Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

Name: Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo
Author: Nirodbaran

Nirodbaran

Nirodbaran's correspondence with Sri Aurobindo began in February 1933 and continued till November 1938, when Sri Aurobindo injured his leg and Nirod became one of his attendants. The entire correspondence, which was carried on in three separate notebooks according to topics - private, medical, and literary - is presented in chronological order, revealing the unique relationship Nirod enjoyed with his guru, replete with free and frank exchanges and liberal doses of humour. Covering a wide range of topics, both serious and light-hearted, these letters reveal the infinite care Sri Aurobindo devoted to the spiritual development of his disciple.

Books by Nirodbaran Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo 1221 pages 1984 Edition

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Publisher’s Note

The most important letters of this correspondence were first published in Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo (First Series, 1954; Second Series, 1959; Combined Edition, 1969) and were arranged according to the subject-matter. In 1972 and 1974 additional letters (humorous ones for the most part) were published in Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo (Part III) and Sri Aurobindo's Humour.

In this new edition, nearly half of the material is being published for the first time. Parts of the edition were serialised in the Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education (November 1971 to August 1975) and Mother India (May 1980 to November 1982).

Editor’s Note

Nirodbaran's correspondence with Sri Aurobindo began in February 1933 and continued till November 1938 when Sri Aurobindo injured his right leg in an accident as a result of which the correspondence came to a stop, and Nirodbaran became one of his attendants.

We felt that it would be interesting to present the entire correspondence just as it has taken place, in its chronological order, showing the gradual development of this unique Guru-Shishya relationship. The chronological arrangement, moreover, allowed us to include a great number of letters or fragments which were not included in the earlier editions.

From the facsimiles, the reader will observe that Sri Aurobindo usually answered Nirodbaran's questions in the margin and at times long answers followed at the end. But since we cannot reproduce this form in print, the device adopted here is to arrange the questions and answers in paragraphs.

Nirodbaran sent 3 notebooks at a time: private, medical and literary. So the reader may sometimes find a single day's correspondence jumping from one subject to another.

The correspondence was left for Sri Aurobindo before 8 p.m. at the head of the staircase in the Meditation Hall.

Sri Aurobindo used to consult the Mother on questions regarding the sadhana and practical matters. He sat up in an armchair, going through the correspondence of the disciples till the early hours of the morning, in the hall below the Mother's second-floor room (which was built much later). The next day the "divine post" was handed over to Nolini for distribution to the disciples.

For the publication of Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo a thorough checking was done with the original manuscript as well as with the typescripts of those letters that Nirodbaran had sent to Sri Aurobindo for revision (more than a hundred typed sheets). In earlier editions the questions were either condensed (at times to such an extent that they were given a different turn) or omitted altogether. Here all the relevant questions are being published, mostly verbatim. They help to show the great liberty the Shishya took while writing to the Guru. But the main purpose is to bring out the full sense of Sri Aurobindo's responses, which can often be better appreciated and understood if the reader has an opportunity to read Nirodbaran's letters just as Sri Aurobindo did. Many are new and those already published can be seen in a new light because all is now in its actual sequence and reads virtually as it did when the notebooks were passing between Sri Aurobindo and Nirodbaran.

Introduction

Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo is coming out in two volumes. It contains many new letters appearing for the first time with the exception of those which are strictly private. Now it may be called a complete set.

This book adds a further chapter to the voluminous correspondence which Sri Aurobindo carried on with his disciples over many years; but it is a chapter with a big difference. It is in the new tone and manner of it that its special charm lies, of which the readers of Mother India have already had a foretaste. The matter is also of no less importance, but it gains an extra interest and novelty from this quality. About Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo, the Mother said, "Thanks to Nirod, we have a revelation of an altogether unknown side of what Sri Aurobindo was." Similarly we can claim about this book that another latent side of the Master's personality has been revealed to us. In fact, when the previous edition of the book was read out to the Mother, she often used to laugh for sheer delight and was impressed by it so much that she made more than one reference to it in the Agenda. She said that Sri Aurobindo was all the time laughing and she added to me, "He has given you everything." Letters on Karmayoga had a special interest for her and she wanted them by her side to show them to the sadhaks.

One is happily surprised to find here not the Sri Aurobindo of Himalayan grandeur and aloofness, but the modern Shakespeare of spiritual sublimity and jollity. Discussion, argument leavened with a sweet temper, witty passages of arms, mental duels, banter, persiflage, rollicking laughter, repartees, swear-words, then all on a sudden a switching off to solemn and serious topics, all written at lightning speed, and if any answer was not completed for shortage of time (apprehending that the Mother would be late for the morning pranam) a request for the note-book back again next day—these are the contents of this opulent offering. Turn a page and you find a gem.

All these lengthy discussions, mind you, with a disciple who had the mental development neither of an Amal (Sethna) nor of a Dilip, but was merely a young man of average intelligence having a thirst for knowledge. One who had "drunk the Infinite like a giant's wine" came down to my mental level, argued point by point, knowing very well how shallow were my thoughts and yet considering them as if I had been an equal opponent, then invalidating my logic with the sweet comment, "To be a logician, sir, is not easy." Dilip who was another recipient of Sri Aurobindo's munificence remarked, "To Nirod he would constantly assume a tone he never once assumed with me. And yet he was talking to me as to a 'friend and a son' and to Nirod like a comrade whom he almost invited to give him as much as he got."

The modern age has produced a modern Guru who could deal with each sadhak according to his nature. When I asked from what perennial fount flowed so much laughter, his cryptic answer was the Upanishadic "রসো বৈ সঃ"¹. In the whole of spiritual history I know of no Guru-Shishya relationship in which the Guru of venerable age and vast learning has given such unlimited liberty to the disciple, so that I could challenge his Karmayoga doctrine, refuse to accept his own example as having any validity for common people like us, carry on a long-drawn out argument on Homeopathy vs Allopathy, etc., etc. In all the exchanges what was remarkable was his calm and cool temper, yogic somata, inexhaustible patience and above all his sunny humour pervading the entire correspondence. At times, he asked to be excused for the bantering tone he could not resist when his own Karmayoga based on experience was tilted at. Very freely he used swear-words for the sake of fun or perhaps to shock the puritan temper. I was occasionally on the perilous brink of irreverence. When people complained of it, he replied, "I return the compliment—I mean, reply without restraint, decorum or the right grave rhythm. That is why I indulge so freely in brackets."

As regards subject matter he gave me a wide field to range over. Supermind, literature, art, religion, spirituality, Avatarhood, love, women, marriage, medical matters, sex-gland, any topical question, such as goat-sacrifice at Kalighat, Bengal political atrocities, sectarian fanaticism, hunger-strike, India's freedom, etc., etc. were my rich pabulum. I need not labour the point that in the process emeralds and lapis-lazulis of, rare value were the reward extracted from his supramental quarry, though at the cost of being dubbed a "wooden head" and many other complimentary epithets. Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Napoleon, Virgil, Shaw, Joyce, Hitler, Mussolini, Negus, Spanish Civil War, General Miaja, romping in, oh, the world-theatre seen at a glance exhibiting many-coloured movements for the eye's, the ear's and the soul's rejoicing.

Now, the question arises: what was the purpose of it all? At one stage, Sri Aurobindo declared that he wanted to intellectualise and logicise my "wooden head". But that would be a very short-sighted human view of the Divine's multi-dimensional work. I am reminded, however, of a narrative poem by Tagore about Guru Govind Singh. The Sikh Guru adopted a Pathan boy whose father he had killed in a flare of temper. He brought him up well-versed in all Shastras and proficient in the art of warfare. Every morning and evening the old valorous Guru used to play with the boy as with his own son. His disciples, much alarmed, warned him not to indulge in this dangerous game, since he was a tiger-cub. However kindly and diligently trained, he would not change his nature. "When he grows up, do remember that his paws will be piercingly sharp," they added. The Guru replied, "If I fail to make the cub grow into a tiger then what have I taught him?"

I was anything but a tiger-cub. Was it the Guru's purpose to experiment with common clay and see how far it could be transformed by his Supramental Power? He has said that he turned many cowards into heroes during the Swadeshi days. Or could it be that—to adapt his own words—he tried to enlighten my understanding, raise me to his level and inspire willing obedience, by convincing me with his incontrovertible logic, as, according to him, Sri Krishna seems to have done in the case of Arjuna, so that my mind purged of all wrong ideas might thereby be prepared to plunge into the sadhana?

Another story comes à propos. When we were attending on Sri Aurobindo after the accident to his leg, the Mother entered his room one day and saw a vision that Sri Aurobindo and I were playing with each other like two babies on a bed. I shall not try to analyse it for he himself replied, when asked about the reason of our exceptional relationship, "Cast your plummet into the deep and perhaps you shall find it—or perhaps you will hit something that hits nothing at all to do with it." I said, "But the 'deep' is too deep for my plummet." His answer was, "For any mental plummet. It is not the mind that can discover these things."

One or two points are there in the Correspondence at which some readers may raise their eyebrows. "Why has Nirod revealed the inner story of the Ashram?" they may ask. My intention is clear. For one thing, I wanted to show what kind of stuff we were that Mother and Sri Aurobindo had to fashion into a new race. People in general have a rosy view of the Ashram. Since it is a Yogashram, they believe a priori that it must be chock-full of big yogis, but their preconceptions do not take long to break into pieces. Most of us, in truth, were common people, and knew very little of yoga. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo took us as they found us. It is precisely one of the cardinal principles of their yoga to take up fresh and simple natures "uncouth, shapeless", if you like, and try to mould them in the image of their souls. When I exclaimed, "What disciples we are of what a Master! I wish you had chosen or called better stuff", Sri Aurobindo answered, "As to the disciples I agree! Yes, but would the better stuff, supposing it to exist, be typical of humanity? To deal with a few exceptional types would hardly solve the problem."

The readers will be lost in wonder and admiration when they see how much care and attention the Master and the Mother have given to the troubles of each disciple. Can one imagine Sri Aurobindo taking interest in a sadhak-patient's small boil and asking the doctor to attend to his groundless complaints? I, as medical attendant, often inveighed against people with contagious diseases being allowed to share the common Ashram life instead of being sent away. Sri Aurobindo's answer full of compassion for one victim still rings in my memory, "he had nowhere to go." Of course they do not always concur with our medical notions and have their own ways of protection. Now, after fifty years or so, I find some of those people visiting the Ashram quite healthy and one actually greeting me with, "Do you recognise me?"

We must also remember that Sri Aurobindo's yoga accepts life and must attend to all matters big or small as parts of it with a view to transform it. He remarked to me that life was in full swing in the Ashram. We know also that the Ashram has been considered as a small "Supramental laboratory" or an epitome of the world where all human problems are concentrated: if and when their solutions would be found, the world problems too would get solved. Each one of us represents a type. On the one hand, our inner and outer difficulties, struggles, resistances in the peripeties of sadhana, the ups and downs, successes and failures, complexities of nature (each one an impossibility, according to the Mother), all these coming to the surface as a result of the pressure of yoga. On the other hand the Mother and Sri Aurobindo treating each case with amazing love and patience in order to give each one the full chance of finding his soul. Such is the spiritual saga I have tried to unfold with innumerable illustrations. I myself was a certain type so that my conversion would facilitate the conversion of many others like me. I believe that is what Sri Aurobindo meant when he said, "You see, your difficulties are not yours alone. When they are conquered, others also will benefit by it. That is the meaning of one man doing yoga for all."

I shall point the reader's attention to a few medical cases to illustrate what the acceptance of life meant in yoga. Let us take the case of S. He suffered from a protracted illness due to his own indiscretion and was on the brink of death. My long correspondence with Sri Aurobindo on the case is an eye-opener, revealing how Sri Aurobindo kept vigil as it were night and day and went on applying his force till S was pronounced out of danger. Another case was of M. The patient, my assistant, had an accident and was hospitalised. Since it became a Police case, Sri Aurobindo ascertained from me and other sadhaks all the facts and gave me minute instructions regarding the conduct of the case with the Police. Then came the vaccination comedy à la Molière. For the first time the French Government sent an injunction that all Ashram members must be vaccinated. That created a mild commotion in the Ashram. To the Mother and Sri Aurobindo vaccination was a nasty business. Sri Aurobindo wrote to me, "The whole Pasteurian affair is to me antipathetic—it is a dark and dangerous principle, however effective." That is all very well, but how to avoid it? Sri Aurobindo had to use all his divine diplomacy and initiated me in the art of dodging the Government, ending eventually with a small number of sadhaks being "induced to make themselves victims on the sacred altar of Science." I could not resist my hilarity, poring over Sri Aurobindo's reasons why such and such persons should not be touched.

Lastly, a sinking high blood-pressure patient from outside was revived by an Ashram homeopath with the effective help of Sri Aurobindo's Force. In this and S's case, I went all out and furiously attacked homeopathy and the doctor as all a big bluff while Sri Aurobindo went on defending him and his science. A tussle followed, neither side relenting till the Shishya had to bow down to the Guru's rigorous logic. I wonder now what plucky devil goaded me on, forgetting that I was engaged in a battle royal with the Divine himself. This particular correspondence is a most valuable document showing the Guru's unbiased judgment, keen insight into the working of invisible forces in diseases, conditions for the effective application of the Force and its method of working, and above all the Master's cool temper and humour in the face of my dogged tenacity in defence of "the blazing hot allopathism."

Let it be understood however, that whenever Sri Aurobindo wrote to me about individual sadhaks or personal matters, it was done to help me see things in their proper perspective and not get disturbed by outer happenings. For instance, when any departure from the Ashram made me apprehensive of my own destiny, I had to place my misgivings before the Mother, and Sri Aurobindo enlightened me by revealing the true facts about such cases. But these disclosures were always done in a dispassionate manner with' out any bias or carping spirit. Equality is the hallmark of any yogi, not to speak of Sri Aurobindo. We were enjoined to open ourselves to the Mother and conceal nothing from her. But it was Sri Aurobindo who mostly replied to our correspondence. He never had any personal animus against anybody. His criticisms had always an impersonal love, devoid of anger, prejudice or ill-feeling.

I need not dilate upon the spiritual and psychological effect the letters have produced and even now produce upon my stumbling journey towards the Unknown. They are a golden chain by which I am bound and drawn willy-nilly towards the destiny the Guru has foreseen. Whenever I read them, the one feeling is the unrestrained freedom and the divine largesse accorded to my nature in that I could soar with wings unfurled in the bosom of the infinite Blue. Indeed freedom, not license, is the cardinal principle of the integral yoga, and the key by which my soul was released from its prison-house. Oh, the halcyon days!

The total effect of the entire correspondence can be summed up in Sri Aurobindo's luminous sentence, "But within there is a soul and above there is Grace. This is all you know or need to know,' and, if you don't, well, even then you have at least somehow stumbled into the path and have got to remain there till you get haled along it far enough to wake up to the knowledge. Amen."

Besides these two volumes, there will be two other volumes of my Bengali and English poems written under the Master's inspiration and guidance and our correspondence on them. I was also made the channel of communication for Jyotirmoyee's Bengali poetry which he explained and commented upon. That will easily run into another big volume. So much he has done for one single person, which the Divine alone can do. And he had to attend to about two hundred persons, besides.

I offer my deep gratitude to Amal, Jayantilal, David and Sudha, especially the last two for their collaboration and untiring care in making the book as flawless as possible.

—Nirodbaran

Mother's Comments on the Correspondence

Here is what she said to the disciple:

Nirod is reading out to me his correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, and it contains all the things (it's amusing), the things I said long, long afterwards, and I didn't know that he had written them!—exactly the same thing. I was very much interested.

In this correspondence, he told Nirod in a letter¹ (he said it several times): "I may take a fancy to leave my body before the supramental realisation ..." He said that a few years before he died. He had felt it.

(Silence)

But he spoke of a transformation that would come before the advent of the first supramental being.² And that was what he told me. He told me that his body was not capable of bearing this transformation, that mine was more capable—he repeated it.

But it is difficult. I told you so the other day.

Food, especially, is ... it has become a labour.

Have you read the whole "Correspondence with Nirod"?

I am translating it as I go along, so I haven't read the whole thing.

There are extraordinary things in there. He seems to be joking all the time but ... it's extraordinary.

You see, I lived—how many years? Thirty years, I think, with Sri Aurobindo—thirty years from 1920 to 1950. I thought I knew him well, and then when I hear this, I realise that ... (Mother makes a gesture as if to indicate a breaking of bounds.)

According to what Nirod is reading out to me now of his correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, it seems to have been the same thing for Sri Aurobindo. Because, according to what he wrote (you will see when you read it), I am always the doer. He says: "Mother says, Mother does, Mother ..." You see, as far as the organisation of the Ashram is concerned (relations with people and all that), it would seem that, quite naturally, all the time, it is all done through me.

And you know, from the point of view of humour, I have never read anything more wonderful, oh! ... He had a way of looking at things ... it's incredible. Incredible. But it seems that for him, the outside world was something ... absurd, you know.

(...)

Oh! it's very strange. It's very strange. Since my childhood all my effort has been to (how can I put it?) achieve a total indifference—neither annoying nor pleasant. Since my childhood, I remember a consciousness which tried ... That was what Sri Aurobindo meant—an indifference. Oh! it's strange. Now I realise why he said that I was the one who could attempt to effect the transition between the human and the supramental consciousness. He said so. He told me, and he says it, it is, recorded in Nirod's thing. And I understand why ...

Ah! I understand.

Yes, I understand.

I am hearing—through Nirod—things that Sri Aurobindo said, and he himself says that he contradicted himself a considerable number of times ... (...) and that, of course, the two or three different ways are true.³ So we can be as ... as wide as he!

In fact his understanding was very flexible—very flexible. While listening to the things he said, I felt, that I had understood very little of what he meant. And now that I am more and more in touch with the supramental Consciousness, I can see that it is extremely flexible—flexible and complex—and that it is our narrow human consciousness that sees things ... (Mother draws little squares in the air) fixed and definite.

(...)

And I can see that when one goes above the mind, it becomes ... it is like waves on the sea.

1933

February 1933

I wrote to you regarding my staying here permanently. My aspiration and decision still stand the same. May I hear from you about it?

Before deciding forever, we can take a period of time and see say till August.

I am thinking of learning French, but will it help me in my sadhana? Will you kindly suggest what I should do by way of some work or studies?

There is some work in the B.D.²—if you like, you can ask Khirod—telling him how many hours you want to work.

There are not much facilities for French just now. The classes have been stopped for a time owing to the illness, of the eyes of the teacher.

March 1933

What shall I do about the scattering of my mind?

The method of gathering of the mind is not an easy one. It is better to watch and separate oneself from the thoughts till one becomes aware of a quiet space within into which they come from outside.

As soon as I start meditating I lapse into sleep.

The sleep does come like that when one tries to meditate. It has to be dealt with, where that is possible, by turning it into a conscious inner and indrawn state and, where not, by remaining in a quietly concentrated wakefulness open (without effort) to receive.

Some days I feel intensely happy after doing pranam³ seeing your smiling face. On other days, there is calmness, but no joy. I thought it has something to do with your smile.

Or does it depend on the state of the psychic being?

Don't start having that idea. It is quite untrue and those who indulge it raise vital reactions and imaginations in themselves and provoke much unnecessary trouble.

It is in yourself that there is the variation, not of the psychic being which is always all right, but of the rest, mind, vital or body.

Should one write about everything? Or according to the need of each?

Only those who feel the need, write their experiences or condition daily to the Mother. Even so, they need not write the same things daily, but only what they feel the necessity to write.

Is there any difference between doing meditation in a sitting position and doing it while walking? I feel that while walking, it is not possible to get the same amount of concentration as in the other—for beginners, at least.

It is as each finds convenient. Some meditate better walking, some sitting.

I suppose meditation while walking is more likely to be a prayer than meditation proper.

Not at all. One can meditate very well when walking.

Do I profit, Mother, by simply looking at you or your photograph?

Yes, very many do.

I want to know whether I am pursuing the right line.

Yes.

I dreamed that I had gone away from the Asram, to my native place. My misery and utter helplessness cannot be described.

I think the significance of my dream was that life outside will be a hell for me. I am meant for this life and must stick to what I am called for.

Yes, obviously.

The hostile thoughts which may and do arise in me sometimes, can they not be partly due to my relatives' thought-waves disturbing my poise and equilibrium?

Yes.

Then how to prevent them? By constant aspiration and your kind help and blessings?

Yes, and by elimination of old interests and attachments

I read Galsworthy's book "Flowering Wilderness" which is a very good one, still-it did not help me, for I felt unhappy.

Why should something that belongs to quite another order of con sciousness help the sadhana?

Can one be in a serious mood throughout the day?

It is quite possible—only it is not a mood, but a quiet and ardent consciousness.

May I take French lessons from Benjamin?

You can.

I hear there will be music⁴ tomorrow at 4.30 p.m. May I come away at 4 from my work to get a good seat?

It is at 5 o'clock.

Nolini has told you, I suppose, that I intend to shift tomorrow, after pranam. Please give the necessary orders for a servant to help me in shifting and getting the room ready.

Things have been arranged for that.

Mother, you forgot to give flowers for B and P.

A whole handful of flowers were given to C for distribution to everybody there.

Could I have a mosquito curtain? The one I have is too big for my cot.

At present, Mother has no cloth for mosquito nets. But you can give yours to Kanai for making it of the size of the cot.

I have read in the Mother's "Conversations" that if one prays to her before going to bed to be conscious in sleep, it helps.

You have to start by concentrating before your sleep, always with a specific will or aspiration. The will or aspiration may take time to reach the subconscient, but if it is sincere, strong and steady, it does reach after a time so that an automatic consciousness and will are established in the sleep itself which will do what is necessary.

I am having a peculiar experience for the past few days. After pranam I usually go to the reception room and gaze at Sri Aurobindo's portrait for about fifteen minutes. Then I pass a few minutes over the newspapers. When I get up I get dizzy, my head reels and I have at once to sit down. Is it connected with sadhana, and if so what am Ito do?

It seems to be connected not with sadhana but with newspapers. After 15 minutes' concentration to plunge into newspapers may not unnaturally lead to such a result.

Last night I went to hear music and sat beside Nolini. I felt an intense joy, not to be equalled by the jay of music. Is it merely an imagination?

No—it means there is a vital sympathy

Mother, I took your permission to walk about or meditate in the Pranam hall when you play on the organ in the morning. But some days I am late due to miscalculation of time.

Mother never plays before 9.30.

April 1933

I feel a great longing to express myself in literature but sometimes it gets mixed with a desire to be a great writer. But on the other hand my language is poor, style immature and thoughts meagre.

There should be no "desire" to be a "great" writer. If there is a genuine inspiration or coming of a power to write, then it can be done but to use it as a means of service to the Divine is the proper spirit.

I went to is place and came back feeling depressed. May I have caught the depression from her or did it come like that without any apparent reason?

Both are possible.

I think I have read in "Conversations" that depression is contagious and one may get it just like the germs of a disease. Is it true and what might have been the cause in my case?

Yes. She must have dropped it upon you (not intentionally of course) and also perhaps your vital forces went to her leaving you for the moment empty.

Since my coming here, I don't think I have ever had a good meditation. It begins in earnestness and ends in sleep with dreams.

What kind of dreams?

It is very difficult to say what kind of dreams they are. They are incomplete, incoherent and indistinct. But I remember one: some chickens were going about with their mother, and some crows appeared, suddenly one of them caught hold of a chicken and flew away. How on earth could such a dream take place and what significance could it have?

Naturally, these dreams have no value except when they are symbolic; but it counts only as the beginning of an inward going movement.

It is probable that you have begun to go inside and first get into touch with a world very near to the physical and are seeing things there.

I quite realise that there should be no craving for anything. But when a cup of tea is offered can it be harmful to our sadhana? I thought it all depends on the attitude.

Yes, but the attitude of craving can be encouraged by taking. If there is the right attitude one can take, but one will not perhaps care to!

I do not quite understand what is meant by "your vital forces went to her leaving you for the moment empty".

There is always an interchange of vital forces going on between people. If you sit near one who is weak and depressed and needs vital force, you may have your forces pulled from you by his or her need and yourself feel depressed or weak or empty.

Is this vital interchange one of the reasons why many sadhaks segregate themselves?

Yes. Not the drawing of vital forces alone, but the invasion by the ideas, feelings, atmosphere of others, hampering the sadhana, is one of the chief reasons of the turn towards segregation and solitude.

How to increase the vital resistance by which these in-drawings or outgoings can be prevented?

It is partly by being vigilant and having a self-protecting will; partly by a capacity to call in and replenish the forces at any moment that one can best meet the difficulty.

I tried to meditate but I had to simply give it up, and sleep came in and with it what confused dreams!

When you cannot meditate, remain quiet and call in the Mother's Peace or Force.

About that "legal action", I do not know exactly what they intend. I suppose they would like very much to have a personal warrant issued and so get me back for some debts.

Pondicherry is a place where people often come as a refuge—because there can be no personal warrant for debts against them here. I knew a Parsi from Bombay loaded with debts who was here for three or four years and only went back when his affairs were settled by others in Bombay itself.

Whenever I receive letters from friends I go into ecstasies, and constantly I'm thinking of what I should write etc. Evidently such an upsetting is not good for our sadhana, is it? But perhaps one can indulge in a little exuberance when friends seem to aspire for a divine life.

It is not likely to be much of an obstacle. But there should be no attachment or depression if it does not happen as you would like.

When I get up in the morning I find that the previous day's sadhana is forgotten. What should be done to keep up the continuity?

The gap made by the night and waking with the ordinary consciousness is the case with everybody almost (of course, the "ordinary" consciousness differs according to the progress); but it is no use wanting to be conscious in sleep; you have to get the habit of getting back the thread of the progress as soon as may be and for that there must be some concentration after rising.

At night, you have to pass into sleep in the concentration—you must be able to concentrate with the eyes closed, lying down and the concentration must deepen into sleep—that is to say, sleep must become a concentrated going inside away from the outer waking state. If you find it necessary to sit for a time you may do so, but afterwards lie down, keeping the concentration till this happens.

I go to the Asram for meditation, about an hour after I rise. Is this not rather late for "getting back the thread of the progress"?

You neen not meditate at once—but for a few minutes take a concentrated attitude calling the Mother's presence for the day.

Last night I was trying to concentrate in bed, with the eyes closed. I suddenly woke up and the first thought was that I had been able to concentrate for long, and it did not look like sleep as there was no dazed or queer feeling as one usually has in sudden wakings. I have no experience of what going inside is like. Maybe this is the thing?

[Sri Aurobindo underlined the last sentence.]

Yes, only not yet a conscious going inside—that has to come.

The rest of the night also passed in a kind of constant remembrance, but in between I had an unhappy dream which I completely forgot. I woke up in the morning feeling spiritless without any apparent reason. Then it struck me that it was perhaps the effect of the dream working beneath the surface.

Its effect—yes. But you ought to shake it off at once and not allow it to trouble you.

By saying that I seem to have become quieter, did you mean that my vital-physical is not so clamorous or is it an inner quiet of the psychic?

Mother meant simply that there was less restlessness of the mind and the vital during the meditation—as you yourself felt.

Today at pranam, you did not keep your hand on my head as you usually do. If there is any twist, I will at once set U right.

There was no such significance.

Here is a letter from J. He asked me to pray for him and to take a flower from you. And he would also like to come here.

You must understand that if we refuse persistently J's demand, we have a good reason for it. I do not understand really what he wants you to do. Flowers are usually given on special occasions and he can have them then.

I find that the concentration before going to bed merges unconsciously into sleep.

These things cannot have their effect in a moment. You must persevere till the physical consciousness is penetrated.

I have marked that if We write to you about some defects, some wrong movements, etc., they are immediately rectified but only for a day or two. Then gradually the old habits, wrong turns of the mind, creep in.

Again, transformation does not happen by a miracle in a day. It must be gained by constant aspiration, patient perseverance and persistence.

Just now I received P's telegram. I am sure you will give him permission, won't you?

The permission may be given—but does he want to stay in the Asram? If so, does he know the ways of life here and that he must conform to them and also about the expenses? Or will he stay outside?

For how long is he likely to come?

All this should be understood before you answer.

Some days I walk out of the Pranam hall with joy and warmth filling my whole being; on other days the whole being seems calm and quiet. Which is the better condition?

Both are good—and there is no harm in their alternating till the joy and peace can combine.

Last night while I was concentrating lying in bed I entered into a half-wakeful state which made me a little afraid. I tried to fall asleep but the state of concentration would not leave me. At last sleep came. Is this an intermediate stage?

Yes. I don't know why you should have any fear! It is a quite usual experience of the concentrated state when one is going inside.

As the meditation deepens, a sense of pressure is felt on the head. I don't suppose it is anything abnormal?

It is on the contrary the most normal thing everybody feels at a certain initial stage.

I hear that one can pray for a friend and write to you about him.

Yes but don't do it for people who have not the turn for Yoga. Each has his own movement—his own time in this life or another.

For some days there is joy and enthusiasm; sadhana goes on well. Then there comes a lapse when there is less joy and meditation needs effort.

These alternations are quite normal. In the low periods one has to remain quiet, assimilate what one has received and aspire for more.

May 1933

S writes to me that he is suffering from urinary trouble and he refuses to have any treatment except your blessings.

You can send blessings—but he ought to use every means to get rid of his illness. It is only if he has a calm mind and a sound body that he can do Yoga. His present state is too disorganised to bear any pressure.

I read in "The Synthesis of Yoga" that every act, movement etc. must be done as an offering, even if by a mental effort. This mental discipline is easy in acts of mechanical nature but not so easy in those of concentrative nature where the attention gets divided.

It is because people live in the surface mind and are identified with it. When one lives more inwardly, it is only the surface consciousness that is occupied and one stands behind it in another which is silent and self-offered.

What is meant exactly by "opening oneself'? Calling you, praying to you, remembering you, etc.?

These are acts of the mind, openness is a state of consciousness which keeps it turned to the Mother, free from other movements, expecting and able to receive what may come from the Divine.

I hear you have some special hours when you work for us?

No, it is not so.

Mother, today after pranam as I raised my eyes, I could not but mark something different in your look, as if some surprise, some concern, even the suggestion of a reproach, was trying to express itself.

Not at all.

I feel it may be due to one of two reasons. First, I have been having vital thoughts. But when I realised they may be due to yoga, my mind settled down.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "due to yoga" and put a question mark in the margin.]

Second, I had to go to the pier⁵ with X as she was not feeling well and I came back depressed.

The pier itself has a very bad atmosphere nowadays.

For which of the two reasons did you give me that searching look?

For neither. You looked depressed, so Mother looked at you,—there was no other search.

I feel much better when alone but sometimes I have to attend to X in her illness or I have to go to market with her. I wish I could do all this with a calm mind. I hope lam clear.

Quite and you are right—but I don't see the way out for the moment—unless you can separate yourself within and put a guard of calm aloofness around you.

Mother, one mistaken idea seems to trouble me for some time. I feel that in the evening whenever my eyes catch your look, you suddenly turn it away. I come to see you with some misapprehension lest you do not look at me. I am sure there is no truth in my imagination.

No, there is no truth in it. It is your own idea your apprehension and misapprehension that produce in you the misconception that Mother does not want to look at you!

Last night I had a funny dream: my sleep suddenly broke off and I heard somebody saying to me, standing near my head, that Sri Aurobindo has asked him to use my soap and I had the distinct sweet smell of the soap. I was frightened and trembled all over. Any significance

In itself the dream was absurd and has no significance—but it may be the transcription made by the mind was false and the man standing at the head was a vital force approaching. That alone would explain the fear. But this kind of fear ought to be got over. The sadhak has to be able to face the vital world, in waking or in sleep, with courage, calm and confidence in the protection.

I hear that many people have been on the point of going away due to the pressure of Yoga.

It is not due to the pressure of Yoga, but to the pressure of something in them that negates the Yoga. If one follows one's psychic being and higher mental will, no amount of pressure of Yoga can produce such results. People talk as if the Yoga had some maleficent force in it which produces these results. It is on the contrary the resistance to Yoga that does it.

The Mother, in "Conversations", says that the first effect of yoga is to take away the mental control so that the ideas and desires which were so long checked become surprisingly prominent and create difficulties.

They were not prominent because they were getting some satisfaction or at least the vital generally was getting indulged in one way or another. When they are no longer indulged then they become obstreperous. But they are not new forces created by the Yoga—they were there all the time.

What is meant by the mental control being removed, is that the mental simply kept them in check but could not remove them. So in Yoga the mental has to be replaced by the psychic or spiritual self-control which could do what the mental cannot. Only many sadhaks do not make this exchange in time and withdraw the mental control merely.

I find already that at certain moments this life seems distasteful, dull and dreary.

What is meant by dull and deary is that the ordinary preoccupations and amusements of the vital are not there. The whole of one's life and action has to be turned into sadhana and then it is not dull.

I hear you do not like the gate-keepers to do any writing, reading, etc., when on duty. Is it true?

It was because people were neglecting their duty in the absorption of reading and writing, allowing undesirable people to enter etc. If that does not happen, one can read or write—only when one is on duty, the duty comes first.

Mother, after raising my hopes, you have dashed them to the ground! With much expectation, I waited for a flower from you this morning, but got none. Is it because I hadn't asked for it? I have been upset all day because of it.

It was not at all intentionally that the flower was not given—it was due to an oversight committed when Nolini was counting the number of flowers to be distributed.

SRI AUROBINDO
May 18, 1933

N says you have arranged Budi House for P. I suppose, no nearer house is available.

There is another house less breezy and almost as far.

Mother, in the pranam your looks vary so much from day to day that one cannot but realise at once that they have a significance. Today, I could make out that you wanted to tell me something but I could not understand what it was. I went over all the incidents of the day—no result.!

It was only to keep your self clear from all influences except the Mother’s.

Can I have tea at Dilip's place, in the morning?

Yes.

I hope there won't be any "encouragement of cravings". Of course, I have not been able to trace any outward bad effects from such occasional indulgence.

If it is occasional and you have no attachment, it is all right.

I am trying, as you asked me, to give Sanjiban, a general idea of the surface of the body to help him in his painting.

Yes, that is it; especially the proportions and forms and the deformations coming by movement e.g. contraction of muscles in different positions etc.

Sometimes I think that you are giving me a taste of the cup of bliss in very small drops, and at long intervals, but I do not at all despair.

There is no reason certainly for despair. The bliss always comes in drops at first, or a broken trickle. You have to go on cheerfully and in full confidence, till there is the cascade.

B writes that one can receive forces even unconsciously. Many people who were once hostile or had no opening to yoga had a sudden change. At the same time I've heard you say that one receives when one opens oneself—which is true?

It is more complex than that. Of course a hostile mind can be changed by a sudden experience, but the experience shows that something in him was open though not on the surface.

How to remember the Mother during work? I have tried to follow a mental rule, without success. Perhaps it is the inner consciousness that remembers while the outer is busy?

One starts by a mental effort—afterwards it is an inner consciousness that is formed which need not be always thinking of the Mother because it is always conscious of her.

June 1933

After these few months of peace and cheerfulness, why now an upsurge of vital thoughts and desires which don't leave me? They are so depressing.

The only thing to do with such depressing thoughts is not to indulge them, to send them away at once. Vital difficulties are the common lot of every human being and of every sadhak—they are to be met with a quiet determination and confidence in the Divine Grace.

Now I realise that my efforts are not everything, they can be more effective by your help and Grace. But should I write to you every time I have a difficulty?

You can always write

During my gate duty visitors enquire sometimes about the nature of food, number of people, etc.

No inner details about the Asram can be given to outsiders—there is an express rule against it.

Some people get disappointed when they learn that they cannot see Sri Aurobindo. Shall I suggest to them to write or tell them anything about you?

No, certainly not. They can be shown the photograph in the Reception Room—if they want. There is no necessity to volunteer information about the Mother.

I took some food at D's. I don't know whether you approve of these indulgences.

It does not matter.

Dr. B wants to take up the gate duty. Shall I part with it?

Yes, it was his work, so he is entitled to have it back.

July 1933

Do you think I should allow myself these moods of recreation or occasional enjoyments? I think, there is a little craving for a cup of tea associated with it.

You can if you feel the need.

R asks me to take some food outside. I am rather tempted. But should I?

You do not expect the Mother to give sanction for these things? Those who take food outside, do it on their own responsibility.

I find that French grammar is very annoying. Will it not be better to read for the present some easy story books?

If you like. But if you do not learn the grammar, you will never know French well.

Dilip is giving lessons on rhythm. I intend to learn, but I think there is hardly any poetry in me.

You can learn it—it is easy enough to learn.

I offered to work in Nagin's vegetable garden. Should I try at least?

Yes, you can try.

[About a personal problem]

There is nothing unusual in your feelings towards X. It is the way that vital love usually takes when there is no strong psychic force to correct and uphold it. After the first vital glow is over, the incompatibility of the two egos begins to show itself and there is more and more strain in the relations—for one or both the demands of the other become intolerable to the vital part, there is constant irritation and the claim is felt as a burden and a yoke. The other elements of which you speak have nothing to do with this particular relation, they could have existed in a purely mental friendship or psychic relation without any vital demand on either side. Naturally in a life of sadhana there is no room for vital relations—they are a stumbling block preventing the wholesale turning of the nature towards the Divine.

August 1933

Mother did not put her hand on my head during pranam. I hope it was not due to any wrong movement in me?

No. It was merely because Mother was in trance.

I hear N is going away. It is very surprising and painful to find that one who has been apparently so earnest and sincere in sadhana should have such a sad failure.

What do you mean by "sincere"? If one does Yoga in order to be a great Yogi or in order to satisfy the sex impulse in the vital, that is not sincerity. It is what N started doing. Farther he began to have wrong experiences and when he was told so, instead of putting himself right, he began to conceal his experiences from me—which shows that he preferred his egoistic satisfaction in getting experiences to the Truth—and that too is not sincerity.

I have the idea that since we can communicate everything to you by prayer, why need we write? But then it can also be said—why not write? Do you think something is trying to hide under the cloak of this argument?

It is always well to write what goes on in you—but it need not be done every day. The essential is to keep nothing concealed.

May I do an extra pranam for C and P?

Yes, provided you do the two in one minute. Even with one minute for each we are threatened with a 7 hour sitting. There are 500 people.

Chandu has sent two rupees on the occasion of his birthday—26th August. May I send you some flowers?

Yes.

With the money shall I buy fruits or sauce or pickles?

No sauce or pickles at any rate. Fruit if you like.

I have asked X to come to my place whenever she likes, but she says it will go against your order.

There is no objection to her going—the objection was to talking etc. in such a way as to disturb A.

I want to learn some instrumental music: esrāj or tablā. For the first S is the only instructor, I don't know if she'll be willing to teach and for the second A. Will you kindly suggest something?

For tabla A is sufficient. I don't think S will be willing to teach. So—

I am often troubled by sexual thoughts

How to get rid of them?

To think too much of sex even for suppressing it, makes it worse.

You have to open more to positive experience. To spend all the time struggling with the lower vital is a very slow method.

How to open oneself to positive experience? Please tell me.

By remaining quiet and aspiring for it—knowing that it is waiting there above. Also think more of the Mother and less of your vital impulses.

How narrowly I've lost my chance for pranam! Will you give me some consolation by sending a flower for me?

Yes

D is of the opinion that one has to do studious sadhana by constant writing and reading etc.

D's idea may be good for one who is a writer by nature and has to cultivate his gift—your case is different—and you have first to develop the inspiration, otherwise your writing will be only a mental exercise.

I am sending a poem which visited me while I was lying in bed at 10.30 p.m. It took me two hours to complete it and many more, brooding over it. Has it any inspiration or is it a mental galley-slave labour?

It is not at all bad as a beginning—there is at least an opening for inspiration there.

It struck me suddenly that instead of seeking for dazzling experiences, I should aspire for more important things like light, force, calm, etc.

Yes, those are more important things to aspire for. The rest is not excluded but should be subordinate.

Then again the same difficulty of transmission appears to hinder the proper finish. Will you tell me where the defect lies—little mastery over language, style, or insufficient inspiration?

All writers have the difficulty—it is the tamas of the physical mind which finds it difficult to transcribe the inspiration.

Is it bad for our sadhana to think much about the rhymes, words and ideas of these poems? But I find this a wonderful escape from the prison of thoughts of the lower vital.

It is certainly better than being occupied with the lower vital.

Mother, I had been expecting that after getting your touch, I would sit down to write poetry; but I failed to secure the thing I was seeking for in your touch. And then I began to think, with a depressed heart, what is precisely wrong in me. Do you like us to ask for your power and force for writing poetry etc.?

The depression is quite out of place—of course it came because you had a rajasic expectation which got disappointed.

In the Pranam the Mother puts her force for whatever she sees to be necessary in the sadhana. She would not do it specifically for giving you a poetic inspiration. For that you have only to keep yourself open and it will come of itself whenever it is due. But there should be no over-eagerness—a harmonious listening quietude is the best medium for the rush of inspiration to come.

September 1933

May I go and see Krishnalal's paintings now and then?

Not now and then—artists usually do not care to be disturbed. You have not seen them already? I don't think he is painting his pictures now.

I send you a poem, rather long I am afraid. I shall eagerly wait to hear what you think of it.

I will take another day to read your poem! What I have read of it is good.

Last night I had a terrible dream. J was telling me: "Have you heard what D has come to? He is totally insane and now lies down in the drains." I was suddenly seized with fear, and thought: who knows if the same lot may not befall me! In the grip of that terrible fear I began to call you, but my voice wouldn't come out. Then in two or three minutes it left me... Last few days, I have been rather depressed.

Is this due to some influence exerted unconsciously on the mind by D's condition?

It is not D's condition, but your "depression for the last few days" that opened the door to this nightmare. It simply seized hold of the idea about D in order to shove itself in farther and more forcibly.

Sometimes I doubt my call for spiritual life. Occasionally some peace comes down which perhaps comes from inactivity.

If you allow such absurd ideas to take hold of you and make you belittle an experience, it is no wonder you can't progress. What is wrong with the peace that comes from inactivity? It is as good as any other.

So many thoughts have been invading me—hence my gloomy, cheerless and pessimistic attitude, I think. At such a time many tempting thoughts lure me to set the wheel back—but it is clear that I shall never step back. I must go on.

It is a formation of a hostile character that is wandering about the Asram and taking hold of one after another telling them that they are not fit and won't be able to do the Yoga and had better die or better go away or at least better be desperate. The only sensible thing is to kick these suggestions out of you without any ceremony and tell them that you have come here to succeed and not to fail.

Seeing J's aspiration I am tempted to ask him again to come for Darshan. Will you kindly give him blessings that he may come one day?

Don't press too much. Let him develop naturally if he has the true call.

Is it likely that you have forgotten about the poem? Of course I am not in a hurry, but only anxious to hear your opinion about it.

It has disappeared in a mass of papers and I am hunting for it now.

I find sometimes that the rejection is not entire. The mind tries to call in the thoughts and enjoy them. It is no doubt due to a weakness in the nature still trying to satisfy itself in thoughts.

It is usually that—some part of the being has the taste still—so it returns.

October 1933

Yes, it's very true that there is still a "taste" in the being. But what to do about it?

You can put pressure on that part of your mind to give up its predilection.

I cannot deny that along with my urge for acquiring a fine style etc., there is hiding some desire for fame as a good writer which, however, one can reject, at least one can hope to.

Better not force the inspiration. You have some literary gift and can let it grow—but no desire for fame, if you please.

I send you a letter from P.

I don't find P's letter. Perhaps it has flown down to Nolini.

Mother, P wants your blessings. Could you give a flower for him at pranam?

Mother will try to remember—otherwise she will send with Nolini.

I send a poem for your kind perusal and opinion. There is hardly any originality in thought and expression. Will you kindly tell me how to acquire power and subtlety in writing, both of which I seem to lack awfully? And do you think the style and originality in technique come in automatically or one has to consciously strive for them?

The opening and close of the poem are rather poor, but in between it is well written, as it seems to me, and there are some good lines.

The original poetry comes in when you get back from the mind and outer vital to some inner source or at least channel of inspiration. Aspiration for that is better than to strive.

Lately all vitality seems to have disappeared, leaving no interest in anything.

It is a tamasic reaction, I suppose. It is to be discouraged and got rid of.

November 1933

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

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

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

Not constantly, but from time to time.

I do some running exercise in the early morning. Is there any harm?

No.

Today I saw N with S at 6 a.m. It was at once clear that she has joined the hostile camp. I now hear that she is going away. Yet she herself had said recently that she will never leave you...

Perhaps you don't know that N came as a temporary resident and stayed on simply because she did not care to go, finding herself at ease here. She was never permanently accepted.

And it cannot be denied that following a sincere call she came from her place to this far-off land, in quest of Truth.

How do you know it was a sincere call? She did not come to India to seek the Truth from a far land leaving her near and dear ones; she came in order to get away from her family life in which she was in furious conflict with most of her people. After she came to India she began wandering through various Asrams—but was not satisfied with some and the others sent her away or perhaps entreated her to leave them. All the same there was a being within her which had pushed her to this life, so she had her chance—although the Mother never expected much of her nor were we at all certain about her staying or being able to go through. Her failure does not mean a definite frustration. The being that is in her will certainly have its way in this life or another—but it must be admitted that for this life the chances don't look overbright.

Within a very short span of time we have seen some four or five departures among whom B had been here quite a number of years and he was not a weak adhar⁶ either. How is it that all of a sudden he opened the doors to undivine beings, when he was going so smoothly and confidently on one track?

B did not open all of a sudden. He had from the first a violent Asuric strain in his nature, as he himself knew and he was always trying to incarnate new Asuras in the plea of offering their mighty strength and power for the Divine Work. I don't believe that at any time in his life he went "smoothly and confidently on one track"—it was from the beginning all leaps and shouts and catastrophes and upheavals. I thought I had destroyed the legend of his being a perfect Bhakta⁷ and strong Adhar.

Is the Divine so helpless against these forces or beings?

Do you expect the Divine to force a man into heaven against his own will?

You said the other day that we call in these forces by our habit, for the sake of drama, etc. It is true but isn't it quite natural too since we are hardly transformed in our nature and aspiration, as yet?

To have weaknesses of the lower nature is one thing—to call in the hostile forces is quite another. Whoever does the latter, takes his risk. He is going towards the opposite camp—for the marks of the hostile Force are contempt of the Divine, revolt and hatred against the Mother, disbelief in the Yoga, assertion of ego against the Divine Being, preference of falsehood to Truth, seeking after false gods and rejection of the Eternal.

Am I then to suppose that N, B and others began to walk with hesitating steps, doubting at every step they had taken the Divine leading?

Not with hesitating but with hostile steps—away from the Truth.

As for N, one can hardly say that she took steps hesitating or not—most of her life was drifting in the current of her own impulses...

If after a few years of sincere sadhana I make a wrong movement under the influence of hostile forces, why does not the Divine come in with his power and save me, considering that I have been true to him at least for some time?

And what do you make of the free choice and the necessity of assent? Supposing the Divine does intervene and you say "Damn you I don't want you—you are a nuisance and a lie. I want my own inspirations and the satisfaction of my ego," and supposing you kick the Divine in the face when he stoops to help you and even when he lifts you up and sends the Black Force away, you call it back each time and rush back to embrace it. What then? That is what those who are under that influence do—D,N, others all did it.

I cannot believe that the Divine does not know our ultimate fate. Why then does the Divine accept me if he knows that I shall fail in the long run?

What is the long run?

May I know when and under what circumstances fulfilled, you send in your saving hand, in case one is assailed by such forces? I am convinced that no undivine powers can stand against you unless for some inscrutable reasons you have not helped or do not help.

It is when they refuse to be saved. B was saved several thousand times. Finally he said he would go on his own way, that the Divine in him was the true Divine and we were only indulging our outer personalities and he threatened to starve himself to death if we kept him here. What do you expect us to do under these circumstances? Yoga is an endeavour, a tapasya—it can cease to be so only when one surrenders sincerely to a higher Action and keeps the surrender and makes it complete. It is not a fantasia, devoid of all reason and coherence or a mere miracle. It has its laws and conditions and I do not see how you can demand of the Divine to do everything by a violent miracle.

I ask myself why I lose heart over cases which are apparently failures and not take courage from those who are going triumphantly.

I have never said that this Yoga was a safe one—no Yoga is. Each has its dangers as has every great attempt in human life. But it can be carried through if one has a central sincerity and a fidelity to the Divine. These are the two necessary conditions.

What a shock I got today when I saw that one of our bean-plants died! It was growing so luxuriantly and overnight, this was the state. J says it may be due to white ants—for which there is no remedy.

The only remedy is to find out the queen and kill it—if it is in the garden.

This case very significantly reminds me of all the cases I have written about.

Why not take it as a lesson in equanimity

By saying that N was never permanently accepted by you, you invite me to ask you about myself which I have not done so far, partly through fear, partly feeling no necessity for it.

My meaning was this only that the original understanding with N was that she was here to try if it suited her and she was free to go at any moment. And this was never altered. It suited her only in so far as she was at ease with no strong pressure to give up her peculiarities unless she freely chose to do so. The pressure we put on others, however silent, or modified, on yourself or J, we did not put on her—we left her to her fancies. The reason was that if she was to take up the life in good earnest, it must be from herself, from the being within corning out. With a mind like hers the least pressure would be useless—until that moment came, if it came. There is therefore no analogy between your case or J's and hers.

From all my outbursts of yesterday, I hope you have been able to see that I am pleading for the solicitude of the Divine, beforehand.

The solicitude is there.

...Because you know I have very often been played at by these suggestions—and the forces have not exhausted their resources, though at present they are out of the way.

So are many in the Asram. The thing is neither to play with them—nor to fear them. Suggestions are suggestions—they come to all. It is the rejection that is important.

I have received a letter from my family—usual pathetic letter. Will it not be wise to write saying that all their wailings are of no use?

Better say nothing—it does no good and only increases the reaction from there.

When you give us flowers. are we to aspire for the things they stand for. or do you give them with the flowers?

There is no fixed rule—sometimes it is the one, sometimes the other. But even when the thing is given, it is given a power—it has to be realised by the sadhak in consciousness and for that aspiration is necessary.

The fountain of poetry has dried up. Not only so—there is a feeling of disgust for poetry. Is it due to inertia?

Tamas—the disgust is also tamasic.

December 1933

If this disgust is due to tamas, will you tell me how to drive this tamas out?

Use your will.

Is then inspiration the source of all ideas?

At any rate in poetry it is.

Last night as I was meditating in a half-sleepy state, I had a vision of a most gorgeous auroral display of colours in the eastern horizon, one colour being added to and superimposed on the other in a quick succession; the sort of display one sees before the sun rises, only infinitely grander. I don't remember whether your image flashed through before or after the vision. Has it any significance?

The play of colours is the play of forces and on the east indicates something that is beginning or about to begin.

Mother, your reproachful look in the morning put me out of all good cheer. Is it due to a lingering desire in me?

That is an imagination, as usual. There was no reproach. Of course Mother saw that you had been touched by the desire, but there was no feeling of reproach in her.

The Divine pushes me to such tests when he knows me so well—and then I get a none-too-happy look from you!

The imagination of a none-too-happy look! I repeat there was no reproach.

Would you advise me not to go to X's aid in her illness?

I can't very well say that. I could only say so if there was somebody else who was willing to help her.

For some time past I have been feeling as if I were receding from the Divine, or is it that the Divine is receding from me?

The Divine does not recede. For yourself, you are probably not so much receding as getting into the part where there is the difficulty. I mean you have projected yourself from the mind into the vital. It would have been better if you had drawn back into the psychic—but since you are there, you have only to force your way through it to the psychic gates.

I want to offer you the best cheese available here and a tin of biscuits. I hope you will accept?

Certainly we accept

1934

January 1934

Is there any hint that the projection from the mind into the vital has been rather invited and encouraged by myself?

It came by being preoccupied too much with the difficulties of the nature. It is always better to dwell on the good side of things in yourself—I do not mean in an egoistic way, but with faith and cheerful confidence, calling down the positive experience of which the nature is already capable so that a constant positive growth can help in the rejection of all that has to be rejected. But in fact one gets often projected into the vital difficulties at an early stage and then instead of going from the mind into the psychic (through the heart) one has to go through the disturbed vital.

Is it possible to retrace One's steps to the psychic? If so, how?

It can be done, if you refuse to be preoccupied with the idea of your difficulties and concentrate on really helpful and positive things.

Be more cheerful and confident. Sex and Doubt and Co. are there, no doubt, but the Divine is there also inside you. Open your eyes and look and look till the veil is rent and you see Him—or Her.

While meditating I saw among many things, a sea in flood Just after it the silver disc of the sun flashing brilliantly.

The sea is the vital—the sun the first appearance of the Light of Truth over it.

Though you have given me permission to take a cup of tea, as soon as I face you I feel guilty.

If you feel like that, it is much better not to take tea.

S called me to see him. He offered me a cup of tea. Do you approve of my taking anything offered by him in future?

No.

It would be better not to take S's things—this cooking has re-awakened his greed of food and made him ill again, after I had completely cured him.

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

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

Last night I had a unique experience: I saw a skeleton standing by my bed, it seemed to resemble my father...

The skeleton was created by your fear.

I have heard that when someone dies with strong attachments, his spirit remains chained as it were to the object of his desire.

Yes.

But these spirits are supposed to be maleficent and their appearance also ugly. He seemed to have nothing of these. Did he mean any harm?

No they need not be.

No. The fear is absurd and has no ground

What should I do if he comes again? Shall I face him and look intently at him and call your name?

The best is to ask what he wants. If there is anything malicious, then use the name.

C asked me whether I'd like to take up supervision work in the House-painting Department. But it's a whole-time work, so other duties have to be given up. What should I do?

It may not be whole time. Speak to Rishabhchand and see what can be arranged.

In connection with that spirit, may I ask you if it was actually my father's spirit even when it had no resemblance?

But if it had no resemblance, why did you take it for your father? It may have been only an ordinary being of the vital world.

Sometimes it appears that all efforts and aspirations are simply like so many stones thrown into the sea. And I feel that there is not a drop of devotion in me for you... I want some busy work that would carry me along with the stream. How to face this situation?

Mother says "Beware of what you talk. Also a certain kind of thoughts. It is very often talks one has that bring in this condition throwing one into the most ordinary and dry physical consciousness." Recover your reading tendency, work and get rid of tamas.

I spoke to Rishabhchand. He would like to have a full-time worker. But Shona wants me to do the garden work with him. I leave it to you.

Mother has written to Rishabhchand that you can be relieved from the office work but might not like to give up garden work, so he should try to arrange in such a way that the garden work could continue.

February 1934

I enclose a poem. The philosophical conception expressed therein may perhaps be wrong, because the Purusha is supposed to be inactive only giving sanction to Prakriti. Isn't it so? I have represented the Lard with dynamism along with static poise.

That is the Sankhya Purusha—the Purusha of the Gita is Ishwara also. The objection as philosophy is correct. Poetically—the opening is heavy, but the rest is good.

There is a notion that with the approach of Darshan there is a greater descent of Force. I don't feel any difference. But they corroborate their theory by the evidence of an upheaval of vital troubles etc. I think one should feel more calm and peace. Which view do you subscribe to? And is it a fact that there is such a descent?

There is usually a descent, but there is also a great opposition to the descent at these times. Some feel the descent only, some feel the opposition only, some feel both the descent and the opposition.

With the taking up of the new work a calmness and ananda have descended on me and I have been surprisingly free from cravings and disturbing thoughts for a long time at a stretch. Is it due to the effect of the work or due to the descent of the Force you speak of?

The Force comes down as soon as it finds an opening and acts in the Adhara whenever it is ready. What determines the descent cannot always be mentally fixed. Aspiration, call, will, prayer, etc., create a favourable precondition in the head or heart or anywhere else and are sometimes the determining cause.

I am much better now. Shall I join work tomorrow?

Yes, if you are all right.

May I be permitted to see you on the 15th instant, the centenary of my arrival here?

[Sri Aurobindo underlined the word "centenary", put an interrogation mark above it.] I say, you have not been here 100 years surely!

Mother won't be free probably before 12.30, but if you like to come in and make pranam, you may do so.

I would surely like to come even if it be for a pranam Please let me know the time through Nolini.

We had said, I think, after 12.30.

I have become a persistent tea-drinker, going against your instruction, though the mind does not see any harm in a cup of tea.

You can take. It is a question of self-mastery, that is all.

March 1934

The peace and joy I was experiencing since Darshan, have, I find, left me all on a sudden since yesterday. But what actions of mine—conscious or unconscious—have caused the happy condition to withdraw?

A very small thing will sometimes bring a fall of consciousness when the thing is not yet pakka⁸. One has to pick oneself up again quietly without minding the interruption.

Mother, from your look at pranam it seemed to me you didn't or don't like our taking food exclusive of Asram food...

How did you read food into the Mother's look? It was not there at all.

Often I have felt that you give sanction for these occasional feastings, but at the same time you don't sanction... Intuitive perception of your wish, I must say, isn't an easy thing. Why don't you tell me clearly what I should do, insteading of leaving me to find out for myself?

Why don't you go on what the Mother says instead of taking all this intuitive or inferential trouble?

Why do I come back so happy from D's place? Is it due to what you call vital sympathy?

It may be a vital sympathy—but with no harm in it.

I send a poem, rather a long one. It's addressed to P, can I send it to him?

Yes. The beginning of the poem seems to me to have some strength in it. The rest spins itself out rather thinly at too great a length. A more compact and original thought and expression are needed.

Is there not a difference between the sleep before 12 and after?

The sleep before 12 is supposed to be the best

I had a very peculiar dream last night. I'm almost ashamed to write about it. I heard someone saying to me in Bengali, "In Shiva's ansha⁹ is your birth", as soon as I got up I was in a flood of joy and devotion for Shiva.

Everyone's inner being is born in the ansha of some Devata.

Birth and tradition of this life are not everything—there have been previous lives also which one carries on into this one and a future also which is already existent in the present.

I send you one more poem. But there seems to be hardly any originality in the idea itself—boat, boatman, etc., reminds one of Rabindranath, doesn't it? I would like to have your opinion.

In the ideas and images there is not much originality and I cannot say Tagore is not there in his ubiquitous glory. But it is well written all the same.

Last night in a half-sleepy state in meditation, I had a vision of Sri Krishna playing on his flute in his usual pose. The likeness was as represented in current paintings. So I rather hesitate to accept it as a vision at all. But I wonder, even if the vision were true, why should Krishna appear when I have been trying to see Shiva?

If it was like the pictures, it may have been a mental image. On the other hand it may not have been, especially as you did not ask for it. Krishna may have appeared in that form because for your mind it was easiest.

I am surprised to see that within a few days J has written more poems than my whole output in a year. No, I am not jealous but I wonder how and why I don't get sufficient inspiration.

Your poems are well enough—but for both J and yourself, what has to be seen is whether it comes to something original and substantial. At present what both are doing is only prentice-work.

For a week or so I have not been able to write a single line. But it struck me-why not try something in prose which, I suppose, can be done even in the absence of any inspiration. But I am faced with the difficulty of a weak style, lack of plots and the thought of a failure.

You can try—making it the object to get rid of the defects of style and structure.

Will you kindly give me some advice on this, as well as your Force for the necessary development? When the current of inspiration comes to a stop, I think sometimes that perhaps you have forgotten me in your busy moments.

It does not depend on that at all. It depends on a certain state of receptivity—an opening of the channel between the inner plane where the inspiration comes and the outer through which it has to Pass.

I have diarrhoea. I had toast and butter at A's, and am having tea regularly at D's. Is it due to either? But can the bowels be so sensitive as that by Yoga?

Yes, the bowels can be quite as sensitive as that—but it is probably some other cause. Diarrhoea may come from catching cold in the stomach or other reasons than food.

As regards the "opening of the channel", can it be done sooner by more concentration, meditation, etc., disregarding the literary side for the time being?

One can get the power of receptivity to inspiration by concentration and meditation making the inner being stronger and the outer less gross, tamasic and insistent.

You have said that inspiration comes as a result of a certain state of receptivity. Are we supposed to be more receptive at times that we feel the inspiration descending?

Yes.

But the difference is hardly perceptible.

It only means that you cannot perceive it.

I have been faced with a doubt whether one can profit by writing poems, etc., as much (I mean spiritually) as one would if he had devoted that part of his time to sadhana—meditation, etc. In other words can literary activity be taken as part of one's sadhana?

Any activity can be taken as part of the sadhana if it is offered to the Divine or done with the consciousness or faith that it is done by the Divine Power. That is the important point.

April 1934

I send a poem. I wasn't happy about it ; it has too much of Rabindranath in it, I think.

I fear your opinion of it is correct. Evidently you have the writing capacity, but it does not come to much—at least in poetry—unless you have something to write of your own. For that you must wake up something in you that is not yet awake.

I am much encouraged to hear from you that I have the writing capacity. Since it's there I can hope that it will express itself sooner or later in its own garb and form. The "inner soul of rhythm", originality, etc., come, as you say, by the inflowering by yoga. I can wait my turn for that. But why do you say "you must..."? Doesn't this "must" demand from one a conscious and concentrated effort to avoid the imitation and follow the unhewn path? And can one really do it in that way?

No. Must simply indicates what must happen or should happen. What you can do is to have a will that it should happen, settle within you. The will will bear fruit in time if it is of the right kind and especially if it becomes a Yogic will.

I send you a poem. I didn't send it yesterday because it was the day of our vengeance¹⁰ and who knows my little verse may have been the last straw... But since all people profit at your expense, it wouldn't be wiser for me to stand aloof. So the poem and your kind opinion on it.

My opinion is "good, but not good enough"—more stuff is needed. It is good you did not throw your straw on the waters yesterday—the flood might have carried it away into the beginning of next week.

Is it not possible to keep C here by Thy all-powerful Grace?

It would mean his cutting all outside ties. So long as the ties remain the financial obligations also remain. I do not think he has advance so far that he can cut away altogether and be free.

J says she was given a very small quantity of curry by A and her appetite is unappeased. It is very sad to see that in spite of your repeated directions and warnings (to the Dining Room workers), they forget this simple thing.

It is because D is no longer there. He was very careful in this matter as in all details—especially there in which the Mother had given special instructions. I shall write to A.

I find it rather inconvenient to imprison these bulky letters in a small envelope. You will see how many folds had to be made, it looks so ugly. Still I do it with difficulty.

Ugliness does not matter in this instance. The envelope system has been instituted so as to save a little the Mother's time in the morning so that she may not have to cut short the little rest she has or else have to come very late for pranam.

I had a very unique experience last night, in the realm of poetry.

The inspiration came and as I sat down to write the whole thing dropped, so to say; I simply let myself be led to see how and when it'd end. Never before have I written a whole poem in this way. I was very joyous and recovered all lost hope.

Why is it that people get so much joy out of writing a poem?

It is the joy of creation partly, partly the joy or "enthousiasmos" the sense of exaltation and Ananda which always comes when one is freely and powerfully used by a greater Force.

Does this spontaneous, automatic inpouring depend on some inner state?

It does not depend on any inner spiritual state, but on an opening to some supraphysical plane of inspiration.

I had a very peculiar dream last night:

I was going away somewhere much dejected and disappointed. The road I took was most gorgeous reminding me of that of the Lake Districts of Scotland; I had proceeded far; suddenly J came up running and said—"The one whom you wanted has come and is waiting for you." I turned back but found nobody. More disappointed I was just going away when a woman's form with a child in her lap appeared as if from nowhere. I fell at her feet saying "0 Mother, you have come then?" with such an ecstasy and fervour that words can't convey. Are you going to leave me? Will you come often?" I asked. "I shall come nine or ten times a day." With this reply she vanished and the dream ended. Who is this form and what is the meaning of this? And why the child?

The child was your psychic being. It was the Mother you saw and she brought it to you—that is, put you in close contact with it.

I am very, very happy, as if some secret fountain has been unsealed. One should remain as quiet as possible holding within oneself all the rapture, shouldn't one?

Yes

Is this a simple vital joy or a joy of writing poetry?

It is not vital at all, though the vital may share in it.

Sending you the poem I had spoken of. What an "enthousiasmos" I felt when I wrote it!

Yes, this time you had undoubtedly a living inspiration

I am happy, happy, but I am afraid at the same time lest it should disappear by some inadvertent action of mine. It is generally supposed that the Divine also deliberately leads us through alternating states of joy and despair to make us strong or to test us. Is it true? If so, I cannot pray to you to give me such an uninterrupted bliss!

It is not a law, but it happens so because of the difficulty of human nature. If all were led by the psychic being with its faith, surrender, one-pointed will to the Divine, there would still be ups and downs of a slighter character, but no need for states of despair.

X was coming from the Asram at 9 p.m. and was molested by a ruffian in front of Nolini's room. She called him and then the boy disappeared.

I am simply dumb-founded by the news. To think that someone—maybe a fuffian or a devil—should attack a sadhika under your very roof—is it not surprising? I hear and believe too that you give a veil of protection around us. Is it so ineffective that even when one doesn't go out of one's way, some hostile beings should attack the very physique and especially that of ladies? Then each lady must stop walking alone or each must have somebody by her. I wonder how long it'll take to free the atmosphere from these seen vital forces.

When the sadhaks get rid of the unseen ones in themselves and in the atmosphere of the Asram.

I am afraid there will be now an apprehension and a nervousness among all the sadhikas.

The Mother has constantly told the sadhiksa who approached her about it that they should not be out alone or without a sadhak to accompany them after 8 o'clock—even after dusk it is not so very safe. After 9 o'clock any woman out alone can easily be taken for a bad character and even questioned by the police. The reason is that when the streets are otherwise deserted, it is largely drunkards, bad characters that come abroad or people like the Topa boys who are little better than criminals. Pondicherry is not a place where women can walk about alone at night. Only two or three days ago S asked whether they could not go out to enjoy the moonlight at 9 if there were 2 or 3 sadhikas together and Mother forbade it unless there was a sadhak with them, so they are going with the Doctor.

I do not know why you should consider that a sadhak or sadhika can count, whatever he does and whatever the conditions, on an absolute protection and immunity. There are conditions under which there is an absolute safety—if the sadhaks are sadhaks through and through, if they have a pure and complete faith etc. Or if a sadhika has got rid of sex impulses and sex appeal and lives in the Mother or with the Mother in her, or even if she has a perfect fearlessness, inner strength and courage, then she would be able to walk about unchallenged even in Pondicherry. But conditions are not like that here—as yet at least—the wrong forces are here inside the Asram as well as outside—under such circumstances, the protection, though it can still act, acts on conditions and within limits.

X, I think, is more or less free from sex and tries to live in the Mother.

More or less? tries? that was not what I said. I spoke of freedom from sex and living in the Mother.

I cannot forget a nice dream I had in the first year of my stay in England. Buddha was sitting in "padmasan" and was giving me a red lotus. Was it a forecast of my later spiritual life?

I suppose so.

May 1934

Suddenly I have dropped from a state of exaltation and peace to that of depression. The soaring, the days of exaltation seem to be so unreal—almost a chimera beside this world of reality.

? [Sri Aurobindo underlined "world of reality".]

It is surprising that I cannot live in one state for more than a few days, and yet this dejection, sadness seems so foreign to my nature!

Why do you give way to it, then? You ought to be able to detach yourself from it, see it as an intrusion and fling it out.

Would you suggest a way to increase thought power in poetry?

There is no device for that. You have to open from within to a deeper or higher source of inspiration or grow from within into a deeper or higher consciousness—there is no other way for it.

I seem to be contented with myself, in peace and bliss and have nothing to pray for. Is this not tamasic peace in a sattwic garb?

It is far more favourable to spiritual progress than being miserable and depressed or in vital revolt and agitation and disturbance.

I have ceased even to aspire, believing that you will give me inspiration. I simply refuse to make even a mental effort.

Mental effort is one thing and aspiring and holding yourself in readiness is another.

Need one aspire even for writing poetry?

Aspiration is an essential part of the sadhana.

If one waits calmly, does not the Grace descend by itself without our asking?

Not unless one is in a state of Grace—in a psychic condition.

If a person asks for something and doesn't get it, he is likely to get disappointed...

If he asks with the vital, yes.

Your mind is too active in these matters. Get your mind silent, learn to feel within, to aspire from within—then things will come more easily.

I woke up from sleep with a touch of sadness caused by some depressive dreams at night, dreams which have no correspondence in real life. For instance I saw H going to a pub and getting heavily drunk, D running after a girl in a drunken condition. Aren't these dreams a sufficient cause to awake one to a sadness?

Not unless you believe that they point to something real in the physical life. Why should one be sad for a mere dream?

Am I seeing my own condition in others' forms?

No. These are dreams on the vital plane. Such dreams may be mere formations in the vital without any actual value, they may point to something in the persons seen which was there in the past, in some cases they indicate possibilities of the future, in others things going on in the present (the last is rare, but does happen), but not always in the forms suggested by the dream. It is such things that happen on the vital plane, very rarely (though that too does happen) on the physical plane. But also they may be merely possibilities conjectured by one's own vital mind about people. So one must know which it is of these various possibilities before getting sad about dreams! For instance in H's case it is evidently an impression of something in his nature and habits that you knew to have been there in the past and which you know is not there at present.

I have been thinking whether I would not profit more by spending the time I use for writing in doing meditation instead. Has the writing work any spiritual value?

No present value spiritually—it may have a mental value. It is the same with the work—it has a value of moral training, discipline, obedience, acceptance of work for the Mother. The spiritual value and result come afterwards when the consciousness in the vital opens upward. So with the mental work. It is a preparation. If you cannot yet do it with the true spiritual consciousness, it, the work as well as the mental occupation, must be done with the right mental or vital will in it.

The Mother says in her "Prayers and Meditations" that experience is willed by the Divine. Am I then to suppose that dearth or abundance of experiences is, in any given case, willed by the Divine?

To say so has no value unless you realise all things as coming from the Divine. One who has realised as the Mother had realised in the midst of terrible sufferings & difficulties that even these came from the Divine and were preparing her for her work can make a spiritual use of such an attitude. For others it may lead to wrong conclusions.

In some cases you don't seem to like people to be engrossed in literary work. Can it be taken as a general rule?

There is no general rule; the mind is always trying to build general rules. The thing done may be the same, but it is done in different ways according to the circumstances and the nature of the people.

Well, Dilip had to work in spite of your Grace. So may I ask you in the vein of Arjuna—but alas, not with that love and surrender!—to give me one direct and decisive rule to follow in this path of poetic activity? My aspiration for your Grace and blessings in this mental occupation, is as great as for spiritual progress.

Aspire for the opening to the right plane of inspiration. You forget that D got his opening by grace and never lost it—all his work only helps him to utilise and develop what is already there.

The popular idea is that the more one is rich in practical experiences of life, the more successful he is in literary pursuits; for, then he will be able to write better, tackle various. problems of life in a better way.

Why should a creative artist write only about problems?

A littérateur of Bengal, B, used to say that it is simply unthinkable that living in entire seclusion in Pondicherry or the Himalayas one can write anything in prose or poetry. His experience is sure to be limited.

What a stupidly rigid principle! Can B really write nothing except what he has seen or experienced? What an unimaginative man he must be! And how dull his stories must be and how limited.

I wonder whether Victor Hugo had to live in a convicts' prison before he invented Jean Valjean. Certainly one has to look at life, but there is no obligation to copy faithfully from life. The man of imagination carries a world in himself and a mere hint or suggestion from life is enough to start it going. It is recognised now that Balzac & Dickens created on the contrary their greatest characters which were not at all faithful to life around them. Balzac's descriptions of society are hopelessly wrong, he knew nothing about it, but his world is much more striking and real than the actual world around him which he misrepresented—even life has imitated the figures he made rather than the other way round. Besides who is living in entire seclusion in Pondicherry? There are living men and women around you and human nature is in full play here as well as in the biggest city—only one has to have an eye to see what is within them and an imagination that takes a few bricks and can make out of them a great edifice—one must be able to see that human nature is one everywhere and pick out of it the essential things or the interesting things that can be turned into great art.

In the evening when you come on the terrace—as I look at you, the horizon behind, divides distinctly into two colours: pale pink and pale blue. Is it simply due to my gazing fixedly at you, Mother?

In that case everybody who looks fixedly at the Mother on the roof would see a horizon of pale pink and pale blue. I doubt if it is the case.

You didn't tell me the significance of the colours.

Pink is the psychic colour—pale blue may be the higher mind—but blue has several significances, so it is not certain.

I hear B left because he couldn't conquer sex-impulse within some specified period?

B left out of ambition, not because of sex.

June 1934

Nirod,

You can write to C that it is obvious he must stop this thing if he is to make any progress in his sadhana. Sexuality even of the natural kind is an obstacle, but unnatural practices like these are a much greater obstacle—they bring greater reactions, make the will weak and bring a habitual subjection to the lower forces. He has allowed himself to relax his will and as a result the forces he had kept in check here have rushed up with a double force and brought up everything in that line to which his lower vital had been at any time open. He must stop it at once! If it is idleness that makes him like that let him keep himself busy. But most of all he must once more fix his will, realise that he must stop yielding and make up his mind to give no indulgence whatever.

SRI AUROBINDO
June 6, 1934

In the afternoon I felt a descent of Ananda. In sheer joy, I could have embraced the earth itself, Ramakrishna is said to have gone into ecstasy at the sight of clouds. My ecstasy, if you will excuse my impudence, was of the same kind.

It is Ananda in the mind and vital.

No apology necessary. The Ananda is the same for everyone, whether Ramakrishna or another.

To relieve myself in some way of this rapture, I wanted most unfortunately to express it in a verse with the consequent loss of the rapture.

What was the necessity of that? And why did you want to relieve yourself of the rapture?

For some time past the inspiration has stopped. Find it rather painful.

You must remember that you are not a "born" poet—you are trying to bring out something from the Unmanifest inside you. You can't demand that that should be an easy job. It may come out suddenly and without apparent reason like the Ananda—but you can't demand it.

The pangs of delivery cannot always be avoided.

To acquire a good style in prose I am reading any and every book in Bengali.

Any and every! That is more likely to spoil the style.

But I don't want to lose the peace and the joy I am in now. If you think that over-reading or reading anything will lower the consciousness I shall lessen the activity.

I do not know whether the peace and joy will stand over-reading. It may if it is very strong.

My friend C is extremely troubled by his own defects and is in utter despair and thinks of putting an end to his, life. What should I tell him?

You have seen my answer I suppose. You can add that despair is absurd and talks of suicide quite out of place. However a man may stumble, the Divine Grace will be there so long as he aspires for it and in the end lead him through.

Last night I woke up suddenly in a condition of deep ecstasy. My room seemed to be quite different, it was pervaded by your presence. I felt I was lying in an immense cradle of that presence. I wonder if the condition was a stupefaction of the senses due to an interruption of sleep or a simple imagination.

What on earth is this nonsense? Do you mean that an experience of the pervading Presence can only be due to a stupefaction of the senses, an interruption of sleep or a simple imagination?

When you get experiences, especially such experiences, take them as they are. Why these mental mystification?

If my Ananda was vital and mental, is there a psychic An too?

I did not say it was vital and mental, but that it was Ananda manifesting itself in the mental and vital—a quite different thing; for the one Ananda (the true thing) can manifest in any part of the being.

If you think that my Sunday feasts may harm me, I will stop them, or at least make them infrequent.

But do you not feel yourself whether it harms or not? These things are of small importance to those who are still in the ordinary mind, important only to those who have begun to live within or to have major experiences. The latter is your case since you lived several days with the Ananda in you.

You mean that these feasts are not good for me?

Yes

Is Ananda a major experience?

Light, Peace, Force, Ananda constitute the spiritual consciousness; if they are not among the major experiences, what are?

There is no doubt that there is a craving for relishing dishes and then it is not far to seek an excuse.

Probably the cessation of the meal would make your vital uncomfortable—so it may be better to continue.

Last night I dreamed that C had come to me and I took hold of his hand: I opened my eyes; there was no C! But I felt that he had possessed me just as a spirit would have done. I wanted to cry for Mother but he wouldn't allow me.

It was not C at all, but some vital force taking his form. These are things that happen when you enter the vital world. The only thing needed is not to be afraid and to call on the Mother.

July 1934

Last two weeks what misery and wretchedness I have gone through! On close inspection I find that the only unusual thing I have done is having meals at D's place, cooked by Nishikanta.

It may have helped, but it is not likely to be the main cause. Some thing in the atmosphere probably to which you opened yourself.

Or is it not due to food at all? I have heard that at the time of Darshan all our cravings are thrown up.

There is no such inevitable rule. It is true that attacks are frequent at that time, but one need not admit them.

D was saying, "What is food-desire after all, for me? I can give it up at once." How far is this view correct? Or is the vital having its play out under this pretext?

It is a self-deception of the vital, "I have no attachment, so I can go on indulging myself!" But in practice the attachment is there, however lofty the attitude.

I don't know what I should do in order to utilise time to my best advantage. Shall I begin by stopping all reading during work? Please give me the right attitude and interest in work.

So long as work or reading either is done merely to utilise time, the right attitude can hardly come or the interest. Work must be done either for pleasure in it or with some purpose beyond itself.

Mother, there are days when I am awfully afraid to go to pranam, lest I should have the misfortune to see your grave face, with no smile at all. All my despair, melancholy, etc., is intensified after that, while your smile disperses all gloom.

All this about the Mother's smile and her gravity is simply a trick of the vital. Very often I notice people talk of the Mother's being grave, stern, displeased, angry at Pranam when there has been nothing of the kind—they have attributed to her something created by their own vital imagination. Apart from that the Mocha's smiling or not smiling has nothing to do with the sadhak'S merits or demerits, fitness or unfitness—it is not deliberately done as a reward or a punishment. The Mother smiles on all, without regard to these things. When she does not smile, it is because she is either in trance or absorbed, or concentrated on something within the sadhak that needs her attention—something that has to be done for him or brought down or looked at. It does not mean that there is anything bad or wrong in him. I have told this a hundred times to any number of sadhaks—but in many the vital does not want to accept that because it would lose its main source of grievance, revolt, abhiman,¹¹ desire to go away or give up the Yoga, things which are very precious to it. The very fact that it has these results and leads to nothing but these darknesses ought to be enough to show you that this imagination about Mother's not smiling as a sign of absence of her grace or love is a device and suggestion of the Adversary. You have to drive away these things and so give some chance for the psychic with its deeper and truer love and surrender to come forward and take up the Adhar as its kingdom.

C asks your opinion about his taking a job in the detention camp. How does he hope to get it being a police-suspect himself?

I forgot to write about this. You had better tell C that I do not look with approval on this idea of the post in the detention camp. Even if he got it, it may lead to very undesirable things.

August 1934

Last night as I was going to bed, I prayed for your light in the subconscient. Strange to say, all the troubles and turmoils were thrown up in response as it were, to the prayer. I had even emissions in dream. And this has happened more than once. Is there any coincidence or is really the effect of your response?

The prayer brings a Force which presses on the subconscient and by that pressure these things come up. The emissions are of no great importance provided they are not frequent, but they indicate the presence of the sex-impulse there. Many are able to get a control by putting a strong will on the sex-organ or sex-centre before sleeping, but then succeed only after a time. With some it does not succeed because the will in them is not strong enough or not trained up or they have not the habit of controlling the lower movements.

During this Darshan, instead of Ananda, Force or Light I felt a great dryness.

It depends upon your condition whether the Ananda or Force or Light descends or whether the resistance rises. It is the resistance of the ordinary physical consciousness ignorant and obscure that seems to have risen in you. The period of the 15th is a period of great descents but also of great resistances. This 15th was not an exception.

It is exactly one and a half years since I have been here. Unfortunately I cannot detect any sign of progress, everything is status quo, so to say.

You have had some experiences which are signs of a future possibility. To have more within the first 1½ years, it would be necessary to have the complete attitude of the sadhak and give up that of the man of the world. It is only then that progress can be rapid from the beginning.

I was simply staggered by C's sex abnormalities and would absolutely despair of him unless I knew that your protection and blessings are with him.

Yes, he is a phenomenon in that way—but there is something very sincere somewhere in him. Let us hope the inner man will soon get the better of the outer.

I would like to know why the resistance rushed up on 15th August. You said it depends on one's condition. It is true that I indulged in food or in mental questionings and these last few months were very lax.

Laxity and a self-externalising consciousness more occupied with outer than with inner things.

I have resolved to abstain from/ Sunday indulgences or make them as infrequent as possible. I have already resisted many hankerings for a cup of tea.

About food, tea etc. the aim of Yoga is to have no hankerings, no slavery either to the stomach or the palate. How to get to that.point is another matter—it depends often on the individual. With a thing like tea, the strongest and easiest way is to stop it. As to food the best way usually is to take the food given you, practise non-attachment and folloW no fancies. That would mean giving up the Sunday indulgence. The rest must be done by an inner change of consciousness and not by external means.

After Darshan, I have been trying every day not to go to D's, but somehow find myself there...

If you get something by the darshan, it is better to go home and absorb it; if not, it does not matter. Only you have to take care not to absorb deleterious influences at the gathering—I mean, moods of doubt, depression, indifference to things spiritual etc., etc.

There are some people who are very free with their palate and yet are not the worse for it.

How do you know they are not any the worse in the Yogic sense?

This is what you mean, I suppose, by the term "complete attitude of the sadhak"—giving up all these things. If not, I would request you to elaborate it a little.

All these are external things that have their use But what I mean is something more inward. I mean not to be interested in outward things for their own sake, following after them with desire, but at all times to be intent on one's soul, living centrally in the inner being and its progress, taking outward things and action only as a means for the inner progress.

The question of food is to some extent within one's control, but what to do with the habitual movement of the mind?

Detach yourself from it—make your mind external to you, something that you can observe as you observe things occurring in the street. So long as you do not do that, it is difficult to be the mind's master.

People say that one shouldn't read when one is at work I have already told you that I read.

Usually reading when at work is not desirable. I don't remember just now what your work is.

When I have given up all reading, and taken up work seriously, just then an accident!¹² People say it is a good sign! I attribute it to my carelessness.

How?

It should rather be a warning to be careful than a good sign.

Tomorrow being Sunday, may I take rest?

It is better to take rest, if you feel better when at rest.

I could not sleep last night, though there was no pain. In the afternoon I had a cup of tea. Do you think it was responsible?

It is true that a sense of nervous exhaustion sets in after taking it. I wanted to stop it after your writing but here I am again!

Certainly, you should not have taken tea in these circumstances. It is not good for the nerves.

All trouble comes at night! I was a little mortified to think that you can't or won't give me some sleep. After all, I may be responsible for it.

It is your nerves that are responsible—they have too little resistance probably to pain and illness and are too easily restless. Relax yourself at night and don't struggle to sleep—but relax with all the mind and nerves and body quiet and let sleep come.

Looking at my wound, one would think that it is the work of some hostile force which while being compelled to leave me, gave the last kick in parting. Some say it is. Do you think so?

These things usually come from some adverse force.

Many people show signs of progress after an illness. May I not expect some? Give me thy blessings that I may be cured without any complication setting in.

It is true that one can use an illness in that way—though to advance without illness is better.

September 1934

I saw what you wrote to T about reading. I wonder if it applies to me also.

What is written for T is not meant for you. T has got into a movement of consciousness in which reading is no longer necessary and would rather interfere with his consciousness. There is no objection to your reading provided it does not interfere with your meditation.

I should like to be a literary man. Do you approve?

It depends on what kind of "literary man" you want to be, ordinary or Yogic.

What did you mean by a Yogic "literary man"? I find here that sadhaks who have flourished as literary men have read a lot—N, A, D etc.

A literary man is one who loves literature and literary activity for its own sake. A Yogic "literary man" is not a literary man at all, but one who writes only what the inner will and Word wants to express. He is a channel and an instrument of something greater than his own literary personality.

Of course the literary man and the intellectual love reading—it is their food. But this is quite apart from writing. There are plenty of people who never wrote a word in the literary way, but were enormous readers. One reads for ideas, for knowledge, for the stimulation of the mind by all that the world has thought or is thinking. I never read in order to create. As the Yoga increased, I read very little, for when all the ideas in the world come crowding in one, there is not much need of food there. At most an utility for keeping oneself informed of what is happening in the world—but not as food for one's own seeing of the world and Truth and things.

I have found that one's reading does not always help one in expressing the thoughts in the most effective way. So also with writing poetry, we have the ideas, words, thoughts, yet we can't write a poem as poets do.

Poetry especially—even perfect expression of any kind comes by inspiration, not by reading. Reading helps only to acquire a language or to get the technique of literary expression. Afterwards, one develops one's own use of the language, one's own style, one's own technique. It is a decade or two since I stopped all but the most casual reading, but my power of poetical and perfect expression has increased tenfold. What I wrote with some difficulty, often great difficulty, I now write with ease. I am supposed to be a philosopher, but I never studied philosophy—everything I wrote came from Yogic experience, Knowledge and inspiration. So too my greater power over poetry and perfect expression was acquired in these last days not by reading and seeing how other people wrote; but from the heightening of my consciousness and the greater inspiration that came from the heightening.

What is it then that operates behind? Reading, natural talent or painstaking labour?

Reading and painstaking labour are very good for the literary man, but even for him, they are not the cause of his good writing, only an aid to it. The cause is within himself—as to "natural" I don't know. Sometimes, the talent is inborn and ready for expression, then you call it natural. Sometimes, it awakes from within afterwards but I suppose then also it is natural, though from a till then hidden nature.

I am ashamed to say that I couldn't follow your advice about tea. I fell a victim to the temptation. If I would really profit by giving it up I shall do so.

If you can give up, it is all right—if you can't or have to force yourself too much, wait till you can. The important thing is the opening of the inner being.

Since I seem to have a possibility of opening in the direction of poetry, may I not direct my aspiration mainly towards it?

It seems to me that the aspiration should be mainly directed to the full opening of the Adhar to the divine Force.

October 1934

Had a severe headache after pranam. Why?

Some mental resistance probably.

Sri Aurobindo,

Last night I had a dream of a mixed character. I saw that many of us have assembled and are expecting you to come down amongst us. A great expectancy was in the air, a great excitement, because a Force was to descend.

This is also in the vital.

You came, but we didn't know how or when. Suddenly we found that Nolini had fallen senseless on the ground, and you were lying beside him, which gave us the impression that you were transmitting your Force into him. Then somebody came and separated us from you by drawing a screen, saying or suggesting that this was the Force that was expected to come down.

After a while some of us went to see you again, and saw you passing by. To our great delight and surprise your feet were just the colour of lotus—so soft, tender, beautiful. Unfortunately I couldn't make much of your face. So this was the dream, though not accurate, perhaps.

Dreams of this kind in the vital plane are very common. They correspond to something that has happened there, but the forms are often partly supplied by the subconscient mind and partly true. The "supplied forms" have then to be taken as symbolic, while the rest actually happened in that plane. N's falling down etc. and the drawing of the screen seem to be of the supplied kind. The rest seems to be of a more direct character.

I have been rather clumsy in expressing my thoughts. Somehow I feel a great resistance and words simply won't come. The same resistance everywhere!

It is the negative resistance mostly of the physical mind and vital physical—a resistance of inertia, of অপ্রকাশ¹³ and অপ্রবৃত্তি¹⁴ against any idea of any possibility of being other than they are. It often comes when the keenness of the vital resistances is no longer there.

I notice that a definite and marked despair has come over me, making me realise constantly how limited and meagre are my powers and possibilities. Whatever I produce is most mediocre.

Even supposing what you produce is not something extraordinary—what does it matter? Do your best and leave it to the Power to improve your best.

I feel quite helpless and without force and energy, without aspiration or faith. I would like to know if and how one is responsible for such a condition. Shall I persist in meditation or try to replace it by some reading?

These things must be the result either of desires or of inertia or of vital restlessness. If you stop meditation, I do not see how you are going to get rid of these things. It is only by bringing in a higher consciousness that you can get rid of the habitual conditions of the old consciousness.

Last night I dreamt of two huge snakes with their hoods spread out and when I woke up, what did I see to my utter surprise—again two similar snakes standing by my bed. On looking closely I found two parallel beams of light fallen on the curtain. Due to the movement of the curtain, it looked like the swaying of the snakes. But I still can't believe that they were mere beams of the street light, and not a vision of snakes.

It is not a vision. Very often what one sees at the moment of waking prolongs itself into the waking state until the full ordinary consciousness comes back. Here it was farther prolonged by finding a physical support in the beams of light. I have often seen in the early stages that a subtle image takes advantage of something physical to make itself more durable and concrete even in the full waking state. The snakes here were probably Energies, not of the harmful kind.

Last night I was in a mood of depression. To get out of it I tried to meditate. After half an hour's struggle I had to give it up, with more depression as a consequence. Then various unwholesome thoughts began pouring in: it is simply futile to make any effort for anything. Especially as one sits to meditate, one thought after another surges up. What a terrible tug-of-war I had with the mind! Some days pass simply in unsuccessful efforts and one has to leave meditation in utter disgust. One is thus forced to the conclusion that our efforts, however keen and earnest, are after all impotent. If the higher Power wills, it comes in a second. But the Power not only doesn't will it, but keeps the door tightly shut, at the same time asking us to knock against it with all our might, knowing fully well that we are going to be baffled. Why this costly joke?... In this vein I went on till I again reached the conclusion that all efforts are useless, useless! And with that conclusion I slept a most disturbed sleep of depression, inertia and restlessness.

These are the thoughts of depression, but the impression is still settled in the mind that though efforts have to he made, they will bear no fruit whatsoever and they can do mighty little...

One can either use efforts and then one must be patient and persevering, or one can rely on the Divine with a constant call and aspiration. But then the reliance has to be a true one not insisting on immediate fruit.

All that is the physical mind refusing to take the trouble of the labour and struggle necessary for the spiritual achievement. It wants to get the highest, but desires a smooth course all the way. "Who the devil is going to face so much trouble for getting the Divine?"—that is the underlying feeling. The difficulty with the thoughts is a difficulty every Yogi has gone through—so is the phenomenon of a little result after some days of effort. It is only when one has cleared the field and ploughed and sown and watched over it that big harvests can be hoped for.

Dilip told us today that you were trying to bring down the personality of Durga on the puja day.

There was no trying—it came down

When I came for pranam, your appearance made me feel that you were Durga herself though I have not the faintest idea of what the Goddess looks like. Later I told Nishikanta my impression. He said he too had a similar feeling. I don't know whether such a feeling arose out of the association with the puja on that day, or quite independently of it.

All that is the silliness of the physical mind which thinks itself very clever in explaining away the inner feeling or perception.

One can't take such feelings very seriously (perhaps you will rebuke me for it) because they are so vague, abstract and momentary! It is difficult to distinguish the border line between imagination, intuition and feelings unless they are substantiated by something like a concrete vision.

What else do you expect the first touches to be?

To give you one instance: I heard as if the Goddess Bhagawati¹⁵ were telling me, "I am coming", and many other things which I don't remember now.

These things are at least a proof that the inner mind and vital are trying to open to supraphysical things. But if you belittle it at once the moment it starts how can it ever develop?

Now, in what light should I take it? If I take it as a reflected response of my own nature's restlessness, shall I be wrong?

Yes, quite wrong.

You have shown two ways of sadhana: one of effort, another of reliance on the Divine with constant call. But aren't they really the same? How do they differ? Constant call and aspiration means the constant acceptance of Truth and rejection of falsehood, which means a constant effort at rejection and acceptance since our mind being what it is, will always run after physical things and its pleasure. Is there any less effort in this method?

Much less. The other is a constant effort to get things down and pull down what one wants. Acceptance and rejection are quite a different thing.

P has chronic stomach ulcer. You have cured many incurable and curable diseases, so any chance for him?

It depends on himself. Anyway I suppose it is not a thing that kills quickly? People thrive on it for 30 years sometimes. Isn't it a question of care and diet—or supposed to be so? Punuswami who comes here has had it and is still alive and doing his work, so is K who was here once. But I can't promise to cure it—I tried with K but it comes back when he is off his guard. If a man is very receptive, it is another matter.

I have started concentrating in the heart now. Last Sunday while I was meditating I had the vision of Sri Aurobindo's face floating before me for about an hour or so, accompanied by a deep joy. I was fully conscious, but the body became as if dead, all movements stopped and what a rapture it gave me.

That was very good!

... Has anything opened up in me, really? Or is it only a momentary phase of a descent like Peace or Ananda? But I feel as if you have given me a lift forward—the fulfilling of your promise—I am coming. Am I right?

It looks like it. At any rate there is evidently an opening in the heart-centre or you would not have had the change or the vision with the stilling of the physical consciousness in the body.

November 1934

For quite a number of days I was free from vital thoughts and impulses. But they seem again to raise their heads ... I sat down to meditate thinking that the wave would pass over my head if I plunged it deep down. The meditation was over when another huge wave swept me away, as it were.

Why these impulses after meditation?

They come in order to disturb or obstruct the meditation and if there are any results gained from it or about to be gained, to come across them.

I am trying to be silent within, but the mood of jocularity persists. Is it not, however, a sign of cheerfulness?

Not always—moreover the cheerfulness is vital. I do not say that it should not be there, but there is a deeper cheerfulness, an inner সুখহাস্য¹⁶ which is the spiritual condition of cheerfulness.

My birthday falls on the 17th. Hope my name is there?

It is there. On the I 7th after 12.

About five minutes before the end of the evening meditation, I felt such a pressure on the head as if it would burst or I would tumble down. I was then forced to open my eyes to relieve the pressure. Was it because my capacity to contain the Force was limited?

Probably the accumulated Force became more than the physical being could receive. When that happens, the right thing to do is to widen oneself (one can learn to do it by a little practice). If the consciousness is in a state of wideness, then it can receive any amount of Force without inconvenience.

I had a dream that I had gone home. My mother seeing me after a long time clasped me and pressed me so hard that I got afraid and began to call you. Is it that my vital went there or that the vital spirit of my mother came here and attacked me in this way?

It is probable that it was not your mother at all but a vital Force taking her shape so as to have a hold on you.

P.S. was telling me that cultivation of literature here hasn't much sense, since none will be able to get first class, or outclass Tagore. He must always remain the only brilliant star in literature. Others won't even get a chance to shine by his side, not to speak of outshining him. Only Dilip can be somehow given a second class privilege, but that too for his prose, and not for poetry.

He further asserts that Yoga has no power to bring any pursuit—literature, painting, etc. to a height of perfection.

I don't agree with P.S. If a man has a capacity for poetry or anything else, it will certainly come out and rise to greater heights than it would have done elsewhere. Witness D who was unable to write poetry till he came here though he had the instinct and the suppressed power in him, N whose full flow came only here. A, P whose recent poems in Gujerati seem to me to have an extraordinary beauty—though I admit that I am no expert there. H wrote beautifully before but the sovereign excellence of his recent poetry is new. There are others who are developing a power of writing they had not before. All that does not show that Yoga has no power to develop capacity. I myself have developed many capacities by Yoga. Formerly I could not have written a line of philosophy—now people have started writing books about my philosophy to my great surprise. It is not a question of first class or second class. One has to produce one's best and develop—the "class" if class there must be will be decided by posterity. Tagore himself was once considered second class by any number of people and the nature of his poetry was fiercely questioned—until the Nobel prize and consequent fame ended their discussions. One has not to consider fame or the appreciation of others, but do whatever work one can do as an offering of one's capacity to the Divine.

Of course, P.S. qualified his statement by saying that Supra-mental Force may do miracles. Such being the case, why not then direct one's energies towards spiritual achievements?

Certainly the energies should be directed towards spiritual achievement here—other things can only be a corollary or else something developed for the service of the spiritual Force.

I suppose he didn't mean born poets like Harindra and Nishikanta but the common herd like us who have no inborn talents, but who nevertheless aspire to be literary men. But even then, one cannot agree, for ff Yoga can only raise geniuses to super-geniuses and cannot make crowns out of clay, well—

Well, of course the first business of Yoga is not to make geniuses at all, but to make spiritual men—but Yoga can do the other thing also.

I have four rupees with which I wanted to buy something for you on my birthday. But an impulse has come to offer something to the sadhaks. So I asked D if biscuits could be managed. Do you approve of my proposal?

Yes—although it is not according to rule or precedent

I showed Dilip and others what you wrote about literature vs. Yoga. I hope it wasn't wrong.

No.

December 1934

This time I had a great Ananda at Darshan. At the very sight of you I seemed to have seen Shiva himself! And what a rapture it was! Especially your last look seemed to have taken me into another world, so much so that I did not even know who I was. It seemed you were drawing my inside out by your fixed gaze, very much as a python enchants its prey by the magnetic look!

All these happy impressions and recollections were with me vividly for 2 or 3 days. Then I found that all that consciousness has evaporated—and I have passed these days most passively, without any strong aspiration. But I marked that there was no depression. Only today it tried to overtake me, but so far it is unsuccessful. I expected so much from this Darshan, but it seems all has been spoiled!

There is no reason to be discouraged by what you call the evaporation of the consciousness that you got on the darshan day. It has not evaporated but drawn back from the surface. That usually happens—when there is not the higher consciousness or some experience. What you have to learn is not to allow depression, but remain quiet allowing time for the assimilation and ready for fresh experience or growth whenever it comes.

I have written only one side of the picture of the Darshan. May I know if you have discovered any fresh signs of hope?

For my part, I see plenty of signs of hope.

During the evening meditation I was wondering why I was not able to find the rasa¹⁷ of life. Many have found it in poetry, some in painting, others in physical work through which they can offer themselves easily and joyously to the Divine. The consecration becomes ever so much easier through works for which they have an affinity whereas to people like me who have no definite tendencies in any single pursuit, consecration becomes doubly difficult. I was thinking of praying to you to let me find rasa in work, when I had this experience:

I felt that my mind was divided into two parts—the inner absolutely silent, not disturbed by anything; the surface mind (physical?) thinking at random of many things which were passing by like a cinema film. Previously the whole being was mixed up with all those thoughts with a resultant turmoil. But this time the inner mind seemed to be detached. As soon as the outer thoughts cropped up it tried to see if all this was a forced condition of mind,—but no, the silence was really there and intact. This continued as long as the meditation lasted. I would like to have your corroboration on the matter. I wonder how these experiences suddenly drop in. I don't know that I opened myself today specially to such an experience!

The consciousness from which these experiences come is always there pressing to bring them in. The reason why they don't come in freely or stay is the activity of the mind and vital always rushing about, thinking this, wanting that, trying to perform mountaineering feats on all the hillocks of the lower nature instead of nourishing a stronger and simple aspiration and opening to the higher consciousness that it may come in and do its own work. Rasa of poetry, painting or physical work is not the thing to go after. What gives the interest in Yoga is the rasa of the Divine and of the divine consciousness which means the rasa of Peace, of Silence, of inner Light and Bliss, of growing inner Knowledge, of increasing inner Power, of the Divine Love, of all the infinite fields of experience that open to one with the opening of the inner consciousness. The true rasa of poetry, painting or any other activity is truly found when these things are part of the working of the Divine Force in you and you feel it is that and it exists in the joy of that working.

This condition you had of the inner being and its silence—separated from the surface consciousness and its little restless workings—is the first liberation, the liberation of Purusha from Prakriti, and it is a fundamental experience. The day when you can keep it, you can know that the Yogic consciousness has been founded in you. This time it has increased in intensity, but it must also increase in duration.

These things do not "drop"—what you have felt was there in you all the time, but you did not feel it because you were living on the surface altogether, and the surface is all crowd and clamour. But in all men there is this silent Purusha, base of the true mental being, the true vital being, the true physical being. It was by your prayer and aspiration that the thing came, to show you in what direction you must travel in order to have the true rasa of things, for it is only when one is liberated that one can get the real rasa. For after this liberation come others and among them the liberation and Ananda in action as well as in the static inner silence.

I am much delighted by yesterday's letter, and wiser too. But my point was a little different; perhaps I could not make it clear. What I meant is this: If a sadhak is asked to offer himself through a work for which he has a natural liking, the offering becomes a joyous and consequently an easier one. The very rasa of the Divine for which we are all here, first and last, can be had and tasted more quickly and laboriously through such a work. For instance, if Dilip were to transfer his allegiance to another deity, say one who presides over the control of servants (if there be any), well, you can imagine the results! (Yesterday itself he said that if he is asked to do Yoga working at the timber godown, he will have to look for a rope for his neck!)...

It is not a question of liking but of capacity—though usually (not always) liking goes with the capacity. But capacity can be developed and liking can be developed or rather the rasa you speak of. One cannot be said to be in the full Yogic condition—for the purposes of this Yoga—if one cannot take up with willingness any work given to one as an offering to the Divine. At one time I was absolutely unfit for any physical work and cared only for the mental, but I trained myself in doing physical things with care and perfection so as to overcome this glaring defect in my being and make the bodily instrument apt and conscious. It was the same with some others here. A nature not trained to accept external work and activity becomes mentally top-heavy—physically inert and obscure. It is only if one is disabled or too physically weak that physical work can be put aside altogether. I am speaking of course from the point of view of the ideal—the rest depends upon the nature.

As for the deity presiding over control of servants, godown work as well as over poetry or painting, it is always the same—the Shakti, the Mother.

... The day when I am able to keep the experiences, only then the Yogic consciousness will be founded in me!! But that day seems to be an ever-receding one, for it seems there are many sadhaks living here for four to five years who still haven't established themselves in this inner silence!

There are many who have not even got it—even most. But I was not laying stress on silence but on the separate awareness of the inner being.

I would like to know if experiences of this kind effect a lasting result in the way of raising one's consciousness higher, or is it simply the result of preceding days of prayer and aspiration and nothing more, coming and going just like a shower of rain on a parched plot of sandy tract?

They come first in this isolated way, afterwards more frequently and for longer periods, then they settle. In some they settle at once, but that is rare. In some they persist recurring till they are settled, that is less rare. In others the occurrence is at first at long intervals and waits for the consciousness to be ready.

I cannot quite follow you when you say, "... to show you in what direction you must travel." Does it imply that I should first establish myself in the inner consciousness? But surely that is the primary concern of everyone, as well as mine!

Yes, but I was not writing to everyone and everyone had not asked for the রস [rasa] in work.

Will it do any harm if I show some parts of my letter which deal with my personal experiences?

It is not of much importance whether you can show or not. Just as you feel about it. Later on it may become necessary for you to keep all your personal experiences to yourself.

What do you think of this [a letter from C]? Isn't it appalling that a small job and a little money in his hands have brought him to this pass? ... Is it right to suppose that the Divine will is behind it in order to exhaust an abnormal propensity? I write so because I read in Bejoykrishna's biography of a Mahapurush, that in his ascetic wanderings the Mahalpurush met a woman and lived with her, for 3 years, a most passionate life. Then he got terribly disgusted and ran away. Behind it, the Mahapurush sees the Will of the Divine or his Guru who led him to exhaust his propensity through excessive indulgence. Even if it be true, it seems to be rather an abnormal remedy, because to our experience we find the more a desire is satisfied the more it flares up. But the working of the Divine may be quite different! What would you say?

It may be true of this Mahapurush or of other well-known cases, because the spiritual impulse is strong in them and survives; but what of those in whom the desire persists or even grows?

But what to do now with C? He may turn desperate and try to satisfy his lower propensity which will totally finish him. Do save him, or at least give him a thunder. These cases are very queer indeed—on one side such a bhakti, aspiration, and on the other—!!

He will have to fight it out. You can tell him whatever happens not to despair. I don't think thunder is of much use.

Today I was very quiet in meditation and saw the full moon with cross stripes over it.

Full moon=spiritual consciousness. Cross is the symbol of the triple Divine—transcendent cosmic, individual.

Last night I had a dream that you had come out of your seclusion for once,; you were tall, quite young, but very dark. I began to wonder if this was Sri Aurobindo of former years!

No. It is not likely. It is probably some subtle physical form—the one corresponding to the Shiva element in me. I have seen myself like that sometimes and it was always the Shiva formation.

The dream ended, but recurred soon after when I saw that you have appeared before my closed eyes exactly the same in appearance as we see you during Darshan. The vision remained for some time. The joy was not as intense as on a previous occasion. Was it because I made some intentional movements in order to test the strength of the vision?

Maybe. The consciousness was probably nearer to the gross physical which is less responsive than the inner physical being.

Mother, it seemed by your looks at pranam that you didn't approve of some of my movements. Is it true?

No. It was probably some idea of your own that put that appearance on the Mother's looks.

Is it unnecessary to write about these dream-experiences?

No—it is useful to write.

I have done a great offence today by taking restaurant food—which is strictly forbidden by you...

I thought not to write about it, but to resolve not to repeat the offence. But that wouldn't be the right attitude. And by writing to you, I guard myself against any future like-occurrence.

It is always better to say.

[Image 1]

I have to resume the thread of work vs. meditation, because of some fresh questionings in my mind. It is quite evident that you give the preference to Karma, but is it possible to attain the highest realisation in your Yoga through work alone, or is work to be used only as a means up to a certain stage and then left aside, as Ramakrishna said in his well-known analogy of a pregnant woman and the gradual falling off of her work with the nearing of her full term?

Am I Ramakrishna or is there no difference between my yoga and his?

If I remember right, you wrote to me that work is only a means for the preparation of the spiritual life; otherwise, it has no spiritual value.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "only" and put an interrogation mark above it.]

Lord God! when did I make this stupendous statement which destroys at one fell swoop the two volumes of the Essays on the Gita and all the seven volumes of the Arya? Work by itself is only a preparation, so is meditation by itself, but work done in the increasing Yogic consciousness is a means of realisation as much as meditation is.

In Dilip's letter also you say that work helps to prepare for the direct contact with the inmost. In another, you say that work prepares for the right consciousness to develop—which means the same thing...

I have not said, I hope, that work only prepares. Meditation also prepares for the direct contact. If we are to do work only as a preparation and then become motionless meditative ascetics, then all my spiritual teaching is false and there is no use for supramental realisation or anything else that has not been done in the past.

My own impression is that work is an excellent means as a preparation, but the major experiences and realisations are not likely to come in during work. My little experience corroborates me, because whatever drops of Ananda descended on me, were mostly during meditation. Only once did I have 2 minutes Ananda during work.

I see. When the time for preparation is over, one will sit immobile for ever after and never do any work—for, as you say, work and realisation cannot go together. Hurrah for the Himalayas!

Well, but why not then the old Yoga? If work is so contrary to realisation! That is Shankara's teaching.

The main difference between the two, is that in work the attention is bound to be diverted. While working with the hand, utter the name of Hari with the mouth—this attitude is quite possible, but only as a preparation, and not effective for the realisation—which meditation alone can bring; because the whole being is absorbed into the engrossing meditation of the Beloved.

In that case I am entirely wrong in preaching a dynamic Yoga—Let us go back to the cave and the forest.

My theory about work hampering one pointed concentration finds some support, I think, from your own example. (I proceed very cautiously, though).

? [Sri Aurobindo underlined 'cautiously' and put a question mark above it.]

You have said that 9/10 of your time is spent in doing correspondence, works, etc., whereas only 1/10 is devoted to concentration. One naturally asks, why should it not be possible for you to do concentration and work at the same time?

For me, correspondence alone. I have no time left for other "works etc." Concentration and meditation are not the same thing. One can be concentrated in work or bhakti as well as in meditation. For God's sake be careful about your vocabulary, or else you will tumble into many errors and loosenesses of thinking.

If I devoted 9/10 of my time to concentration and none to work—the result would be equally unsatisfactory. My concentration is for a particular work—it is not for meditation divorced from life. When I concentrate I work upon others, upon the world, upon the play of forces. What I say is that to spend all the time reading and writing letters is not sufficient for the purpose. I am not asking to become a meditative Sanyasi.

Did you not retire for five or six years for an exclusive and intensive meditation?

I am not aware that I did so. But my biographers probably know more about it than I do.

If the Supramental Divine himself differentiates between work and concentration and finds it difficult to radiate his force among the few sadhaks contemporaneously with his work of correspondence, etc., what about undivines and inframentals like us?

Between concentration on correspondence alone and the full many-sided work—not between work and correspondence.

It does not mean that I lose the higher consciousness while doing the work of correspondence. If I did that, I would not only not be supramental, but would be very far even from the full Yogic consciousness.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined the phrase "contemporaneously with his work of correspondence" and commented):

Say "by correspondence alone". If I have to help somebody to repel an attack, I can't do it by only writing a note. I have to send him some Force or else concentrate and do the work for him. Also I can't bring down the Supramental by merely writing neatly to people about it. I am not asking for leisure to meditate at ease in a blissful indolence. I said distinctly I wanted it for concentration on other more important work than correspondence.

The ignorance underlying this attitude is in the assumption that one must necessarily do only work or only meditation. Either work is the means or meditation is the means, but both cannot be! I have never said, so far as I know, that meditation should not be done. To set up an open competition or a closed one between works and meditation is a trick of the dividing mind and belongs to the old Yoga. Please remember that I have been declaring all along an integral Yoga in which Knowledge, Bhakti, works—light of consciousness, Ananda and love, will and power in works—meditation, adoration, service of the Divine have all their place. Have I written seven volumes of the Arya all in vain? Meditation is not greater than Yoga of works nor works greater than Yoga by knowledge—both are equal.

Another thing—it is a mistake to argue from one's own very limited experience, ignoring that of others, and build on it large generalisations about Yoga. This is what many do, but the method has obvious demerits. You have no experience of major realisations through work, and you conclude that such realisations are impossible. But what of the many who have had them—elsewhere and here too in the Asram? That has no value? You kindly hint to me that I have failed to get anything by works? How do you know? I have not written the history of my sadhana—if I had, you would have seen that if I had not made action and work one of my chief means of realisation—well, there would have been no sadhana and no realisation except that, perhaps, of Nirvana.

I shall perhaps add something hereafter as to what works can do, but no time tonight.

Do not conclude however that I am exalting works as the sole means of realisation. I am only giving it its due place.

You will excuse the vein of irony or satire in all this—but really when I am told that my own case disproves my whole spiritual philosophy and accumulated knowledge and experience, a little liveliness in answer is permissible.

I had expected the blows and enjoyed them. Only one blow I did not expect, nor did I seem to deserve it. It is where you say that I have hinted that you "have failed to get anything by works".

Anything except preparation at any rate? for works can only prepare.

I send you the letter of the 16th for a little correction. In one place all of us stumbled. You have written: "It does not mean that I use the higher..." Use does not seem to make any sense here.

Because you have turned "lose" into "use". No wonder everybody stumbled over that hitch.

If you have time, please complete the letter tonight.

None tonight.

It seems I had the same experience again. In the meditation I felt that something descended, and the body became silent, i.e. it seemed to me that it was something apart from me. Along with this the inner silence began.

i.e. The real self (Atman or Purusha) is not the body—the body is something separate, a part of the being, but a part of Prakriti, not the true self or Purusha.

I also tried to imagine your presence before me, but the appearance soon became obliterated into a nothingness, so to say. But is it harmful to test the experience as I did? Should I have remained absolutely silent and calm?

It is best to remain silent. To test the experience may lead to a mental activity which will break it. That it did not do so in this case, shows that the power of silence that came down must have been very strong and imperative.

You said before that this condition was of the inner being and its silence, the separation of Purusha from Prakriti.

Yes, but it seems also to be the beginning of liberation from identification with the body consciousness. That easily comes with the Purusha-consciousness in the inner being.

Is this inner being or the Purusha the same as the psychic being?

No, not necessarily—the inner being is composed of the inner mental, the inner vital, the inner physical. The psychic is the inmost supporting all the others. Usually it is in the inner mental that this separation first happens and it is the inner mental Purusha who remains silent, observing the Prakriti as separate from himself. But it may also be the inner vital Purusha or inner physical or else without location simply the whole Purusha-consciousness separate from the whole Prakriti. Sometimes it is felt above the head—but then it is usually spoken of as the Atman and the realisation is that of the silent Self.

I am fortunate to have the same experience repeated so soon.

Yes, it proves that the Yogic consciousness is beginning to grow in you.

Last night as I returned from a walk, at 11.30 p.m., and sat down in my chair, I felt, all on a sudden, your presence in the room and I was so very happy. Did you really visit me?

Yes.

In your letter on meditation and work, you say, "... afterwards meditation has to build laboriously a big superstructure on that foundation. It is very indispensable..."

"It" obviously refers to "the building of the superstructure".

You have written: "Those who do work for the Mother in all sincerity are prepared by the work itself for the right consciousness even if they do not sit down for meditation," Yet in another letter you say: "It may be necessary for an individual here and there to plunge into meditation for a time."

This applies to a certain number of people—it does not lay down non-meditation as a principle. Note the "even if" which gives the proper shade.

To "plunge into" means to do meditation alone—for a time only.

These statements would obviously mean that meditation is not indispensable, for sincere workers, I mean.

I do not mind if you find inconsistencies in my statements. What people call consistency is usually a rigid or narrow-minded inability to see more than one side of the truth or more than their own narrow personal view or experience of things. Truth has many aspects and unless you look on all with a calm and equal eye, you will never have the real or the integral knowledge.

But when I wrote to you that I didn't feel like meditating, you replied, "I don't see how you can change your lower consciousness without it"; and when I got back the urge to meditate you again said, "That is the only thing to do."

Perhaps there was a stress on the "you".

I have hardly any time for meditation because till 9.30 p.m. I am simply cramped with work, classes, etc. After that I read a little or jump straight into bed and fall into a state of 'Sachchidananda', as Barinbabu terms it. Now how to reconcile the two?

Half an hour's meditation in the day ought to be possible—if only to bring a concentrated habit into the consciousness which will help it, first to be less outward in work and, secondly, to develop a receptive tendency which can bear its fruits even in the work.

In her "Prayers and Meditations", under 8th October, 1914 the Mother says: "The joy that is contained in activity is compensated and balanced by the perhaps still greater joy contained in withdrawal from all activity..." This state of greater joy, Mother explains, is that state of Sachchidananda and the withdrawal is not an inner detachment during work. Does it not suggest then that there is a joy in non-activity superceding that of activity? If such be the case, one would naturally aspire for this far greater joy which is the aim and purpose of our sadhana, isn't it so?

Do you think the Mother has a rigid mind like you people and was laying down a hard and fast rule for all time and all people and all conditions? It refers to a certain stage when the consciousness is sometimes in activity and when not in activity is withdrawn in itself. Afterwards comes a stage when the Sachchidananda condition is there in work also. There is a still farther stage when both are as it were one, but that is the supramental. The two states are the silent Brahman and the active Brahman and they can alternate (1st stage), coexist (2nd stage), fuse (3rd stage). If you reach even the first stage then you can think of applying Mother's dictum, but why misapply it now?

Is it possible to have the highest Sachchidananda realisation in work?

Certainly it is realisable in work. Good Lord' how could the integral Yoga exist if it were not?

I regret to say that I haven't read your "Arya" and "Essays on the Gita". So I don't know what you have said or how far, about the possibilities of yogic work. I have only a rough idea. Others' experiences are others'...

Not the less true for that!

By the way, Rishabhchand remarked that many are wavering between meditation vs. work. What do you think of that? In spite of the 7 volumes of "Arya", 2 volumes of "Essays on the Gita" and repeated stress on work, your sadhaks are wavering!!

My sadhaks are like that

So may I request you to thrash out the whole thing beyond doubt, question, wavering, etc., with that addition you said you'd make? Please consider that your yoga is absolutely new—the Karma part of it, I mean.

Karmayoga is as old as the hills. What is this nonsense about its absolute newness? Donner-wetter! Tausend Teufel!¹⁸

If we with our old ideas, are bewildered and question you repeatedly about it, please excuse us.

Yes, but if I have to write the same thing over and over again for each sadhak,—well!

Let one thing be clear—I do not mean by work action done in the ego and the ignorance, for the satisfaction of the ego and in the drive of rajasic desire. There can be no karmayoga without the will to get rid of ego, rajas and desire which are the seals of ignorance.

Another thing, I do not mean philanthropy or the service of humanity or all the rest of the things—moral or idealistic—which men substitute for the deeper truth of works.

I mean by work action done for the Divine and more and more in union with the Divine—for the Divine alone and nothing else. Naturally that is not easy at the beginning, any more than deep meditation and luminous knowledge are easy or even true love and bhakti are easy. But like the others it has to be begun in the right spirit and attitude, with the right will in you, then all the rest will come.

Works done in this spirit are quite as effective as bhakti or contemplation. One gets by the rejection of desire, rajas and ego a peace and purity into which the peace ineffable can descend—one gets by the dedication of one's will to the Divine, by the merging of one's will in the Divine will the death of ego and the enlarging into the cosmic consciousness or else the uplifting into what is above the cosmic,—one experiences the separation of Purusha from Prakriti and is liberated from the shackles of the outer nature; one becomes aware of one's inner being, and feels the outer as an instrument; one feels the universal Force doing one's works and the self or Purusha watching or witness but free; one feels all one's works taken from one and done by the universal or the supreme Mother or by the Divine Power controlling and acting from behind the heart. By constant reference of all one's will and works to the Divine, love and adoration grow, the psychic being comes forward. By the reference to the Power above one can come to feel it above and its descent and the opening to an increasing consciousness and knowledge. Finally works, bhakti and knowledge join together and self-perfection becomes possible—what we call the transformation of the nature.

These results certainly do not come all at once; they come more or less slowly, more or less completely according to the condition and growth of the being. There is no royal road to the divine realisation.

This is the karmayoga as it is laid down in the Gita and developed by myself in the Arya. It is founded not on speculation and reasoning but on experience. It does not exclude meditation and it certainly does not exclude bhakti, for the self-offering to the Divine, the consecration of all oneself to the Divine which is the very essence of this karmayoga are essentially a movement of bhakti. Only it does exclude a life-fleeing exclusive meditation or an involved Bhakti shut up in its own inner dream taken as the whole movement of the Yoga. One may have hours of pure absorbed meditation or of the inner motionless adoration and ecstasy, but they are not the whole of the integral Yoga.

Here am I, with all my doubts and questionings about work vanished, an absolute slave of Thine, for whatever work you choose to throw me in from the cleaning of the sewage to anything honourable and respectable...

But please tell me, is it because of the lack of right attitude that I haven't yet had any experience at work?

Yes

I read somewhere that only when one has developed a strong hatred towards lower troubles one can conquer them.

That is not true. Indifference is sufficient.

Do you think learning sitar will be useful for me?

I don't see much use in sitarring—but if you do!

Your German has become Greek to me, Sir! It is illegible. Dilip wants to know if one is "Teufel" meaning "fiend".

[The words in italics are mine. Sri Aurobindo filled in the gaps.] These are swearings in German. Donner wetter (thundering weather!)

Tausend Teufel! (thousand devils = French "Mine diables!")

Today I lost my temper in my carpentry work over a workman's disobedience and insolence. He refused to clean the place at the end of the work; I insisted and had it done. Perhaps I did wrong by losing my temper, but how can a worker be rude and insolent? Chandulal said the other day that in such cases he always calls you for aid, and is rescued.

Yes, that was the mistake. It was not a mistake to insist (quietly, but firmly, it should be) on his doing his duty—but by losing the temper you raise issues and make it a case of Greek meets Greek. Besides that, you must learn to use a silent inner force on the man or else call in the Mother's force, as C suggested. It may not be successful at first through want of practice and skill in the handling, but when you become an expert in that Yogic way, you will be surprised at the additional power of effectuation it brings. In all action the Yogin uses this inner force to support the outer means—it is the difference between Yogic and ordinary action.

Just today I signed my bond of Karmayoga, and today comes the test in which I've failed! and I am almost tempted to say, By Jove, this is "Karmayoga"!

If this is Karmayoga, why not do it through literature where one doesn't face such troubles? D and others will surely have transformation of nature without having to fight so many complicated factors?

They have plenty of complicated factors to fight and their confinement to literature does not make their fight any easier. Work like this gives much more opportunities of inner change—provided one is ready to take advantage. You are making good progress, and I think if you had remained only a literary gent or only a medical gent, it would have taken longer.

When I wrote about the absolute newness of your Yoga, you swore at me in German.

Not my Yoga—Karmayo! The Karmayoga element in my Yoga is not new.

Yes, in the "Gita" it is there, to be sure, but has it been done through timber-cutting, bread-kneading, cooking, etc., etc.?

There is nothing new in that either. It has always been a rule of Karmayoga that one must be ready to do any work for the Divine or with the spiritual consciousness.

Janakas, Arjunas might, but not Nirods or Rama Shyama!¹⁹

Why not Rama Shyama? Plenty of Ramas and Shyamas have done that kind of karmayoga and done it easily enough.

I can quite understand that the inner knowledge comes with the growth and heightening of consciousness. But what about the outer knowledge—what we ordinarily call knowledge?

The capacity for it can come with the inner knowledge. E.g. I understood nothing about painting before I did Yoga. A moment's illumination in Alipore jail opened my vision and since then I have understood with the intuitive perception and vision. I do not know the technique, of course, but I can catch it at once if anybody with knowledge speaks of it. That would have been impossible to me before.

Suppose you had not studied English literature; would it be still possible for you to say something about it by Yogic experience?

Only by cultivating a special siddhi,²⁰ which would be much too bothersome to go after. But I suppose if I had got the Yogic knowledge (in your hypothetical case) it would be quite easy to add the outer one.

I hope you won't say like Ramakrishna that these things—outer knowledge, beauty of expression, thought-power, etc., don't matter since they don't lead us to the Divine. But you have said we are children of an intellectual age. Should we not follow in the footsteps of the Master?

Essentially Ramakrishna was right. The literature etc. belongs to the instrumentation of the Divine Life—It is of importance only if one accepts that aim and even so, not of importance to everybody. It is not necessary for instance for everybody to have a mastery of English literature or to be a poet or a scientist or acquainted with all science (an encyclopaedia in knowledge). What is more important is to have an instrument of knowledge that will apply itself accurately, calmly, perfectly to all that it has to handle.

Chand has sent a rupee to buy something for you on New Year's day. I don't know what to buy.

Nor do I.

1935

January 1935

I am rather shocked to hear of the behaviour of D.S. lacking all common sense, not to speak of Yogic attitude and that too after living here for so many years!

At any rate it is not Yoga that upset D.S. He never proposed to do any—he was interested only in medicine. That, he always said, was his Yoga, to read, to study, to experiment, to learn more and more about medicine. But perhaps you will say that Yoga of works is responsible.

Then I thought if one has big experiences, he will be safe, but G has shattered that delusion. This man is said to have had overmental experiences! And he also gone. I have heard that you don't approve of one's going.

He had no overmind experiences—he had something of the opening of the cosmic mind and vital in the intermediate zone and that plenty besides him have done and are doing. I have explained this before.

We approved of it. He went to arrange about his aunt's property as the family want to live here (not in the Asram, but outside).

At one time I thought that old people are better off since they have a less active vital, but Doctorbabu and Bhupalbabu have demolished that view. Doctor had a genuine seeking and went away for a flimsy reason! With A the same fate!

He has always been doing that—doing the navette between his family and the Asram.

A has left the Asram?

All these cases of failures prove what? I apprehend the same reasons may operate in me and I may behave exactly like an insane person.

What you say may apply to everybody because everybody has things in him which conflict with the Yoga. Logical conclusion—Nobody should try anything in which anybody has failed or in which there is a possibility of failure! I am afraid most human activities would stop on that principle except আহার নিদ্রা মিথুন²¹ and perhaps only the first two. But after all not even these—for people die in their sleep and others die of their food by poison, indigestion or otherwise. So to be safe one must neither eat, sleep nor [do] anything else—much less do Yoga. Q.E.D.

... I don't know really how I have dared such an adventure knowing full well the other side of my nature. Yet there has always seemed to have been something within which remains to be called up, touched and awakened. What is to be done? Believe in Thy Grace? But I am puzzled a little about the Grace itself.

I suppose you always avoided getting into a railway train because there might be a collision or into a steamer for similar reasons and certainly you would never dare go in an aeroplane!

In meditation, I had again a stillness of the inner and outer being, but the body was gradually bending down, as ill was in a light sleep. I could remember that you were there. Was that a state of sleep due to a full stomach?

You were going into the inner consciousness and away from the outer, that is all.

Is that the medical man's explanation of the experience? If a full stomach can produce experiences, you ought perhaps to treble or quadruple your rations.

A letter from C. Is it possible for him to come here without being completely cured?

No.

Can't decipher C. The Doctor has prescribed a treatment and he can't afford it? Is that it? Or what else?

Forgive me if I quarrel with you today; you have hinted that I am a coward.

There is a coward in every human being—precisely the part in him which insists on "safety"—for that is certainly not a brave attitude. I admit however that I would like safety myself if I could have it—perhaps that is why I have always managed instead to live dangerously and follow the dangerous paths dragging so many poor Nirods in my train.

I am stunned to see you mention Yoga and other human activities in the same breath. Is it not Sri Krishna who said that out of thousands very few seek him and still fewer get him?

There are lots who try for a Govt. post and only a few get them It is the same principle everywhere.

Let me tell you how a born yogi felt and feels about Yoga. He says often to us that on many occasions he has felt like running away never mind to which hell! What then about us, born-biyogis?

I was not aware that there are born Yogis and unborn Yogis. All have their vital and mental difficulties, whether born or unborn.

You have called around you or rather we have come to you, a jumble of assorted elements, (I call no one—says your thundering voice, but don't you really call even from within?) for yoga which seems to me a great gamble like that of Monte Carlo.

Whom have I called?

If they were not, they would not be representative of the world which has to be changed.

And this gambling fight is more against forces unseen than seen. We eat hostile forces, breathe them, feed them, exchange them, do everything except see and trample them—swarming micro-organisms!

So is all life on earth—a complex of seen and unseen forces and an obscure and ignorant struggle.

These forces drag us down from today's ecstasy to tomorrow's valley of depression and next day's abyss of doom. In Barinbabu's world gods and goddesses are seething, in ours hostile forces!

After all there are plenty of people here who are going pretty well; why emphasise only the comparatively few who have fallen out or are in serious trouble? Each has his difficulties, no doubt, but how on earth do you expect so high a path to be without them?

To add to all this, you hardly take an initiative and ask people to do this or that. Your principle is to give a long rope either to hang oneself or have a taste of the bitter cup.

I am to put everybody into leading strings and walk about with them—or should it be the rope in their nose? Supermen cannot be made like that—the long rope is needed.

When I went on reading and reading in the godown you said nothing till the blow came.

Reading in a godown does not end tragically as a rule.

D.S. is doing the same. Yet it can't be denied that he Originally came to do yoga. In spite of it he is caught in the intricate net of the blessed forces and gives up the greater pursuit for the lesser.

It is not reading medical books that was the cause of D.S.'s serious upset. It was the usual causes coupled with something else. But as all that is private, I can't go into it.

I come for yoga with all sincerity but end by being a tool in their hands. Isn't it tragic and pathetic? This side of the shield I request you to see.

Gracious heavens! you are really a poet.

"So, what is your point?" you may ask, "One shouldn't do yoga?" Certainly. Only, I am trying to establish my proposition that one is never sure in yoga, or only a few are.

One is never sure in anything. It is absurd in this world to say, "I will only do what is sure and absolutely safe—especially in anything great."

Your caustic satire about railways is, with all apology, a little off the point. Firstly I have dared yoga.

Why not go on daring—instead of wailing because there is no safety?

In railways etc., the journeys are safe hostile forces are not so villainous. But even after Herculean efforts, the path of yoga is not a jot easier.

You ought to read the Matin. Every now and then a tremendous collision and holocaust. I admit that in India railway is slow and scanty and therefore more though not quite safe. Anyway, what about aeroplanes?

Ramakrishna had a word of hope for his disciples and used to say, 'এখানে যারা এসেছে, সবার হবে'²² You don't or won't give any, not even a quarter. You might say it is a greater Truth but we have greater Divines as well.

He had a few disciples round him—here there is a crowd of 150—so his assurance was not a very big sporting flutter. But what did হবে mean?

For this greater Truth if some fall out, what matters? The Wheel of Jagannath²³ must roll on and the Divine has no tears for them, for he is beyond dualities.

Even if I fall out myself, I will not weep. I will try again.

It is very problematic, however, how many will reach your Heaven alive, like Yudhishthir.

And his dog. You have forgotten the dog.²⁴

I am afraid most of us will have the fate of the Pandavas,²⁵ unless the Divine is prepared to carry us all himself—barring the ladies!

What the deuce has sex to do here? Don't be too medical.

Because medical science says that their physiological apparatus is more suitable for the psychological attitude of self-abnegation which is also the essential desideratum for yoga.

That's the only thing for which their physiological apparatus works? I fear there are other things both in male and female which are not essential desiderata for Yoga.

Apart from all sense of humour—I have never said that Yoga or that this Yoga is a safe and easy path—what I say is that anyone who has the will to go through can go through. For the rest if you aim high, there is always the danger of a steep fall, if you misconduct your aeroplane. But the danger is for those who allow themselves to entertain a double being, aiming high but also indulging their lower outlook and hankerings. What else can you expect when people do that? You must become single-minded, then the difficulties of the mind and vital will be overcome. Otherwise those who oscillate between their heights and their abysses, will always be in danger till they have become single-minded—that applies to the "advanced" as well as to the beginner. These are facts of nature—I can't pretend for anybody's comfort that they are otherwise. But there is the fact also that nobody need keep himself in this danger. One-mindedness (एकनिष्ठा), surrender to the Divine, faith, true love for the Divine, complete sincerity in the will, spiritual humility (real, not formal) ; there are so many things that can be a safeguard against any chance of eventual downfall. Slips, stumbles, difficulties, up-settings everyone has; one can't be assured against these things, but if one has the safeguards, they are transitory, help the nature to learn and are followed by a better progress.

I hope you have understood the psychology behind all my wailings. My headache and fear are that you allow the other forces to take away some of the poor Nirods from your "train", being weary of the fight, perhaps.

Excuse me, I don't allow—the poor Nirods allow or they take themselves away in a huff

But I sincerely pray that you will drag this really poor Nirod in your train till his last breath!

What else am I doing, but dragging towards that?

You call me a poet? A poet without poems? A briefless barrister?

It was the uchchhwas²⁶ that extorted that exclamation from me.

What is double being or double nature? Are both the same? Is it, as you say, aiming high and aiming low simultaneously? In that case I am afraid most of us have it more or less!

Every man has a double nature except those who are born (not unborn) Asuras, Rakshasas, Pisachas²⁷ and even they have a psychic being concealed somewhere by virtue of their latent humanity. But a double being (or a double nature in the special sense) refers to those who have two sharply contrasted parts of their being without as yet such a linking control over them. Sometimes they are all for the heights and then they are quite all right—sometimes all for the abysses and then they care nothing for the heights, even sneer or rail at them and give full rein to the lower man. Or they substitute for the heights a smoky volcano summit in the abyss. These are extreme examples, but others while they do not go so far, yet are now one thing, now just the opposite. If they can convert the lower fellow or discover the central being in themselves, then a true harmonious whole can be created. (For a case of a double being who had no central organising part in him you can take R as an example.)

During meditation, I had again a strong feeling of pressure. As you had advised, I tried to enlarge my consciousness by thinking that I was as large as the universe. But is that the way?

Yes. At any rate it is a very good way—there may be others, but I think it is the best.

I don't know anything about the example you gave of a double being. You have read, I am sure, Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. Is that an instance of a double being?

Well, it is something very much like that—except that the possession of the consciousness by either personality is not always or often as complete as that.

Is Divine Force somewhat different from Ananda and Peace in its operation? When Peace descends or Ananda invades, one can distinctly feel it as coming from above. But what about the Force?

One can feel it in the same way if it descends into the body. But sometimes it simply works from above or behind or within and in that case one may be conscious of the result, the energy given without feeling the Force itself.

Why is it so rarely felt? Is it more difficult to bring it down?

No. It depends on the person. Many people feel the Force more easily than the Peace or the Ananda.

Today an almirah was completed after 38 days, costing Rs. 98. To me it seems too much. But I don't know how the labour could have been reduced.

That needs a knowledge and keen observation, I suppose—to see whether the fruit of the work is as good as the show. But you are there for supervision mainly, not for expert knowledge.

I can never imagine that some day I shall have an expert knowledge of carpentry to supervise and regulate the work.

Well, get Energy from above (the Force) and put it forcefully on the carpenters—If one day you can do that, you will amply justify your timber throne.

In Yoga everything seems to be opposite. My Rs. 20,000/- over medical education are in vain! I don't know what purpose will be served by making me a carpenter of the Divine. If, on the contrary, I could be the Son of a carpenter that would be something!

I was under the impression that you were not enthusiastic over medicine or at least over the practice of it. If we had known that you were anxious to justify the 20,000, we could have utilised you in that direction. Are you serious about it?

If, as you say to D, remembering the Divine and giving thanks at the end ought to be enough, that is very simple and easy.

One must also aspire for the Force and for the consciousness of the Force.

It comes as a great surprise to hear that you consider enthusiasm so important for want of which you didn't utilise my medical knowledge!

I meant that as you had no enthusiasm for drugs, you might just as well be busy with timber.

I am really puzzled by your question; the more so because you have said that I am progressing more than I would have done if I were a literary or a medical gent.

Well, Mother had thought of you when we wanted somebody to fill up the hole left by the erratic D.S. and we also don't know what we shall do when B goes for his periodic inspection of his affairs in Gujerat. We had rejected the idea because we thought you might not only be not enthusiastic but the reverse of enthusiastic about again becoming a medical gent. When however you spoke lovingly and hungeringly about the Rs. 20,000, I rubbed my eyes and thought "Well, well! here's a chance!" That's all.

If you seriously think that I may add my little strength to help the Divine and call me to do it I am thrice seriously your man.

We will think of it in case of need.

You speak as if the Energy or Force is just above the head, and one has only to snatch it down.

There is a lid in between. Remove that and the Force will come tumbling down into you.

And even if it were, how can I put the Force on the carpenters? Does it not also depend on the receptivity of the individuals?

Much more easy if you have the force to make a carpenter carpent properly than to propel a sadhak in the way he should go. Receptivity is all-important for the sadhana—it counts but not so much in getting an ordinary thing done by an ordinary man.

Khirod says he wrote to you about my proposal of shouldering the entire responsibility of the timber godown. Somehow I felt pity for him—an overburdened, harmless gentleman.

Harmless only? He is one of the ablest and most quietly successful "men of work" I have come across.

Supposing I get the Force from above, how to apply it on the carpenters?

Direct it upon them in a steady stream. If Force can come into you, why can't it go out from you too?

You laughed away my medical statement about ladies. Is it not true that women are more receptive and psychic than men? All outward signs would direct that way, at any rate.

Rubbish! Neither more receptive nor even more hysteric. Men, I find, can equal them even at that. It is true they declare hunger-strikes more easily, if you think with Gandhi that that is a sign of psychicness (soul force). But after all Non-cooperation has taken away even that inferiority from men.

You wrote [on the 5th] that you had lived dangerously. All that we know is that you did not have enough money in England,—also in Pondicherry in the beginning. In Baroda you had a handsome pay, and in Calcutta you were quite well off.

[Above "quite" Sri Aurobindo put!!!!].

I was so astonished by this succinct, complete and impeccably ac-, curate biography of myself that I let myself go in answer! But I afterwards thought that it was no use living more dangerously than am obliged to, so I rubbed all out. My only answer now is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I thank you for the safe, rich, comfortable and unadventurous career you have given me. I note also that the only danger man can run in this world is that of the lack of money. Karl Marx himself could not have made a more economic world of it! But I wonder whether that was what Nietzsche meant by living dangerously?

I am rather grieved to know that you rubbed off what you wrote, and that my attempts to draw you out have failed very narrowly! But what are we to do? Everybody's opinion is that nothing can be got out of you unless you are "pricked" (not my term) and we want to know so much of your life of which we know so little!

Why the devil should you know anything about it?

So I dared to make this hazardous statement. Often we have to write strongly about what we feel and think and so many ways and means we have to devise just for a few more strokes than you almost grudgingly allow. You will admit that I almost succeeded in my diplomacy (forgive me).

Of course, I don't mean that lack of money is the only danger one can be in. Nevertheless, is it not true that poverty is one of the greatest dangers as well as incentives? The lives of many great men illustrate this. Therefore living poorly seems to me to be akin to living dangerously. I know that my contention has obvious fallacies in it, but isn't this mostly true?

Not in the least. You are writing like Samuel Smiles.²⁸ Poverty has never had any terrors for me nor is it an incentive. You seem to forget that I left my very safe and "handsome" Baroda position without any need to it and that I gave up also the Rs. 150 of the National College Principalship, leaving myself with nothing to live on. I could not have done that, if money had been an incentive.

But what is the use of telling me what Nietzsche meant by it? How am I to know that you mean the same as he?

Certainly not the commercial test.

I was quoting Nietzsche—so the mention of him is perfectly apposite.

Kindly let us know by your examples, what you mean by living dangerously that we poor people may gather some courage and knowledge...

I won't. It is altogether unnecessary besides. If you don't realise that starting and carrying on for ten years and more a revolutionary movement for independence without means and in a country wholly unprepared for it meant living dangerously, no amount of puncturing of your skull with words will give you that simple perception. And as to the Yoga, you yourself were perorating at the top of your voice about its awful, horrible, pathetic and tragic dangers. So—

I beg to submit my apologies. I committed this folly because of ignorance of facts. Believe me, I did not know that you were the brain behind the revolutionary movement and its real leader till I read the other day what Barinbabu has written about you (that does not minimise my guilt, I know). But even then I couldn't persuade myself to believe it, though I was very glad to hear it. I only knew that you were an extremist Congress leader for which the Govt. was shadowing and suspecting you. Now that it is confirmed by you. I know (not by experience) what is meant by the phrase "living dangerously". Of course I was not referring to anything about Yoga or the inner life. But why put me to shame by dragging my poor self into it? My dangers don't prove anything, do they?

Wait a sec. I have admitted nothing about "Barinbabu"—only to laving inspired and started and maintained while I was in the field a movement for independence. That used at least to be a matter of public knowledge. I do not commit myself to more than that. My fear dear fellow, I was acquitted of sedition twice and of conspiracy to wage war against the British Raj once and each time by an impeccably British magistrate, judges or judge. Does not that prove conclusively my entire harmlessness and that I was a true Ahimsuk?

I read your poem on "Tautology"²⁹ written to Dilipda, and I felt rather bad for you. So if you like I can write only three days a week.

The poem was not aimed at you—you need have no qualms of conscience.

If you mind the way I have written the last few letters, I mean the humorous vein in them—I shall stop it and keep to the point. But let me say that it was by some gracious movement of yours that I dared to do this, and I have really wondered how I dare! I have told you already how I enjoy and feel happy by your kindly jokes and humour...

Not necessary to stop. Unless you are afraid of word-punctures in the skull. My indignations and objurgations are jocular and not meant to burn or bite.

To come to serious matters. What would you say if the Mother actually proposed to you to exchange the timber-trade for medicine? E.g. (1) to transfer your worldly and unworldly goods and your learned and noble person to the Dispensary and take physical charge of keeping it in order. (2) to help Becharlal in ministering to the physical ills of the sadhaks—with the provision that you may have hereafter to take the main charge, if he takes a trip to Gujerat.

The Mother is rather anxious that you should take up this work; she had the idea, as I told you, when D.S. broke down (which was a pity because he was in many respects the ideal man for the charge), but she did not propose it because she was not sure you would like it. As yet the suggestion is confidential, for pending your answer, we have said nothing to Becharlal.

Today during meditation, again there was the sense of much pressure on the head, as if I would fall down. I was quite unconscious for some seconds and felt also very light, as if there was no body. Is it the same experience as the previous one? Why is the Force felt only on the head, and why opening of the eyes relieves the intensity?

Yes, it was the same experience. You went inside under the pressure of the Force—which is often though not always the first result—went into a few seconds' samadhi, according to the ordinary language. The Force when it descends tries to open the body and pass through the centres. It has to come in (ordinarily) through the crown of the head (Brahmarandhra) and pass through the inner mind centre which is in the middle of the forehead between the eyebrows. That is why it presses first on the head. The opening of the eyes brings one back to the ordinary consciousness of the outer world, that is why the intensity is relieved by opening the eyes.

My last questions on women were a prelude to a bigger question on them in general...

I will quote the view of a medical man of experience who seems to represent the popular opinion "Women are, as a rule, more intelligent than men, but their intelligence is of a different order. Man's brain is superior to woman's in size and weight... We are told that it can be explained by our keeping all culture as a sex-monopoly to ourselves, that they have been in constant subjection, that they have never had a fair chance." Then he adds that in Greece and Rome during the Middle Ages women had great freedom and a superior form of instruction, yet they did nothing outstanding. In his own profession, though there have been women professors since the 17th century in famous Italian Universities—in Bologna, Naples, etc.—they have done nothing to advance their special science.

In Greece woman was a domestic slave—except the Hetairae and they were educated only to please. In Rome She remained at home and spun wool" was the highest eulogy for woman. It was only for a brief period of the Empire that woman began to be more free, but she was never put on an equality with man. Your medical man was either an ignoramus or talking through his hat at you.

Then again, there have been no women of first rank in painting, music, literature, etc., except Rosa Bonheur, who however had to shave her chin and dress as a man.

What an argument! from exceptional conditions as against the habits of millenniums! What about administration, rule, business, in which women have shown themselves as capable and more consistently capable than men? These things need no brains? Any imbecile can do them?

You will then agree that that is the consensus of opinion.

The consensus of masculine opinion,—perhaps.

Of course no one can dispute that in another sphere they are angels: by the side of death and disease, sorrow and suffering...

It means that is what men have mainly demanded of them—to be heir servants, nurses, cooks, children-bearers and rearers, ministers of their sex-desires etc. That has been their occupation, their aim in life and their natures have got adapted to their work. All that they have achieved else than that is by the way—in spite of the yoke said on them. And then man smiles a superior smile and says it was all due to woman's inferior nature, not to the burden laid on her.

Whatever may be the reason of the difference between a man and a woman, it can't be gainsaid that women can efface themselves more completely or more easily for the sake of love. Is it because their heart is full and strong that their head is weak (if true)?

They have been trained to it through the ages—that is why. Subjection, self-effacement, to be at the mercy of man has been their lot—it has given them that training. But it has left them also another kind of ego which is their spiritual obstacle—the ego which is behind the abhiman and the hunger-strikes.

Can it be said that because they live more in their heart than in their head, their path is easier?

All these clear-cut assertions are mental statements—and mental statements are too clear-cut to be true, as philosophy and science have now begun to discover. Life and being are too complex for that.

So doubt having gone and faith coming in, their love raises them towards the Divine as thermometre by heat! Or Love transferred from the human to the Divine closes the cycle by taking them to the All-love.

There you go from mental statements to poetry and image—not more reliable.

Here I have noticed that out of sheer love some women have followed their husbands into the travails of the Unknown, but when the husbands have been assailed with doubts and depression, they have been sitting happily and confidently in the lap of the Divine.

Great Scott l what a happy dream

It seems that in Yoga women have one advantage, the sex instinct in them is not as strong as in men.

There is no universal rule. Women can be as sexual as men or more. But there are numbers of women who dislike sex and there are very few men. One Sukhdev³⁰ in a million, but many Dianas and Pallas Athenes. The virgin is really a feminine conception; men are repelled by the idea of eternal virginity. Many women would remain without any wakening of the sexual instinct if men did not thrust it on them and that cannot be said of many, perhaps of any man. But there is another side to the picture. Women are perhaps less physically sexual than men on the whole,—but what about vital sexuality? the instinct of possessing and being possessed etc., etc.?

How is it that Ramakrishna always used to ask his disciples to avoid kāmini-kānchan?³¹ Buddha was no less strict.

That is the old monastic idea. It arises from the extreme sexuality of men. They see in women the नरकस्य द्वारं³² because that door is so wide open in themselves. But they prefer to throw the blame on women.

Was not man's Jail from heaven due to woman?

That was not due to sex, but to woman's desire for new experience and knowledge.

This letter of mine is pretty long. I am waiting to have from you.a royal verdict covering and satisfying all the points.

I can't cover and satisfy all points—it would need a volume.

I had kept your book in order to write something less flippant and insufficient than the marginal notes about this grave matter. But I have had enough work today for any two Sundays, so I had to leave aside all that was not urgent. The inferiority and superiority of women is not a subject that cannot wait, so—it waits.

Dr. B asked me to shift over to the Dispensary today itself, but I refused, waiting for your full instructions about the furniture, table lamp, management work, etc.

I think there is everything needed over there, table Lamp and all. You had better go and see. If so, you will need to take only your personal things. One thing the Mother wants to say—she asks you to keep the Dispensary meticulously clean as D.S. did ; there is a special servant attached to the Dispensary for that. As a "foreign degree doctor" you will understand the necessity. You can move in whenever you like, handing over your wooden responsibilities to Dikshit.

Now that I shall be in charge of the Dispensary I feel afraid about my prestige. People expect great things from an England-returned doctor (who I may confide in you, hasn't had enough time for experience). If you can't save my prestige, save at least my face.

People are exceedingly silly—but I suppose they can't help themselves. The more I observe humanity, the more that forces itself upon me—the abysses of silliness of which its mind is capable.

The prestige I can't guarantee, but hope to save something of the face.

Above all, you are putting me in front of my very weakness—to be conquered, perhaps.

It had to be faced someday.

I have no desire to eat though I am hungry. I can't even sleep at night. Can it be due to the hypersecretion of the endocrines from yogic pressure?

Confound your endocrines! You have got to eat. Yoga can't be done on a hungry stomach. Sleep also is indispensable.

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

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

But I don't know how long the right man will be right for them. They want me to entertain them with "pāyas"³³ to celebrate the occasion.

No man ever is the right one for them—for a long time, but just the time of digesting the payas.

I feel a little "māyā"³⁴ for that room where I stayed, with plenty of air and light.

That was the reason for our hesitation to change you. But there is no go. The man in the right place must be in the place.

I thought, however I am the neighbour of the Divine, under his breath,³⁵ almost. So I am at least free from any number of hostile forces.

Provided you allow the breath to come into you and don't blow it away.

Is it necessary to keep the Dispensary open for longer hours than at present?

There are two different things—(1) sadhaks who can be confined to limited hours and (2) workmen and servants who cannot, for the workmen may have accidents and that must be seen to immediately. So you must be available, especially at the times when the work closes. No. (2) is the main thing, for it throws a considerable responsibility upon us.

The Dispensary table is covered with paper and looks rather untidy. An oilcloth would be better.

Mother had given a fine coloured hospital cloth, very big,(the size of the table) and much better than any oilcloth. Ask what has become of it.

There is no table for my personal use, and for your big photo what would you suggest, a small cane table or nails on the wall?

No nails on the wall—absolutely forbidden. Ask for a small table from Amrita.

By the way, I find that I am extremely hilarious and happy, though I am doing very little sadhana. One cause, I find, is the daily contact with you. But is hilarity permissible in the court of the Divine and can it go hand in hand with progress?

Cheerfulness is the salt of sadhana.

It is a thousand times better than gloominess.

The cloth you sent is too good for the dispensing table and will be spoilt. So it is being used for the writing table. Will oilcloth be available?

Yes, you have to ask the B.S.³⁶

The main room is now broomed twice and mopped once.

That is all right.

How shall we clean the glazed tiles? They are now simply dusted. I am thinking of thoroughly watering the floor once a week.

Glazed tiles can be wiped with wet cloth. But watering can't be done because it spoils the walls.

Shall we use floor polish, if available?

Polish can be given, but then you can't use water any more. Of course polish is nice looking and hygienic, but it will be rather a labour to keep it up, passing a special cloth every day. If the servant has time, it can be done.

The walls can be rubbed with wet cloth once a week.

That is good; the wall-tiles can be rubbed with wet cloth.

Shall I put a notice: "No shoes, please"?

Yes, you can put a notice. Of course, if there is polish, shoes are impossible.

Another thing, but I feel hesitant to write about it. I have a great fancy for a secretariat table like the one being prepared under my supervision for Cocotier...

It can be done—you can ask Chandulal for it.

Your resident physician or surgeon is not satisfied with being that alone, he is anxious to serve another Deity who is still behind. So he needs a bigger table which will be convenient and necessary, apart from the prestige.

The bigger table is necessary for the prestige of the Deity and for the convenience (and necessity) of the physician-priest?

N said that he took some methylated spirit knowing it fully well and obeying a suggestion that if he took it, all his complaints would disappear. Is it really the hostile force that prompted him?

Is he speaking the truth? B writes that he did it immediately after B left him and then bawled from the terrace to B to come and help. If he did do it with such an idea, it is evidently a suggestion of the hostile force or, if you like to put it more psychologically, he was possessed by a mental formation of an irrational undetermined character. It is of the same class as the ideas which get hold of people's minds and become "fixed ideas", only these are momentary. But even if he did it by mistake, it was a suggestion from a source that wanted to do him injury—and took advantage of a momentary absence of mind.

Apropos our discussion on women, let me put before you Mother's opinion on the matter. She says that women are not more bound to the vital and material consciousness than men. On the contrary, as they do not have the arrogant mental pretensions of men, it is easier for them to discover their psychic being and be guided by it.

No doubt, they can discover their psychic being more easily,—but that is not enough. It is the first step. The next is to live in the psychic. The third is to make the psychic the ruler of the being. The fourth is to rise beyond the mind. The fifth is to bring what is beyond mind into the lower nature. I don't say it is always done in that order. But all that has to be done.

Then why do you say that these are my clear-cut mental assertions? [19.1.35]

Perhaps if you give full weight to my marginal answers, you will realise why. The truth is too complex for such assertions to be re liable.

Mother also says that women are conscious in their sentiments, and that the best of them are conscious in their acts. If that is so, there is no more question about it, I think.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined the words "no more question"]: That is too much to say. There may not be so much mental questioning but there may be a lot of vital questioning and resistance.

You will agree then that women are more intuitive than men?

Yes, that of course—but it is the spontaneous intuition of the heart or of the vital mind, not the Intuition with a capital I.

As they live in the vital, their difficulties in the sadhana will be less, I suppose.

Not at all. How can living in the vital make things easier? The vital is the main source of difficulties in the Yoga. The difficulty with men is not purely mental. There too it is vital—only men call in their intellect to defend their vital against the coming or the touch or the pressure of the Divine. Women call in their vital mind to do the same thing.

Nolini writes in his book, "Woman's whole being is concentrated on the thing she clings to, but man's vision is not so exclusive. "Nishtha"³⁷ is the very nature and ideal of woman."

It depends on the spirit in which she is concentrated. There is the psychicised spiritual and there is the unregenerate vital. The tin, regenerate vital way creates enormous difficulties, and its desire to possess means a vehement vital egoism. How can a vehement egoism be helpful for the spiritual life?

If this nishtha can be transformed into higher and diviner Concentration of will in dedication things then her path becomes easier, I suppose.

What is this nishtha? If the woman recoils from the vital to the spiritual and psychic (the vital converting itself into an instrument of realisation), then what you say may be true. But there lies the whole question.

Since ancient times women have been trained to accept a position of subjection by Manu and others. Is it because men are more sexual? It would be rather hard on us to be accused of this!

It is because of man's desire to be the master and keep her in subjection,—the Hitler and Mussolini attitude. The sex is an additional stimulus. Not more hard than you deserve.

Then again, it is said that woman's centre of life and consciousness is in the vital, whose nature is to pull the jiva down to earth.

Woman's living in material and vital is not the cause—it is man's living in the vital and material that is the cause of his finding her an obstacle. She also finds him an obstacle and could say of him that he is নরকস্য দ্বারং³⁸. The assumption that man lives less in the vital and material than woman is not true. He makes more use of his intellect for vital and material purposes—that is all.

Is it not because of this fundamental trait in her being that she has been so sacrificed and tied to man, and also incapacitated from any spiritual endeavour N conjunction with man?

Man has taken advantage of it to keep them under his heel.

Can we not then justify Buddha, Ramakrishna and others who advocated isolation from women? After all, is it not essentially the same principle here, because if vital relations are debarred, nothing remains except a simple exchange of words?

What about the true (not the pretended) psychic and spiritual—forgetting sex? The relation has to be limited as it is because sex immediately trots into the front. You are invited to live above the vital and deeper than the vital—then only you can use the vital aright. Buddha was for Nirvana, and what is the use of having relations with anybody if you are bound for Nirvana? Ramakrishna insisted on isolation during the period when a man is spiritually raw—he did not object to meeting when he became ripe and no longer a slave of sex.

Now, I have learnt a lot on the subject, but it has not been wholly satisfying, since the answers are in the nature of marginal comments. I would like to have a coherent, harmonious whole. My notebook can wait on your table till Monday.

Sorry, but you can't get today either the volume or the harmonious whole. Woman will have to wait as she has done through the centuries and may have to do again if Hitler and Mussolini have their way. The men have crowded her out. Next time better not discuss her yourself—that will save me from the temptation of marginals. As for Monday—no, sir!it is almost as impracticable as the Saturdays.

N feels feverish. He says that it has been going on for some weeks. It may be an early sign of TB., or a mild kidney infection. He had kidney trouble in the past.

It was Mother's impression also. The old Doctor said the same thing, that that was the weakness in his body.

I blurted out in a confident bravado that he will be all right in two days. I pray that my bravado may work out successfully. If S could come to help him it would be good.

Let it be so. After 2 days he ought not to be any more lying in bed, it is not safe at his age.

Very well. Mother is telling Dyuman

Why do I feel so sleepy in spite of having enough sleep? Is it tamas? I hardly seem to be doing any sadhana; no prayer, no meditation—nevertheless quite well!

If you feel quite well, it is all right. Perhaps you are "assimilating"!

My bravado has not worked. N's temperature is still running.

Is it absolutely necessary to keep him in bed? To remain quiet out of bed in light and air might be better.

There are some people who keep fever if they are lying down all the time and it is not considered good after a certain age. This is only for your consideration.

In your proposed (or promised?) volume on the subject of woman [in the letter of the 19th instant], I would like to have answers to these points.

There will be no volume

1) You say that man has kept woman under his heels from time immemorial. But how has that been possible? Was there no tacit consent from the inferior and weak power to the superior intelligence and strength of man?

They used their superior strength and cunning and took advantage of the psychic trend in woman, that's all. If you think that is a justification!

2) Are women created only for the preservation of the species and the race?

Much as doctors are? Only of course the doctor does not produce the species out of himself.

3) It is said that woman is man's guru and shakti³⁹ Sounds queer, doesn't it?

No more queer than the husband being a god (husband-god, patidevata). The husband is supposed to be the wife's proper and only guru, so why should not the wife return that compliment and be the man's guru? Tit for tat.

4) Is this shakti needed to make a man complete and whole?

Is man needed to make a woman complete and whole?

How are we different from Buddha who, you say, was bound for Nirvana, so far as our relation with woman is concerned?

Don't understand. We are not going for Nirvana—at least I am not.

As for shakti, we can get any amount of it from above, can't we?

It doesn't look like it—most of the shakti is either not received or spilled. It does not follow that you should all go hunting for shaktis to complete you.

5) In the law of rebirth, is it true that once a man always a man and once a woman, always a woman?

No fixed rule, at least not invariable but a general line or tendency

I haven't left any marginal space in my writing, because I want an exhaustive answer. The book can wait till Sunday.

As you put no margin, I have put interstitials instead of marginals.

Hitler and Mussolini are much better than Manu and Chanakya⁴⁰, I should say, for they haven't excluded women.

They want women to be subject to men and confined to the domestic drudgery and child-bearing—which is the same position as Manu and as all the old masculines had towards women.

The Divine Grace has done something. I acted up to your advice and N felt better the whole day, as he wasn't in bed.

It was not the Divine Grace but the Divine Force. If it had been the Grace, it would simply have said तथास्तु⁴¹ and the thing would be done. As it is, last night I had to work a damned lot for this result—I only hope it will last and complete itself.

M has ringworm. It's a nasty business and very likely to spread. He has to go on persistently and patiently applying medicine and waiting till one day he is cured—as for the Divine Grace, I am afraid!

Tell him all that and give him the treatment. He is as sceptical about medical Force as others are of the Divine species.

I am thinking of giving him Benzoic and Salicylic ointment May I ask if you know anything better?

No, we don't. Benzoic and the other fellow can be tried.

Today I examined patient N; there is a definite lesion in the left lung. It may be either pleurisy with effusion or T.B. T.B. cannot be excluded altogether considering his advanced age, long-lasting oral sepsis and susceptibility to cold.

I don't know whether there is T.B.—but the mental formation of T.B. on N was formed long ago and when you have a mental formation like that, then physical results may come at any opportunity,—pleurisy, a strong chill even etc. Because of this mental formation, the Mother cannot see definitely.

The doubt can only be cleared by a blood exam and conclusively by exploration...

But is pleurisy undiscoverable except by exploration? Blood exam is so often doubtful.

...I feel a great responsibility. It is bad luck for me to have to tackle such a difficult case... My prestige is also involved.

It is a test case, I suppose. But why so strong on prestige? I should have thought everybody knows that doctors have to be guessing all the time and that cure is a matter of hit or miss. If you hit often, you are a clever doctor—or if you kill people brilliantly, then also. It reduces itself to that.

But may I ask you why you are wasting such a lot of Force when a word could do the job? Why not cut short our labour and the patients' discomfort by saying tathāstu? Is it as easily done as it is said? If working "a damned lot" reduces the temperature only by one degree and that too for 12 hours or less, what am I to think? I would surely like to see Thy Grace operate on this poor man—certainly this is a case for the descent of Grace!

I did not expect you to take my तथास्तु with such grim seriousness. Speaking semi-seriously, I am not here to do miracles to order, but to try to get in a new consciousness somewhere in the world—which is itself however to attempt a miracle. If physical miracles happen to tumble in in the process, well and good, but you can't present your medical pistol in my face and call on me to stand and deliver.

As for the Force, application of my force, short of the supramental, means always a struggle of forces and the success depends on (1) the strength and persistency of the force put out, (2) the receptivity of the subject, (3) the sanction of the Unmentionable—I beg your pardon, I meant the Unnameable, Ineffable and Unknowable. N's physical consciousness is rather obstinate, as you have noticed, and therefore not too receptive. It may feel the Mother inside it, but to obey her will or force is less habitual for it.

N's departure to see his mother, my attachment for my mother, G's activities in Gujerat and B's departure in spite of his profound bhakti, set my brain whirling.

Why on earth should such natural and inevitable things make your brain whirl?

Mother, R says that you visit the Dispensary on the first of every month. Are you then coming tomorrow?

R is romancing or perhaps he is dreaming dreams in preparation of the millennium.

By the way, one point. You seem to want the fever down, R wrote that the fever must be there (but not rise too high) because it is a necessary reaction of the body against the poison. Now, look here! which doctor am I to follow?

February 1935

N asked me to tell you that he felt your Presence and Force in the evening very concretely. He does not want any medicine at all; he says that he used to have doubts before, but now they have disappeared.

It is queer. All the force I am putting into it or almost all turns into this subjective form—some objective result is there but still slight, uncertain and slow. Of course the cause is apparent—he has been accustomed to receive subjectively but not accustomed to receive physically. It is not however convenient for the present purpose—except as a preparation for the more objective receptivity.

We are not anxious to stuff him with too much medicine.

Perhaps it is better not to give medicines except Lithiné.

I still can't understand why you should bother to follow us doctors. The Divine can very easily act from the supramental consciousness directly; you don't really need a diagnosis given by ordinary men!

If things were like that, why the deuce should we have Doctors or a dispensary at all? And what would have been the use of your 20,000? We don't propose to do the whole business of the inside and outside off our own bat. You are as necessary for this as Chandulal for the building or others for their work.

Who told you we are acting from supramental consciousness? We aren't and can't until the confounded quarrel with Matter is settled.

If we doctors are important as mediums, you must tell me what our attitude should be in conducting a case.

Faith, openness, an alert and flexible intelligence. I mean by faith especially faith as a dynamic means of bringing about what has to be effected or realised.

Can we help a patient by aspiring for him? Since the Divine Force is already acting on him, how can my aspiration help him further?

It can. Every little helps.

What is this "confounded quarrel with Matter" you mention? Does this refer to the lower vital and physical movements of the sadhaks?

I am not speaking of the sadhaks, but the resistance of the Earth nature itself in its material parts. But these are things you people cannot understand unless you have less childlike notions about things.

I am still wondering why there should be doctors and a dispensary at all! Isn't it a paradox—the Divine sending his disciples to the human physician?

Rubbish! This is a world of the play of forces, sir, and the Doctor is a force. So why should not the Divine use him? Have you realised that if the Divine did everything, there would be no world, only a show of marionnettes?

D also thinks the same as I do. Why is it not possible for the Force to cure the patients? Let the Dispensary go to the devils!

Thank you for your suggestions all the same—especially about the dispensary and the devils. D.S. almost sent it there, but it went to you instead.

Coming back to the cure you effected in D by your Force, X says that it might have been due to a combination of unseen factors—not due to your Force.

How does' he know? Why can't my poor force be there among the invisibles, since invisibles there are? If only visibles were admitted, then of course.

In that case all the trouble I took for D was sheer waste of energy, hallucination and chimera. Hallucination also the fact that D's improvement agreed exactly with the thought I put out in the force? Well, it may be so. Modern science says there is no such thing as cause and effect, only conditions and statistics. But what are these unseen factors? (The Doctor at any rate thought it miraculous. And what about the hundreds of cases of healing by suggestion or other mental forces everywhere?)

You say "natural and inevitable" things make my brain whirl [31.1.35]. But N has been here for so many years, no frivolous company, no lower trouble; on the contrary 7 or 8 hours meditation daily. Yet he was not able to cut his attachment for his dead mother. Then what kind of a sadhana has he done?

What kind of meditation? The only report he gave to me of it was devils. See note on next page.

I have always been at a loss to understand why mere length of meditation should be a title to greatness in Yoga.

Did he ever try? To my knowledge he did not. He was in constant correspondence with wife and son, always thinking about his family, demanding the advent of wife (+ son understood) here in spite of our constant refusals. As for his meditations, in them he was always going to his house, getting attacked there by devils and still returning. Yet you think his keeping attachment unnatural and evitable! Have some common sense.

As for G, I hear that he is preaching the Truth, saying, "Will you accept the Truth from Sri Aurobindo or from me?" What else is insanity!

But he has always been like that.

This fellow has been saying that you have told him that he has played great parts in the Divine Lila, in former births, had beautiful experiences!

Hallo!

How often have I intimated that G was no great clergy. As for experiences, anybody with an occult bent can have experiences. The thing is to know what to do with them.

Am I to say alas, human nature! Or alas, Divine Power!

Excuse me. It was not the Divine Power that told G to be a Teacher It was his ego.

Please don't mind our pungent remarks. We don't look upon you as a Bengali father but as an English one—who is a father and a friend.

That you is who? I decline the adhyaropa⁴² of an English or any father on me!

If you find my ravings too much to answer, let me hear something about the patient N.

What about the patient? It is for you to say, not me.

N is very well today: fresh and cheerful. What about giving him some orange? Yesterday he enjoyed those few bits from D.R.

When Mother has she will give.

If he doesn't take pocket money, can I help him with a few annas?

Yes. But also if you think he needs, Mother can give the pocket money.

M's servant boy came today at 11 a.m, but R was not available. He was asked to come at 4 p.m, but he didn't turn up.

This won't do. He should be told to go to the Government hospital. We can't be responsible for a case like that.

So tomorrow we'll examine him.

If you want to examine, examine him at once, or else send him to the Hospital without farther ado.

N has less sweating, and above all, his general appearance is so changed and he feels it.

We are inclined to agree with you.

He is weak, he says. I stopped soup. But should I increase soup because of flatulence?

Yes, if there is flatulence, soup is best.

Fruits may benefit him. If you think the same, he will require the pocket money for this month, to buy them.

Mother will tell C to send 2 oranges daily. Will that be enough? If more is needed, pocket money can be given.

I incised j's finger and he was quite bold. But funnily enough, while I was bandaging it, he said he was feeling giddy, and fell unconscious!

I think J himself is a little nervous by temperament.

It seems you were a little displeased about my "ado" about M's servant boy?

No, not at all.

Your mentioning "ulcer" made me think.

It was the story of blood-vomiting several times that made Mother suspect ulcer and insist on the hospital.

N is keeping better. Temperature actually came down to 99.4˚, the first time in his illness. He is already aspiring to do his gate duty on Darshan day. What more evidence? Yesterday during meditation he felt a lot of Force on his chest, he said.

It is evidence of a subjective improvement which helps—but we must get the objective one also. If his lungs are improving and temperature [has a] downward tendency then it is all right.

I have a very wonderful colleague in Dr. B. He can't utter two words about you without shedding tears! Is it second childhood? In spite of all this devotion, domestic affairs bind him.

It is not second childhood—he has always been like that. Here or over there looking after his affairs, his bhakti is constant and genuine.

I am simply overjoyed to learn that one day your retirement can really come to an end. We had always a fear that you might never come out. Tagore expressed this sentiment saying that the world has lost you. How can the world be changed without the personal presence of the Incarnate Divine?

You mean to say I am not personally present—I have gone off to the x loka⁴³ already?

You refuse to be a Guru and decline to be a father, though ladies especially think of you as father and call you so. If they come to know of your refusal, I'll have to run with smelling salts from one lady to another!

Father is too domestic and Semitic—Abba⁴⁴ Father! I feel as if I had suddenly become a twin-brother of the Lord Jehovah. Besides, there are suggestions of a paternal smile and a hand uplifted to smite which do not suit me.

Let the ladies "father" me if smelling salts are the only alternative, but let it not be generalised.

But what is the relation you won't decline? Is it something besides the recognised ones in spiritual history?

I don't know. I always prefer something new to the old labels. I will see the Supramental and perhaps find something.

They are saying that a "sweet relation" has been established between you and me. I only hope and pray that it will be sweeter and sweetest.

The sweet relation is all right, but let it be nameless.

I have brought down a verse from heaven on the correspondence like Bahaullah⁴⁵—which proves that if I am not an Avatar, at least I am a prophet. It is I fear full of chhandapatan and bhashapatan,⁴⁶ but it expresses my feelings:

সাধক্গনের হৃদিতলে correspondence করব বলে
যদি জাগতনা পিপাসা,

থাকতাম আমি হাসিমুখে মগ্ন Supramental সুখে
হায়রে হায় কোথায় সে আশা ?⁴⁷

But for heaven's sake, don't show this undivine outbreak to anybody! They will think I am trying to rival Dara⁴⁸ in his lighter poetic moods.

February 5, 1935
[Morning]

Your humorous verse on the burden of correspondence makes me feel a bit guilty.

I don't mind your correspondence. It is a relief. But when people write four letters a day in small hand closely running to some 10 pages without a gap anywhere and one gets 20 letters in the afternoon and forty at night (of course not all like that, but still!) it becomes a little too too.

Though I admit that you have reclaimed one non-believer by means of your correspondence, the thought of going away is becoming more and more remote. Perhaps this is no consolation to you, for what do you care after all? Men may come and men may go—

But letters go on forever!

February 5, 1935
[Evening]

Correspondence suspended till after the 21st and resumable only on notice. But under cover of your medical cloak, you can carry on. Only mum about it! Otherwise people might get jealous and give you a headache.

Yesterday X and I had a discussion about the action of your Force. Try as I would, I could not convince him of its reality.

Let me put before you the discussion in dialogue form as it actually took place.

X: I just can't believe that D was cured by Sri Aurobindo's Force, unless I hear to this effect from Sri Aurobindo himself.

Myself: But the facts and figures are there: they show quite clearly that something utterly miraculous happened—an abdominal abscess being cured without any material intervention,—symptoms subsiding, the temperature coming down from 103 degrees to 102, and then dropping to 99. As a doctor, I think, I am in a position to judge these things.

X: Maybe all this happened, but how do you know it was Sri Aurobindo's Force that brought about this sudden change?

Myself: Everybody knows here that Sri Aurobindo's Force is constantly acting on us with a tremendous power. Almost all of us have experienced it one time or another. D was brought here under the Mother's instructions, even though his condition was precarious, so that Sri Aurobindo could act upon it with his Force. So it seems quite obvious that he had been cured by this Force just as others have been. What other blessed force could have acted upon him, and if some force did act, why not the Force under which we are living and which is all the time animating us?

X: If that is so, what about the instances where the Divine Force has failed, and why does it succeed in some cases and not in others?

The mistake is to think that it must be either a miraculous force or else none. There is no miraculous force and I do not deal in miracles. The word Divine here is out of place, if it is taken as an always omnipotently acting Power. Yogic Force is then better; it simply means a higher Consciousness using its power, a spiritual & supraphysical force acting on the physical world directly. One has to train the instrument to be a channel of this force; it works also according to a certain law and under certain conditions. The Divine does not work arbitrarily or as a thaumaturge; He acts upon the world along the lines that have been fixed by the nature and purpose of the world we live in—by an increasing action of the thing that has to manifest, not by a sudden change or disregard of all the conditions of the work to be done. If it were not so, there would be no need of Yoga or time or human action or instruments or of a Master and disciples or of a Descent or anything else. It could simply be a matter for the तथास्तु and nothing more. But that would be irrational if you like and worse than irrational—'childish'. This does not mean that interventions, things apparently miraculous, do not happen—they do. But all cannot be like that.

Myself: I don't see how you can deny the reality of this Force. Were you able to write with such vigour before you came here?

X: Yes, I could work a lot; so much so that people were astounded! Was that Sri Aurobindo's Force?

What is Sri Aurobindo's force? It is not a personal property of this body or mind. It is a higher Force used by me or acting through me.

And Tagore, Lenin, etc. who are giants—is your Divine Force working in them too?

Of course it is a Divine Force, for there is only one force acting in the world, but it acts according to the nature of the instrument. Yogic Force is different from others because it is a special power of the spiritual consciousness.

Myself: It may not be Sri Aurobindo's Force, but how can I exclude the possibility of Divine Force behind? Because one is an atheist, it doesn't mean the Divine is undivine against him!

There was an obvious intervention in the case he speaks of—but the agent or process could only be determined if one knew all the circumstances. Such interventions are frequent; e.g. My uncle's daughter was at her last gasp, the doctors had gone away telling him there was no more to be done. He simply sat down to pray—as soon as he had finished, the death symptoms were suspended, the girl recovered without farther treatment (it was a case of typhoid fever). Several cases of that kind have come within my personal observation.

X: Oh, if you say that everything is being done at the Divine impulsion, I have nothing to say. But you can't say for that matter that I am working because Sri Aurobindo is constantly at my back! (He had admitted this before, I don't know whether for the sake of argument, but he recedes now. What can I say against it?)

I am not very particular about that. It is a personal question and depends on X's feeling. I certainly put force on him for the development and success of his poetry—about the rest I don't want to say anything.

I have marginalised on the Force—to write more completely would need more time than I have tonight. Of course, if it depended on a few cases of illness, it would be a thing of no certitude or importance. If the "Force" were a mere freak or miracle, it would be equally trivial and unimportant, even if well-attested. It is only of importance if it is part of the consciousness and the life, used at all times, not only for illness but for whatever one has to do. It manifests in various ways—as a strength of the consciousness evenly supporting the life and action, as a power put forth for this or that object of the outward life, as a special Force from above drawn down to raise and increase the scope of the Consciousness and its height and transform it not by a miraculous, but by a serious. steady, organised action following certain definite lines. Its effectiveness as well as its action is determined first by its own height and intensity or that of the plane from which it conies (it may be from any plane ranging from the Higher Mind upward to the Overmind), partly by the condition of the objects or the field in which it acts, partly by the movement which it has to effect, general or particular. It is neither a magician's wand nor a child's bauble, but something one has to observe, understand, develop, master before one can use it aright or else—for few can use it except in a limited manner—be its instrument. This is only a Preface.

[Image 2]

I am simply dying to show your divine verse to. D; "heaven's sake" I can't take seriously; you don't mean it either. Besides, I am no believer in heaven, so you will excuse me. No one in our group will think Dara's influence is acting on you!

Well, under careful limitations and in all confidentiality, you may risk the indiscretion.

Your yesterday's letter has given us quite a new and interesting point to think about. Our idea was that the Divine is always omnipotent, independent of all conditions and not limited by the particular plane from which he acts. But you give so many clauses under which the Force can operate successfully! K then seems to be right when he says that if one has not got a particular possibility in him the Divine cannot make him develop in that direction. Pushing this a little farther, I would say that one must have a talent or capacity as a nucleus in him for the spiritual development he is going to have later. One must have it, the Divine cannot make anything out of শূন্যম্⁴⁹

What is শূন্যম্? It is out of the Silence that all things originated All is contained in what you call Shunyam.

But I may be wrong. It again seems possible that the Divine can do these things—even change an atom into a mountain. If he does not, he has reasons of his own for not doing it. But then how is it that you spent so much Force on P but to no avail? Is it that you did not use the supramental Force, which alone can work irresistibly without the necessity of adapting itself to existing conditions?

Certainly, supramental Force was not the force used in that case, it was mental-spiritual. In such cases the object of the Force has always the right to say No. I put the force on him because he said he wanted to change, but his vital refused—as it had the right to do. If nothing in him had asked for the change, I would not have tried it, but simply put another force on him for another purpose.

There may be conditions and qualifications for the success of the Divine Force, but is it not also true that the Divine can rise above all conditions and act, and get a thing done

if he wants to? You make a distinction between the Yogic force and the Divine Force; but is not the former an outcome of the latter?

Of course, but all force is the Divine Force. It is only the egoism of the individual which takes it as his own. He uses it, but it is not his.

By the way, X did not question the reality of your Force for his poetry or other literary activities, but he said he could not admit that all his activities were through and through permeated by your Force, because he used to work with great vigour and energy even before he came here.

Of course not—all the activities cannot be that. It is only in the Yoga realisation that one feels all one's activities to be from the one source—something from above or the Yogashakti or the Guru Shakti or the Cosmic Force or whatever it may be (all names for the same thing in different formations) driving the whole consciousness and being.

Outside life is interdependent—on one's own energy and the environmental stimulus; fame, ambition, social stimulations, and one may thrive very well. But when these conditions are removed, one's whole energy may be paralysed, unless some higher Energy takes him up...

What is one's own energy after all? You mean Nature's energy in you? It may, in new conditions, remain extant in some things, develop in others, fail or change in others. One can't make a rule.

Looking at myself, I wonder how a vitalistic man can pass his days in cellular imprisonment without any suffocation!

That kind of change happens

One may say that a tamasic, indolent man can't be activised by the Divine to that extent.

Of course he can.

Am I really wrong?

No, but there are many sides or aspects to a question

After the 'preface", is any chapter likely to follow, or is it going to be like so many other prefaces—nothing coming after them?

Perhaps in some weeks or some months or some centuries the chapter may follow! But I used the word preface to characterise the nature of what I had written, not in a prophetic sense.

There are two things—Yoga-Force in its original totality, which is that of the Divine spiritual force, always potentially all-powerful, and Yoga force doing its work under the conditions of the evolutionary world here.

It is not a question of "can" or "cannot"⁵⁰ at all. All is possible, but all is not licit—except by a recognisable process; the Divine Power itself imposes on its action limits, processes, obstacles, vicissitudes. It is possible that an ass may be changed into an elephant, but it is not done,—at least physically, because of the lack of a process. Psychologically analogous changes do take place. I have myself in my time changed cowards into heroes and that can be done even without Yogashakti, merely by an inner force. How can you say what is latent in man or what is incurably absent? I have developed many things by Yoga, often even without any will or effort to do so, which were not in my original nature. I may even say that I have transformed my whole nature and it is in many respects the opposite of what I began with. There can be no question about the power to change, to develop, to awaken faculties that were not there before; this power exists already, but it can be raised to an acme by being lifted to the spiritual plane.

The force put on the gentleman you speak of at least made it necessary for him to change if he remained here. He had no will in the vital to change and so did not remain here but went to his fate.

The rest is for the indefinable future. One day I shall certainly try to explain methodically and by examples what the spiritual force is; how it has worked on the earth-plane, how it acts and under what conditions—conditions not rigidly fixed, but plastic and mutable.

If you want seriously to write more on the subject as you hinted, may I point out to you that now is the golden opportunity? After the 21st, you will be again crushed and we shall have to rescue you with difficulty, from the heap of correspondence.

Yes, but I cannot spend these days in elaborate literary production—:I have taken this respite⁵¹ (though I find that letters still comet for more serious work that has been badly impeded since November. So it is only marginals and short comments that I can indulge in.

A.D.⁵² has questioned your placing of Intuition above Reason. My question is whether genuine yogic feelings are not some form of Intuition?

The heart has its intuitions as well as the mind and these are as true as any mental perceptions. But neither all feelings nor all mental perceptions nor all rational conclusions can be true.

Some would, like A.D., perhaps consider Reason to be the sole arbiter. But if the question be the quest of Truth, I should say that feeling or intuition should be more reliable than reason, especially where instances are not lacking that reason is not infallible and feelings have as much claim to certitude as reason...

How can Reason be the sole arbiter? Whose reason? The reason in different men comes to different, opposite or incompatible conclusions. We cannot say that Reason is infallible, any more than feeling is infallible or the senses are infallible.

If someone refuses to accept my feeling as a proof of something, since it is not based on reason, but when I get a confirmation from you in support of the truth of my feeling, then he accepts it, must I not say that his reason is a less sure guide than my feeling?

Your feeling is a guide for you until it leads you towards the Truth—but it is difficult for another-to accept your feeling as a guide—he must find out things for himself.

We are a little puzzled when you give your own example to prove your arguments and defend your views, because that really proves nothing. I need not explain why: what Avatars can achieve is not possible for ordinary mortals like us to do. So when you say that you had a sudden "opening" in the appreciation and understanding of painting, or that you freed your mind from all thoughts in three days, or transformed your nature, it is very poor consolation for us. Then again, when you state that you developed something that was not originally there in your nature, can-it not be said that it was already there in your divya amsa?⁵³

I don't know what the devil you mean. My sadhana is not a freak or a monstrosity or a miracle done outside the laws of Nature and the conditions of life and consciousness on earth. If I could do these things or if they could happen in my Yoga, it means that they can be done and that therefore these developments and transformations are possible in the terrestrial consciousness.

There are many who admit that faculties which are latent can be developed, but they maintain that things which are not there in latency cannot be made manifest. My belief is that even that can be done. The Divine is everywhere, and wherever he is, there everything exists. Still, I don't think that I could be turned into, say, an artist or a musician!

How do you know that you can't

As for your statement, "All is possible, but all is not licit—except by a recognisable process... It is possible that an ass may be changed into an elephant, but it is not done, at least physically, because of the lack of a process", people say that there is no point In saying this, because it is no use knowing that a thing can be done when it is not licit, and is therefore not done.

[Sri Aurobinda made the following brief marginal comment on this remark but gave a longer answer to it at the end of the letter.] You had said it can't be done or somebody had said it.

About your changing "cowards into heroes", they put forward the same "latency theory". True, it is not possible to know what is latent or what is not, but that does not refute either theory.

How do they prove their theory—when they don't know what is or is not latent? In such conditions the theory can neither be proved nor refuted. To say "O, it was latent" when a thing apparently impossible is done, is a mere post factum explanation which amounts to an evasion of the difficulty.

They state very strongly that a servant of the Asram, like Muthu, for example, cannot be changed into a Ramakrishna, or a Yogi for that matter, even by the Divine.

If he were, they would say "O, it was latent in him".

Well, Ramakrishna himself was an ignorant, unlettered rustic according to the story.

Another point, one can't say categorically and absolutely that the Divine is omnipotent, because there are different planes from which he works. It is when he acts from the Supramental level that his Power is omnipotent.

If the Divine were not in essence omnipotent, he could not be omnipotent anywhere—whether in the supramental or anywhere else. Because he chooses to limit or determine his action by conditions, it does not make him less omnipotent. His self-limitation is itself an act of omnipotence.

The fact that P was not changed by the mental-spiritual force put on him proves that.

It does not prove it for a moment. It simply proves that the omnipotent unconditioned supramental force was not put out there any more than it was when Christ was put on the cross or when after healing thousands he failed to heal in a certain district (I forget the name) because people had no faith (faith being one of the conditions imposed for his working) or when Krishna after fighting eighteen battles with Jarasandha⁵⁴ failed to prevail against him and had to run away from Mathura.

Why the immortal Hell should the Divine be tied down to succeed in all his operations? What if failure suits him better and serves better the ultimate purpose? What if the gentleman in question had to be given his chance as Duryodhan was given his chance when Krishna went to him as ambassador in a last effort to avoid the massacre of Kurukshetra?⁵⁵ What rigid primitive notions are these about the Divine! And what about my explanation of how the Divine acts through the Avatar? It seems all to have gone into water.

By the way about the ass becoming an elephant—what I meant to say was that the only reason why it can't be done is because there is no recognizable process for it. But if a process can be discovered whether by a scientist (let us say transformation or redistribution of the said ass's atoms or molecules—or what not) or by an occultist or by a Yogi, then there is no reason why it should not be done. In other words certain conditions have been established for the game and so long as those conditions remain unchanged certain things are not done—so we say they are impossible, can't be done. If the conditions are changed, then the same things are done or at least become licit—allowable, legal, according to the so-called laws of Nature,—and then we say they can be done. The Divine also acts according to the conditions of the game. He may change them, but he has to change them first, not proceed, while maintaining the conditions, to act by a series of miracles.

[Image 3]

Excuse my writing today, since all days are Sundays for you it is all right, I suppose.

The whole Asram seems to reason in the same way and to draw the farther consequence that the perpetual Sunday is the proper day for each writing his special letter to me! What a touching proof of unanimity and solidarity in the communal mind!

You say that since "these things"⁵⁶ have been possible in you, they are possible in the earth-consciousness. Quite true; but have they been done? Has any sweeper or street beggar been changed into a Buddha or a Chaitanya by the Divine? We see in the whole history of spirituality only one Christ, one Buddha, one Krishna, one Sri Aurobindo and one Mother. Has there been any breaking of this rule? Since it has not been done, it can't be done.

The question was not whether it had been done but whether it could be done. The street-beggar is a side-issue. The question was whether new faculties not at all manifested in the personality up to now in this life could appear, even suddenly appear, by force of Yoga. I say they can and I gave my own case as proof. I could have given others also. The question involved is also this—is a man bound to the character and qualities he has come with into this life—can he not become a new man by Yoga? That also I have proved in my sadhana, it can be done. When you say that I could do this only in my case because I am an Avatar (!) and it is impossible in any other case, you reduce my sadhana to an absurdity and Avatarhood also to an absurdity. For my Yoga is done not for myself who need nothing and do not need salvation or anything else, but precisely for the earth-consciousness, to open a way to the earth-consciousness to change. Has the Divine need to come down to prove that he can do this or that or has he any personal need of doing it? Your argument proves that I am not an Avatar but only a big human person. It may well be so as a matter of fact, but you start your argument from the other basis. Besides, even if I am only a big human person, what I achieve shows that that achievement is possible for humanity. Whether any street-beggar can do it or has done it is a side-issue. It is sufficient if others who have not the economic misfortune of being street-beggars can do it.

What a wonderful argument! Since it has not been done, it cannot be done! At that rate the whole history of the earth must have stopped long before the protoplasm. When it was a mass of gases, no life had been born, ergo, life could not be born—when only life was there, mind was not born, so mind could not be born. Since mind is there but nothing beyond, as there is no supermind manifested in anybody, so supermind can never be born. Sobhanallah!⁵⁷ Glory, glory, glory to the human reason!! Luckily the Divine or the Cosmic Spirit or Nature or whoever is there cares a damn for the human reason. He or she or it does what he or she or it has to do, whether it can or cannot be done.

Kindly excuse the impudence of the next question; it has been hovering at the back of my mind for some time. Can a Muthu or a sadhak be ever a Sri Aurobindo, even if he is supramentalised? I say that it is absolutely impossible, impossible, a thousand times so.

What need has he to be a Sri Aurobindo? He can be a supramentalised Muthu!

If anybody comes and says "Why not?" I would answer, "You had better rub some Madhyam Narayan oil⁵⁸ on your head."

I have no objection to that. Plenty of the middle Narayan is needed in this Asram. This part of your argument is perfectly correct—but it is also perfectly irrelevant.

And how can it be otherwise? You are looked upon by us here, and even by many outside, as a full Incarnation of the Divine. The sadhaks here at best are misty sparks of the Divine. I cannot by any empyrean flight of imagination conceive of this possibility even for a second.

The psychic being is more than a spark at this stage of its evolution. It is a flame. Even if the flame is covered by mist or smoke, the mist or smoke can be dissipated. To do that and to open to the higher consciousness is what is wanted, not to become a Sri Aurobindo or equal to the Mother. But if we are the Divine, what is the harm of evolving into a portion of the Divine, living in the divine Consciousness even if in a lesser degree? No middle Narayan will then be needed for anybody's head.

Once when Y had said she wanted to be like the Mother—you thundered saying, "How can it be? That is an ambition!" Do you say now it's possible?

Certainly not, it is not intended and I never said that [she] could as a practical matter.

All this is really too much for me. Please give a more direct answer—is it possible or not? Can a Muthu be changed into a being as great as an Avatar? If he can be, I have nothing further to say ; if not, there is a limit to the omnipotence of the Divine. It is for this reason that I said that your own example doesn't prove much.

Not at all. You are always making the same elementary baby stumble. It is not because the Divine cannot manifest his greatness anywhere, but because it is not in the conditions of the game, because he has chosen to manifest his centrality in a particular line that it is practically impossible.

Next point: it is hoped that the sadhaks will be supramentalised. Since it is a state surpassing the Overmind, am I to deduce that the sadhaks would be greater than Krishna, who was the Avatar of the Overmind level? Logically it follows, but looking at others and at myself, I wonder if such a theory will be practically realised. Past history does not seem to prove it. In Krishna's time, no disciple of his was a greater spiritual figure than the preceding Avatar Rama, even though Krishna was an Avatar of a higher plane.

What is all this obsession of greater or less? In our Yoga we do not strive after greatness. It is not a question of Sri Krishna's disciples, but of the earth-consciousness—Rama was a mental man, there is no touch of the overmind consciousness (direct) in anything he said or did, but what he did was done with the greatness of the Avatar. But there have since been men who did live in touch with the planes above mind—higher mind, illumined mind, Intuition. There is no question of asking whether they were "greater" than Rama ; they might have been less "great", but they were able to live from a new plane of consciousness. And Krishna's opening the overmind certainly made it possible for the attempt at bringing Supermind to the earth to be made.

I would not mind your fury in revenge if only you would crush me with a convincing assault. I hope to close the chapter on "Divine Omnipotence" with this last letter, but you keep me hoping with that promise of yours to write at length some day—

"Peace, peace, O fiery furious spirit! calm thyself and be at rest." Your fury or furiousness is wasted because your point is perfectly irrelevant to the central question on which all this breath (or rather ink) is being spent. Muthu and the sadhaks who want to equal or distance or replace the Mother and myself and so need very badly Middle Narayan oil—there have been several—have appeared only as meaningless foam and froth on the excited crest of the dispute. I fear you have not grasped the internalities and modalities and causalities of my high and subtle reasoning. It is not surprising as you are down down in the troughs of the rigidly logically illogical human reason while I am floating on the heights amid the infinite plasticities of the overmind and the lightninglike subtleties and swiftnesses of the intuition. There! what do you think of that? However!!

More seriously. I have not stated that any Muthu has equalled Ramakrishna and I quite admit that Muthu here in ipsa persona has no chance of performing that feat. I have not said that anyone here can be Sri Aurobindo or the Mother—I have pointed out what I meant when I objected to your explaining away my sadhana as a perfectly useless piece of Avatarian fireworks. So in my comment on the Muthu logic, I simply pointed out that it was bad logic—that someone quite ignorant and low in the social scale can manifest a great spirituality and even a great spiritual knowledge. I hope you are not bourgeois enough to deny that or to contend that the Divine or the spiritual can only manifest in somebody who has some money in his pockets or some University education in his pate? For the rest as I myself have been pointing out all the time there is a difference between essential truth and conditional truth, paramartha and vyavaharika, the latter being relative and conditional and mutable. In mathematics one works out problems in infinite and in unreal numbers which exist nowhere on earth and yet these are extremely important and can help scientific reasoning and scientific discovery and achievement. The question of a Muthu becoming a Ramakrishna, i.e. a great spiritual man may look to you like being an exercise in unreal numbers or magnitudes because it exceeds the actual observable facts in the case of this Muthu who very evidently is not going to be a great spiritual man—but we were arguing the matter of essential principle. I was pointing out that in the essentiality all things are possible—so you ought not to say the Divine cannot do this or that. But at the same time I was pointing out too that the Divine is not bound to show his omnipotence without rhyme or reason when he is working by his own will under conditions. For by arguing that the Divine cannot, that he is impotent, that he cannot do what has never yet been done etc., you deny the possibility of changing conditions, of evolution, of the realisation of the unrealised, of the action of Divine Power, of Divine Grace, and reduce all to a matter of rigid and unalterable status quo. Which is an insolent defiance to both fact and reason (!) and suprareason. See now?

About myself and the Mother,—there are people who say, "If the supramental is to come down, it can come down in everyone, why then in them first? Why should we not get it before they do? Why through them, not direct?" It sounds very rational, very logical, very arguable. The difficulty is that this reasoning ignores the conditions, foolishly assumes that one can get the supramental down into oneself without having the least knowledge of what the supramental is and so supposes an upside-down miracle—everybody who tries it is bound to land himself in a most horrible cropper as all have done hitherto who tried it. It is like thinking one need not follow the Guide, but can reach up to the top of the mountain from the narrow path one is following on the edge of a precipice by simply leaping into the air. The result is inevitable.

About greater and less, one point. Is Captain John Higgins of S.S. Mauretania a greater man than Christopher Columbus because he can reach America without trouble in a few days? Is a university graduate in philosophy greater than Plato because he can reason about problems and systems which had never even occurred to Plato? No, only humanity has acquired greater scientific power which any good navigator can use or a wider intellectual knowledge which anyone with a philosophic training can use. You will say greater scientific power and wider knowledge is not a change of consciousness. Very well, but there are Rama and Ramakrishna. Rama spoke always from the thinking intelligence, the common property of developed men; Ramakrishna spoke constantly from a swift and luminous spiritual intuition. Can you tell me which is the greater? the Avatar recognised by all India? or the saint and Yogi recognised as an Avatar only by his disciples and some others who follow them?

I am a little taken aback to hear that a "certain note of persiflage" dilutes the grave discussion I am having with you.

Look here, don't tell me that because you are a doctor, therefore you can't understand a joke. It would have the effect of making me dreadfully serious.

I am sorry I can't detect the adulteration of the Divine philosophy with persiflage. My medical appliance is hardly capable of doing it.

A sense of humour (not grim) ought to be a sufficient appliance.

No doubt, I enjoy heartily the humour but I should like to be able to suck up the cream and give the rest its proper place.

The cream = the persiflage—the rest is the solemn part of the argument.

I would like to know something about my "bad logic" before I write anything further to you.

Helps to finding out your bad logic. I give instances expressed or implied in your reasonings.

Bad logic No 1) Because things have not been, therefore they can never be.

" " 2) Because Sri Aurobindo is an Avatar, his sadhana can have no meaning for humanity.

3) What happens in Sri Aurobindo's sadhana cannot happen in anybody else's sadhana (i.e. neither descent, nor realisation, nor transformation, nor intuitions, nor budding of new powers or faculties)—because Sri Aurobindo is an Avatar and the sadhaks are not.

4) A street beggar cannot have any spirituality or at least not so much as, let us say, a University graduate because, well, one doesn't know why the hell not.

5) (and last because of want of space) Because I am a doctor, I can't see a joke when it is there.

N's temperature is varying from 98˚6-99˚2.

Why the deuce doesn't it become normal? What about his blessed lungs?

He wants to come to evening meditation, will he?

Depends on you. The nights are not yet quite warm and he would be there for a long time.

But how terrifying is your "Look here"! What I have heard about your extreme seriousness in former days,⁵⁹ is quite enough not to invite it farther on my poor head!

Bad logic again! when I write "Look here!" it means I am not serious, however terrifying I may be.

Only I find that you have beaten me right and left for what I did not even intend to say.

Of course! One is most responsible for what one does not intend. It is besides the nature of bad logic to imply what the logician did not mean or did not know that he meant. Ignorance is no defence in law and non-intention is no defence in logic. Such is the beauty of life!

G.L. came for glycerine. Rajangam asked me to see his throat, since he has been going on applying it mechanically. I thought it was not my business in absence of any complaint from him. There is chronic catarrh which subsides with present remedies, he says. Shall we use stronger throat-paints? R says that it is our duty to see how a man is getting on, even though he doesn't himself volunteer for examination or treatment.

R's theory is excessive. We are doubtful about the advisability of stronger paintings—it tends to dull down the natural resistance in the throat.

Excuse me—I did not say that a street beggar or a proletarian can't manifest a great spirituality; I know that there have been cases where fishermen, barbers and robbers have been transformed into spiritual men by the touch of saints, prophets and Avatars. So I don't deny the action and the effectiveness of the Divine Power.

Then why bring in the poor street-beggar at all?

But others say—and it was the central question—that wherever the Divine Power has successfully acted upon and miraculously changed those who were in their external nature robbers and social pariahs, there was probably in them, interiorly, something latent. And they say—excuse my reiteration—that from those who have evidently no music or poetry latent in them the Divine cannot bring out these elements in spite of His omnipotence.

What is the use of this argument based on a "probably"? You say that in one in whom poetry and music are not evident, the omnipotent Divine is impotent to create poetry and music. Yet in one in whom virtue and sainthood is not evident at all, criminals, debauchees, etc., he can produce sainthood and virtue. When it appears, it is supposed to have been "probably" latent. But why can't poetry and music also be "probably" latent even when they are not evident? To say that only moral capacities are latent and mental capacities cannot be, is a sheer absurdity. There are plenty of examples of particular mental capacities manifesting in men who had them not before—A man makes one magnificent speech in his life, writes one or two splendid poems—all the rest is either silence or twaddle. The eye dull to beauty of painting becomes aware of line and colour; the man who was "no good" at logic or philosophy can develop into a logician or a philosopher. When he was "no good" these capacities were not "evident",—they become evident only when they appear.

Moreover, what is meant by latency—where do these things lie in their latency? If you say in the surface mind, then show me how their secret existence can be discovered while they are still latent. Otherwise how can we affirm an undiscoverable latency? If you say it is in the subliminal, I answer that the subliminal is the inner being which is open to the universal and plastic to it. All things exist in the universal, so it is impossible to say what will or will not manifest in the inner being, once the universal acts on it.

If the Divine is omnipotent, he can do it. If he can't do it, he is not omnipotent. What is this absurd self-contradiction of an Omnipotent who is impotent? If the Divine does not, it is because he does not choose to for one reason or another and I have tried to explain to you how the thing works—it is because he conditions his own working to suit his own self-made law and purpose.

When I argue with these people I say that maybe these things are latent, but even if they are not, the Divine can make them manifest if He chooses to. "Then you mean to say", they reply, "that a Muthu can be metamorphosed into a saint or an Avatar? A very big jump indeed!" I tell them, "Leave out the Avatars; they are perilous examples. But a Muthu can surely be turned into a great spiritual man by the omnipotent Divine; that is quite possible." Then these people answer, "Yes, maybe it is possible, but we are in no way wiser for it, because it is not done".

Now we don't know what is latent and what is not latent, but great Yogis and Avatars do; so we request you to tell us what is meant by mūkam karoti vācālam,⁶⁰ and whether the Divine can sow a seed in a barren, unproductive plot of land and reap the harvest of music, poetry and spirituality out of it, or whether He brings these things out from seeds which are already there in the soil—latent?

It means exactly what it says—that a man in whom there was no "evident" capacity, can suddenly or rapidly manifest that capacity by the Divine Grace. Indeed such things happen even without the direct intervention of the Divine Grace, so a fortiori the Grace can do it. He can make the barren unproductive land productive and fertile. Even a man can do that, say, Mussolini or the Japanese agriculturist. Seeds are thrown into the soil—they don't lie there for a thousand years and then sprout. But first make clear what is meant by the soil? The surface man? The subliminal man? In every human being there are these two, and if you can say something about the first, how much can you say about the other?

The examples of an unlettered Ramakrishna or a St. Peter and others do not prove much; one may say that big spiritual figures can and do take birth in humble social disguises. When all is said and done, the "latent" theory cannot be entirely waved aside. It seems that the Divine too usually follows the path of least resistance—I mean he brings out generally those tendencies and capacities that one is born with, that is, things that are latent.

It is a mere word—this "latent". It is like the materialist's "coincidence" and "hallucination" to explain away the appearance of the supernormal. At least it is so unless you define its action and modalities.

Certainly, it is the usual case. But the usual is not the limit of the possible.

Now, about your personal example. You speak of the evolution theory to prove that "it can be done", though the domain I touched upon was only the spiritual. If the scientists say that man has not been able to create living things up to now, and therefore he will not be able to do so in the future—that "it can't be done", what will be your answer? And if similarly, I say that a Tom, Dick or Harry cannot be a Rama, Krishna or Sri Aurobindo, what reply will you give?

I have brought in the evolution theory or rather fact of evolution, to disprove your argument that because a thing has not been done, it is thereby proved that it could not be done. I don't understand your argument. If a scientist says that, he is using bad logic. I have never said it can't be done. I dare say some day in the right conditions the creation of life will become possible.

They may not be Ram or Krishna or Sri Aurobindo, but they may become a spiritualised super-Tom, super-Dick or super-Harry. I have answered about the Avatar.

I have never said that you are only a big human person. On the contrary, you are not, and hence nobody can be like you. Nevertheless, I don't quite follow what you mean when you state that whatever you achieve is possible for humanity to achieve, your attainments opening the way for others to follow.

It is singular that you cannot understand such a simple thing. I had no urge towards spirituality in me, I developed spirituality. I was incapable of understanding metaphysics, I developed into a philosopher. I had no eye for painting—I developed it by Yoga. I transformed my nature from what it was to what it was not. I did it by a special manner, not by a miracle and I did it to show what could be done and how it could be done. I did not do it out of any personal necessity of my own or by a miracle without any process. I say that if it is not so, then my Yoga is useless and my life was a mistake—a mere absurd freak of Nature without meaning or consequence. You all seem to think it a great compliment to me to say that what I have done has no meaning for anybody except myself—it is the most damaging criticism on my work that could be made.

If a man has transformed his nature, he couldn't have done it all by himself, as you have done.

I also did not do it all by myself, if you mean by myself the Aurobindo that was. He did it with the help of Krishna and the Divine Shakti. I had help from embodied sources also.

I should say that Avatars are like well-fitted, well-equipped Rolls Royce machines.

All sufficient to themselves—perfect and complete from the beginning, hey? Just roll, royce and ripple!

They do have plenty of difficulties on their journey, but just because they are like Rolls Royce they can surmount them—whilst the rest of humanity is either like loose and disjointed machines or wagons to be dragged along by Avatars and great spiritual personages. Floating on the heights of the Overmind, you have overlooked what this earth-bound clod crawling over low plateaus has meant.

Great Scott! What a penal servitude for the great personages and the Avatars! And where are they leading them? All that rubbish into Paradise? How is that any more possible than creating a capacity where there was none? If the disjointed machines cannot be jointed, isn't it more economical to leave them where they are, in the lumber-shed?

I don't know about Avatars. Practically what I know is that I had not all the powers necessary when I started, I had to develop them by Yoga, at least many of them which were not in existence in me when I began, and those which were I had to train to a higher degree. My own idea of the matter is that the Avatar's life and actions are not miracles, and if they were, his existence would be perfectly useless, a mere superfluous freak of Nature. He accepts the terrestrial conditions, he uses means, he shows the way to humanity as well as helps it. Otherwise what is the use of him and why is he here?

I was not always in the overmind, if you please. I had to climb there from the mental and vital level.

Really, Sir, you have put into my mouth what I never mentioned or even intended to.

You may not have mentioned it but it was implied in your logic without your knowing that it was implied. Logic has its own consequences which are not apparent to the logiciser. It is like a move in chess by which you intend to overcome the opponent but it leads, logically, to consequences which you didn't intend and endS in your own checkmate. You can't invalidate the consequences by saying that you didn't intend them.

Let me remind you of what I wrote about the Avatar. There are two sides of the phenomenon of Avatarhood, the Divine Consciousness behind and the instrumental personality. The Divine Consciousness is omnipotent but it has put forward the instrumental personality in Nature, under the conditions of Nature, and it uses it according to the rules of the game—though also sometimes to change the rules of the game. If Avatarhood is only a flashing miracle, then I have no use for it. If it is a coherent part of the arrangement of the omnipresent Divine in Nature, then I can understand and accept it.

As for the Muthu affair, that was only a joke as ought to have been clear to you at once. Nobody has any intention of making Muthu a saint or an Avatar. But that is only because the Divine is not going to play the fool, not because he is impotent. Muthu's only business in life is to prepare himself for something better hereafter and exhaust some of his lower tendencies in the meantime. That is not the question—the question is whether as a general rule rigid and unalterable man is bound down to his outward nature as it appears to be built at the moment and even the Divine cannot or will not under any circumstances change it or develop something new in it, something not yet "evident", not yet manifested, or is there a chance for human beings becoming more like the Divine? sâdrishyamukti, sâdharmyam âgatâḥ.⁶¹ If not, there is no use in anybody doing this Yoga; let the Krishnas and Ramakrishnas rocket about gloriously and uselessly in the empty Inane and the rest wriggle about for ever in the clutch of the eternal Devil. For that is the logical conclusion of the whole matter.

It seems that before I could come out of the pit of "latency", the Avatar-pyramid has fallen on my head, sending me down to the bottom again! But I am afraid, you are making me admit something I never wrote, nor implied in what I wrote. However, I shall consult your "Essays on the Gita" to see what you say about the Avatar.

Can you not understand that it was the natural logical. result of the statements made on either side about the unbridgeable distance between "Man Divine" and the human being moving in, the darkness towards the Divine? If you admit the utility of my sadhana, the controversy ceases. But so long as you declare that what I have done in my sadhana has no connection with what can be done, I shall go on beating you. (What the Avatar says in the "Essays", is only an explanation of the Gita; it is not the full statement of the issue.) But still if you read three or four chapters there; you will get some idea of the general principles. For the rest I propose that all discussion be postponed till after the 21st (not immediately after). This will give time for you to clear your ideas and for me to pursue my "Avataric" sadhana (not for myself, but for this confounded and too confounded earth race).

N was looking a little tired, Mother says. If it is necessary for hint to have S again, Mother can spare her.

I accept your proposal of postponement and send this last letter, which incidentally brings to an end the topic of latency and omnipotence. We shall all be anxiously waiting to hear what you have gained in two weeks for founded earth race" which you always seem to have such great love. (please don't forget this confounded little earth creature.)

Now, I would like to mention one things more. Sometimes I think that the Avatar's work,—Buddha's sadhana, Christ's preaching about the Kingdom of Heaven, etc.—were not so unselfish. I don't mean that they did anything for personal gain; nevertheless, it was a kind of selfishness—let us say of the noblest kind.

No objection—if to do things for the Divine in the world rather than for individual gain is a high selfishness, that is all right. Only selfishness usually means doing something for one's own sole profit.

Considerably subdued after the beating I received, I am beginning to understand what you say about omnipotence, the conditions of the game that have to be observed, latency, etc. This letter is not to dispute any of the things you have stated, but just to express that I am boiling inside with impotent rage to see how you have "unfairly" cornered me with the very arguments I was maintaining all the while. Alas! my pen derives its power only from terrestrial planes!

You were the reporter of the discussion, so naturally you had to be the whipping boy for all sides. You can't complain of that. There must be somebody to tilt at—otherwise how the deuce is the argument to be done?

I have, however, jotted down a few points for you to see.

Point No 1. I never said that only moral capacities can be latent, and not mental.

No, but it was implied in the argument to which you gave voice. It may not have been your argument, but what does that matter?

Point No 2. I did not say that poetry or music, or any art not evident, cannot be manifested. I distinctly used the word latent, and not evident.

Evident is the opposite of latent; so "not evident" or "evidently not there" as you put it is equal to "latent"—my use of the word is therefore perfectly apposite.

Our point was that faculties not yet evident may be made evident because they may be unmanifest, latent, in some inner region of the being ; just as in Shunyam everything exists, so also in man—whatever comes out of him.

How can they be evident when they are latent? "Latent" means "hidden", therefore not evident. When you say that a capacity is evidently not there, you mean only that to all evidence it is not there = there is no evidence of its being there to the observer, ergo, the observer concludes that it is not there. All that you can really say is that it appears to be non-existent—you cannot say with certitude more than that.

The whole discussion collapses if we deny that the unevident can be made evident.

You said "people who have evidently no music in them"—that can only mean people in whom music is not evident—for none can say whether it is or is not there latent.

It does so also if you admit that the unevident can be made evident.

By latency we mean what is not evident, that is, not on the surface, but somewhere behind or below. If it is in the surface mind, it is no longer latent, because one can say with some certitude that such faculties exist, though not quite developed yet—that is, neither latent nor fully evident.

Evidently not there on the surface, but how can you say that it is evidently not there below?

You say, if I understand you right, that since the inner being is open to the universal, anything can manifest through it even if it is not there latent ; you further add that it is impossible to say what will or will not manifest once the universal acts upon it. But is this impossible for Yogis also? For example, can't you say whether a man has a capacity for Yoga or for something else? Do you simply gamble when you accept someone?

I have never said anything about how I choose people. I was answering the argument that what has not been or is not in manifestation, cannot be. That was very clearly the point in the discussion—that the Divine cannot manifest what is not yet there—even He is impotent to do that. He can only manifest what is either already manifest or else latent in the field (person) he is working in. I say no—he can bring in new things. He can bring it in from the universal or he can bring it down from the transcendent. For in the Divine cosmic and transcendent all things are. Whether He will do so or not in a particular case is quite another matter. My argument was directed towards dissipating this "can't, can't" with which people try to stop all possibility of progress.

You have raised another new point about the universal.

These are not new points, they are as old as the hills.

You can cut me, Sir, or beat me, but don't forsake me. In imitation of the librarian of my College who came out with a similar appeal when the professor of English caught him smoking one day.

Never! But beat—a lot.

I repeat—a little pathetically—that my brain is sclerotic and psychic smoky; no intellect and no Yogic capacity, as you yourself must have realised by making "word-punctures".

Well, to see that they are non-evident shows you at once that they are latent and will be evident and even if they are not latent they are waiting for you in the universal! So in every blessed way you are very quite all right. Be consoled therefore.

Rather a long letter, because a closing one. When will these two weeks be over! Give me a little extra force for doing something, just to keep me out of mischief—an idle brain is the devil's workshop. Who knows what I'll be up to!

Man, don't talk lightly like that of the devil. He is too active to be trifled with in that way. My devils? they are only expletive.

By the way, Mother, no chance for me to see you tomorrow—the anniversary of my arrival?

Mother has 2 birthdays (not her own, of course) and an interview tomorrow morning. I am afraid your train can pass only when the line is clear.

N is straining himself too much. It would be advisable to let S look after him, but as you see she is unwilling to give up work altogether.

The work can be so arranged that she will be there when he most needs her. They can arrange that between them.

It is neither a discussion nor a medical report; but you may take it, if you like, as a medical report of my present mental-spiritual condition...

I am unhappy and I don't know why. To put it medically, there is some hidden focus of infection, disseminating slow and mild but constant toxins of unhappiness in the system.

Well, but hang it all If there is no "why", then "why" be "unhappy"?

Is it in "the system" or in the air? Endemic? epidemic? You seem to be only one of many cases.

I felt an immense joy at the Darshan [on February 21st], but it ebbed away as soon as I came down.

It sounds like facilis descensus Averno.⁶² But after all downstairs and Erebus are not the same thing.

There are some Yogis, I hear, who are in bliss during meditation, but when they come down they are swallowed up by the lower nature, and to escape from this they at once leap up to their static sublimity. Unfortunately I can't rush up again till August [15th—the next Darshan]. Will you kindly come down and help the poor amateur Yogi out of these inexplicable meshes?

Come down? into Erebus? No, thank you—I might become like the said Yogis.

But what is all this? We count minutes and hours for the Darshans and when they come and go, what kind of reaction do they leave in the being? and why?

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "why".] It must be like your unhappiness—no why to it.

At present I am only sleeping and sleeping, no aspiration, no will, nothing—shunyam, void! Have I set the devil on my track by my boasting?

Please save me from this Dilipian despair.⁶³

Which boasting?

But why hug despair without a cause—Dilipian or other? Come to your senses and develop a Nirodian jollity instead (not necessarily Mark Tapleyan,⁶⁴ though that is better than none). Laugh and be fat—then dance to keep the fat down—that is a sounder programme.

The Overmind seems so distant from us, and your Himalayan austerity and grandeur takes my breath away, making my heart palpitate!

O rubbish! I am austere and grand, grim and stern! every blasted thing that I never was! I groan in unAurobindian despair when I hear such things. What has happened to the common sense of all you people? In order to reach the Overmind it is not at all necessary to take leave of this simple but useful quality. Common sense by the way is not logic (which is the least commonsense-like thing in the world), it is simply looking at things as they are without inflation or deflation—not imagining wild imaginations—or for that matter despairing "I know not why" despairs.

Your grandeur and austerity imposed themselves not on this commonsense-lacking poor man alone, but on others too. I will say then that common sense is highly uncommon like yogic faculties. However, I am waiting to write in detail as soon as the signal is down.

Common sense is exceedingly uncommon in this Asram. Sometimes I think the Mother and myself alone have our stock left unexhausted and all the rest have sent theirs flying sky high. However!

Our "poisoned" patient V has, to our surprise, recovered. Our medical authority Says that castor oil seeds are highly toxic and that 10 seeds are the extreme limit. This chap took more than three times 10! Is medical science mistaken or has your Force worked or is it the antidote of cow dung given by some villagers that did the miracle?

Perhaps it was Force + the cow dung that did it. You know the proverbial Cromwellism "Trust in God and keep your powder dry"—so "Open to the Force and keep your cow dung handy" would be the recipe for castor-oil-seed-eaters. By the way, we are told V advised D.R.R. to take the poison and he himself takes 5 grains at a time as a joy-dose. Is this fact or legend?

R has submitted the latest report, he says.

I have no report from R, but I gather from you that he has rallied and is at least on the way to cure. The books give 48 hours for the period of the poisoning, so I suppose if he is not only alive but kicking and lively at noon tomorrow, we may consider him safe.

Do you mean seriously that you will "never" forsake this humble pie? [15.2.35]

Of course! [Underlined.]

Or has it any concealed meaning?

None; it is quite above-board. [Underlined.]

Will you have some spare moments to release a wave of inspiration for one or two good poems?

That I don't know—provided the poems are there "latent

V's story turns out to be a history. Last two months he has been taking the seeds starting with 5-7 seeds a day. The number rapidly rose to 26-30 divided among three meals. It is amazing he had no bad symptoms except a slight oily sensation in the throat at first. Immunity? Tolerance by the system? Or another Khagananda⁶⁵ in the Asram?

He must have immunised himself—a modem Mithridates! Of course, the Yogis do do this kind of thing and it is perfectly possible, but I did not realise that V was one of the great ones. He has however in these matters the faith (and audacity) that moves mountains. Also his intestines must be very leathery and tough.

Who is Khagananda? There was the public poison + nails + snake eater who died because once he forgot to do the antidotic Kriya after his poison-meal. But that was, I think, another Ananda.

It would be better if V stopped taking these seeds. Who knows if it may not produce cumulative poisoning later. I learn that he has already done some Hathayoga.

He must not stop suddenly, otherwise all the symptoms of poisoning are likely to come up. If he stops, it must be very gradually, decreasing little by little. Mother finds him very grey—perhaps he is mdermining his system. But one does not know what to do with hese fellows who start such things without reason or warning. You might discuss the matter with him and see what can be done.

The more we are seeing the more that pessimistic attitude comes over me and the likes of us you want to supramentalise! But the Book of Verses says, "The meaner the slave, the greater the Lord."

What is this more that you are seeing?

Jiban asked me about D.R.R.'s diet. Is he under my jurisdiction? He is all right, except for slight pain. Just now we have given him guimauve.

That is right—he should take until the pain goes. You had better keep an eye on him till he is all right. He can have milk, but you must ;peak to Dyuman about it. Mother has already informed him—in case it is wanted.

I discussed the matter with V [the "poisoned" patient]. He agrees to give up taking the seeds—if you wish it. He says that the seeds have done him a lot of good—cured his obstinate constipation and resistant piles. Besides, he doesn't notice any bad effect. Well?

At any rate he had better diminish the quantity and not increase it—and not advise others to take. Of course, he must not stop it abruptly: As for the cure, it means that his bowels have become dependent on this artificial action—that is all.

We gave D.R.R. some Bismuth and Magnesium Carbonate for the pains in his bowels. It is indicated as treatment.

Bismuth constipates. Enema of guimauve and tisane (decoctions) of guimauve or linseed would be better.

Are you intrested in seeing our monthly work? We can send you the reports of the cases tomorrow.

Yes.

Khagananda is a Bengali Ananda who exhibits these yogic tricks, and is still on this earth. The other fellow you speak of was a Madrasi and is dead and gone—by Potas. Cyanide.

We are at a loss about Mithridates. The experts know only of one—a Persian king. Is he the one you allude to? But he had nothing to do with swallowing poisons.

The information of the experts is defective. Mithridates in order to guard himself against all possibility of poisoning immunised himself by training his system to take all poisons first by small then by increasing doses. He did it so well that when the Romans were after him in their genial manner and he had no choice but death at their hands or his own, he could not take recourse to poison and had to end himself by a vulgar perforation with steel—at least I think it was steel. He was not a Persian king, though he was of Indo-Persian extraction as his name shows. I believe he was king of Armenia or Bithynia or some such obsolete place in Asia Minor.

I proposed to R to get my bureau painted in my spacious bathroom, as he has no other place. He is willing if you will it.

Yes—but on condition he does not spoil the floor.

February 27, 1935

Here are the medical reports—In.: inmates; w.: workers. You may be surprised at the small volume of papers, but the actual number of cases attended is more than reported. If you want all, I'll write down everything.

Don't. [Underlined.]

It is all right. But if you gave a resume (number sadhaks, number workmen, number cases cured, number pending) that would complete it.

By the way, people get poems, pictures in meditation and I seem to get only letters and points for letters! Since letters and discussions are interdicted I have been obliged to draw inspiration from sleep. And I find that sleeping has a decided advantage in this Yoga!

You get letters in meditation! that would be fine—it would save me the trouble of writing them, simply project into your meditation instead of sending through Nolini! No objection to sleep---the land of Nod has also its treasures.

March 1935

I am thinking of doing some studies in English language, not for any creative purpose, but for recreation.

All right.

With this aim in view, I want to take up your immortal philosophy—though my walnut of a brain can't do much with it—and if you will allow, have some discussions with you, at intervals.

Provided the discussions can be put in a "walnut" shell!

I hear you are having a tough fight with the forces?

Very beastly—these forces. One can't advance a single step without their throwing their shells and stink-bombs. However like General Joffre, I advance. "Nous progress:Imes."⁶⁶

If we busy ourselves with something like the study of the English language, as I have stated, it may indirectly help to keep the devil of

Let us hope so. There is much need of keeping him off and if the English language can do it, glory be to the English language!

You thrashed me for calling you grave and austere at the Darshan time [23.2.35]. But see, when we go to the Mother, how seraphically she smiles, while your Self being near, appears still far away at some Olympian height. It is difficult to discern the gravity or the jollity of a face at such a height. But I suppose, our conception of the gods was formed from the vision of such a figure.

Neither gravity nor jollity, but a large, easy, quiet, amiable condition. The gods can't be amiable?

The very fact that there remains no question about the Mother's feeling and attitude, shows that we are not probably all wrong and devoid of sense.

Look here, what are you saying? The Mother's feeling and attitude are being constantly questioned by the sadhaks, "You didn't smile! You were severe! You are displeased with me! You don't love me! What wrong have I done?" etc., etc. much to the Mother's astonishment, as she had no consciousness of such things in her!

A smile may be nothing to some, but if you look at it a little sympathetically and humanly, you will give it its proper importance. Considering the fact that one has left behind all joys and pleasures of life and come to a desert—at least at the primary stage—you can't ask us to be above all expectations of touches of soft breezes, can you?

The poet says or ought to have said, "It is the mind that makes its hell or heaven." The proof is that some people find it for a long time not a desert, but as they call it, a Paradise. Of course it is neither,—it is what one makes of it.

I am thinking of taking some milk-tea and butter in the morning! Will it be a move to the left? If so, I give it up at once.

Butter in milk-tea? Never heard of such a meal before! Is it symbolic of the supramental?

Last night I had a peculiar dream. I saw Mother in a half-reclining position, writing something playfully on my forehead with her finger and you entreated her smilingly to write more. Now, what is this? Result of my groaning complaint? Effectuation in dreamland what couldn't be in the world of fact and reality?

The place where you were is as much a world of fact and reality as is the material world and its happenings have sometimes a great effect on this world. What an ignorant lot of disciples you all are! Too much modernisation and Europeanisation by half!

These things are meetings in the vital plane, but very often in the transcription of what happened some details get in that are contributed by the subconscient mind ... The writing on the forehead means of course something that is fixed in you in the vital plane and has to come out hereafter in the physical consciousness.

By milk-tea and butter I meant a greater quantity of milk with a little tea, bread and butter. Well, the idea is to fill up the clavicular and other hollows in the body. Laughing alone can't make one fat! And without a little fat, it is said one hardly looks like a doctor!

Fat = medical knowledge? or a doctor thinks with his fat and not with his brain?

But the self-buttering is your affair—I have no idea one way or the other in the matter.

You discover it too late, Sir! No escape now but to drag us, the ignorant fools, and it is for this very reason I was protesting that fools can't do what Avatars can. However!!

Well, they can, if they stop being fools. However!!!

Can you enlighten me how "... its happenings have sometimes a great effect on this world"? I have a personal interest too.

The physical world is only a last field in which not only the physical forces but those of other worlds also throw themselves for realisation. Whatever happens here has already been prepared or foreshadowed in the vital; it does not happen exactly as represented in the vital, but with a change suitable for the material world. But this is a big subject—can't be dealt with tonight.

And can't you be a little more explicit and precise about that writing on the forehead? Something impure that has to come up? We usually associate the vital with impurity.

Why the Apollyon⁶⁷ do you suppose that all vital things are impure? The vital has strength, ardour, enthusiasm, self-confidence, generosity, the victor spirit—a host of other very necessary things. The only difficulty is that they get mixed up with others that are impure. All the same they are there and much needed.

What is this "something fixed in the vital"? If anything impure is to happen, to be forewarned is to be forearmed. Besides, I am not afraid of anything since that memorable "never" of yours.

Great Muggins, man! What a mess you have made of my explanation! I meant that by writing on your forehead the Mother had fixed something in you on the vital plane. That something, which she has fixed, will in time come out, manifest, be produced, born, fulfilled in this (slightly obtuse) physical consciousness of yours on this material plane. Produce itself out of latency like the sainthood in Muthu—see? Why on earth should the Mother write something impure on your forehead? Something good of course—something meaning to be there something of your spiritual future, realisation kind of affair—what? If you echo me and ask "What? what?" I can't tell you—No data in the dream and as a conscientious scientific person I refuse to interpret without data.

Here is another dream: we were all sitting in the Pranam Hall, in the morning, when the Mother came down smiling and began to look around. There seemed to be many invisible presences—I felt Christ was there too. Then she sat down and a blazing ray of blue light was focussed on her from somewhere. Her appearance became marvellous. This gave me immense joy.

Well, you are beginning to have very good dream-experiences on the vital plane—very beautiful and true. That is something. But I wonder what Christ was doing there? Perhaps he came to be converted from his "gospel of sorrow"—but that would be the Christian Christ, not the real one.

Enclosed is a long, perhaps too long controversy⁶⁸. But the subject demands it. You may read it at one, two or three stretches. Please write an exhaustive reply, but in ink.

Nirod. [Underlined.]

On the back the rational and logical result of your arguments. I shall write certain irrational answers on your MS.—in ink.

You have won all along the line. Who could resist such a lava-torrent of logic? slightly mixed but still! You have convinced me (1st) that there never was nor could be an Avatar, (2) that all the so-called Avatars were chimerical fools and failures, (3) that there is no Divinity or divine element in man, (4) that I have never had any true difficulties or struggles, and that if I had any, it was all my fun (as K.S. said of my new metres that they were only Mr. Ghose's fun); (5) that if ever there was or will be a real Avatar, I am not he—but that I knew before, (6) that all I have done or the Mother has done is a mere sham—sufferings, struggles, conquests, defeats, the Way found, the Way followed, the call to others to follow, every, thing—it was all make-believe since I was the Divine and nothing: could touch me and none follow me. That is truly a discovery, a downright knock-out which leaves me convinced, convicted, amazed, gasping. I won't go on, there is no space; but there are a, score of other luminous convictions that your logic has forced on me. But what to do next? You have put me in a terrible fix and I see no way out of it. For if the Way, the Yoga is merely sham, fun and chimera—then?

[Here begins my typed letter. Sri Aurobindo's answer, written in hand on the same sheets, was never sent. I first read it after it was discovered among some old papers of Sri Aurobindo in 1981.]

I have read your "Essays on the Gita", "Synthesis of Yoga", letter on Rama and, though I am wiser, my original and fundamental difficulty remains as unsolved as ever. What is so simple to you, as everything is, appears mighty complex and abstruse to my dense intellect. So no alternative but to submit to a fresh beating.

What your view comes to, put in a syllogism, is this: Since I have done it and I am an Avatar, every other blessed creature can do it.

This is idiotic. I have said "Follow my path, the way I have discovered for you through my own efforts and example. Transform your nature from the animal to the spiritual, grow into a higher divine consciousness. All this you can do by your own aspiration aided by the force of the Divine Shakti." That, if you please, is not the utterance of a madman or an imbecile. I have said, "I have opened the Way ; now you with the Divine help can follow it." I have not said "Find the way for yourself as I did."

In the "Essays on the Gita" you say, man "is ignorant because there is upon the eyes of his soul and all its organs the seal of ... Nature, Prakriti, Maya ... she has minted him like a coin out of the precious metal of the divine substance, but overlaid with a strong coating of the alloy of her phenomenal qualities, stamped with her own stamp and mark of animal humanity, and although the secret sign of the Godhead is there, it is at first indistinguishable."⁶⁹

Does it follow that the coating cannot be dissolved nor the mark effaced? Then stamp the stamp of the chimera on all efforts at spirituality and catalogue as asses and fools all who have attempted to rise beyond the human animal—all who have tried to follow the path of the Christ, the Buddha; stigmatise as folly Vedanta, Tantra, Yoga, the way of the Jinas, Christ himself and Buddha, Pythagoras, Plato, and any other pathfinder and seeker.

On the other hand you write that in the Avatar, "the divinely-born Man, the real substance shines through the coating; the mark of the seal is there only for form, the vision is that of the secret Godhead, the power of the life is that of the secret Godhead, and it breaks through the seals of the assumed human nature "⁷⁰

Does it follow that the breaking through had not to be done, or was a mere trifling impediment? The power of the form can be exceedingly great as every thinker and observer of life can tell you.

After this you say that the Avatar's descent is "precisely to show that the human birth with all its limitations can be made such a means and instrument of the divine birth and divine works... Even human sorrow and physical suffering he must assume and use so as to show... how that suffering may be a means of redemption."⁷¹ Well, Sir, it will have no go with me, my heart won't leap up at such a divine possibility, such a dream of Paradise!

Your heart not leaping up does not make my statement a falsehood, a non-sequitur or a chimera.

My fellow-brothers may venture to reach there through such a thin hanging bridge, but if they do, I am afraid it will be into a fool's Paradise.

The fool being myself, eh? For it is my Paradise and it is I who call them to it.

The difficulties you face, the dangers you overcome, the struggles you embrace would seem to be mere shams.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "mere shams".]

Truly then what a humbug and charlatan I have been, making much of sham struggles and dangers—or, in the alternative, since I took them for realities, what a self-blinded imbecile!

Mother knew she was an Avatar at a very early age.

At what age? But I shall say nothing about the Mother—I cannot bring her into such arguments, only myself.

She was thus able to follow the path of travails through volcanoes and earthquakes. But if she says to me, "You can also do it," I will cry out, "Forbear, Mother, forbear."

Nobody asks you to go through volcanoes and earthquakes or to proceed unhelped. You are simply asked to follow the Leader and Guide with the Divine help and with courage, in the face of whatever difficulties come.

If I knew I was an Avatar (pardon my bold hypothesis) do you think I would cry or wail for fear of any amount of crashes and collisions or would it matter if I began with a nature with not a grain of spirituality in me? I would jump from peak to peak in somersaults, go down the abysses, rise up the steeps without fear of mortal consequences since I would know that I was the Divine.

Would you? I wish you had been in my place then! You would have been a hundred times more fit than myself, if you could really have done that. And how easily things would have been done! while I did them and am still doing them with enormous difficulty because lead and have to make the path so that others may follow with less difficulty.

There could be no death or failure for me.

The Divine in the body is not subject to death or failure? yet all those claimed to be Avatars have died—some by violence, some by cancer, some of indigestion etc., etc. You yourself say that they were all failures. How do you reconcile these self-contradictory arguments?

You say, "A physical and mental body is prepared fit for the divine incarnation by a pure or great heredity and the descending Godhead takes possession of it."⁷²

Like my heredity? It was "pure"? But of course I am not a divine incarnation. Only why put all that upon me whom it does not fit?

To his beloved children created in his own image the Divine says with gusto, "I send you through this hell of a cycle of rebirths. Don't lose heart, poor boys, if you groan under the weight of your sins and those of your ancestors to boot. I will come down and take hold of a pure heredity with no coating around me and say unto you—come and follow my example."

Who gave this message? It is your own invention. The Divine does not come down in that way. It is a silly imagination of yours that you are trying to foist on the truth of things. The Divine also comes down into the cycle of rebirths, makes the great holocaust, endures shame and obloquy, torture and crucifixion, the burden of human nature, sex and passion and sorrow and suffering, manifests many births before he reveals the Avatar. And when he does reveal it? Well, read the lives of the Avatars and try to understand and see.

Nobody ever said there was no coating—that is your invention.

Not a very inspiring message, Sir!

No, of course not—but it is yours, not any Avatar's.

Jatakas tell us that in every life small or great. Buddha's frontal consciousness was always above the level of others.

Jatakas are legends.

Ramakrishna and Chaitanya began yoga in their cradle, it seems.

Did they? I know nothing about it; but if they told you that! Any how one died by drowning and the other of a cancer.

I don't know if Avatars ever play the part of the rogue or the eternal sinner.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "rogue or the eternal sinner".]

Krishna was a rogue and a sinner even in his Avatar life, if tales are true! Don't you think so?

Now about your absence of urge towards spirituality. Even though that sounds like a story, pray tell us how you could free your mind from all thoughts in 7 days or be established in Brahmic consciousness in a few days.

3 if you please. You are terribly inaccurate in your statements. It was simply through the Divine Grace, because it had been done by thousands before me throughout the centuries and millenniums, and the Divine did not want me to waste time over that other things in the Yoga were not so damned easy!

And even apart from spirituality, what of your waiting for the gallows for your country's sake, with perfect equanimity?

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "perfect equanimity".]

Who told you that? I was perfectly sure of release. But even so plenty of ordinary men did it before me.

What of your profoundly bold assertion that you would free the country by a Force which was under your feet?

Never said that, surely. Under my feet?

What of your brilliant career?

My career was much less brilliant than many others'. They ought to have progressed then farther in Yoga than myself, e.g. Mussolini, Lenin, Tilak, Brajendranath Seal, the admirable Crichton, Gandhi, Tagore, Roosevelt, Lloyd George etc., etc. All Avatars or all full of the essential principle.

If one has the essential principle, what does it matter if one has no urge towards spirituality? The inner consciousness is there.

All that does not apply to me alone. There are hundreds of others. The inner consciousness is not so rare a phenomenon as all that.

There are some people, I hear, who are to all external appearance debauchees or moral insolvents but whose psychic is much developed or "can be touched".

That gives away the whole case. For mark that I have never asked the whole human race to follow me to the supramental—that is your invention, not mine.

Still you go on saying that what you have done is possible for me and not for Arjunas only to whom alone Krishna seems to have addressed the Gila.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "Arjunas only".]

What a waste of words and energy! Yet Krishna said "even Chandalas can follow my way."

I prophesy that your message will reverberate in the rarefied atmosphere evoking a loud rebellious echo from human hearts.

I admit that you have successfully proved that I am an imbecile.

But if you say, "I come to raise you bodily by my divine omnipotence, not by my example," I am all for it. If you insist that I follow your example, it would be as well to insist on my leaving you bag and baggage at once.

All this is a purely personal argument concerning yourself. Up to now you were making general assertions—so was I. I was concerned with the possibility of people following the Path I had opened, as Christ, Krishna, Buddha, Chaitanya, etc. opened theirs. You were declaring that no human being could follow and that my life was perfectly useless as an example—like the lives of the Avatars. Path, life, example all useless—even Power useless because all have been failures. These are general questions. Whether X or Y is able or willing to follow the path or depends on divine Omnipotence only is a personal question. Even if X or Y does so, he has no right to pass a general decree of impossibility against others.⁷³

There are some who claim that they are here and remain here by their soul's call. But I am not one of those fortunate ones. Where they hear the soul's call, I hear the calls of a thousand devils and if it were not for your love—well, no,—for your Power (which I firmly believe in), I would end up myself by being one of those devils. I hope you will believe that this is not a conceited statement.

It is very conceited. To be a devil needs a considerable personal capacity or else a great openness to the Beyond. If you had said, I can only be an ordinary human being, that might be modest.

We don't mean to give you a compliment when we say these things.

Of course not. It is the reverse of complimentary, since you prove me to be an ignorant and mistaken fellow of an Avatar, who merrily wastes his time doing things which are of no earthly use to any human being—except perhaps Arjuna who is not here.

We say that the Sun is a thing apart, not to be measured by any human standards.

The Sun's rays are of use to somebody—you say all my acts and life and laborious opening of the way I thought I had made for spiritual realisation, are of no use to anybody—since nobody is strong enough to follow the path, only the Avatar can do it. Poor lonely ineffective fellow of an Avatar!

We respect him, adore him, lay ourselves bare to his light, but we do not follow him.

Who is this we? Editorial "we"?

Let me point out one or two facts in a perfectly serious spirit.

(1) It has always been supposed by spiritual people that divine perfection, similitude to the Divine, sadrishya, sadharmya is part of the Mukti. Christ said "Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect"—the very Divine himself, mind you, not a mere Avatar or luminous projection from him. His followers strive to be Christ-like. Thomas a Kempis, meditating and striving, wrote a book on the Imitation of Christ. Francis of Assisi and many others arrived at Christlikeness. [Krishna in] the Gita insists on sadharmya, gives himself as an example, and tells Arjuna that many before him from ancient times reached to it. Buddha in teaching karuna, the eightfold path, the rejection of sanskaras, gave it as an ideal to all true followers of his path, thus placing before them not only his own path but his own example. All this is trash and humbug? Christ and Buddha were fools? Myself even a bigger fool? It is not a question of greatness—it is a question of acquiring a certain consciousness to which the way is laid open. It is not a question of acquiring cosmic omniscience and omnipotence, but of reaching the essential divine consciousness with all its spiritual consequences, peace, light, equality, strength, Ananda etc., etc. If you say that that cannot be done, you deny all possibility of spiritual perfection, transformation or any true Yoga. All that anyone can do is to lie helpless and wait for the divine Omnipotence to do something or other. The whole spiritual past of man becomes a fantastic insanity, with the Avatars as the chief lunatics. That is the materialist point of view; but I am unable to envisage it as a basis for sadhana. That example is not all, is true; I have not said it is; there is Influence, there is spiritual help—but the truth of the Way and the Example cannot be belittled in this scornful fashion.

(2) You make nothing of the Divine in man. If there is no divinity in man, then there is no possibility of Avatarhood; also spirituality. can just as well pass away into silence—it has no foundation here. If the divinity is there in man, it can break through its coatings. You admit that it can do it in debauchees and moral insolvents—that it can manifest in ignorant and uncultured men and women is a proved fact; the Gita itself declares that all kinds of men and women can follow its path. Whether X or Y⁷⁴ does or does not [do] so does not depend then on these things and it is no use trying to bar the path to people because of either their ignorance or their immorality. To do so is to betray a bottomless ignorance of spiritual things. As to the possibility of awakening the psychic being, on what intellectual grounds or by what fixed ethical or rational rules are you going to fix that and declare "No entry here for you"? You cannot generalise in the way you try to do by an intellectual reasoning. The mystery of the Spirit is too great for such a puny endeavour.

[Whatever correspondence on Avatarhood follows now, refers only to Sri Aurobindo's short reply of March 6, 1935 (see above, pp. 165-6) written on the chit: "Nirod... chimera—then?" or before.]

You seem to attribute to me things which I never said, or is it my clumsy way of putting things? Probably that. But even then, you have put into my mouth exactly the opposite of what I have been trying to say. For instance—when did I say that you are not an Avatar? On the contrary I wrote to you that you are an Avatar.

You don't say, but if your theory or description of an Avatar is right, I am not one. I am proceeding on the necessary consequences of your logic.

When did I say that you or Mother had no difficulties or struggles? Did I not write that the Avatar accepts all terrestrial conditions, etc.? However, I did say that the difficulties and struggles are all shams, that is, not as real as our difficulties.

If they are shams, they have no value for others or for any true effect. If they have no value for others or for any true effect, they are perfectly irrational and unreal and meaningless. The Divine does not need to suffer or struggle for himself; if he takes on these things it is in order to bear the world-burden and help the world and men; and if the sufferings and struggles are to be of any help, they must be real. A sham or falsehood cannot help. They must be as real as the struggles and sufferings of men themselves—the Divine bears them and at the same time shows the way out of them. Otherwise his assumption of human nature has no meaning and no utility and no value. It is strange that you cannot understand or refuse to admit so simple and crucial a point. What is the use of admitting Avatarhood if you take all the meaning out of it?

I never said that there could be no Avatars nor that they are failures.

Good Lord! You said most emphatically that they were all failures and that is why the Divine had to come back again and again—to "atone for his failures".

If your argument is that the life, actions, struggles of the Avatar (e.g. Rama's, Krishna's) are unreal because the Divine is there and knows it is all a Maya, in man also there is a self, a spirit that is immortal, untouched, divine; you can say that man's sufferings and ignorance are only put on, shams, unreal. But if man feels them as real and if the Avatar feels his work and difficulties to be serious and real?

I don't think I said that there is no divinity in man. In the quotation I gave from the Gita it is said that man is made out of the divine substance but has a thick coating on him.

If the existence of the Divinity is of no practical effect, what is the use of a theoretical admission? The manifestation of the Divinity in the Avatar is of help to man because it helps him to discover his own divinity, find the way to realise it. If the difference is so great that the humanity by its very nature prevents all possibility of following the way opened by the Avatar, it merely means that there is no divinity in man that can respond to the divinity in the Avatar.

You make a flourish of reasonings and do not see the consequence of your reasonings. It is no use saying "I believe this or that" and then reasoning in a way which leads logically to the very negation of what you believe.

Also, I find that some important points on which my whole case stands and without which my "fury" has no meaning, have been left out by you. I admitted that Avatars have many difficulties, but because they know, as Mother did, that they are Avatars, because the "real substance" shines through the alloy in all that they do, they have a fixed faith and conviction that they will never fail. Now take the case of man; he has usually no such conviction because of the blessed "coating". So he groans and writhes in agony, doubt and despair. How many times in the midst of struggles have I not said to myself that Yoga is beyond my capacities! Now, if I knew for certain that I was an extraordinary being, say an Avatar, I would not despair. This is why I said that the difficulties of Avatars are not real, but shams—not that they have no sting in them, but that the luminous consciousness bears them easily and goes on in spite of them.

You think then that in me (I do not bring in the Mother), there was never any doubt or despair, no attacks of that kind. I have borne every attack which human beings have borne, otherwise I would be unable to assure anybody "This too can be conquered". At least I would have no right to say so. Your psychology is terribly rigid. I repeat, the Divine when he takes on the burden of terrestrial nature, takes it fully, sincerely and without any conjuring tricks or pretence. If he has something behind him which emerges always out of the coverings, it is the same thing in essence, even if greater in degree, that there is behind others and it is to awaken that that he is there.

The psychic being does the same for all who are intended for the spiritual way,—men need not be extraordinary beings to follow Yoga. That is the mistake you are making, to harp on greatness as if only the great can be spiritual.

Regarding the divinity in man—what is the use of this divinity if it is coated layer after layer with Maya? How many can really become conscious of it?

Exactly! Why admit any divinity then at all, if humanity is an insuperable bar to any following in the Way pointed out by the Avatar? That was your contention that humanity and divinity are unbridgeably opposite things, that it is no use the Avatar asking others (except Arjuna) to follow in his Path—they, being human, cannot do it.

You had defeats, struggles, but had at the same time the spirit of absolute surrender, faith which we find shining through Mother's prayers as well. Did you not leave your great work for the country at one word of Krishna?

Lots of people leave things at the word of a human being like Gandhi, they do not need the word of Krishna.

Does the average man have this faith etc.? If he has not, but has instead struggles, sufferings etc., picture what his condition would be!

If absolute surrender, faith etc. from the beginning were essential for Yoga, then nobody could do it. I myself could not have done it, if such a condition had been demanded of me.

Let me make it clear that in all I wrote I was not writing to prove that I am an Avatar! You are busy in your reasonings with the personal.question, I am busy in mine with the general one. I am seeking to manifest something of the Divine that I am conscious of and feel—I care a damn whether that constitutes me an Avatar or something else. That is not a question which concerns me. By manifestation, of course, I mean the bringing out and spreading of that Consciousness so that others also may feel and enter into it and live in it.

I await your "irrational" remarks on my type-script.⁷⁵ I hope you haven't thrown it into the waste paper basket.

I had written a good deal the same day as I got your type-script—but I have a sanguinary eye, so I have to wait a day or two before pursuing my irrationalities.

I am surprised and sad to hear that you can still be affected by these physical ailments!

What I am surprised at is that I have any eye left at all after the last two or three years of half-day and all night work. The difficulty for resting is that the sadhaks have begun pouring paper again without waiting for the withdrawal of the notice—not all of course, but many. And there is a stack of outside correspondence still unanswered! I am persuading my eye, but it is still red and sulky and reproachful. Revolted, what? Thinks too much is imposed on it and no attention paid to its needs, desires, preferences etc. Will have to reason with it for a day or two longer.

How I wish, as a medical man, I mean, I could enforce absolute rest to the eyes and issue a bulletin.

[Underlining "absolute rest"]: It does not exist in this world—not even in the Himalayas—except of course for the inner being which can always be in absolute rest.

I am pursuing a policy of non-interference with others' patients according to medical etiquette. For instance D.R.R. called in Dr. R from the very start, so I didn't butt in.

Of course you can't interfere—but you may assist. R however does not seem to be fond of his acquisition—he was proposing to shove him into the hospital again! I think after B goes you must not hesitate to take things in your hands firmly.

Don't hesitate to lead R gently in the way he should go. If he does anything foolish, interfere vigorously—I have told R at his own suggestion to call you and see what D.R. has, if it is typhoid he must go to the hospital—we can't deal with that here.

Dr. B is going tonight and the whole responsibility of the dispensary sits on my shoulders. Well, all faults and failings have to be borne alone. You may say the Divine is there behind. Yes, but that "behind" makes all the difference! One doesn't know whether He is there! And I don't know why He proposes to work in me from behind or within!

Don't know, "God moves in a mysterious way"—that is the sum of human wisdom in the matter, but it doesn't carry you very far.

We gave N.P. some bromide for sleep.

Bromide should be avoided—it does not give good sleep of a helpful kind.

We have prescribed mercury ointment also.

For many mercury ointment increases pain and swelling of eyes.

S seems to be all right. We can let him walk about a little. P asked me if his giddiness was due to congestion or some other cause. Considering his age, state of pulse and symptoms, I would think it's congestion.

I think he might walk about a little. Giddiness can come from many causes. I used to walk about for hours with my head going round or going up in a most exhilarating way. It gave me a perverse Ananda but did not inconvenience me otherwise. But S's case is not quite clear.

And why so many illnesses all on a sudden? Is the Supramental then too near?

No, it is the material which has become too uppish.

People are saying that it has come down into the physical, evidenced by great peace and calm. Is this then that calm and peace or the deluge before the new creation?

Into whose physical? I shall be very glad to know—for I myself have not got so far, otherwise I would not have a queasy eye. But if you know anybody who has got it (the Supramental in the physical, not the eye) tell me like a shot. I will acclaim him "Grand First Supramental" at once.

And so many eye-cases too! Is the infection spreading from the Master to the disciples?

There were plenty of eye-cases before. Your idea of their sudden multitude is an optical illusion!

Please see that my type-script [on Avatarhood] with your remarks, is not misplaced. I am almost dreading it. If once it goes into the heap, it is gone for ever!

It is safe. I have a stylish 17th century (or something like that) portfolio for these three precious (?) documents now.

N.P. has pain in the eye which he says is of a throbbing character as if somebody were "pricking" from within the centre of the eye.

"Throbbing" and "Pricking" are two quite different things. Pricking pains are quite normal in ordinary eye-illness. N is not a good "pain-bearer" and those who are like that, always get pain worse and find it more difficult to get rid of it.

R came to see him at my request and advised him to do palming.

We must first know what the damned thing is. If it is glaucoma, then sunlight treatment is the only chance of cure. Let us hope it is not.

My impression is that R is more concerned with treatment than diagnosis; then the treatment is bound to be symptomatic.

I don't think R is any good at diagnosis. The old Doctor was the man for that. I would define R's method as "book work + imaginative experimentation". (It is a confidential estimate).

But I really wonder why the Divine can't do something! You said people were saved from death by prayer, and here the Divine himself can't save this fellow from pain and suffering!

Such questions are all "my eye".

N got remarkable response from the Divine, then why not N.P.?

Every man does not get response, and every man does not give response.

K has a thick crop of eruptions on the face, and temperature. I was thinking it may be measles. You seem to think it may be due to dengue. But rashes are not so numerous in dengue.

Don't know. Mother was thinking of X's case more than K's. These do not seem to be the characteristic signs that are precursors of measles. Anyhow we shall have to see and if it's anything, must be careful it doesn't spread. Especially one must be careful to keep to the rule—"Don't give purgatives in high fever unless you are sure of the nature of the fever".

S's case is really puzzling. It does not seem to be apoplexy since there is no paralysis nor is the pressure high.

It seems to me a congestion such as comes at his age to people who Live well (S is a good eater). Perhaps it might have been worse if he had not bled.

Anyway there doesn't seem to be any immediate danger, is there?

Probably not—people carry on for many years like that—I mean with that tendency. Provided it does not turn to real apoplexy.

N.P. has got a complicated eye trouble. It looks like iritis.

I think you had better ask N if he is willing to show his eyes to R's ophthalmologist—for diagnosis only. It is evidently difficult to act without knowing definitely what the matter is—without any doubt.

K's case seems more like dengue than measles, for all symptoms are against measles.

It can't be measles in that case.

S's case could be a mild apoplexy from old age due to arterial degeneration, though no definite physical signs are evident.

Certainly there was no arterial haemorrhage. S denies any congestion of brain—he says there was no giddiness, but describes a vital attack and a fall due to a physical movement of his own to avoid it—his head falling on something projecting caused the bleeding. He says the congestion is a legend.

K sent me a scavenger with a big swelling above the left clavicle. We suspect some growth, cancer or glandular swelling. He won't go to the hospital. K thinks we are not responsible in any way, but I thought I would let you know.

We are responsible only for accidents during work. If a fellow gets a glandular or other swelling or a cancer, we have nothing to do with it. No treatment must be given—if he asks, show him the road to the hospital.

M's is not a pimple. It looks like a Myobeian [meibomian] cyst.

What the hell is that? I don't know bad Greek.

We were surprised not to receive any answer from you to R's letter. He says he was late.

He is always. He sent me two letters (which I read together) repeating the same things with different amplification.

N. P. was feeling better at 5 p.m. He felt as if you were working within his eye and inferred that perhaps you were reading his letter at that moment. It was after all, an illusion.

Only a wrong inference.

What is really this impression? Is there no truth in it?

There was truth in his feeling of the Force working—but his inference was an inference and not an experience. There is no infallibility in experiences.

Everyone thinks that as soon as you read our letters we get the necessary help and not before that. In my own case I got relief only after Mother's touch at Pranam or after I had written my whole trouble. Prayers are not heard, then?

It depends on how far the inner being is awake—otherwise one needs a physical avalambana.⁷⁶ There are some people who get the relief only after we read a letter, others get it immediately they write or before it has reached us or after it has reached but before we have read. Others get it simply by referring the whole matter to us mentally. Idiosyncrasies!

I send you a diagram of M's condition, drawn by Nishikanta. I hope the "hell" is clear now! Meibomian cyst is an enlargement of one of the glands in the inner coat of the eye-lid.

This is more intelligible. You haven't explained your bad Greek, through—myoboemiant⁷⁷ which seems to have something to do with a mystically silent shout.

I find many things which are recommended or given for diseases, are not much favoured by the Divine. So I think it's better to ask your opinion before any drug is given.

There are some remedies which cure the disease temporarily but are bad for the system like quinine—others which suit some people but harm others, others which have a good effect one way, but a bad one in another way. That is why Mother does not like them to be used indiscriminately. Some she disapproves of altogether, e.g. quinine. She also disapproves of the excessive use of purgatives.

My system has been rather supersaturated with medicine and reports. If you could release that type-script document without any inconvenience to your eye, I can recharge the battery.

Release? I am seeking for mukti⁷⁸ myself.

N.P is much better as regards pain. But I wonder why atropine increased the pain as it is the drug indicated for iritis. And why did you ask it to be stopped?

Mother felt that the medicines were causing trouble—you yourself saw that atropine increased the pain.

How did you find S at Pranam?

He was all right except for a little weakness.

M showed me his eye with a pea-sized swelling inside—yellowish.

It is a swelling, not a pimple? Try hot boric solution wash for the present.

The Ost [ophthalmologist] said that M's condition has improved. He has advised to give salicylates for past rheumatism.

All right—salicylate him as much as the Ost likes.

Queer! one has to be dosed not only for present and future but past ailments. Medicine like the Brahman transcends Time.

An inner unquiet is running for some days. It seems as if I would mightily like to have something, but don't get it,—as if it is around me, but I don't have it! Mother's writing on the forehead [5.3.35] doesn't manifest! And what about the universal? No sign of its opening its door to this poor fellow! Meditation, concentration, aspiration—everything is gasping! Let me have some stimulant drops, please.

Stop gasping and "smile a little".

Well, if it is around you, it is bound to manifest—you have only to keep quiet and open yourself pleasantly.

You are seeking for mukti!! I thought you never caredfor it.

That mukti I got ages ago without my wanting it.

B's upper eye-lid is congested. Eye drops?

If he wants drops, drop—but nothing startling or violent, please. Mother suggests camphor lotion, but she does not know the proportion and it must be light. I suppose you have no "codex"—book of ordinances?

21.3.35

Nirod

You will have to go and see S—he is not quite well and also here is some difficulty about the hair over the place of the wound. Do what is necessary—but, by the way, don't auscult; it made them nervous last time.

SRI AUROBINDO

P.S. Also take care not to look anxious; it upsets them still more!!

S is showing signs of cerebral irritation. It is strange that I did not think of the head injury, neither did you draw my attention to it.

The Mother got the suggestion several times, but she did not feel entitled to interfere as she is "not a doctor" and the suggestion was not scientific or rational, but only an "unbased" intuition. The rights of reason and science, you know, are not to be trifled with! Hail, Reason, holy Light! etc. But it is a great pity she did not act on her intuition; she asked whether it was not necessary to open the wound and see, but Pavitra told her Andre had not found it necessary as there was no pain. But evidently something went seriously wrong.

Mother, thinking of this case and one or two others, I feel ashamed of my poor knowledge and experience. I was wondering how I would show my face to you at Pranam.

Cheer up. And as Danton said "De l'audace et toujours de l'audace".⁷⁹ (What is lacking in you is the doctor's confidence in guessing at a disease and throwing a medicine at it in the hope that it will stick and cure. But that is not what I mean by the quotation.)

I dreamt that you had come to me for eye treatment, though there was no facial similarity.

If there was no facial similarity, how do you know it was I!

Does it mean that you are still unwell? M says you walk about with a bandage on.

The eyes are still unready for overstrain, that is all. I suppose they have erected an automatic self-defence against the Call of correspondence.

If you believe all that M's highly wrought poetic imagination conceives!!

D and H are losing their nails perhaps due to their washing work with soda. I have asked them to wash their nails with lemon-water after the work to neutralise the corrosive action.

That ought to stop it. Do they not rinse properly after work? They should do so and rub each finger with the lemon-water.

As regards S's case, could it have been due to syphilitic gumma in the brain, the symptoms of which were brought out by the exciting cause?

The Surgeon told Pavitra, I think, that even hereditary syphilitic tendency could expose one to the results and 90% (in Europe perhaps—India may not yet have caught up in the race) were open to it! Some exaggeration perhaps?

By the way I forgot to mention about your "unbiased in tuition" in favour of the fracture of the skull.

I had written not "unbiased" but "unbased" = without any definite ground in apparent facts.

Throughout the day his condition was almost the same, only from 5—6.30 p.m. he was free from any "crise" which, I believe, was due to your Force. If not, we can attribute it to the mercury injection.

Let us hope the credit is due to the treatment, although they say it produces its effects only after a longer time—but I have seen that the Force can bring about a quicker action if the remedies are the right ones.

But what do you make of the original fall? It struck me at once at the time that it was epileptic, but as nothing seemed to come to support the idea, I dropped it. But when S said there was no giddiness and described the strangling attack on the throat and the movements he made, the epilepsy interpretation came back to me with great force (of course I know nothing about the illness scientifically). Do you consider the fall as an accident? If it was epileptic, the fall with the injury bringing about only the rapid development of the illness and this violent crisis, then what was the cause of the epilepsy? Epilepsy is from the occult point of view a characteristic form of vital inroad, but to take so physical a form a vital inroad must have or create some physical cause as its means or support for its manifestation. If syphilis of brain, tumour, haemorrhage are ruled out by absence of hypertension, what then was the cause, since the fracture or traumatism was not there at the time of the fall? Constitutional disease? What disease would produce the epilepsy? S's movements were often abnormally vehement, a great restlessness was there often and there was the trembling of the limbs. But what disease—if constitutional disease there was?

SRI AUROBINDO
March 24, 1935

Now that the whole show is over with the death of S, I don't know if any purpose will he served in discussing the matter further. Still I cannot but ask some questions. The haemorrhage caused by the fall must have been on the surface...

How is that? One of the tests indicated that the injury was deep down, we were told.

I am upset but perhaps you are slightly upset too and it would be unwise to upset you further by my questions.

No, I am not in the least "upset". I did not expect S to be immortal nor did he expect it himself. In fact the Mother expected him to die before this and it was only his return to the Asram that gave him enough vitality to last longer.

I firmly believed that death was impossible here. Since it has been possible, it means that hostile forces have become victorious.

There have been three deaths since the Asram began—one, of a child in a house that was not then part of the Asram and the other of a visitor. This is the first death of an Asramite in the Asram itself.

You said, I hear, that you have conquered Death, not only personally, but for others as well.

I am unaware of having made any such statement. To whom did I make it? I have not said even that personally I have conquered it. All these are the usual Asram legends.

The conquest of Death would mean the conquest of illness and of the psychological and functional necessity of death of the body—that is one of the ideals of the Yoga, but it can be accomplished only if and when the supramental has driven its roots into Matter. All that has been acting here up to now is an Overmind force which is getting gradually supramentalised in parts—the utmost that it can do in this respect is to keep death at a distance and that is what has been done. The absence of death in the Asram for so many years has been due to that. But it is not impossible—especially when death is accepted. In S's case there was a 5 percent chance of his survival on certain conditions, but he himself knew the difficulty in his case and had prepared himself for his departure from the body.

It was Y who said to K the other day that Mother told them in an interview that you and Mother have conquered Death, that S needn't die and that even if such a possibility came, if they called you fervently Death would recede.

What the Mother said was that there was no necessity that S should die—of the possibility both S and Y knew—and if death came, yet if they could call in the force it would have to recede. This was a statement of the principle and it is a thing that has happened to many. It was not an affirmation that S would certainly live. The sadhaks have a habit of turning spiritual truths into crude downright statements of a miraculous kind which lead to many misunderstandings.

About yourself there is already a strong conviction "based on fact" that you have made yourself immortal.

On what fact?

In one of your talks in the early days you seem to have acclaimed yourself as immortal except under 3 conditions—accident, poison and Ichchha Mrityu.⁸⁰

It must have been a joke taken as a self-acclamation. Or perhaps what I said was that I have the power to overcome illness, but accident and poison and the I.M. still remain as possible means of death. Of course, the Mother and myself have hundreds of times thrown back the forces of illness and death by a slight concentration of force or even a use of will merely.

And just lately I came to know that the first two also have been conquered and the last, Ichchha Mrityu, depends on your Ichchha.

Great heavens, when?

Another conviction which all of us shared is that you could never have any illness; but your "eye", due to whatever cause, has shattered it.

It is long since I have had anything but slight fragments of illness—(e.g. sneezes, occasional twitches of rheumatism or neuralgia: but the last is mostly now outside the body and does not penetrate)—with the exception of the eye and the throat (only one kind of cough though, the others can't come) which are still vulnerable points. Ah yes, there is also prickly-heat; but that has diminished to almost nothing these last years. There is sometimes an attempt at headache, but it remains above the head, tries to get in and then recedes. Giddiness also the same. I don't just now remember anything else. These are the facts about "having no illness". As for the conclusion, well, you can make a medical one or a Yogic one according to your state of knowledge.

You have written that with the growth of the inward consciousness, one can feel the forces of illness coming and if one knows how to stop them one can do so. Then surely you can see what is coming, why don't you prevent it? How does this theory coincide with what you have written namely that illness can be conquered only by the Supramental rooting itself firmly?

Always the same rigid mind that turns everything into a statement of miraculous absoluteness! It is my experience and.the Mother's that all illnesses pass through the subtle consciousness and subtle body before they enter the physical. If one is conscious, one can stop it entering the physical, one can develop the power to do so. We have done that millions of times. But that does not mean that every time we will do so. It may come without one's noticing or when one is asleep or through the subconscient or in a sudden rush when one is off one's guard etc., etc. Let us suppose however that I am always on guard, always conscious, even in sleep—that does not mean that I am immunised in my very nature from all illness. It only means a power of self-defence against it when it tries to come. Self-defence may become so strong that the body becomes practically immune as many Yogis are. Still the "practically" does not mean "absolutely" for all time. The absoluteness can only come with the supramental change. For below the supramental it is an action of a Force among many forces—in the supramental it becomes a law of the nature.

Can the supramental really make immortal a tottering old man, with all his anatomy and physiology pathological?

Well, don't you know that old men sometimes get a new or third set of teeth in their old age? And if monkey glands can renew functionings and forces and even make hair grow on a bald head, as Voronoff has proved by living examples,—well? And mark that Science is only at the beginning of these experiments. If these possibilities are opening before Science, why should one declare their absolute impossibility by other means?

In "Yogic Sadhan"⁸¹ I find that by Yoga every cell in the body can be changed in structure and function; but to expect that in a grand old man—well, isn't it too much even for the Yogic Force?

Now that the omnipotence of this Force is being questioned, will you kindly write that promised letter "by means of examples" on what Yogic Force can do?

There is a difference between Yogic Force on the mental and inferior planes and the Supramental Nature. What is acquired and held by the Yoga-Force in the mind-and-body consciousness is in the supramental inherent and exists not by achievement but by nature—it is self-existent and absolute.⁸²

Not now. I am too busy trying to get things done to spend time in getting them written.

Last night I was taking a walk in the yard when I began to feel that it was not I who was doing the walking, but some form which I did not know at all. It seemed to be devoid of much vitality or consciousness. As I came into the area where it was a little darker, the things that were lying about looked peculiar as if they existed in dreamland,—and in the midst of them was this form walking about like one in sleep. Is it all imagination?

It is a very usual experience. It means that for a moment you were no longer in your body, but somehow either above or outside the body consciousness. This sometimes happens by the vital being rising up above the head or, more rarely, by its projecting itself into its own sheath (part of the subtle body) out of the physical attachment. But it also comes by a sudden even if momentary liberation from the identification with the body consciousness, and this liberation may become frequent and prolonged or permanent. The body is felt as something separate or some small circumstance in the consciousness or as something one carries about with one etc., etc., the exact experience varies. Many sadhaks here have had it. When one is accustomed, the strangeness of it (dreamland etc.) disappears.

I propose to go to the hospital 3 or 4 days in a week, because I think it will help my work. But please don't say later on that I was following closely my predecessor Esculape, in trying to be a big doctor.

Mother fully approves your attending—she considers it helpful in many ways. So have no scruples Esculapian or otherwise.

May I use a cycle to go to the hospital?

Where will you keep the cycle there? If there is a safe place, you can have the cycle.

Excuse my returning to the question of S's death. I would infer from your letter that sufficient force was not called in, so he died.

How could he himself call in or receive and assimilate the force in his body when that body was in fits or unconscious?

From whatever you have said in joke or in earnest, it logically follows that you are immortal. Because if you say that Supramental can alone conquer death, one who has become that is evidently and consequently immortal. So if one is immortal or has conquered death, no poison or accident can affect him.

Your syllogism is:

"One who became supramental, can conquer death.
Sri Aurobindo has become supramental
Sri Aurobindo has conquered death."

1st premiss right; second premiss premature; conclusion at least premature and in any case excessive, for "can conquer" is turned into "has conquered" = is immortal. It is not easy, my dear doctor, to be a logician ; the human reasoning animal is always making slight inaccuracies like that in his syllogisms which vitiate the whole reasoning. This might be correct:

"One who becomes wholly supramental conquers death
Sri Aurobindo is becoming supramental
Sri Aurobindo is conquering death."

But between "is conquering" and "has conquered" is a big difference. It is all the difference between present and future, logical possibility and logical certitude.

I hope I haven't made a rigid mental conclusion.

The premiss is false. I have never said that I am supramental—I have always said that I have achieved the overmind and am bringing down the supramental. That is a process and until the process is complete it cannot be said that "I am supramental". Of course when I say "I"—I mean the instrument—not the Consciousness above or the Person behind which contain all things in them.

Because you are still subject to eye and throat trouble. would it mean that you haven't yourself conquered death? If that be so am I to accept that the Supramental hasn't driven its roots into you?

See above for the answer.

Besides, I said "has driven its roots into Matter". Am I "Matter"

Though you say that Death is possible because illness hasn't been conquered, I take it as a principle. Amal and myself firmly believe that those whom you have accepted, are absolutely immune to death.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined twice "accepted".] Too comfortable a doctrine. It brings in a very tamasic syllogism. "I am accepted by Sri Aurobindo. I am sure of supramentality and immune from death. Therefore I need not do a damned thing. Supramentality will of itself grow in me and I am already immortal, so I have all time and eternity before me for it to happen—of itself". Like that, does it sound true?

I was myself going to write to you about Voronoff and rejuvenation. Have you any idea why the monkey-gland is used? I wonder how far the rejuvenating operation is successful.

It is successful partially and for a period—one cannot say more than that. But even that—rejuvenation for a period—is a tremendous progress and how can one say where it will end? As for the monkey, it is because it is nearest to man and at the same time an extremely vital creature, I mean full of vital force. As for the gland, it is because the seat of the physical energy is there which supports and reinforces all the rest. Voronoff's selection is perfectly logical and intuitive at the same time.

What does supramentalisation mean exactly? We know by your own statement that you have achieved that. Is it then supramentalisation in parts? You want transformation of everything—mental to physical?

Achieved what? What statement? What are these wild assertions? I spoke of an overmind Force which is getting supramentalised in parts.

Does it mean that some parts of your being are supra-mental and this physical is not yet supramentalised?

Overwind in process of supramentalisation—not supramental.

How can it be possible—realisation in parts, in your case?

Why not? Always the idea that there must be an instantaneous absolute miracle or else nothing! What about process in things? You are ignorant of all that is between supreme Spirit and matter, it seems. You know nothing of the occult processes of mind, life and all the rest—so you can think only of miraculous divinity or else law of matter as known to Science. But for supramental Spirit to work itself out in matter it must go through a process of transforming the immediate mental, vital and other connections, must it not—so why should not the process be in parts? Immortality also can come by parts. First the mental being becomes immortal (not shed and dissolved after death), then the vital, while the physical comes only last. That is a possible evolution, recognised by occult science.

T's hysteria has put my logic into hysteric fits... She had never had any fits before. It seems she was late for her work, by a few minutes and A gave her a severe rebuke before the other workers. Maybe this is the cause?

She had these fits, but milder, in Gujerat before she came here. Here they did not occur—this is the first time and a bad fit at that. She has had very often "fears" and other moods and imaginations which might be of a hysterical character,—it is difficult to say.

You will excuse my fear, I hope. But surely if one can be the cause of such a trouble and upset somebody—and a lady at that, and in the Asram, in addition to the fact that one has plenty of these to bear in oneself, I don't know really what could be done. You know, so I leave it to you.

Fear of what?

[Underlining "one".] Who is the one? in either case—A, you or X in general or in particular?

This is very mysterious language—can't you be more explicit?

My logic again, Sir: Sri Aurobindo is bound to become wholly supramental and is being supramentalised in parts. If that is true—and it is—well, he can't die till he is supramental—and once he is so, he is immortal.

It looks very much like a non-sequitur. The first part and the last are all right—but the link is fragile. How do you know I won't take a fancy to die in between as a joke?

Now, if that is accepted, then those whom you know for certain as would-be supramentals and have been accepted as such, are immortal—follows as a corollary.

Again the fallacy comes in in the "would-be". A "supramental may be immortal, but why should a W.S.⁸³ be immortal?

It may be a "comfortable doctrine" but that's my philosophy of sadhana. What is the good of the Avatar if we do everything by ourselves? We have come to you and taken shelter at your feet so that you may, as the Gita says, deliver us from all sins...

But what if the Avatar gets frightened at the prospect of all this hard labour and rushes back scared behind the veil?

After all what's the use of so much austere sadhana? The supramental is bound to come down and we shall lie flat at the gate and he can't pass us by.

[Underlining "he can't pass us by".] Why not? Why can't he float easily over you and leave you lying down or send for the supra-mental police to chivy you out and make you pass through a hard examination in an Epicurean austerity before you are allowed inside?

This is not really a joke. You may beat me for my semi-Epicurean attitude, but I do believe that those who can stick to the last from Anilbaran to N, will have the supramentalisation.

N also!!! Great illogical heavens! Obviously if N becomes a supramental, everybody can! No doubt about that logic.

You may say that it will be delayed in its descent by our passivistic attitude, as some people say that yourself and the Mother would'have been supramentalised long ago if only we had not kept you down. Is it really true?

I can't say there is no truth in it, but it is not the passivistic attitude that stood in the way. However, "ifs" come to nothing so far as the past is concerned, since the past having been had to be—"Ifs" are only of value for the future.

Manubhai (in the smithy) has conjunctivitis.

Manibhai is the Smithy Superintendent—Manubhai is the Lord High Gardener. Don't mix men and vowels supramentally like that.

To my query T said that the trouble is now pain in the lower abdomen. When that pain increases, she goes unconscious.

Isn't that mere hysteric auto-suggestion? She used to have these pains before and did not "go unconscious". Or is it brain congestion due to stoppage of the menses?

I gather that she is having periods for the last three days and usually she suffers from pain. For the last three months she had no periods at all.

Many of the women here have very fanciful periods—but I suppose that is fairly common everywhere. Pavitra has a medicine for blood circulation and regularity of menses. You might ask Pavitra about it. These medicines (he has more than one) are the latest discoveries in Europe of which samples have been sent here.

D is all right. But can you tell me why so many cases have flared up along with my advent? Are the hostile forces trying to test the capacity of a raw doctor?

I have noticed that—but am not yet quite clear as to the cause—whether it is a special favour to you or merely a coincidence—i.e. you just balled in when these things were due

I am doctoring on others, but there is nobody to doctor on me. When I send my case to the Supreme Doctor, he smiles or keeps silent, or watches and observes, Oh, it is the same complaint. The Force does not "tumble in"; one part wants to be in a flood of energy and work and work, another part inert, obstructive and lethargic... Can you diagnose and treat it effectively and in the shortest time? From your answers, I gather that there is no hurry—all eternity is before me!

Two different personalities standing in the way of each other. No remedy except "harmonisation" and that is usually done by the working of a higher Force which compels the two beggars not to interfere with each other. The business of the patient is to take plenty of doses of the Force. The usual formula (prescription, whatever you like to call it) is "Proceed with as much zeal as if all had to be done in a short fraction of a lifetime and as much patience as if you had all eternity before you." Your two parts ought to arrange that between them—one seems to plump for the first course, the other for the all-eternity. A splendid chance for harmonisation.

About learning French, wouldn't it be better to drop A's and C's classes and ask K to teach me alone for a rapid progress and a better pronunciation because it seems K's pronunciation is better.

Not better than C's, but good. But the class is not sufficient for going quick. You can ask K.

I asked J to tell me something on occult science, learning that you spoke highly about him. He seems to have some knowledge. He says my mind is not clear but it has strength and my emotional being very good!! All this true? If he knows all this he is wonderful for his age.

I should say on the contrary that your mind is very clear (in spite of bad logic); it has strength but a slow deliberate strength. The third statement is correct.

He has been learning and experimenting, but is often very hasty in his conclusions.

By the way, name of those perverse "fancies" please [vide 30.3.35]. If at all you think of going, let us know beforehand. so that we may disappear before you!

Where would be the fun if I told you beforehand? However, I have no bad intentions for the moment.

April 1935

Manibhai is all right. A little astonishing that the eye responded so well and so soon!

With many people or in many cases it does. It depends on certain conditions either of the conscient or of the subconscient.

I was under the impression that it is quite possible to know intuitively, with the Yogic vision, the exact condition of a patient without any medical diagnosis, but from your recent remarks about some patients I find that it is not so. On the contrary you say that the Force can act better and quicker when there is a proper diagnosis. In that case you depend upon human instruments which being fallacious and ignorant mostly, will paralyse or baffle the working of the Force.

It can if you can train it to act in that field and if you can make it the real Intuition which sees the things without ranging among potentialities.

As for me, I have no medico in me, not even a latent medico. If I had, I would not need an external one but diagnose, prescribe and cure all by my solitary self. My role in a medical case is to use the force either with or without medicines. There are three ways of doing that—one by putting the Force without knowing or caring what the illness is or following the symptoms—that however needs either the mental collaboration or quiescence of the victim. The second is symptomatic, to follow the symptoms and act on them even if one is not sure of the disease. There an accurate report is very useful. The third needs a diagnosis—that is usually where the anti-forces are very strong and conscious or where the patient himself answers strongly to the suggesfions of the illness and unwittingly resents the action of the Force. This last is usually indicated by the fact that the thing gets cured and comes back again or improves and swings back again to worse. It is especially the great difficulty in cases of insanity and the likes. Also in things where the nerves have a say—but in ordinary illnesses too.

No, it is not "again expectation of miracles".

I am afraid it is.

But if Yogic vision and knowledge can at once see a man through and through, his past, present, and future, why can it not see this?

To see what is in a man is quite a different matter—it is the direct sphere of Yogic vision. As for all past, present, future, one does not see that at a glance, one comes to know little by little if one has a special faculty and cares to use it. These things are not miraculous, they are forces and faculties like others.

And if you can't say precisely, how can we ever hope to get at any direct intuitive knowledge of the matter we have to deal with?

Supramentalise—the supramental is for physical things the only "dead cert".

But how can one harmonise?

I have told you—Force from above does it.

... Really I believe that the hard crust will some day be broken miraculously, and all the energies will rush forth like snakes from a charmer's basket—poetry, prose, philosophy—everything. But I am not so sure about poetry any more, and wonder whether all that is said about Valmiki's sudden opening is true. You said about yourself that you had to plod on for a long time. How could Valmiki have it without undergoing any preparatory pangs of delivery?

Plod about what? For some things I had to plod—other things came in a moment or in two or three days like Nirvana or the power to appreciate painting. The "latent" philosopher failed to come out at the first shot (when I was in Calcutta)—after some years of incubation (?) it burst out like a volcano as soon as I started writing the "Arya". There is no damned single rule for these things. Valmiki's poetic faculty might open suddenly like a champagne bottle, but it does not follow that everybody's will do like that.

Whatever little benefit I derive from the hospital attendance, is counteracted by vital itches uprising in that atmosphere. Old nature!

Put some psychological pommade on them.

Kick it out.

What is all this about S and his finger? He has written many pages and sent messages through Nolini. He seems to think it very serious and that you are treating a dangerous injury very lightly. Facts? If it is serious, as he says, you will have to take him to the hospital. Also what are these pains of which N is complaining?

About S's finger—without going into all his accusations, I can say that his 'facts" are bosh. I can claim, I hope, to have some understanding of serious or trivial injuries; so I gave it the importance due to it... Did he see red, by comparing himself with Suchi's condition?

Many people get alarmed by a quite ordinary injury or ailment of their own.

Yesterday I examined A's eyes. There are some definite follicles on the lower lids. It may be either follicular conjunctivitis or granulations.

Sometime ago all pimples about the eyes or on the lids were being classed in the Asram as trachoma. It was an epidemic of trachoma!

T better.

R said T was "unconscious" and restless at night wanting to go out and saying "Somebody is trying to take me out, I don't want to go". Also she speaks of something dark in the room which tries to get into her stomach and gives her the pains. Also she can't remember things—took medicine, afterwards forgot and said she had not taken—speaks to people, afterwards doesn't remember what she spoke. For information, in case he hasn't told you.

N came to me for "pricking pains" in the chest, now and then.

That's all! His description of them was rather fearsome.

You seem to think that epilepsy and insanity are due to possession by evil spirits. [Reference to patient T.]

I don't think—I know it is so. Epilepsy however is not possession,—it is an attack or at most a temporary seizure. Insanity always indicates possession.

I read in a paper that in England a woman is curing people possessed by spirits. She claims to cure ailments caused by these spirits. Possible?

It is quite possible.

How do you then explain hereditary contributions as in epilepsy and other like illnesses?

The hereditary conditions create a predisposition. It is not possible for a vital Force or Being to invade or take possession unless there are doors open for it to enter. The door may be a vital consent or affinity or a physical defect in the being.

Is T's condition due to one of these forces?

Perhaps. It is not a possession but a pressure.

Tomorrow, we hear, is the anniversary of your arrival day. Give some blessings, please.

Plenty of them.

We shall enjoy a little innocent feast of "Khichuri"⁸⁴ by way of observing the occasion. I hope you won't mind.

I have no objection, but is it at J's that the cooking is done? K is complaining bitterly of cooking operations there and is much disturbed by them.

How can one train oneself to have a direct Intuition? Possible?

It can be done—but I should have to write an essay on the Intuition to make any explanation intelligible.

I thought whatever is necessary will grow of itself either by growth of consciousness or by something else. Must one train oneself for things one after another? Why should they not open up like your painting vision?

It can or it may not. Why did not everything open up in me like the painting vision and some other things? All did not. As I told you, I had to plod in many things. Otherwise the affair would not have taken so many years (30).

In this Yoga one can't always take a short cut in everything. I had to work on each problem and on each conscious plane to solve or to transform and in each I had to take the blessed conditions as they were and do honest work without resorting to miracles. Of course if the consciousness grows all of itself, it is all right, things will come with the growth, but not even then pell-mell in an easy gallop.

But why should you have any latent medico in you to diagnose diseases?

Why not? I can begin to write poetry only if I have a poet either latent or suddenly introduced into me. I can lay down the law to Einstein only if I have a scientist similarly lodged inside.

I thought your Yogic vision is something like X-ray, which when applied, gets the condition on the plate; or the vision directly penetrating a subject, at once says—his kidney is wrong, her lung is weak, etc.

A slightly too simple description of it. Essay needed again.

... Above all, you have the direct Intuition to fall upon.

I haven't—not just now at any rate. I am too busy handling the confounded difficulties of Matter. The material is subconscious and I would have to be subconscious myself to get its true intuition. I prefer to wait for the supramental.

But even if you have no medico in you, it is high time that something should open up. Don't you see how so many difficult cases are rising, the nearer the Supramental is descending, if it is descending at all?

Let it open up in you then. Don't you see how all these things are coming just to make you bloom into a Dhanwantari overnight?

For me to suprarnentalise and then know definitely physical things is a "long way to Tipperary".

Why not get it like my painting vision?

I would like to know how the experiences I had are going to have any practical utility. Do they come and go simply?

No—they are first indications of an opening—but the opening has to be stabilised and enlarged. Also so long as the external mind is very much on the top they come at intervals only. Continuous experience is only possible when one gets inside and stays there.

Or do they come according to individual nature or requirement or opening?

All these are contributary determinants

We had the feast at J's. I thought of having it in the Dispensary, but felt the smell would disturb you. So I thought it is better to sacrifice K—b disturbing him than sacrificing the Supramental!

Certainly, the Dispensary is out of the question for such things. But when the Vedic or other ancient people made a বলি⁸⁵ fell they took care that the victim should not kick about or make a row. You did not take that precaution with K.

I wonder why T has no sleep.

Lots of people are starting having no sleep. It seems to be the latest fashion.

You had Nirvana in three days. Still you say there was no spirituality in you!

None, before I took up Yoga.

You said that nothing comes in an "easy gallop", that one has to plod on and develop faculties.

No, I did not say nothing comes in an easy gallop. Some things do. But one can't count on that as a rule.

I would like to make a contact with this Intuition which, I am sure, will help me a great deal in my work. So kindly tell me how I should train myself—an essay on this subject should prove useful. Just to give you more time I shall stop now and write nothing more.

I must still say that I am too busy tonight. Things are altogether too strenuous just now for essays. You give time, but others take the given time. Just now I am fighting all day and all night—can't stop fighting to write. One day I may give not an essay but a few compendious aphorisms on intuition and how to get it.

I had a talk with J which has rather puzzled me. He said that intuitions are of various kinds and come to us from different planes.

Quite true.

So the process would depend on what one wants. There is a silencing of the mind, a kind of rapid thinking, concentration. etc.

True also, but how do they work or how are they put together or how do they avoid getting in the way of each other? And above all how to keep them pure from mixture with the ordinary mind? If he knows that and can tell you rightly, he will save me the labour of an essay.

Finally, he said that I should not worry about these things—everything would be developed in me by the Mother. I said, "Surely that's what I want; but Mother is unmother-like. Have to plod—it may or may not come! They seem to grudge our having anything for nothing because they didn't have it; they had to pay the price!"

Well, if it is impossible to get anything for nothing, why say we grudge it?

It is Nature that grudges it. A price there always is. The price is sometimes labour and tapasya, sometimes it is faith, sincerity, simplicity, openness, surrender.

Manibhai has conjunctivitis again. I wonder if it is due to putting his dirty fingers into the eyes.

Exceedingly probable.

People are very eager to read your letters written to me. I have no objection to show them, but some people seem to misunderstand and misinterpret my discussions with you...

What is the use of showing to everybody? They were meant for you and though I have no objection to your showing to those who are helped by it, there are many who do not care for such questioning and answers.

Is it really possible to get anything simply by faith and surrender? I heard Mother said to X that if one wants to be an artist one must work hard. What is true of art, is true of everything, isn't it?

For heaven's sake, don't be so universal in your rules. Art means a technique (especially painting, sculpture, etc., music also, poetry less) and technique has to be developed. But that does not mean that there is nothing that can come by simply faith and surrender.

I wonder if I annoy you by so many questions. I have a great thirst for knowledge, I must know the inner intricate workings and the external things too.

That is all right. That is a very helpful Knowledge and there are toofew here who have it.

Can you explain by a few master strokes what is "pulling down" which is so often used by you in connection with our sadhana? I understand by it that one goes on making mental effort without having any eagerness about it.

That is not what is meant by pulling. When one is open and too eager and tries to pull down the force, experience etc. instead of letting it descend quietly, that is called pulling. Many people pull at the Mother's forces trying to take more than they can easily assimilate and disturbing the working.

The other night while I was doing a little "easy-chair sadhana", I saw a sea most tumultuous—no gale, no clouds, but most terrific and a most magnificent view!

A sea in tumult usually indicates a vital upheaval or a period of strain and stress and struggle.

I want to love and love completely and lose myself in love. If one can think of losing oneself for mortal love, why not for the love of the Divine? ...

Well, why not? But it must be done in the divine way, not in the mortal. Otherwise—

Let me then say definitely that I love you and you love me a little. Then let us meet somewhere in this real matter. You may remark, "This man has gone mad, otherwise why all these asthmatic gaspings?" Yes, I am mad, Sir, and impatient too; and who can be and remain otherwise unless and until one is divine oneself?

Ummm! don't you think there are enough people in that condition already here without the Asram doctor adding himself to the collection?

Unfortunately, experience seems to show that one must be divine oneself before one can bear the pressure of divine love.

Come down, Sir,—for heaven's sake give us something and make life more substantial and concrete. I am really beginning to doubt if things like divine Love, Knowledge, etc. can be brought down in me!

In the old days long before you came plenty of things were brought down—including the love. Hardly one could bear it and even then only in a small measure. Is it any better now, I wonder? it does not look like it. That is why I want the supermind first,—and especially the peace, the balance in an intensity unshakable. There are several who have been trying to push on with the intensities, but—Well, let us hope for the best. For God's sake, peace, balance, an unshakable supramental poise and sanity first. Ecstasies and intensities of other kinds can come afterwards.

X says that my depression is due to the general atmosphere which is rather hostile since yesterday. He adds that it is in a way good, for it proves that one is open.

[Sri Aurobindo drew an arrow indicating "for it proves that one is open".]

Open to the general atmosphere? Considering what the general atmosphere is just now, that is hardly a desirable aperture.

The Divine writing, not the Divine Love, has made me a little peaceful. But the way you are hammering the "Supra-mental" on us in everything, in every problem, in every difficulty, as the solution to all riddles, panacea to all ills, one almost thinks that its descent will make all of us "big people" overnight... Without it, there is absolutely no chance of any achievement, it seems!

My insistence on the supramental is of course apo-diaskeptic. Don't search for the word in the dictionary. I am simply imitating the doctors who when they are in a hole protect themselves with impossible Greek. Peace, supramental if possible, but peace anyhow—a peace which will become supramental if it has a chance. The atmosphere is most confoundedly disturbed, that is why I am ingeminating "peace, peace, peace!" like a summer dove or an intellectual under the rule of Hitler. Of course, I am not asking you to become supramental offhand. That is my business, and I will do it if you fellows give me a chance, which you are not doing just now (you is not personal, but collective and indefinite) and will do less if you go blummering into buzzific intensities. (Please don't consult the dictionary, but look into the writings of Joyce and others).

You say that peace is absolutely necessary for bringing down Love, Knowledge, etc.,—but don't you think purity is also required? And if peace and purity are to be established, a complete opening of the inner being is essential, and the bringing forward of the psychic. This will naturally take years—so we have to go on starving for Love and Knowledge and other things divine.

That is logical and orthodox; but the supramental, once it is down (O lingering once!) is supposed to bring these things up generally and induce an aeroplanic tendency to accurate swiftness in all who are on the road to it.

Can't they visit us now and then, and keep us going?

They can if you keep the doors open.

And if you have to wait for absolute purity of nature before the Supramental can come down, I should say that you will have to go on waiting and waiting!

Whose nature? It is I who have to bring it down. Do you mean to insinuate that I am impure? Sir, I raise my blameless head in dignified remonstrance.

Can't it accept the conditions and come down and alter them? In "The Synthesis of Yoga", in Chapter VI, you seem to say that after the descent those which don't change have to disappear.

"Those"? what "those"? (I can't be referring to my own blessed writings all the time, so I don't know what you mean or what I meant either). And in whom?

By the way, I have to complain about the lack of some essential instruments. Since a general practitioner has to be ready for all "blessed conditions" and cure them, many apparatus are necessary...

You can consult Pavitra. Mother has already spoken to him about ordering instruments from France—here they are too costly, many of them.

About patient Z, confidentially, I hear she bothers herself with environmental influences, e.g., maltreatment from Y. But doesn't she say that she already feels much better?

Yes, she was almost, indeed quite alright—but there have been dramas in which she is sometimes party, sometimes confidante (confidential information this!), so her sleep these two nights was not so good. I put strong force on her for several days and got her into excellent condition, but when these things come across

See, please, how you have understood my "impurity of nature". No wonder people will abuse me, curse me when they see that. They will say that you could not have written in that way unless I "insinuated" you.

Why should they see it? It was a private "goāk"⁸⁶ between us.

It is you who will bring down the Supramental, certainly. But my question was whether it will come anyhow, in spite of all our resistance.

I presume it will come anyhow, but it is badly delayed because, if I am all the time occupied with dramas, hysterics, tragic-comic correspondence (quarrels, chronicles, lamentations,) how can I have time for this—the only real work, the one thing needful? It is not one or two, but twenty dramas that are going on.

I couldn't quite catch the meaning of your phrase, "if you fellows give me a chance..." Nowadays we don't see many vital outbursts in the atmosphere.

[Sri Aurobindo drew an arrow from the word "atmosphere".]

O happy blindness! N.B. (confidential again).

What is happening to me? I like to lie down quietly at night and go on looking at the sky or hear the rustling of leaves. Then I wake up and say "time is gone, no reading at all!"

What harm? "The sky's my book and rustling leaves my poems."

Z's error of refraction though very slight may account for the headache. Is he, by any chance, given to any malpractice? I heard that he was passing through some lower vital trouble. If he does that it will be the worse for him.

Unluckily even the knowledge of that "worse" doesn't stop people from malpractices.

I think (?) it is that largely. Is it possible for you to give him some medical knowledge hinting darkly at least and speaking of the ill effects on nerves and eyes? He does not want to wear glasses, so that fear might act as a check.

I don't need to be a practitioner any more... When the Supermind descends, our knowledge of it will do everything correctly without any scientific knowledge of the disease!

What a lazy lot the Supramentals will be!

I keenly realise that I have no scientific element in me, I can't be a good doctor.

Medicine is not exactly science. It is theory + experimental fumbling + luck.

Perhaps you will console me by saying, "Never mind, have faith." Well, then why should I study all these diseases or go to the hospital? Can't I leave all that to Yogic force?

Yogic force is all right when one is in a Yogic condition, and when it acts. But when it does not, medicine is handy.

... Will these quarrels and lamentations go on for ever, or will your fight end in the near future? People say there is one century, if not more, for the Supramental to descend!!

One day, one week, one month, one year, one decade, one century, one millennium, one tight year—all is possible. Then why do people choose one century?

One material point. Can you sanction 3 pice worth of milk from the dairy, for an afternoon cup of tea?

Very revolutionary and hair-raising proposal, but you can do it and risk the loss of hair.

I wonder how Z will take the hint about his malpractice. He may flare up in indignation. Still I shall try.

Don't tell him that you know or that he is doing it. Try to bring it in obliquely.

What is this revolutionary invention of yours? Tea a cause of loss of hair? I am sure all the tea plantations over the world will send up loud lamentations if this theory be true! But, how can one accept it?

It was not the tea but the 3p milk and the cause and effect were psycho-physical, so there is no difficulty in accepting the theory.

J says that I have in me some capacity for "intuitive criticism"—whatever it may mean. I don't think I have got the right type of mind for criticism, or enough knowledge. Behind my "bad logic", do you see any signs of a budding critic—intuitive or otherwise?

It is the easiest thing in the world to be a critic. Just look wise and slang the subject in grave well-turned sentences. It does not matter what you say.

What are the things, if any, that have a chance of getting manifested in me—poetry, prose, philosophy, etc., or medicine? I am asking for a yogic prophecy.

Why bother your head? When the supramental comes, and you bloom into a superman, you will just pick up anything you want and become perfect in it with a bang.

By the way Mother told D, it seems, that she would look as young as a girl of 16 in ten years time. That would obviously mean the descent of your Supermind in the physical and its transformation.

I don't know. As you know Time has only one lock of hair (too much tea drinking?) and the difficulty is to catch it.

I had a dream last night: I had gone for Pranam, saw that Mother was in a playful mood with me. She took a flower, gave it and took it back. Then she took another flower and did the same thing. It was "Power over sex-centre". I don't remember whether ultimately she gave it or not. But why this hesitation?

The playing in that way simply means a gradual working. The offering of the flower indicates a play of the force e.g. in the sex-centre. The taking of the flower away means that the sex-centre is not yet ready—but the play of the flower is not without effect, i.e. something has been done to prepare the centre.

I don't know how to take this "bloom into a superman", except as a great sarcastic joke—striking me with my own rod, so to say. Have you not so often silenced and ridiculed my easy and lazy reliance on you to open up everything as the opening of a flower, by repeated examples of yourself, your plodding, your labour, your tapasya?...

It is a joke and not a joke. One must rely on the Divine and yet do some enabling sadhana—the Divine gives the fruits not by die measure of the sadhana but by the measure of the soul and its aspiration. Also worrying does no good—I shall be this, I shall be that, what shall I be? Say "I am ready to be not what I want, but what the Divine wants me to be"—all the rest should go on that base.

Your "superman" reminds me of an interesting argument I had with K. He contended that our aspiring for the Supermind was not something sober—that we should aspire for the Divine realisation only.

By Divine realisation is meant the spiritual realisation—the realisation of Self, Bhagawan or Brahman on the mental-spiritual or else the overmental plane. That is a thing (at any rate the mental spiritual) which thousands have done. So it is obviously easier to do than the supramental. Also nobody can have the supramental realisation who has not had the spiritual. So far your opponent is right.

K said that one must see what one is aspiring for. With the movements and consciousness externalised, where is the sense of such an aspiration for the Supermind?

It is true that neither can be got in an effective way unless the whole being is turned towards it—unless there is a real and very serious spirit and dynamic reality of sadhana. So far you are right and the opponent also is right.

I told him that it was you who wanted the Supermind for the earth, not we.

I don't see what is wrong in my aspiring for the Supermind in spite of knowing all my weaknesses. The Divine Grace is there on which we rely at every moment, and if the central sincerity is there, there is nothing wrong, I think, in entertaining such an aspiration.

It is true that I want the supramental not for myself but for the earth and souls born on the earth, and certainly therefore I cannot object if anybody wants the supramental. But these are the conditions. He must want the Divine Will first and the soul's surrender and the spiritual realisation (through works, bhakti, knowledge, self-perfection) on the way. So there everybody is right.

The central sincerity is the first thing and sufficient for an aspiration to be entertained,—a total sincerity is needed for the aspiration to be fulfilled. Amen!

I am sorry I was the cause of Y's "terrible upsets". It is because he made some contemptuous remarks about me and J regarding our feast. Both of us attacked him in the D.R., indirectly, which made him very furious.

Why attach any importance? If one gets angry at other people's criticisms, one would need to be angry all the time—for all the time there is criticism going on.

I don't quite follow what you mean by "measure of the soul and its aspiration".

I mean by it the measure of the soul's sincerity in yearning after the Divine and its aspiration towards the higher life.

The soul aspires for union with the Divine. Poetry, literature, music, etc., do they have then any place in that aspiration? Still the Divine gives these things.

They are first in life a preparation of the consciousness—but when one does Yoga, they can become a part of the sadhana if done for the Divine and by the Divine Force. But one should not want to be a poet for the sake of being a poet only, or for fame, applause etc.

From your statement I conclude that tendency does not matter much; I can go on as lain doing, today this, tomorrow that, so on. The Divine will do whatever is necessary.

Yes.

Certainly I would like to be what you want, only I don't know what you want me to be.

I want you [to] be open and in contact with the Peace and Presence and Force. All else will come if that is there and then one need not be troubled by the time it takes in the peripeties of the sadhana.

I find, Sir, that you have most skilfully steered clear between two troubled seas of argument. Allow me to bring the discussion back to the point from where it started.

I have seen K's letter. By transformation, I find, you mean living wholly in the Divine. Then where is the difference between the Divine realisation as you define it, and the transformation you are yourself seeking for us? Did not persons like Ramakrishna, for example, who had this realisation, merge their consciousness entirely in the Divine, thus having this kind of transformation? I think there is a difference, because you speak of a complete transformation—of mind, life and body. Obviously then, those whose realisation of the Divine was on the mental-spiritual plane did not have the physical consummation.

There are different statuses (अवस्था) of the Divine Consciousness. There are also different statuses of transformation. First is the psychic transformation, in which all is in contact with the Divine through the psychic consciousness. Next is the spiritual transformation in which all is merged in the Divine in the cosmic consciousness. Third is the supramental transformation in which all becomes supramentalised in the divine gnostic consciousness. It is only with the last that there can begin the complete transformation of mind, life and body—in my sense of completeness.

But can we say that their mind and life were not transformed?

Answered above.

Can there remain any impurity in these domains, after the Divine realisation?

It is not a question of impurity.

Some say there can be, but I doubt. Krishna, Ramakrishna, Chaitanya, Bejoy Goswami, Buddha—did they have any impurity at all? Of course their body was subject to illnesses, coughs and cold.

Well, that's an impurity.

And here comes in the great difference, great advance, novelty of your Yoga, I should say. Is it not also for the possibility of this great achievement among others, that your Supramental stands unique? For to my thinking, plenty of people have lived in the Divine Consciousness, but none could "divinise the body", which means that none of them had a complete mastery over the laws of physical nature, e.g. age, decay, illness, etc.

You are mistaken in two respects. First, the endeavour towards this achievement is not new and some Yogis have achieved it, I believe—but not in the way I want it. They achieved it as a personal siddhi maintained by Yoga-siddhi—not a. dharma of the nature. Secondly, the supramental transformation is not the same as the spiritual-mental. It is a change of mind, life and body which the mental or overmental spiritual cannot achieve. All whom you mention were spirituals, but in different ways. Krishna's mind, for instance, was overmentalised, Ramakrishna's intuitive, Chaitanya's spiritual-psychic, Buddha's illumined higher mental. I don't know about B.G.—he seems to have been brilliant but rather chaotic. All that is different from the supramental. Then take the vital of the Paramhansas. It is said their vital behaves either like a child (Ramakrishna) or like a madman or like a demon or like something inert cf. Jadabharata. Well, there is nothing supramental in all that. So?

And who will deny that complete divinisation of the body is necessary to be a fit instrument for the Divine?

One can be a fit instrument for the Divine in any of the transformations. The question is, an instrument for what?

My main contention was that we can aspire for the Supermind since you had so emphatically stated that its realisation and the subsequent transformation of our entire existence was the ideal you stood for. Hence anyone ridiculing such an aspiration was arguing against our ideal. Of course, I admit that the necessary conditions must be fulfilled.

K ridicules them because they are not yet fit for the spiritual realisation, some not even for the psychic and yet say they are aspirants for the supermind. He says let us sincerely try for and achieve the spiritual and not talk big about the greater thing still much beyond us. A rational attitude.

I feel that your reply is too conciliatory; otherwise, I don't see why the supramental realisation should be looked upon as a secondary thing or a by-product especially as you also say that the divinisation of the body cannot be done without it.

Not secondary or by-product at all, but ultimate.

[Against the last part of my sentence he wrote:] Not in the sense I want.

In your letter of the 15th you said I want the supramental not for myself but for the earth and souls born on the earth, and certainly therefore I cannot object if anybody wants the supramental"—the tone seems again a little conciliatory. "I cannot object" sounds also feeble.

I put it like that because a premature ambition for the supramental may be disastrous (e.g. B, N etc.).

Either you have become wiser (excuse me!) or you want to make us wiser...

If you mean that I did not realise the difficulties before, you are mistaken.

R is complaining of increasing headache—it can't be the slight astigmatism that is the cause of such intense aches. So will you dive into possibilities and bring up the pearl of knowledge?

It seems something has happened today. You have achieved some great victory: the Mother had, at the evening meditation, an appearance sparkling like gold. On other days she looked as if she were tired of the job, and would like to give it up saying, "Oh, you sadhaks, you are all hopeless!" ...

It would be very natural if Mother felt like that! Never has there been such an uprush of mud and brimstone as during the past few months—However the Caravan goes on and today there was some promise of better things.

Why does K refuse to admit that there are greater possibilities here than elsewhere? Is it not obvious that because we are most fortunate to have such a Master as you are (I don't add epithets), our chances and possibilities are immensely greater than if we had some other guru?

That is not a question for me to answer.

He says we are fit to aspire for the Divine realisation, but not for the Supermind. Is this realisation so easy that without fulfilling the conditions, one can aspire for it? Isn't it a fact that so many lives pass away without even a glimpse of the Divine? ...

It depends on persons

... However I was surprised to hear that such a bad time was, all the time, hanging over our head. But surely it means that the greater the light descending, the greater the velocity, the greater the resistance—law of physics—isn't it?

In a certain sense it is true, but it was not inevitable—if the sadhaks had been a less neurotic company, it could have been done quietly. As it is there is the Revolt of the Subconscient.

In one letter you wrote that you were able to push on; in another that the hostile forces were out of date. That was a year ago. When we read this we thought that it would be merry Christmas henceforth. But now I again feel a bit despondent because you speak of "the confounded atmosphere", "the uprush of mud" and the attacks.

When I said "out of date", I did not mean that they are not going on, but they ought not to be going on—they were only kept up by the sadhaks opening themselves to them and so retaining them in the atmosphere. I thought that was clear from what I said—but the sadhaks seem always to put a comfortable interpretation even on uncomfortable statements.

I have heard that even N had a terrible attack recently. He almost left the Asram! D wanted to commit suicide, and H is in revolt! How many underground tragedies! ... And all these despite your continuous day and night fight.

There are only 2 or 3 in the Asram to whom this word "even" would apply. I won't mention their names lest the devil should be tempted to try with them also. A solid mind, a solid nervous system, and a steady psychic flame seem to be the only safeguard against "terrible attacks".

If such things did not happen, there would be no need of a fight day and night. You put the things in an inverse order. (I take no responsibility for the statements you make, of course—They stand on the credit of the reporters).

Since the descent of the Supermind will quicken up all the processes, why not take an axe of retrenchment and cut off all impeding elements ruthlessly so that among a very few chosen disciples, the whole work may go on most concentratedly and rapidly? When the miracle is achieved, all of us will flock again and achieve everything as by a miracle!

How? I am not Hitler. Things cannot be done like that. You might just as well ask the Mother and myself to isolate ourselves in the Himalayas, get down the supramental, then toss everybody up in a blanket into the Supreme. Very neat but it is not practical.

Won't it be very practical and useless spending so much time on individual dramas and hysterics?

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "useless".]

You mean practically useless?

Regarding the vital of the Paramhansa, the three signs you spoke of may not be those of the supramental, but they are indications of a divinely realised person—at least Ramakrishna used to say so. But I don't suppose you would very much approve of strong eruptions of vital bhakti and constant emotional outbursts.

What three signs? If you refer to the four conditions (child, madman, demon, inert), it is not Ramakrishna who invented that. It is an old Sanskrit sloka बालिन्मादपिशाचजडवत्⁸⁷ describing the Paramhansa or rather the various forms of Paramhansahood. The Paramhansa is in a particular grade of realisation, there are others supposed to be lower or higher.

I have no objection to them in their own place. But I must remind you that in my Yoga alI vital movements must come under the control of the psychic and of the spiritual calm, knowledge and peace. If they conflict with the psychic or the spiritual control, they upset the balance and prevent the forming of the base of transformation. If unbalance is good for other paths, that is the business of those who follow them. It does not suit mine.

We read that among some advanced types of sannyasis barometric rise and fall of temper is quite the usual thing! Sometimes they don't mind a display of their temper if they can preserve a complete inner calm. They say that only a real sannyasi can rise up in anger at one moment, and become as cool as ice the next,

I thought a Sannyasi in the ideal at any rate was supposed to become জিতক্রধঃ জিতেন্দ্রিয়ঃ⁸⁸. That a bad temper should be a sign of fulfilment in the Brahman, is a revolutionary doctrine.

That is a particular stage in the growth in or towards the cosmic consciousness. But it is surely not the last stage of siddhi.

How is it that later Avatars often find fault with the actions and movements of their predecessors? Avatars are supposed to be infallible, they are supposed to have Knowledge directly from above!

Who finds fault with whom? I have not found fault with any Avatar To discern what they expressed and what they did not express is not to find fault.

What is infallible? I invite your attention again to Rama and the Golden Deer. The Avatar need have no theoretical "Knowledge" from above—he acts and thinks whatever the Divine within him intends that he should act and think for the work. Was everything that Ramakrishna said or thought infallible?

If Buddha was an Avatar, his denial of the existence of God amounts to the cutting of the very branch on which he was sitting; he makes man the sole arbiter of his destiny!

Why so? On what branch or what tree was he sitting? He affirmed practically something unknowable that was Permanent and Unmanifested. Adwaita does the same. Buddha never said he was an Avatar of a Personal God, but that he was the Buddha. It is the Hindus who made him an Avatar. If Buddha had looked upon himself as an Avatar at all, it would have been as an Avatar of the impersonal Truth.

You say Buddha achieved Illumined Mind and Ramakrishna the Intuitive. According to your explanation, Intuitive plane appears to be on a higher level than the Illumined. How is it then that Buddha's works and manifestation of realisation greatly superseded that of Ramakrishna's?

He had a more powerful vital than Ramakrishna, a stupendous will and an invincible mind of thought. If he had led the ordinary life, he would have been a great organiser, conqueror and creator.

If a man rises to a higher plane of consciousness, it does not necessarily follow that he will be a greater man of action or a greater creator. One may rise to spiritual planes of inspiration undreamed of by Shakespeare and yet not be as great a poetic creator as Shakespeare. "Greatness" is not the object of spiritual realisation any more than fame or success in the world—how are these things the standard of spiritual realisation?

I find that people are greatly fortunate who can approach the Mother often.

If they know how to approach her which hardly any do.

I have realised it myself whatever you may say for the suppression of our desire for the Mother's nearness.

If one has the desire or the claim, one brings in all sorts of demands, anger, jealousies, despairs, revolts, etc., which spoil the sadhana and do not help it. To others the nearness becomes a mixture.

If you say that there is always an interchange going on between people, surely one who often comes to Mother, will automatically take something precious from her.

A vital. interchange. But there is a difference between the interchange of "people" and interchange with Mother.

And what if their condition is such that it merely passes or is spilt or spoilt by their reactions?

And this is the easiest way of receiving.

If they know how to receive.

The Mother was giving freely of her physical contact in former years. If the sadhaks had had the right reactions, do you think she would have drawn back and reduced it to a minimum? Of course If people know in what spirit to receive from her, the physical touch is a great thing—but for that the constant physical nearness is not necessary. That rather creates a pressure of the highest force which how many can meet and satisfy?

I see that you have found fault with my expression 'find fault". I didn't use it in the sense offinding fault with others. This was my meaning: Buddha, as an apostle of love, preached Ahimsa and held it as the only dharma in any circumstance of life.

The only Dharma? What becomes of the eightfold Way?

You set aside the whole doctrine and say that one can kill, massacre with absolute Ahimsa within, if called by the Divine to do so. Buddha laid stress on complete abstinence in spirit and action, from any killing. That's why, perhaps, he is looked upon as the greatest man of compassion.

Did Buddha preach absolute Ahimsa? I thought it was a Jain teaching. What Buddha taught was compassion. And compassion—well, is it not written that Durga is full of compassion for the Asuras when she is exterminating them?

Now, even if he be an Avatar of impersonal Truth, how can a doctrine descend from a Truth-plane to an Avatar, which could be set aside by the later Avatar? The same I say about Ramakrishna.

The impersonal Truth, precisely because it is impersonal, can contain quite opposite things. There is a truth in Ahimsa, there is a truth in Destruction also. I do not teach that you should go on killing everybody every day as a spiritual dharma. I say that destruction can be done when it is part of the Divine work commanded by the Divine. Non-violence is better than violence as a rule, and still sometimes violence may be the right thing. I consider dharma as relative; unity with the Divine and action from the Divine Will, the highest way. Buddha did not aim at action in the world, but at cessation from the world-existence. For that he found the eightfold Path a necessary preparatory discipline and so proclaimed it.

My contention is that not everything they said was infallible... Of course if you hold that all their movements were guided by the Divine, I have nothing to say. Then I'll have to infer that Buddha's doctrine of Ahimsa was the only one needed by the then Yuga. This Yuga needs another, so the doctrine has to be changed or set aside.

It had nothing to do with the Yuga, but with the path towards liberation found by Buddha. There are many paths and all need not be one and the same in their teaching.

When yesterday you gave the example of Rama and the Golden Deer, did you suggest by it that what an Avatar does, he does absolutely consciously? If he follows a golden deer, he knows that it is a golden deer?

No, I did not suggest that. I suggested that if it is necessary to veil his consciousness so that the work may be done, the Avatar does it or rather the Divine in the Avatar does it. The other thing is also quite possible. Krishna could have killed Jarasandha as he did Kansa. Why did he not do it instead of fighting eighteen unprofitable battles, running away to Dwarka, and then getting J killed by others?

About the wrath of the sannyasis, I also meant that they didn't mind a display of their temper while they preserved a complete inner calm. But I don't know whether that would be called conquest of anger or a permissible or laudable thing either.

Of course it does happen like that—because at a certain stage the consciousness gets cut up into two and the outer may do things which the inner observes but does not participate in that movement. My only objection was to regarding this outward bad temper as a proof of the highest spiritual siddhi. One can also act with the Rudrabhava, but without anger, though people may mistake it for anger. That is a higher stage. There there is no disturbance even in the outer being, only a mass of very calm, but intense divine force in action.

A few Blessings—24th.

Many

Lack of interest and energy, disinclination to go to the hospital—this is my condition for the last few days. Curiously enough, whenever I take a cup of tea in the morning, these symptoms disappear. The whole system seems to buck up and I can do my work with full vigour. But if one has to rely on tea for such results!

Sympathise with you. There was a time when I was like that. Teaified cells—instead of deified.

But what's the reason? Vital resistance, physical inertia or fatigue or what?

Gandhian non-cooperating passive resistance of the vital disgusted to have to do the same thing regularly? Objection to rules—what? Discipline it.

The whole thing came to a climax. I wanted to go out for a walk by way of diversion but J said that the Mother takes away something from the vital.

Why on earth should she?

Everybody else seems to be working with so much interest, and look at me. What a curious mixture am I!

Too many ingredients in too small and unstable proportions?

In any case, break this old being, Sir, and let something emerge, whatever it be!

All right; let's have a try. Hammer, hammer, hammer! Only the being in question is a little—shall we say, solid?

S had no more motions, but has slight heaviness in the abdomen, and pain also. He vomited 2 or 3 times some blood too. The cause of this recrudescence is, I think, again dietetic indiscretions. But he seems to think that his work to the point of fatigue, was more responsible...

The main cause was certainly some serious "indiscretions" about food. You have to keep a very strict eye on him as to diet, otherwise—

Just now an outburst with Champaklal. I am sure he will tell you about it. I hate to trouble you with these trifles.

Champaklal does not usually tell Mother about these things outbursts of that kind are too common with him. And when heat meets heat—It is almost midsummer now.

I don't know if Buddha would have anything to do with Durga's or your principle of compassion with regard to killing.

No, of course not. I only put that in on my account, as to compassion.

I don't think that Buddha would ever give his assent to killing of animals or taking any life.

I don't know. People used to say he died of eating too much pork. Now they say that this particular pig was a vegetable.

Personal and Impersonal are two aspects of the Divine, aren't they? How is it possible for one who realises the Impersonal to be in darkness about the existence of the Divine from which his truth is coming? And why do you say that Impersonal does not guide or help, that one has to rely on oneself absolutely?

Whatever impersonal Truth or Light there is, you have to find it, use it, do what you can with it. It does not trouble itself to hunt after you. It is the Buddhist idea that you must do everything for yourself, that is the only way.

Since it is the Truth one is seeking and the Impersonal also is one aspect of the Divine why should the Divine keep himself aloof from the seeker? Is it simply because one is guilty of seeking his impersonal aspect?

You speak of the Impersonal as if it were a Person. The Impersonal is not He, it is It. How can an It guide or help? The Impersonal Brahman is inactive, aloof, indifferent, not concerned with what happens in the universe. Buddha's Permanent is the same.

People say that Buddha's Ahimsa was the main cause of India's falling an easy prey to foreign invasions, for it made her absolutely devitalised, inert, passive.

Rather doubtful. Buddhist kings generally did not hesitate to fight or to take life.

Though I don't believe in Ahimsa, Buddha's or Gandhi's, I feel a shrinking when I go to kill anything or see others doing it. Ahimsa in blood?

Nerves.

S's story is out. In addition to green mangoes he had some rasagollas too. This food business is almost a possession with him.

So I heard. Why almost?

We have decided to remove his stove for good. Rather childish, but what else can be done?

Quite right. The Doctor said that he was surprised by the relapses of S's health until he found that when he was not there, S used to get up and secretly cook food for himself on the stove! Palate satisfaction seems to be more precious to him than his life.

R says he has still headache although the "cause" is not there. Some investigations? I wonder whether he needs a regime? The difficulty is to keep him to anything Tried eggs—excellent effect, he got tired, we had to drop it. Next tried Nergine, next cod-liver oil—each thing had a good effect, then he dropped it.

I think there is something in his vital clinging to the illness, while the other parts grumble about it.

You have heard that M in the Smithy has recurrence of his eye-disease; more virulent this time. He has to stop his work, but he will die, he says, without it. Why this recurrence?

Pavitra says he saw him all the time touching his eye with his dirty hands and expostulated with, but to no result. what is to be done with all these superrational men? He was doing the same thing with his eczema and that was why it lasted for months. Except tying his hands behind him, I don't know what is to be done.

I am plunged in a sea of dryness and am terribly thirsty for something. Along with it, waves of old desires. Any handy remedy?

Eucharistic injection from above, purgative rejection below; liquid diet, psychic fruit juice, milk of the spirit.

Your prescription, Sir, is splendid, but the patient is too poor to pay. I feel I am the least fitted for the path. The God-seekers whose lives I have read reveal what a great thirst they had for the Divine!

And what deserts they had to pass through without getting their thirst satisfied? The lives left out that?

Whatever you may say, Sir, the path of Yoga is absolutely dry and especially that of Integral Yoga!

One has to pass through the desert sometimes—doesn't follow that the whole path is like that.

For this Yoga, one must have the heart of a lion, the mind of a Sri Aurobindo and the vital of a Napoleon.

Good Lord! Then I am off the list of the candidates—for I have neither the heart of a lion nor the vital of Napoleon.

You may say that when the psychic comes to the front, the path becomes a grand Trunk Road of Roses. But it may take years and years!

Does not matter how long it takes—it crops up one day or another.

And who knows one may not simply pine away in the dry, desert before that?

No necessity to carry out any such disagreeable programme.

Have I the necessary requirements for the sadhana? The only thing I seem to have is a deep respect for you, which almost all people have today.

It is good that, for accuracy's sake, you put in the "almost".

I made the unhappy discovery that it is surely from a financial pressure outside that I jumped for the Unknown and the Unknowable.

It must have been a stupendous pressure to produce such a gigantic leap.

No escape now. Let me be roasted for somebody's toast. Pardon my vagaries.

All this simply means that you have, metaphorically speaking, the hump. Trust in God and throw the hump off.

May 1935

"Trust in God"? Personal or Impersonal? Tell me instead, "Trust in Me", that would be comforting, tangible and practical.

All right. It comes to the same thing in the upshot.

I took J to hospital for her ear, but the E.N.T. doctor found instead vasomotor rhinitis for which he prescribed parathyroid and calcium internally. But she is quite well at present.

If she is quite well, what is the use of parathyroiding and calciating her?

C complains of oppression of the chest, and sleeplessness begun 2 days after there was no more medicine. She wants to starve herself at night; it appears Becharlal told her to do so! I have asked her to go to you. Is the famine method really a remedy for asthma?

I have again become the victim of people's tongue. I came to know that someone was imputing most abject motives to some of my actions, without my giving any cause of offence. I am not even familiar with the person. The person is cultured and has been here for so many years. Above all, we find that you love the person, and the person also is so much attached to you. Still পরনিন্দা⁸⁹ is so strong in the nature!

Do you think people need a "cause" for criticising others? It is done 'or the heavenly Ananda of the thing in itself. পরনিন্দা is to he human vital sweeter than all the fruits of Paradise.

If 6 or 7 years stay in the Asram, doing Yoga can't change these things in persons who are supposed to be good adharas, is there any chance for us?

"These things" are usually the last to change, not the first. Until the inner man is completely changed, the outer refuses to budge. Of course that is not a universal rule, but it seems to be the general rule—at least here. Theoretically it ought to be otherwise and with one or two perhaps it is, but—

I suppose you are curious to know what it is all about! Z said that because I have no chance of eating at D's place, I'm going here and there to get good food—and it is I who made S eat rasagolla and other things and made him ill. Can you explain why these poisonous shafts of criticism are thrown at me, without any reason at all?

Imagination + inference + joy of the perspicacious psychologist + joy of fault-finding + several other vital joys + joy of communicating to others, usually called gossip. Quite enough to explain. No other reason wanted.

I could give you the whole working of Z's mind and vital in every detail of this matter and support it by a thousand equally detailed instances, including criticisms of the Mother by "persons who are so attached to her" implying on her a far greater degradation and meanness, if true, than that imputed to you, (so take comfort by the Blessed Company you are in),—but it would fill 30 volumes and not be worthwhile.

(May I request you to use the pen henceforth, if not inconvenient?) I don't know if by "Blessed Company", you mean D also. I can never even dream of his having such pettiness!...

By the Blessed Company I meant the company of the Mother—very obviously, if you will read the sentence again. I meant that she has been criticised in the same way thousands of times and accused of still meaner motives than those imputed to you. So you ought not to mind, but rather enjoy being in the same boat with the Mother.

I am really amazed to hear that Mother told a child, E, I think, that only 5 or 6 here will realise the Divine. Then all the rest of us to be thrown into the dust-bin...?

"Blessed be they who believe all that they hear! for they have become like little children." (Pseudo-sayings of Christ).

What is this joke? You will tell me next that the Mother has confided to Dayakar⁹⁰ that the supramental now reigns upon the earth or declared the secrets of the ineffable Brahman to K's baby. Are you by chance under the impression that E is 77 years old instead of her apparent age? Who has invented this supreme jest?

Tell us something—give us a word of hope or of despair, But only be fair!

There are already more than 5 or 6 in the Asram who have had some realisation at least of the Divine—so take comfort.

I hear there are some who proceed through the heart, and and some through the mind, in sadhana. Those who proceed through the mind—vertically, receive Light, Knowledge etc. I would like to know if a vertical opening can be there without the opening of the heart centre.

It can—but that usually leads to মোক্ষ or to জ্ঞান⁹¹ only, what Ramakrishna called শুষ্ক জ্ঞান⁹²

I think that an intellectually developed man like N has an advantage over an emotional man like U; he will have a greater depth, wideness and vastness, and will most probably have also the experiences that U had, when his heart centre opened.

Leaving out individual comparisons, which are odorous,⁹³—if the intellectual will always have a greater wideness and vastness, how can we be sure that he will have an equal fervour, depth and sweetness with the emotional men?

I don't see why U's mind-power will be ultimately less because, as you say, when the inner mind or the head centre opens, there is a downpour of Knowledge. Then if we can expect a mental type's heart opening up, we can also expect the psychic type's head and inner mind opening up and thus bringing in the downpour of Knowledge.

That is more logical—but the logical is not necessarily true. It may be that homo-intellectualis will remain wider and homo psychicus will remain deeper in heart.

I am still not sure. Can we say that Ramakrishna's mind or Christ's mind was as powerful as that of Buddha?

Buddha's mind as a mind was more powerful, but had he as much or as many-sided a spiritual knowledge as Ramakrishna?

I leave out Christ, because his spiritual knowledge was from the heart only and intense but limited.

Or can we ever imagine that a supramental X will have the same mental range and altitude as the supramental Sri Aurobindo? Absurd!

Mental and supramental are two different things. How does the supramental come in here?

You may say that it is after all the realisation that is important and all three had that; nevertheless, I think that a powerful mind is an extra asset. In this intellectual age the mind is going to play a big part. Hasn't your great dashing intellect charmed many intellectuals of the age?

Which intellectual age? The intellectual age is dead. Intellectuals are becoming less and less important.

There is nothing dashing in my intellect. And what effect for the spiritual purpose has the charming of these ineffective intellectuals?

So I would like to know how far your supramental Yoga can develop the mental faculty of U, S, etc. and also of people like my humble self: whether the full opening of these inner centres will make everybody's knowledge the same.

Please do not confuse the higher knowledge and mental knowledge. The intellectual man will be able to give a wider and more orderly expression to what higher knowledge he gets than the homo psychicus; but it does not follow he will have more of it. He will have that only if he rises to an equal width and plasticity and comprehensiveness of the higher knowledge planes. In that case he will replace his mental by his above-mental capacity. But for many intellectuals, so-called, their intellectuality may be a stumbling-block as they bind themselves with mental conceptions or stifle the psychic fire under the heavy weight of rational thought. On the other hand I have seen comparatively uneducated people expressing higher knowledge with an astonishing fullness and depth and accuracy which the stumbling movements of their brain could never have allowed one to suppose possible. Therefore why fix beforehand by the mind what will or will not be possible when the Above-mind reigns? what the mind conceives as "must be" need not be the measure of the "will be". Such and such a homo intellectualis may turn out to be a more fervent God-lover than the effervescent emotional man; such and such an emotionalist may receive and express a wider knowledge than his intellect or even the intellect of the intellectual man could have harboured or organised. Let us not bind the phenomena of the higher consciousness by the possibilities and probabilities of a lower plane.

Nirod,

9-5-35

What is the use and limitations of mercury powder? Is it not an unsafe thing which may do harm as well as good? In what illness can it be safely or effectively applied?

SRI AUROBINDO
May 9, 1935

I have again the same chronic trouble. At Pranam I felt, Mother, that you were serious with me and the reason was, I thought, you did not like my comparing the sadhaks in the way I did yesterday. I have no intention of belittling anyone. It is a quite natural human curiosity to want to know what would be the intellectual manifestation of an uneducated sadhak after realisation ...

Rubbish! Mother did not think anything about it at all. Why the hell or heaven or why on earth or why the unearthly should she be displeased? You all seem to think of the Mother as living in a sort of daylong and nightlong simmering cauldron of displeasure about nothing and anything and everything under the sun. Lord! what a queer idea!

I had compared your behaviour, mentally, with others and said to myself: "If such and such a person goes on doing this and that almost all the time of the day (I had S particularly in mind), still Mother is Grace herself with her."

And the same persons make comparisons of Mother's behaviour with others and get into fits of revolt and abhiman, and what not! What a mad Asram!

I feel these formations are not true but I can't throw them away ...

Why not, I should like to know?

But this resistance must go.

I quite agree with you.

If I can't love.you, give myself to you, of what use is the sadhana? For mukti? I have no appetite for such mukti. Ramakrishna used to say "I have no objection to give liberation but I will not give willingly শুদ্ধা ভক্তি."⁹⁴

Meaning? But what is শুদ্ধা ভক্তি, then?

But even if you are serious, I don't know why I can't take it calmly and in the right spirit.

Quite so!

You have no personal interest to be serious. It is for my good alone.

Not at all. It is simply the vital's imagination that the Mother is serious because of its tamas. There is not the least truth in it.

I understand all this but the emotion gets the upper hand. And you say I have a slow, deliberate mental strength!

The "emotion" is not the mind.

J says that in many cases where you were not in the least serious and smiled and smiled he had the after-feeling that you were serious with him.

That has happened at least a thousand times. Even, the Mother has seen somebody come with a gloomy face and she has poured out smiles in a river and blessed him in a most emphatic manner only to get a letter "You are displeased with me; you did not smile. You blessed me with only one finger: what wrong have I done? How can I live if you behave with me like this?" And perhaps an intimation that the outraged sadhak or sadhika is going away or will drop herself (this is generally a feminine menace) into the sea.

I am not exaggerating in the least—it is literally true.

And supposing the Mother happens to be serious in reality? What then? Are there not a thousand reasons in this world for being serious,—why must the cause be displeasure with the sadhika? After all Yoga itself, life itself is a rather serious affair.

But I don't really understand this, because how can One be so blind as not to see the smile on your face, or seeing it, mistake it for seriousness?

I don't know how, but "one" does it and not only one, but many. It is the minority who have not done it.

I want your sword, and not the pen only, to sever these impressions at their very root and let the inner being emerge with its flood of love and absolute surrender and make me your utter slave.

The sword is at your service, but for heaven's sake use it.

I thought that since homo-psychics proceed from the heart, their knowledge aspect will be limited.

But Ramakrishna was a homo-psychicus with no atom of intellectuality—yet he had plenty of knowledge.

Mother says in the "Prayers and Meditations" that there is a knowledge which surpasses all other knowledge which means knowledge of the Divine. In that case, psychics or otherwise who realise the Divine, will have the same width, vastness of knowledge.

Certainly, there is nothing to prevent it.

By the higher knowledge, I understand, you mean spiritual knowledge about Almon, Brahman, etc. But can one deal with the problems of ordinary life with mastery by this spiritual knowledge? For instance, if I am asked to criticise Shaw or other literary figures, how am I to do it with this knowledge alone?

One can. What has all that to do with spiritual knowledge? Criticism of Shaw is not a part of Brahmajnana. If one has to do it, one does it with the mind, so long as one does not get into the intuitive overwind or supermind—then one does it with those. This is quite another matter—it has nothing to do with the main question which is about the spiritual realisation—through love or through knowledge.

I have been concentrating on both the head and the heart centres. In meditation the being falls silent, but the head gets heavy and I feel some working going on there.

That is alI very good.

I hope I am not going to get knowledge only, because this is the centre for knowledge; I want bhakti and love too. Since I haven't felt them, I have been thinking that maybe the head centre is going to open and not the heart. Though I felt elated, I dreaded it also because I hear the head centre gives knowledge, no doubt, but no love, bhakti—so it is as dry as a nut ...

Yes, obviously that is what it is trying to do. When things come in this order the head opens up first and the heart afterwards—finally all the centres. So what is there to be worried about? If you are satisfied only with peace, knowledge and mukti, then perhaps the heart centre may open to that only. But if you want the love, then the descending Power and Light will work for that also. So cheer up and don't get into a state of pother with imaginary difficulties.

S was taking Lithinée according to your suggestion. For the last few days the pain which subsided by Lithinee has come back. Shall I try my mental knowledge or leave her to the spiritual?

At least use your mental K. to know what is the matter with her.

Till the other day patients with stomach ulcer were treated with soda bicarb, mag carb, calcium carb and Bismuth.

Very dangerous. S got his stomach curled up with these things—had to be operated.

I have found a patent drug Biomucine from Pavitra for ulcer to be followed with a strict regime.

What is inside the Bio or the mucine? With strict regime she would have to stop work, I suppose, at which she will kick.

A's right eye is almost cured, but the left one refuses and has become worse again.

The injection also was hopeless? Then it must be a purely local affair?

We are really getting tired and hopless.

[Sri Aurobindo drew a line to the word "hopless".] That is a good word. To be hopeless means to have no hop left in you.

I couldn't make out one word in your answer. Even Nolini failed. I thought you could fill up the gap from memory.

It might have been just possible for me after some concentration and appeal to the supramental.

It seems another victory has been won by you? Some people saw a red-crimson light around the Mother a few days back. What does it signify?

??? Great Heavens? which? who? But there is nothing new in that. It was coming down before Nov. 34, but afterwards all the damned mud arose and it stopped. But there are red crimson lights. One is supramental Divine Love. The other is the supramental physical Force.

I am reading your Intuitive Mind. Can you not release that manuscript in the meantime?

Which blessed manuscript? I have a hundred! I don't recall anything about Intuitive Mind.

I spoke of the manuscript (typed letter) on Avatar, on which you have written a lot, you said [6.3.35]. But if it is among hundreds of manuscripts, there is hardly any chance of rescuing it.

Good Lord, but the Avatar correspondence belongs to the distant past, what is the use of resuscitating it now?

The psychic fire you write about in the Synthesis of Yoga and the psychic being are identical?

The psychic fire is the fire of aspiration, purification and tapasya which comes from the psychic being. It is not the psychic being, but a power of the psychic being.

Allow me to congratulate you on the perfect poetry of your revised chapter VI of the Synthesis. It is a veritable "flowing river of gold". Is it supramental language or can it be still more heightened or perfected?

Supramental language it is not, because no such thing has manifested as yet. As I have no recollection of this chapter, I can't say what it is or whether it can be heightened or perfected.

Nirod

I can't find your microscopic note, so I write separately.

How do you hope to get a better being next time if you don't improve what you have in this life? How can you expect a better being to crop up all of itself without rhyme or reason? So buck up and do what is necessary now...

The Avatar letter was not finished I think, so I would have still to write something and it is far from my mind now. Perhaps one day.

17.5.35

SRI AUROBINDO
May 17, 1935

What a hell of a time you left me in, Sir! The same emptiness, dryness and a negative pressure and one of the longest periods, too!

It is the confounded vital that does that when it is asked to change itself. The vital is a disciple of Gandhi as far as passive resistance goes—a master of non-cooperation.

It came after I took a strong resolution to do some serious sadhana. I wonder if the light of the sun is in view.

It is perhaps the strong resolution that brought up the resistance in a mass. That often happens. If you stick to it, then the light of the sun comes through.

It seems a great pressure is being brought down and many are disappearing, beginning with T and ending with K.

K has not disappeared. He has gone over there to enable D to come here during the vacation, for T would be otherwise alone there. He intends to come back—provided of course T does not capture him and put him in her pocket—if she has one.

For patient X shall we give Cascara or some salt for a few days? I hesitate to doctor on her without your approval.

Cascara you can try. Salt is not good as it may turn to colique hepatique.

I had a queer dream last night: I was bowing with love and devotion before a dark-complexioned gentleman, and he with equal affection raised me up and said, "You will require 18 years (Good Lord!!) to realise the Divine, out of which 12 years will pass away in just knocking about and playing.' Heart-rending prophecy! But who is this old gentleman, and what does his prophecy amount to—please?

The old dark-complexioned gentleman must be Old Nick, I suppose! and his prophecy amounts to Old Nickery.

So I bowed down to the devil, and devotionally too! But is it not possible to develop some kind of discrimination in these things? Usually it is only after the ceremony that I begin to doubt the credentials of the persons. I clearly saw that this devil did not resemble you, but still I bowed. But when we often see Mother in various forms, looking quite different, you say that it is the Mother; then?

Necessarily, Mother can manifest in many other forms besides her physical one, and though I am rather less multitudinous, I can also. But that does not mean that you can take any gentleman for me or any she for her. Your dream-self has to develop a certain discrimination. That discrimination cannot go by signs and forms, for the vital beggars can imitate almost anything, it must be intuitive.

My interest in poetry is growing again, but I could not complete a sonnet even after trying for three days. I don't mind the labour if only it is not spent in vain.

There have been instances where people have taken up music with your approval, and they have worked at it to find later on that it was not their line. What a waste of time for nothing! This is the thought that curbs my enthusiasm. Otherwise I quite understand that one has to suffer the "pangs of delivery". What do you say?

Approval or permission? People get it into their heads that they would like to do some music, because it is the fashion or because they like it so much and the Mother may tolerate it or say "All right, try". That does not mean they are predestined or doomed to be musicians—or poets—or painters according to the case. Perhaps one of those who try may bloom, others drop off. X starts painting and shows only a fanciful dash at first, after a time -he brings out work, remarkable work. Y does clever facile things; one day he begins to deepen and a possible painter in the making outlines. Others,—well, they don't. But they can try—they will learn something about painting at least.⁹⁵

Labour at your sestets if the spirit pushes you. The Angel of Poetry may be delivered out of the labour, even if with a forceps.

Nishikanta has a furious boil on the nose; and as you know boils on the face are dangerous.

Why?

Boils on the face are dangerous because its blood circulation has a direct connection with that of the brain, so that any suppurative process can go up and infect the brain.

[Sri Aurobindo put an exclamation mark.]

Again, I have read many times the "Intuitive Mind". Though the theoretical process is given very elaborately, it is not of much use for practical purposes. So will you answer how to get Intuition? If no time tonight, let the book wait till Monday.

I fear the book would have to wait much longer. I am just now in a strenuous time when I can't even think about these things, much less write about them. I can only keep your question in mind and wait for an opportunity to answer.

S has profuse "whites" ...

What on earth is this word? Winter? wintes? It may be profuse but it is not legible. For God's sake don't imitate me.

Shall try pill Aloes et Ferri for a few days?

You can try.

Today, I surprised myself by completing a poem of 18 lines in about 2 hours and 8 lines of another in 1 hour!

Glory to God!

We hear you are tremendously busy; hot speculations are in the air about near descents.

No, thank you, sir! I have had enough of them—the only result of the last descent was an upsurging of subconscient mud.

In the upshot many crashes and shipwrecks are apprehended.

What an appetite for crashes!

Please tell us something so that we may prepare ourselves in time to bear the pressure of the descent.

No pressure! I am simply busy trying to get out of the mud—in other words to see if the damned subconscient can be persuaded to subside into something less dangerous, less complexful and more manageable.

The word you stumbled against, is "whites". I thought Mother would understand. And it is our ideal to imitate you, or at least to try to imitate you in everything!

Great Lord! What an h! I could not do worse myself.

When you said yesterday, "I am simply busy trying to get out of the mind" etc., etc., I sighed, "What a happy ignorance! Will it be folly to get wise?"

Tot mind, sir. I have gone out of my mind long ago. I wrote "mud' mud, mud, mud of the subconscient.

Can you not tell us a few words on this subconscient? By the grace of Freud and other psychologists, we have come to look upon it as Dante's Inferno or Michael's Hell. Your description seems to come close to it, but you've said somewhere that in this subconscient, there is formed and stored the impression, besides that of previous lives, of everything seen, heard, etc., etc., and the waves surge up later on. If that be so, it can't be all bad! It seems to play a tremendous role in our lives. But is there also a universal subconscient by tackling which you can tackle the individual's subconscient? What will then be the meaning of these impressions in individual consciousness, a simple interchange between universal and individual?

So many questions come up!

Of course the subconscient is universal as well as individual like all the other main parts of the Nature. But there are different parts or planes of the subconscient. All upon earth is based on the Inconscient as it is called, though it is not really inconscient at all, but rather a complete subconscience in which there is everything but nothing formulated or expressed. The subconscient of which I speak lies in between the Inconscient and conscious mind, life and body. It contains all the reactions to life which struggle out as a slowly evolving and self-formulating consciousness, but it contains them not as ideas or perceptions or conscious reactions but as the blind substance of these things. Also all that is consciously experienced sinks down into the subconscient not as experience but as obscure but obstinate impressions of experience and can come up at any time as dreams, as mechanical repetitions of past thought, feeling, action etc., as "complexes" exploding into action and event etc., etc. The subconscient is the main cause why all things repeat themselves and nothing ever gets changed except in appearances. It is the cause why, people say, character cannot be changed, also of the constant return of things one hoped to have got rid of. All seeds are there and all the sanskaras of the mind and vital and body,—it is the main support of death and disease and the last fortress (seemingly impregnable) of the Ignorance. All that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and remains in seed ready to surge up or sprout up at any moment.

The oculist says that R's eye defect is slight and glasses may relieve the headache.

The objection to eye-glasses is that once you start the eyes get not better but worse and worse. So if it is only slight there is no use in spoiling the eye-sight in order to get rid of the headaches.

The oculist suggests Opo-calcium—a thyroid combination. I gave him thyroid pills, but the oculist says it should be continued longer...

It is a very good idea—but I believe it creates an irritation on the skin and R is likely to get wild and give it up.

S took one pill of Aloes et Ferri and from the next morning she had burning in her eyes. I washed her eyes and that gave an uneasiness in the head! Now I realise that I should have left her to you.

All that is of course S's imagination. She decides in herself that the medicine is the cause of the burning and the uneasiness. Perhaps she decides it beforehand—or rather something in her decides it. If her imagination were equally effective for cure it would be a great thing.

M complains of pain in the heels. There is no tenderness in the bone; some tenderness in the pad of fat. Internally salicylates can be tried, but there is no rheumatic history.

No salicylates. It will spoil her stomach without curing her heel.

It may be "policeman's disease" as the French call it, "maladie de sergent de vine"; I have forgotten the technical name for it, but it is supposed to come from too much standing. I had it myself for something like a year because of walking or standing all day—that was when I used to meditate while walking. The Fr. medical dictionary says there is no remedy but rest. I myself got rid of it by application of force without any rest or any other remedy. But M is not a policeman and she does not walk while she meditates—so how did she get it?

It is then quite possible for M to have got this disease, for she is almost always on her heels. Why not apply some Force and cure it?

She has got too much force herself, though the heel may be, as with Achilles, her vulnerable point. The Force may not be able to get into it.

Here is a little Bengali love poem, Sir, after a long travail! Even then Nishikanta had to apply forceps at the end. I mark x against his lines.

The marks are to my eyes invisible.

I myself seem to like it.

This time you seem to have succeeded. That is poetry.

The process I follow in writing is like this: I go on chiselling and improving on what I have written and it takes a lot of time. Sometimes I write down, all the time trying to search for a better expression. It is said that both these processes are bad.

There can be no one rule for everybody. Many follow your process.

S's eye trouble is the same, there is a sign of strain in her eyes.

She writes to me that her eyes are a little better, but she is in dental anguish and as usual, all that is done by the doctor (dentist) makes her worse.

I hear from Rajangam that you are preparing to sacrifice someone, including ourselves, to the gallows of medical study, for a French diploma. Is it really necessary?

It is not for study, but that we may be safe against the French law which forbids anyone, except duly qualified medical practitioners (French-qualified, not foreign-qualified) to practise in French territory. What we are doing now is perfectly illegal, our only defence being that we take no money and do it only among ourselves—but whether that would be sufficient, is doubtful. Mother has often wished for someone who could stand as a shield, having the necessary qualifications, but Dayashankar who was to have done it is no longer available. We have no idea of forcing anyone to do it.

June 1935

If it is necessary and convenient, why not send Pavitra to the Chief Medical Officer to discuss the matter with him? It depends mainly on the chief than on others.

It is not so pressing. If there were a general rule about the matter, as in France, it would be all right; but a special favour is another matter. We will think twice before we ask—especially as they may look with disfavour on the idea of somebody coming in from outside into the closed medical field here.

From what you say about the subconscient, it would seem that its conquest would lessen and minimise our troubles to a great extent. But are there not periods or moments when we consciously bring back to memory certain things of the past, or are these impressions only due to the waves from the subconscious reaching up?

That is the conscious action of the mind.

I mean are our conscious or unconscious movements entirely influenced by the subconscious?

No certainly not—the subconscious is the evolutionary basis in us, it is not the whole nature. But things can rise from the subconscient and take shape in the conscious parts.

I also understand that this subconscient is more directly concerned with what we may call the more obscure and darker movements of our being. What is then the origin of the higher movements? Where do they remain lodged—inner mind, life and body? Do all the higher impulses—service, fame, ambition, etc., come from these inner planes? In the making of a being, I suppose then, the subconscient impressions and sanskaras of previous lives are carried forward. In that case, how far will it be right if I say that my desires, my impulses, formations and tendencies of lower nature are mostly due to old debts of past life, some due to impressions of this life? What about heredity then? Do we not say that usually sensual parents have sensual issues, etc., etc.,?

Another point—even if this subconscient is managed, is there not also universal nature which acts and reacts on individual consciousness and brings back from somewhere what is thrown away from here?

There are three sources of our action—the superconscient, the subliminal, the subconscient of which we are not aware. What we are aware of is the surface being which is only an instrumental arrangement. The source of all is the general Nature, but the general Nature deposits certain habits of movement, personality, character, faculties, dispositions, tendencies in us. That is what we usually call ourselves. Part of this is in habitual movement and use in our conscious part, part is concealed in the other three. But what we are on the surface is being constantly set in motion, changed, developed or repeated by the waves of the general Nature coming in on us either directly or else indirectly, through others, through circumstances etc. Some of this comes straight into the conscious part and acts there, our mind appropriating it as our own; part comes into the, subconscient or sinks into it and waits for an opportunity of rising up into the conscious, part goes into the subliminal and may at any time turn up or may not. Part passes through and is rejected. It is a constant activity of forces supplied to us out of which (or rather out of a small amount of it) we make what we will or can. But in reality it is all a play of forces, a flux, nothing fixed or stable; the appearance of stability is given by constant repetition and recurrence of the same vibrations and formations. That is why our nature can be changed in spite of Vivekananda and Horace and the subconscient, but it is a difficult job because the master mode of Nature is this obstinate repetition and recurrence.

As for the things thrown away from us that come back, it depends on where you throw them. Very often there is a sort of procedure about it. The mind rejects its mentalities, the vital its vitalities, the physical its physicalities—these usually go into the corresponding domain of general Nature. It all stays in the environmental consciousness, which we carry about with us, by which we communicate with the outside Nature, and persistently rushes back from there—until it is so absolutely rejected that it can't return. But when what the mind rejects is strongly supported by the vital, it sinks down into the vital, rages there and tries to rush up again and reoccupy the mind. When the vital rejects it, it sinks from the higher to the lower vital. When the lower vital too rejects it, it sinks into the physical consciousness and tries to stick by inertia or mechanical repetition. Rejected from there it goes into the subconscient and comes up in dreams, in passivity, in extreme tamas. The Inconscient is the last resort of the Ignorance.

As for the general Nature it is of course the natural tendency of its inferior forces to try and perpetuate their action in the individual, so they return on him when they find their influence rejected. But they cannot last long once the environmental consciousness is cleared—unless the Hostiles take a hand. Even then these can attack, but if the sadhak has established his position in the inner self, they can only attack and retire.

It is true that we bring most of ourselves from past lives. Heredity only affects the external being and all the effects of heredity are not accepted, only those that are in consonance with what we are to be or not preventive of it at least. I may be the son of my father or mother in certain respects, but most of me is as foreign to them as if I had been born in New York or Paraguay.

R complains that his head is aching more than ever—he can't sleep—he feels tired, he feels ill. I may observe that he seems to remain with all his windows closed—not the way to cure headache at any time and least of all in this weather, one would think.

P.S. By the way, on the 1st, I sent the medical reports. They came back without your signature.

I simply forgot to hand them over to the Mother for inspection. Send them again.

S's acidity has come back in full vigour, perhaps due to my fault. I added two more slices of bread at his repeated request and he informs me after two days.

His object in not informing you, Purushottam says, was that you might not stop his extra food!

Secondly he thought he has turned out to be Hercules overnight, went on scrubbing, doing gate-duty and many other exercises without ever asking me.

Purushottam says the work is light, but S purposely turned it into a Sandow exercise making all sorts of motions to give work to his muscles. Motive—to get hungry so that he might conscientiously ask for an increase of food.

I noticed recently a very peculiar movement in me. I could no longer think of you—an absolute indifference, apathy was there. It seemed as if you were before me yet not there.

It looks like the subconscient—perhaps due to my writing about it? But also it may be that the subconscient has become my King Charles's head and I see it everywhere.

What are these things cropping up? How will they end?

Let us hope, in the illumination of the subconscient and a glorious transformation!

Today very suddenly J said, "The Mother is sending you to Paris." I thought the whole thing has somehow leaked out. When I asked him how he came to know about it, he replied, "It is absolutely my intuition." Do you believe it, Sir? Can intuition be so exact?

I am not disposed to accuse the intuition in this case. I suspect R or somebody else of indiscretion with this intuitive outbreak as the result. Not that intuition cannot be exact, but we must not put too much on its poor back.

Another Bengali poem. Please cast a glance at it.

I like your poem very much. The poet seems to have come out after all. So the pains of labour, and even the forceps, were useful. It is the turn of the Yogi to come out next what? Even with a forceps!

C says that dal and cucumber curry give her asthmatic attacks; so she wants double milk instead.

Mother says you should not believe everything these women—they are all hysteric or semi-hysteric and these are hysteric or at least nervous imaginations. If one starts believing and acting on all of them, there will be no end. That is why Mother did not agree to the "more milk."

I was happy to know that you liked my poem, but I accept with much reservation your other statement that the poet has come out, for after a long labour I could not even complete a sonnet. If the poet has come out I think it is a sort of Krishna's afternoon visit to Chaitanya! As for the Yogi, I submit myself to anything,—injection, forceps or even operation; but only do bring him out, please. He is overdue!

Well, at any rate it proves that he is there—for these poems were true poetry—and can come out, even if he has still to be dragged out by the hair of his head. In time he will surely become less shy and difficult. As for the Yogi—well, we will see.

I can't resist the temptation of disturbing your Sabbath, Sir; here is a poem. The forceps were indispensable, but I hope it will be an "Angel"!

It is not bad at all—can be accorded the "order of merit". Traces of the forceps are visible. But if you go on, probably the forceps will not be indispensable.

One point, is there any truth in this "white flame" of the Purusha? The psychic being is supposed to be a flame, but it's also called the Secret Purusha. The image is then correct?

Of course the image is quite legitimate for the psychic being. The psychic being is a Purusha, not a flame—the psychic fire is not the being, it is something proper to it.

We had a discussion on Divine Love yesterday at D's place, Can we say the Divine may love one more than another? The expression would then be a little misleading because it will bring in human comparisons.

Not only a "little", but very misleading.

I would like to ask something about it. It is said that the Divine loves all equally; yet it is a fact that some are dearer to Him than others. I believe, you too say the same thing in the Gita!

I don't say ; it is the Gita that says it—or rather there are two separate slokas: one says that the Divine makes no differences—the other says that Arjuna is specially dear to him.

Sometimes I feel that if the Divine loves all equally, even then D and myself, for example, transgressing some vital rules of the Asram, will not be equally treated. In my saner moments I have tried to look at it more rationally.

That does not stand. Sometimes you might get nothing except perhaps an invisible stare; sometimes I might say "Now, look here, Nirod, don't make an immortal ass of yourself—that is not the transformation wanted." Still another time I might shout "Now! now! What the hell! what the blazes!" So it would depend on the occasion, not only on the person.

There are many instances to show that some persons are dearer to the Divine than others. Besides Krishna and Arjuna, we have the instance of Buddha and Ananda.

There is also St. John, the beloved disciple.

Then again, Vivekananda was dearer to Ramakrishna than the other disciples. Chaitanya showered his grace on Madhai and Jagai, but were they closer to him than Nitai?

But he had love for them (তাই বলে কি প্রেম দিব না?).⁹⁶

Some say that because through one person, chances of manifestation are greater, or because he is more open, or is a Vibhuti, he will be nearer to the Divine. That, I think, can be swept aside since degrees of manifestation can never be a criterion. What is it that determines this—I really don't know.

Of course you don't—nor does anybody. Is love a creation of the reason? or dealt out by this or that scale? Or does the Divine calculate "This fellow has so much of this or that quality! I will give him just so much more love than to that other?"

This question is not only of theoretical interest to us, but also of practical importance, since in our stumblings and gropings the Divine here may have a soft corner for some, and not perhaps for others to the same extent.

All that is rather beside the point. There is a universal divine love that is given equally to all—but also there is a special relation with each man—it is not a question of more or less, though it may appear so. But even that less or more cannot be judged by human standards. The man who gets a blow may, if he has a certain relation, feel it as a divine caress; he may even say, erecting his own standard, "She loves me more than others, because to others she would not [have] given that blow, to me she felt she could give it," and it would be quite as good a standard as the kind treatment one—as standards go. But no standards apply. For in each case it is according to the relation. The cause of the relation? It differs in each case. Cast your plummet into the deep and perhaps you shall find it—or perhaps you will hit something that has nothing at all to do with it.

As usual, in a discussion A lost his temper and hit out at S and made her terribly upset. He remarked to me, "Today I hit out at her deliberately. Always she thinks that we know nothing." You must have been given a report of the incident...

Obviously, there was the intention to strike. That is the worst of these discussions that people can't keep their temper or avoid bringing in their ego.

Maybe you will have to write my version of the affair to D, Whatever be the consequences, I will take them in a true attitude.

I don't propose to do so.

S has got boils. What about giving him vaccine injections?

Yes. Have you not got a counter-smoking injection for him also?

In your letter to J you speak of a "special relation" with the Mother. Is this determined by the need and temperament of the sadhak?

For instance, does the Divine say—this man needs to be patted a little, that man humoured, the other requires "an invisible stare" etc.? Is it that? I don't think so.

The need and temperament are one element only. It is the relation as a whole from which everything flows. These things are not arranged by some mental reason or calculated intention. The source is deeper and it is a reality behind that acts.

Some say that the Divine Love is like a rose; those who come nearer to it, that is, open themselves more, necessarily get more of it.

Of course—but those who don't open themselves get it too without knowing it often. Unfortunately many don't recognise or appreciate their good luck and may even go grumbling and bumbling of into the darkness.

But I say that the Divine Love is a rose which is impersonal as well as personal.

Of course.

Some people are of the opinion that those in whom the psychic has evolved through many births will come nearer to the Divine, and will, therefore, be dearer to Him than others whose psychic is still a child.

The psychic is always a child—बालवत्⁹⁷—only it can be a very wise child.

If I may make a personal allusion—I have all of a sudden been the recipient of your jokes and humour denoting an intimacy. What can be the reason for it? Is it because my psychic development needs it? Is it because I have to be handled only in this way?

All these wise reasonings are rubbish. You are x and therefore you get yz, that is all.

You asked me to cast my plummet into the deep to find out the reason. But the "deep" is too deep for my plummet.

For any mental plummet. It is not the mind that can discover these things.

I don't want to know the cause of the relationship. All I say is that a personal relationship does exist with some which is different from the impersonal relationship of love.

That is of course quite true. Why not leave it there?

R is shouting that he has worse headache than ever and also fever.

T has been asked to show her mouth to you, so that you may see what is the matter. She was taking no food at all, so Mother told her to take liquid food and gargle immediately afterwards. She says as a result her mouth is worse and all swollen.

S has again the pains and the [...]⁹⁸ etc. Has she taken her course of Fandorine? (I may add in strict privacy that this has happened after a quarrel in the D.R., a revolt of feelings against the Mother and a day and a half hunger-strike; but as this is Yogic or rather unYogic and not medical, you should pretend not to know anything about it.)

I leave your "special relation", but I have to discuss a little about your Force. I feel that your Force gives us the necessary inspiration for poetry, but I often doubt that you send it in a continuous current.

Of course not. Why should I? It is not necessary. I put my Force from time to time and let it work out what has to be worked out. It is true that with some I have to put it often to prevent too long stretches of unproductivity, but even there I don't put a continuous current. I haven't time for such things.

If the current were continuous, we would nor write just 15 to 20 lines at a stretch and then go on for days together producing only 3 or 4 lines.

That depends on the mental instruments. Some people write freely—others do so only when in a special condition.

Had your special Force been constantly acting, why should we have this difficulty? We should be able to feel the inspiration as soon as we sit down with pen and paper, shouldn't we?

No. At least I myself don't have continuous inspiration at command like that in poetry.

I don't think a latent faculty brought out by Yogic Force would achieve such a height of perfection as a faculty which manifests in the natural way.

Of course, not so long as it is latent or not fully emerged. But once it is manifested and settled, there is no reason why it should not achieve equal perfection. All depends on the quality of the inspiration that comes and the response of the instrument.

While I was having my afternoon nap, I felt some rays of the sun trying to pierce my brow. It means something, I suppose?

It simply means that some rays of the light of Truth are trying to get inside your skull. As you say "trying", I won't commit myself farther than that. Strictly speaking, as it was the brow, it means trying to get into the inner mind and light it up a little.

You said on the previous day that the quick emerging of a faculty depends on a favourable adhar. But on what does this favourableness depend? I thought it is all an asset of a past life due to which it becomes easily manifested in the present life...

How can one say on what it depends? It depends on all the past and all the future and on what is behind the present also!! The mental instrument is what has been formed for the present life—naturally if it has by present nature a marked beginning of capacity in a certain direction, it will be more easy for something that is pressing to manifest, to develop through it than it will be for an instrument not so naturally responsive. But "more easy" is all one can say. It does not follow that the facile instrument will do more than the difficult one. There are poets who produce with no difficulty; there are poets who produce with difficulty; there are poets who produce with occasional facility and customary difficulty. All kinds go in to mix the cosmic hotch-potch.

R says he is well today, free from his headache.

Perhaps that is why he proclaims that he is sad. He evidently means to become "artistic" in temperament. It is well known that you can't be an artist unless you are a prey to fits of romantic and meaningless sadness.

S didn't take full course of Fandorine, nor did I think it necessary, for she responded well and I thought her ailment was slight. Now I shall continue the course for a month.

It is a longstanding ailment and used to be before very violent, so a full course is, I think, necessary.

M complains that he is under treatment for his eruptions for 2 months and shaved his head 5 times—still he is covered, whole head with "irruptions" on face and elsewhere. Then?

We have been told about I.K. that she is in a bad state of health, much affected by profuse leucorrhoea (for which her self-chosen remedy is not to eat), but also there is often no urination for 2 days (this is hearsay, so perhaps an exaggeration). Please look into the affair.

I am at the end of a long poem ; have been working at it for many hours, but could not extract anything.

But what did you extract? Not even words? What a constipation!

I thought what a waste of time! Should one sit down to write without any inspiration seeming to drop?

I suppose you have to go on sitting down, until the inspiration gets converted and drops as soon as you sit.

You can't say that there is no application. But is it the right method, I ask?

Try, try again—as the spider said to Bruce.

Previously I was sleeping like a dog and now I am working like a bull.

The Bull is the mother animal

A flood of energy is there, but to what purpose?

O Force, Force,
Can you ever break this coarse
Tough stuff?

Well, if you can achieve poetry like that in English, what may you not do in Bengali?

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

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

I send you a small poem, opinion?

It is a very attractive little poem.

But where is the joy of the creator? I don't find or feel any!

It is the medical man with his forceps that comes in the way of the Ananda, I suppose—too much occupied with the doubt and difficulty of delivery. But the poet is there beyond a doubt now. So buck up, knock off the Man of Sorrows from your shoulders and go cheerfully ahead.

You have often spoken of the Man of Sorrows in connection with me. But I was a cheerful fellow at school and college. So I ant afraid he is a contribution, partly at least, of your Yoga.

Not of my Yoga, but of the blasted atmosphere that has been created here by the theory that revolt, doubt and resultant sorrow and struggle and all that rot are the best way to progress. The Asram has never been able. to get out of it, but only some people have escaped. The others have opened themselves to the confounded Man of Sorrows and got the natural consequence. But why the devil did you do it? The Man of Sorrows is a fellow who is always making a row in himself and covering himself with sevenfold overcoats of tragedy and gloom and he wouldn't feel his existence justified if he couldn't be colossally miserable—when he gets on people's backs he puts the same thing on them. Yoga on the other hand tells you even if you have all sorts of unpleasantnesses to live in the inner sunlight, your own or God's. At least most Yogas do except the Vaishnava—but the Yoga here is not a Vaishnava Yoga.

I had a terrible headache today, especially worse after pranam, till meditation.

What is this really, I am having now and then? If it is yogic in origin, I will have some comfort. Are you breaking some resistances inside? But if you break them in this way, I am afraid, a lot of pains and aches await me!

No. To make people ill in order to improve or perfect them is not Mother's method. But sometimes things like headache come because the brain either tries too much or does not want to receive or makes difficulties. But the Yogic headaches are of a special kind, and after the brain has found out the way to receive or respond, they don't come at all.

I seem to be making some excursions into the world of music, in my dreams. Last night I heard a professional female singer singing and playing. It was so distinct that even when it ceased, the music was ringing in my ears. I thought it was a lower vital enjoyment. The other day I heard songs about you—a higher vital enjoyment, I believe.

Yes, these are excursions into the vital world (lower or higher) or rather worlds, for there are any number of domains there. They are not really dreams—dreams proper belong to the subconscient and are usually a jumble.

You asked me why the devil I opened to the Man of Sorrows. How can I help it when the atmosphere is thick with doubt and depression? Human as we are, it is not easy to be free from them. They are inevitable in the very nature of things, aren't they?

No, not in this exaggerated form—and not with the vital luxuriating and wallowing in its misery. Attacks and perturbations on the surface, yes; but in some they are slight, in others rare and there is a clear mind or clear soul that looks at them and says, "O, you asses!" Mark that only a minority have allowed up the Man of Sorrows on their backs, though others have dallied with him. I admit that recently this minority has increased in numbers—the subconscient, I suppose!

We hear that you also had to undergo a lot of suffering and despair—to the extent of wanting to commit suicide!!!

What nonsense! Suicide! Who the devil told you that? Even if I knew that all was going to collapse tomorrow, I would not think of suicide, but go on to do what I still could for the future.

Give us a vision of your Vishwarupa or the flame or something to save us from being crushed by the Man of Sorrows. Let him be kicked into the dust-bin!

You indeed write very skilfully in the style of the Man of Sorrows That is just his tone.

R has got back his headache! What do you say to my giving him sulphersenol, an arsenic compound injection?

You can; but R has again become irregular,—windows shut, breakfast shunned, evening meal shunned etc., etc. He is really the architect of his own headache. He speaks of sadness, but refuses to give the reason of his mysterious sadness. You will say "The Man of Sorrows", but medically we can't admit this gentleman.

You said I can try sulphersenol, but Mother is dubious about it and thinks of dangers. Of course these arsenic compounds can produce toxic effects, but they are largely used in syphilis and other chronic skin diseases. Sulphersenol is the least toxic, and given in a very small dose, it may not produce any harm.

"May not" is hardly enough. A cure for syphilis can hardly be a neutral thing capable of being tried as a tonic anywhere. The recommendations themselves warn against possible dangers.

They have a tonic effect also. I am willing to go by your decision. At least one injection of Bismuth can be tried, but it is an inferior substitute. So?

Mother would rather you completed the Cacodylate. When it is finished, we will see.

R came at 11 a.m. for injection and he had high fever. Gave him sponge bath and washed the head with cold water, the temperature came down. Now I hear he has again 106°. Given a bottte.of diaphoretic. No other complication except headache. Ice-bag is being given.

Has he been constipated or is he so now? He used to have very bad constipations, but nowadays it is not possible to get anything out of him on that subject. Another thing to be seen carefully is whether there is any danger of meningitis. (But on no account speak to him of this or say anything that would alarm or upset).

Today I went to see a football match ; tomorrow is the finals! Can I go to see it if l can arrange the dispensary work with Rajangam?

The Lord he knows.

All rosy things and poetry have died and the old Nirod-self is the master of the field!

Better turn it out again—it is not a place for it to graze in.

I objected to J having talks and discussions with a friend in the Dispensary. I said they could do it in my bedroom but J got upset and left the place. This has happened more than once. I am very much indebted to her for having brought me here and helping me in many other ways. At times I feel like breaking off the relation once for all. But I fear to give her any such blow as she is very sensitive. What should I do?

You are perfectly right in your objection. It is extraordinary how people here make a personal matter of everything and extraordinary how they want to mix up everything and make একাকার⁹⁹

As for the rest, well, gratitude is a good thing, but it is after all the Divine who brought you to the Divine and the best gratitude you can show to the instrument is to do what is best for your sadhana as well as hers. It is a little difficult to say what you should do in the case. A quiet friendliness without insistence on either side would be the best thing, if J agrees to it and follows it. Friendship in the big sense of the term is another guess matter; it is an exceedingly difficult affair and needs a gift for it on both sides. From what you say, you don't seem to fit into each other very well and, if so, the chances for it are not very hopeful. To break off altogether seems to be hard, to insist on old ties and make demands is obviously out of place—why not attempt by common agreement a middle way? J's over-sensitive vital? Well, she has to get over it, I suppose—for the sake of her own sadhana.

Shall I try to bear the knocks and shocks when they come, keeping a friendly feeling within Or her? And how much of the letter you have written shall I show her?

I am rather doubtful about the latter. The other process is better at the same time getting J to understand gradually (though as quickly as possible) that there must be a change in the spirit and nature of any relation between you.

Yes, it is after all the Divine who brought me here. But before all was it not her prayer and aspiration for me that was the cause?

As J did not pre-exist before the Divine and it is not she who is managing the affairs of the world, I prefer to believe that it was J who was the instrument of the Divine and not the Divine the instrument of J.

Was it predestined that she should be a link between you and me? Had I really no chance independently? Was our union only a play of forces?

Predestination and chance are words—words that obscure the truth by their extreme rigidity of definition. All is done through a play of forces which seems to be a play of different possibles, but there is Something that looks and selects and uses without being either blindly arbitrary (predestination) or capriciously decisive (chance).

I heard from Jaswant that L and S are two most sincere sadhikas; this seems to have been your opinion.

I am exceedingly surprised to hear it. L, yes—since she had her conversion several years ago, has been single-pointed and single-hearted towards the Mother. But S? She has experiences, but her vital is as vagabond as a butterfly. That is why she does not arrive.

I am in trouble and I don't know if you will help me. Why not?

You know that I have not served or sought any god. Yoga and religion were a repulsion to me. I can't conceive of any Krishna, Shiva or even Buddha helping me—since I have not taken their name.

Perhaps Mahomed?

I have neither any great being nor power behind me which many have, I hear.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "great being nor power".]

Hallo, hallo! what's that?

I know only you and none else. You may say. "What's the use if you don't keep true to me?" Will you also say, "No such sentiments without fulfilling the conditions"?

The sentiment is all right, but you must either trundle along yourself or allow yourself to be kicked along (excuse the simile) towards the goal—one of the two, what the blazes!

June 30, 1935

July 1935

Take S's case—what suffering she went through for the Divine. Left her home, husband, etc. and still other sides show up. What human elements are we made of

Both J and S are made up of disparate elements which are not at all in harmony with each other—so are many others, it is a common case. Nothing to be surprised at in that, the man harmonised round something central in him is a rarity.

Now about predestination and chance. The ultimate responsibility then lies with this "Something" on which the play of forces is dependent and with those, for instance, who have gone away from here due to hostile influence—it was possible because this Something gave its sanction? No chance exists then and no free will. This free will of ours is nothing but being an instrument in the hands of forces while we think we are enjoying great freedom. And this play is again guided by Something?

There is no question of responsibility. The "Something" does not act arbitrarily, paying no heed to the play of forces or the man's nature. "Selects" does not mean "selects at random." If a man puts himself on the side of or into the hands of the hostile influences and says "This way I will go and no other. I want my ego, my greatness, my field of power and action"—has not the Something the right to say "I agree. Go and find it—if you can"? On the other, if the balance of forces is otherwise, less on one side, the selection may be the other way, the saving element being present, and determine another orientation. But to understand the working of this Cosmic Something one must see not only the few outward factors observed by the human eye, but the whole working with all its multitudinous details—that one cannot do unless one is oneself in the cosmic consciousness and with some opening at least to the Over-mind.

There is no such thing as "free" will, but there is the power of the Purusha to say "yes" or "no" to any particular pressure of Prakriti and there is the power of the mind, vital etc. to echo feebly or strongly the Purusha's "yes" or "no" or to resist it. A constant (not a momentary) Yes or No has its effect in the play of the forces and the selection by the Something.

I find that sincerity, openness, etc., are good in theory but very difficult in practice.

It has got to be done all the same.

J said one thing that struck me very much—that I have been so fortunate in having your friendship and still I indulge in trifles.

Almost everybody is like that in one way or another.

Apropos of X's tactics you have said: "The eternal feminine? Terribly so—but that is not the Real Woman."¹⁰⁰ Who is the Real Woman, please? Anyone here?

I was not referring to anyone in particular but to the element in woman which is simple, straightforward, faithful, sympathetic—without the twist in it. I don't mean anything very high, but something straight and unspoiled and clear.

N has been suffering long from Sciatica and it is getting acute—he has to remain in bed. Go and see what can be done to get rid of the attack. He did not want to be treated, but it is getting to be too much of a bad thing.

K's cod-liver oil will be over in 3 or 4 days. We have no stock. Shall we order from Madras? He is better.

Pavitra has a medicine to replace the cod-liver oil for a month. It must be prepared by yourself (as it is concentrated drops) not by K.

Will you warn R.K. that he must not press his eyes on Mother's feet? It is dangerous for the other sadhaks.¹⁰¹

Somehow it seems the atmosphere is very heavy nowadays. How I suffered without any apparent cause—as if something had gripped me by the throat.

You should not allow yourself to be gripped by the throat—grip the other fellow's throat and fling him away.

It seems I am now the target of all depression. But why?

But why accept a depression which has no reason for its existence?

Is it, as our friend Jaswant says, the Asram vital that affects me, or a personal one?

In Jaswant's case it is personal—in yours it looks like surrender to the "Asram" or rather to the "anti-Asram" vital.

But I have suffered enough, enough, more than my share. One can't go on, you know, with a spiritual dietary of 3 chief elements of food. Let me remind you that vitamins of experience are essential; otherwise nervous breakdown or deficiency disease is the result. You have a lot of things in your chaddar as you said in a book...

? [Sri Aurobindo put a big question mark.]

They say that you are now handling the lower vital and so the general trouble. True?

Subconscient vital physical—the lower vital is irrational, but not so utterly "without reasons" as that.

J says he has no personal difficulties; he has to suffer for the sake of the Asram.

Rubbish! His own vital has always been vehement and unstable.

You say his depression is personal, mine impersonal, while all the time I was cursing myself for my neuro-vital mechanism.

The form it has taken is not personal to you, it has all the sign of the "regulation lathi" attack. Of course it takes advantage of something in you, but that is a different matter.

... No one has ever heard of a Master doing sadhana for the sadhaks—fighting day and night. Even then troubles no less, difficulties the same, goal far-off Is it the time and circumstance that are at fault or the nature of the blessed instruments?

It is the nature of the human being—whoever told you it was an easy job?

All on a sudden, N said, he felt giddy. I didn't find any apparent reason. Giddiness in old people is an important symptom. Let me predict that this old man will give you a lot of trouble.

I fear you are right. The only chance is that he has some responsiveness, but his physical self is too weak.

He is very nervous and afraid after S's death. I wish you had adopted a modified Spartan system in your school of training.

So do I. It would have saved a lot of bother

N is slightly better. I came to know he had been taking a lot of mangoes. Won't it be better to tell him to rigorously keep to the Asram diet for the sake of his health?

If he wants to be healthy and last, he must certainly be careful about his diet. It is extremely important at his age.

My cold has given me the quick realisation that everything in this world—including the Divine—is Maya. What Shankara and Buddha realised by sadhana, I realise by a simple cold!

No need of sadhana for that—anybody with a fit of the blues can manage that. It is to get out of the Maya that sadhana is needed.

N reported just now that his "sciatica" is worse and asked me to inform you. But when I advised him to take some external medicine—well, how can he do that without your permission?

He has full permission, but he is very particular on having it in so many precise words written to himself. I will see what he has written today. What external medicine do you want to give? And what about his constipation?

For N, the external application would be a liniment, say, pot.iod. or Siju or Belladonna or any counter-irritant...

All right.

[Regarding a certain incident that had recently occurred] I was under the impression that Mother could at once know of such things. Some even say that she knows everything—all that is material or spiritual. Others maintain that she knows when the question of consciousness is involved, e.g. sex movements etc., but not so much about material things.

Good Lord! you don't expect her mind to be a factual encyclopaedia of all that is happening on all the planes and in all the universes? Or even on this earth—e.g. what Lloyd George had for dinner yesterday?

Questions of consciousness of course she always knows even with her outermost physical mind. Material facts she can know but is not bound to do it. The matter however is too complex for answer in a short space.

What would be true to say, is that she can know if she concentrates or if her attention is called to it and she decides to know. I often know from her what has happened before it is reported by anyone. But she does not care to do that on a general scale.

But if she does not know, what really is the meaning of your message: "Always behave as if the Mother was looking at you, for indeed she is always present"?

It is the emanation of the Mother that is with each sadhak all the time. In former days when she was spending the night in a trance and out working in the Asram, she brought back with her the knowledge of all that was happening to everybody. Nowadays she has no time for that.

This question of Mother's knowledge became even more interesting for me today. She gave me the flower signifying "Discipline". I began to wonder why this particular flower was given; at last I remembered that yesterday I had taken some hot khichuri with J and N.

In this respect the Mother is guided by her intuitions which tell her which flower is needed at the moment or helpful. Sometimes it is accompanied by a perception of a particular state of consciousness, sometimes by that of a material fact; but only the bare fact, usually—e.g. it would not specify that it was hot khichuri that was cooked or how J or N came in. Not that that is impossible, but it is unnecessary and does not happen unless needed.

... If not this, what is meant by "Discipline" in Yogic parlance? Anyway please tell us how far Mother and you know about our physical, material affairs.

In this case it was a general hint with a special reference to khichuri.

What you say about "Emanations" is very interesting. Mother has then about 150 emanations and, adding 150 of yours, we are each, protected by one god and one goddess! It's difficult to believe—well, still—for example our throats are gripped by malign forces, in our sleep!...

I am not aware of any emanations of mine. As for the Mother's, they are not there for protection, but to support the personal relation or contact with the sadhaka, and to act so far as he will allow them to act. If, for instance, you sidle up to X of the beaming face in your sleep, what can the Emanation do but shake its head and say "Well, perhaps when he has finished, there may be a chance of getting something done"?

Kindly enlighten us a little more regarding the emanations. How do they support the personal relation or contact with us when we have neither the former nor feel the latter? Do they do these things even when we are not conscious, and how do they act either? I thought all personal relations were with the Mother direct, not through a deputy.

It is terribly difficult to write of these things, for you are all as ignorant as blazes about these things and misunderstand at every step. The Emanation is not a deputy, but the Mother herself. She is not bound to her body, but can put herself out (emanate) in any way she likes. What emanates, suits itself to the nature of the personal relation she has with the sadhak which is different with each, but that does not prevent it from being herself. Its presence with the sadhak is not dependent on his consciousness of it. If everything were dependent on the surface consciousness of the sadhak, there would be no possibility of the divine action anywhere; the human worm would remain the human worm and the human ass, the human ass, for ever and ever. For if the Divine could not be there behind the veil, how could either ever become conscious of anything but their wormhood and asshood even throughout the ages?

When K says that he feels the Mother's physical touch, with whom does he have the contact—the Mother or the emanation?

With the Mother—the emanation helping—which is its business.

By the way, are these brackets about emanations absolutely unbreakable or can they be withdrawn in favour of a few, e.g. J, D, and put back again?

You have already spoken to 3, she says. That does not matter; but they are not to be thrown down for others. It would only create useless mental froth and bubbles.

I dreamt I had written 4 very beautiful sonnets; are they to actualise?

Let us hope so.

In your letter on the emanation, do you mean by a "persona relation" the impersonal person that is the psychic?

The psychic is not impersonal. You must be thinking of the universal Atman. The psychic is always personal and individual.

One may not be conscious of the Presence, but the relation? Unfortunately, I don't feel any personal relation with the Mother. There lies the whole difficulty of the sadhana.

One has to become conscious by the awakening of the inner mind and vital—or best of all by the awakening of the psychic. It is quite possible for two persons to have a relation of which one is conscious and the other is not—his mental blindness or vital misunderstandings coming in the way. That is frequent even in ordinary life. Very often one becomes conscious of it only when he loses it (by the death of the other or otherwise) and is then full of repinings for his blindness.

A.B. writes in an article that through sorrow and suffering God leads us to immortality; that there is a glory, even a bliss, in their conquest. I am afraid my mystic vision and chicken heart do not see much in this theory. Conquest of sorrow and suffering is all right for brave hearts like Vivekananda's and A.B.'s, or even for poor hearts like mine when they have a Guru. like Sri Aurobindo and a mother like our Mother here to do the sadhana for them; but what about the people outside who are wallowing under the weight of their crosses?

I suppose you have not read my "Riddle of this World" ; but it is a similar solution I put there. A.B.'s way of putting it is a trifle too "Vedantic-Theistic"—in my view it is a transaction between the One and the Many. In the beginning it was you (not the human you which is now complaining but the central being) which accepted or even invited the adventure of the Ignorance. Sorrow and struggle are a necessary consequence of the plunge into the Inconscience and the evolutionary emergence out of it. The explanation is that it had an object, the eventual play of the Divine Consciousness and Ananda not in its original transcendence but under conditions for which the plunge into the Inconscience was necessary. It is fundamentally a cosmic problem and can be understood only from the cosmic consciousness. If you want a solution which will be agreeable to the human mind and feelings, I am afraid there is none. No doubt if human beings had made the universe, they would have done much better, but they were not there to be consulted when they were made. Only your central being was there and that was much nearer in its temerarious foolhardiness to Vivekananda's or A.B.'s than to the repining prudence of your murmuring and trembling human mentality of the present moment—otherwise it would never have come down into the adventure. Or perhaps it did not realise what it was in for? It is the same with the wallowers under their cross. Even now they wallow because something in them likes the wallowing and bear the cross because something in them chooses to suffer. So?

Why am [feeling so disturbed? Life seems to be a washout. Have I fallen again into the blessed lower vital dungeon?

I suppose so. It is the vital that refuses to leave its movements and yet at the same [time] can't enjoy them (i.e. why life seems to be a washout).

I am more and more relapsing into a gloom and glum.

Tamas of a disappointed but still recalcitrant vital.

Do you intend to give me a push or a kick this time at the Darshan, or just a touch as usual?

I think for that your vital has to make up your mind whether it is going to leave its old moorings or not. Otherwise a kick will only give it gloom and glum and a push make it tumble down and say "0 Lord! what a washout is life!"

It is because I made up my mind long ago to leave the old moorings that I was able to kick at the old life, but the moorings seem to be very deep, beyond my human reach...

Yes, you made up your mind and it remains made up—but I was speaking of your vital and its mind. It is because your vital is kicking against your made-up mind that there is the trouble. You ought to talk to it more seriously and firmly and, when necessary, give it a calm and judicious whipping until it becomes a good boy.

If the Emanation is the Mother herself, why do we have to make a big case of our troubles and depressions, and buzz it in post-haste for your hearing? Lack of receptivity? or opening? No faith in the Emanation or in its existence? What?

Nobody has to do it. People do it because they are ignorant and unconscious.

If anyone is conscious of the Mother's presence, he does not make a big case of his troubles. Even if one is not yet conscious, still those who have faith or are not touched by your Man of Sorrows are not making the row you speak of.

A.B. says if we see things impartially we'll find that happiness predominates over sorrow. It is hard for me to concur with this observation.

It is fundamentally true for most people that the pleasure of life, of existence in itself, predominates over the troubles of life; otherwise most people would want to die, whereas the fact is that everybody wants to live—and if you proposed to them an easy means of eternal extinction they would decline without thanks. That is what A.B. is saying and it is undeniable. It is also true that this comes from the Ananda of existence which is behind everything and is reflected in the instinctive pleasure of existence. Naturally, this instinctive essential pleasure is not the Ananda,—it is only a pale and dim reflection of it in an inferior life-consciousness—but it is enough for its purpose. I have said that myself somewhere and I do not see anything absurd or excessive in the statement.

He is evidently speaking from the cosmic consciousness; otherwise how could he fail to find sorrows, struggles, heartbreaks, hells, perditions gaping everywhere!

Not at all. There are plenty of people, not endowed with the cosmic consciousness, who have said and written the same thing. It is no new theory or statement.

I have no statistics about the other parts of the cosmos, but just look at India: acute epidemics, sub-acute unemployment with consequent suicides, chronic famine and starvation. People, who 10 years ago were making a good business, are breaking their heads over the future—of tomorrow, sir, only tomorrow!

All that is only a feature of the present time when everything is out of order. One can't argue from that and speak as if it were the normal existence of the human race.

Even with all this trouble and disorder are all these human beings feeling so miserable as you say? They have so much to vex and trouble them, yet they go on chatting and laughing and enjoying what they can. Why?

And still the Ananda of simply being in bone and flesh surpasses all sorrow! I would like to be an optimist, but surely not in excess!

For most people it does. All are not men of sorrows like yourself or fallen into the Byronic vein. Some of course have so miserable an existence that it stifles the innate pleasure of life—but these are after all a small minority.

You have written in "The Riddle of this World" that this is an unideal and unsatisfactory world strongly marked with the stamp of inadequacy, suffering and evil.

That is when you look at what the world ought to be and lay stress on that. The idealists' question is why should there be pain at all, even if it is counterweighed by the fundamental pleasure of existence? The real crux is why should inadequacy, limit and suffering come across this natural pleasure of life? It does not mean that life is essentially miserable in its very nature.

People will invite A.B. to come down from his hyper-optimism into the material earth-consciousness and see for himself.

A.B. is not an ass. He knows perfectly well what is taking place in the material earth-consciousness and would be very anxious to plunge into the fray to make things better, if I allowed him—but I don't and won't.

I am trying to have a dash again at poetry

Very glad to hear it.

It seems A.B. has come to the top rung of your spiritual ladder. In your heavenly Parliament he must have been in charge of a very important portfolio! Otherwise I don't see how he could, at first sight, have had a vision of the Divine in the Mother, besides other things.

What top rung and what Parliament? There is no such thing as a heavenly parliament. A.B. progressed smoothly and rapidly from the beginning in Yoga, first, because he was in dead earnest; secondly, because he had a clear and solid mind and a strong and tenacious will in complete control of the nerves; thirdly, because his vital being was calm, strong and solid; finally and chiefly, because he had a complete faith and devotion to the Mother. As for seeing the Divine in the Mother at first sight, he is not the only one to do that. Plenty of people have done that, who had no chance of any portfolios, e.g. Rene's cousin, a Musulman girl, who as soon as she met her declared "This is not a woman, she is a goddess", and has been having significant dreams of her ever since and whenever she is in trouble, thinks of her and gets helped out of the trouble. It is not so damnably difficult to see the Divine in the Mother as you make it out to be.

Your general notice about the suspension of correspondence has struck terror! My only yoga consisted in this correspondence with you...

You can count yourself among the exceptions who are allowed to write (with Dilip, Arjava and others). But don't flourish your good fortune (if it is one) in the face of others—keep it dark.

We accepted G's report about his aunt's temperature being 99˚, with some suspicion...

I did not believe at all in this 99˚. G is an overmental sadhak who creates facts according to his liking by the power of Vak.¹⁰²

So your remarks about A.B. only prove that he was not of the common stock.

I don't know. It only proves that he was a good "adhar'

If one comes down from the higher planes, as I understand K has done for your work, everything becomes a Grand Trunk Road for him.

Nobody has found this Yoga, a Grand Trunk Road, neither A.B. nor K nor even myself or the Mother. All such ideas are a romantic illusion.

I don't know what the Musulman lady exactly saw. From what you say it seems to be a flash of intuition.

Not at all, it was a direct sense of the godhead in her—for I suppose you mean by intuition a sort of idea that comes suddenly? That is what people usually understand by intuition. It was not that in her case nor in A.B.'s.

By seeing the Divine in the Mother, I don't mean imagination or calm, calculated reasoning. But to see actually the fully flaming, resplendent, effulgent Divine Mother in any one of her Powers—why, that is damnably difficult, Sir, at least for me who have not even seen the halo around her.

I don't believe A.B. or anybody would have that at first view. That can only come if one has already developed the faculty of vision in the occult planes. What is of more importance is the clear perception or intimate inner feeling or direct sense, "This is She". I think you are inclined to be too romantic and poetic and too little spiritually realistic in these things.

About G's aunt—to detect T.B. bacilli in the urine it has to be injected into a guinea-pig—the doctor says, for absolute certainty. The charge for it will be Rs.7. G is not very willing. I suppose it can be omitted though important for the patient.

Yes, you can insist on his forking out that, if he is unwilling. Luck for the guinea-pig!

If seeing the Divine depended on developed occult faculty, how do you explain people's seeing Ram, Krishna, Shiva, etc., in you at Darshan?—I mean by people who have apparently no such faculty. We've read about Krishna presenting himself before small boys, taking them to school, etc.—fables?

With many people the faculty of this kind of occult vision is the first to develop when they begin sadhana. With others it is there naturally or comes on occasions without any practice of Yoga. But with. people who live mainly in the intellect (a few excepted) this faculty is not usually there by nature and most have much difficulty in developing it. It was so even with me.

What I understand of the matter is that if you intend that somebody should see the Divine in you—be it a blind man—he is able to see. No faculty is required.

It would be something of a miracle to see things without the faculty of seeing. We don't deal much in miracles of that kind.

Darshan is approaching. Would it be more profitable to concentrate and meditate then to try to write poems with much difficulty?

If one can concentrate, it is always good to concentrate—darshan or no darshan.

I started 2 sonnets, wrote 4 lines of each, but could complete neither. Should my project be adjourned sine die?

It can be adjourned if you like, but not sine die.

You have permitted S to have a stove, I hear. Have you also permitted him to cook and gobble rasogollas? I ask for information—because if he is supposed to digest, it is all right—otherwise!

Yes, I permitted the stove since he was complaining of much flatulence, so that he could take milk diluted with barley and sago, but rasogollas not at all.

I am informed that he ate 2 rasogollas and offered to P. P told him to confess, but he has not done so—for fear I suppose that his stove should be taken away. X some time ago wrote that S was making sweets, but one cannot always believe X's statements, so I said nothing about it.

If the stove is taken away he will again complain of flatulence. Please see then if you can find out some way.

I don't know; but one can't be responsible for the results if he goes on like that. If he expects the Divine Force to be always fighting against his Rasogollas to protect his confounded liver!

August 1935

Today we got the result of M's urine exam. The poor pig died of toxic symptoms. No definite light on the diagnosis.

Alas, poor pig!

X is strongly suspected of stealing some ideas from a novel of J, given him for reading. Should he not have avoided it?

Of course he should. But if you knew much of literary and artistic people, you would not be surprised at anything they do.

I advised her to get her book published now with your approval. In that case it has to be done by N, but that will at once wound X who has taken so much trouble to go through the MS.

I have no objection to is doing what is proposed, provided it is not done under my authority. As you can understand, I don't want any farther bust-up in a delicate quarter.

It has really pained me very much. Everywhere the same humanity!

Of course. That's what I have been telling all along. It is not without reason that I am eager to see something better on this well-meaning but woe-begone planet.

I was much touched by your last remarks of yesterday... Looking around and at oneself, one heaves a sigh and says—What disciples we are, of what a Master!

As to the disciples, I agree!

And we are to be divinised and made the nucleus of a greater work? My God! No, Sir, I am doubtful about your success; but wish that at least 2 or 3 may be there so that looking at them we may exclaim—By them humanity is conquered! Really, I wish you had chosen better stuff like K.

Yes, but would the better stuff, supposing it to exist, be typical of humanity? To deal with a few exceptional types would hardly solve the problem. And would they consent to follow my path?—that is another question. And if they were put to the test, would not the common humanity suddenly reveal itself?—that is still another question.

[Referring to something personal:] You really rescued me yesterday. My humble thanks. Got a few knocks though—

Knocks and shocks are good for the soul, according to some philosophers. Agree?

About knocks and shocks, I suppose I have to agree, since you said I have to allow myself to be kicked along. But what about the other philosophers?

The kicking was suggested as a mild stimulant—it could not be included in shocks and knocks. However knocks can help—as man is now constituted—but it is not part of my philosophy, only a viewpoint of experience.

J has a swelling of the lower lip; she surmised that it is a hint to stop her from talking too much. When I smiled incredulously, she argued that it was quite possible.

It is possible. It depends on the person and how he or she takes things.

She added that I could ask you if I liked. What do you say about the great hint?

Hints are hints only when you take them—otherwise they are only swellings on a lip.

I send a small poem with Nishikanta's correction. Am I in any way following in his footsteps?

How? Your manner is quite unlike his.

What did you mean by "the poet seems to have come out"? [5.6.35] Forceps delivery can't be more difficult.

He is out—but with difficulty.

A poem of 14 lines taking so many days! Anyway what do you think of it?

My brother Monomohan in his early days would have taken 40 and been surprised at his own rash celerity in writing.

I like it very well.

N scorched her hand with hot milk. I think it would be good to keep some picric acid for people dealing with fire-works! It will save them some suffering.

It would be a good idea, but we cannot trust people not to misuse or do mischievous things with it. It would have to be kept shut up under Dyuman's care or somebody else's and so not always available at once.

I suppose you have no time to see my old poem of 80 lines?

After the 15th would be more convenient

This morning I lost my temper over N.P.'s obstinacy. He would not listen to my instructions. But can you tell me why I've been feeling a sort of antagonism towards him?

It may be a Dr. Fell affair. "The reason why I cannot tell"—or it may be the result of a feeling of accumulated bother.

Well, Sir, have I covered a few milestones on the journey to the Infinite?

Move on, move on!

Some time back you wrote to me: "Never has there been such an uprush of mud and brimstone as during the past few months. However the Caravan goes on and today there was some promise of better things." What about the up-rush of mud? Has it settled down, and are people now floating in the flood of the Supramental?

It is still there, but personally I have become superior to it and am travelling forward like a flash of lightning, that is to say zigzag but fairly fast. Now I have got the hang of the whole hanged thing—like a very Einstein I have got the mathematical formula of the whole affair (unintelligible as in his case to anybody but myself) and am working it out figure by figure.

As for people, no! they are not floating in the supramental—some are floating in the higher mind, others rushing up into it and flopping down into the subconscient alternately, are swinging from heaven into hell and back into heaven, again back into hell ad infinitum, some are sticking fast contentedly or discontentedly in the mud, some are sitting in the mud and dreaming dreams and seeing visions, some have their legs in the mud and their head in the heavens etc., etc., an infinity of combinations, while many are simply nowhere. But console yourself—these things, it seems, are inevitable in the process of great transformations.

I send a poem as an offering—the result of the Darshan.

By the way very much pleased with your offering. Even if he is slow in delivery and his Muse not অনন্তপ্রসবা¹⁰³ like Harin's or Dilip's or—the poet is undeniable.

You say, "I have become superior to it and am travelling forward fast," but you have been always superior and been always travelling fast all your life. How is it going to affect us? [Sri Aurobindo underlined "always superior and been always travelling fast".]

Rubbish!

If my being able to solve the problem of the subconscient in the sadhana is of no importance, then of course it won't affect anybody. Otherwise it may.

From the condition of the people you describe, there isn't much hope left, nor does it show that your travelling fast has speeded them up.

That is of no importance at present. To get the closed doors open is just now the thing to be done and I am doing it. Speeding people through them can come in its own time when the doors and the people are, ready.

What is this mathematical formula that you have all of a sudden found out? Let us have it in a tangible form, if possible...

I told you it was unintelligible to anybody but myself, so how the deuce do you expect me to give it to you in a tangible form?

Chand writes that while he was meditating in a quiet place, he saw a very brilliant mass of reddish light above the temple there. What does it mean?

Don't know. Red means a hundred different things and the particular sense depends upon the shade and the context. If he is getting calm and peace, that is more important.

It appears you have made many people happy at this Darshan in spite of their oscillations, sitting contentedly on their mud thrones. My discontented self is one of that happy group!

Well, one can be happy in a swing or even in the mud! The perfect sadhak should indeed be happy in all circumstances, সর্ব্বথা বর্ত্তমানোহপি¹⁰⁴ as the Gita puts it.

We wonder and wonder how, all on a sudden, you have melted so visibly, tangibly and manifestly. What is it that could melt you so as to give us 'a patting during darshan?

It is my mathematical discovery—don't seek for any other cause—my grand new, brand-new mathematical formula.

Divine Love concretising itself? or the Divine himself elated at the thought of an impending big deal?

What great expectations! Besides I'm not Roosevelt. I am only going ahead, therefore visibly cheerful though not yet demonstratively exuberant.

But whatever it may be, if you keep up this patting, Sir, at every Darshan, our repinings will disappear. Don't you think so?

Don't know. Provided no sadhak interprets my pattings as blows and cries "Why did you thrash me, Sir?"

I am very very happy, Sir—almost floating in Supra-mental bliss. Not only that, I feel you have done, after all, really something this time. Is this happiness an expression of the psychic or of the inner vital?

The psychic of course, with the vital in dependence on it.

What do you think of your namesake, I mean Aurobindo Bose—engineer? I like him very much.

A very fine fellow with much stuff in him and both strong and truly sincere in his spiritual aspiration.

He says that very soon you will be getting 2 to 3 lakhs of rupees and he wants me to get it verified from you.

Let us hope! let us hope! It would be very handy indeed.

I beg to be pardoned for one thing; today Dilipda was saying that he was very happy with this Darshan. I was so moved that I let out the secret of your "travelling forward" fast. Has it been a mistake to let it out?

No—only you must not tell it to too many people. It is only because I don't want speculation or gossip about such things as that spoils the atmosphere.

The other night after closing my eyes far a few minutes, when I opened them and looked at the moon, I saw around it a rainbow-coloured circle which again was surrounded by a clouded darkness. Any meaning?

It is a certain kind of subtle physical vision which sees these things. It is not quite easy to say when they have significance or are only things seen. If it had any, it would mean spiritual light with a circle of manifold powers around it apparently in the darkness of the ordinary consciousness.

C has sent Rs. 2/- on the occasion of his birthday which is on the 27th. He wants me to do pranam to Mother for him also.

You can do a second pranam (altruistic, for C) on the 27th and Mother will give you a flower for him.

The Darshan atmosphere and its influence seem to be waning away so soon! Old friends or foes are stepping in!

There is always an adverse movement after the darshan, the revanche of the lower forces. I had a stoppage myself, but I am of again riding on the back of my Einsteinian formula.

All poetry gone! Stuck in the sestet of a sonnet. I wonder really when this force will tumble down or will it ever?

You have formed like many poets a bad habit of sticking in the mud between inspired jolts. You have to dissolve the habit—as a doctor you must find out a dissolvent which will do it.

You surprise me by your phrase, "between inspired jolts", for most of the poems have been written by halves, quarters, with some intervals and many attempts in between. That is why I can't look upon a poem as having any worth.

Well, if that is not writing by "inspired jolts", what is?

The worth of a poem depends on what has come out, not on the way in which it has come out.

But since a bad habit has been formed, it has to be dissolved. But how? Doctors, you know, are often failures specially in treating themselves. Please, then, prescribe a remedy. It is queer that you write a few lines in no time and the rest perhaps at no time!

This is too cryptic for me. I may say however that inspiration for poetry is always an uncertain thing (except for a phenomenon like H). Sometimes it comes in a rush, sometimes one has to labour for days to get a poem right, sometimes it does not come at all. Besides each poet is treated by the Muse in a different way.

It is proposed to include my poems in an Asram Anthology of Bengali poems. But won't my work look pale and anaemic beside Nishikanta's, all splendour and glow?

No. Besides, there must always be varieties in an anthology which is like a museum or a botanical collection. So a modestum Nirodicum inside will do no harm even beside a flamingo Nishikantica.

J is thinking if she could get her book published without any recommendation from others.

I suppose she still needs a sponsor. To take good things on their own merit happens sometimes with magazine editors, but sometimes is not always or often.

See the ways of the world! An honest and good work depends on so many factors even for publication. I suppose it is inevitable in the scheme.

It is the pattern of the scheme. It can only be changed if you change human nature or substitute for it a higher nature.

Any chance of coming out of the mud or the same caravan speed?

What? For whom? Which way?

About yesterday's poem, Nishikanta says: "Couldn't your experience—if it is an experience—be expressed in a more subdued way? Have you really heard the "apsara sangeet", in the lyre of the wind?"

It does not seem to me that so much matter of factness can be demanded in poetry. I was not aware of any excessive uchchwas¹⁰⁵ when I read it.

G has a disease of which the exact diagnosis you want to know, can be made only by a microscopic examination. He gives a different story altogether, what shall we do?

Can you not say something like this, that you have to make the analysis (or whatever it is called) in order to be sure of your treatment?

What do you say to showing G's condition to Dr. Manilal?

You may.

With regard to the publication of J's book, she put my name in the letter she was writing to you. I asked her to strike it out as the reference to me was too short and did not convey my exact idea. She struck it out but said that I was afraid of my name being involved. This is what I got after having done so much!

These are the pin-pricks of life. You must walk warily if you want to avoid them. Beware of dropping pins about—they may prick the dropper. J's resentment at being plagiarised is a pin of importance.

Today I shall request you to "stand and deliver" on a different subject. What is exactly the significance of the 24th of November? Different people have different ideas about it. Some say that the Avatar of the Supermind descended in you.

Rubbish! whose imagination was that?

Others say that you were through and through overmentalised.

Well, it is not quite the truth, but nearer to the mark

I myself understood that on that day you achieved the Supermind.

There was never any mention of that from our side.

If you did not achieve the Supermind at that time, how was it possible for you to talk about it or know anything about it?

Well, I am hanged. You can't know anything about a thing before you have "achieved" it?

Because I have seen it and am in contact with it, 0 logical baby that you are! But achieving it is another business.

Didn't you say that some things were getting supramentalised in parts?

Getting supramentalised is one thing and the achieved supramental is another.

You have unnerved many people by the statement that you haven't achieved the Supermind.

Good Lord! And what do these people think I meant when I was saying persistently that I was trying to get the supermind down into the material? If I had achieved it on Nov 24. 1926, it would have been there already for the last nine years, isn't it?

Datta seems to have declared on that day that you had conquered sleep, food, disease and death. On what authority did she proclaim it then?

I am not aware of this gorgeous proclamation. What was said was that the Divine (Krishna or the Divine Presence or whatever you like) had come down into the material. It was also proclaimed that I was retiring—obviously to work things out. If all that was achieved on the 24th [November ] 1926, what on earth remained to work out, and if the Supramental was there, for what blazing purpose did I need to retire? Besides are these things achieved in a single day? If Datta said anything like that she must have been in a prophetic mood and seen the future in the present!

I have stood, but I have not delivered. I had time for standing a moment, but none for a delivery—however pregnant my mind or my overmind may be. But really what a logic! One must become thoroughly supramental first (achieve supermind) and then only one can begin to know something about supermind? Well! However if I have time one day, I will deliver—for evidently with such ideas about, an éclaircissement is highly advisable.

Regarding G's disease, Dr. M says... supposing the microscopic exam is negative, we would not be convinced either. So he is almost as positively definite or definitely positive about the nature of the sore, and the cause of it, as you are in your domain... What do you say?

I am not positive about anything—I am simply negative and positively negative about having the nuisance of the damned thing in this state of sanguinary incertitude. As to my personal opinions, I have them but they are very private.

You confess that you have not delivered but in what little you have, there are many points that need a few more lines.

Pin-points?

Yes, an éclaircissement is highly advisable and if you have time, you can do it tonight.

None at all.

But if you have no time I shall have to disturb your Sunday slumber—either by my questionings or by a long poem.

Excuse me. I don't sleep on Sundays; I climb mountains of outside letters which have accumulated for want of weekday time.

You can choose either of the tortures, Sir!

The poem, please!

The "pin" I dropped has caused a septic sore in the pricked!

You can advise her to be Yogic and not mind. Or are you afraid of getting a slap?

I was wondering if it is possible to get J's book published from the Arya Publishing House with your permission.

I suppose they are afraid to venture—being a concern with pinhead profits and no capital to speak of.

You say you have your personal opinions about G's case. Surely the person of this "personal" is not Nirod, Khirode or Binode—it is the Divine who is omniscient. Then I don't see why the Divine should seek for data from humans. Human opinion, G will at once question, but the Divine's he can't. Or he can and the Divine is afraid of losing his prestige, what?

If you mean that I can kick G out of the Asram even without assigning a reason, of course I can, and it is not any questioning of his that would prevent it. Usually my very deferent disciples demand an explanation of what I do, and if it is not valid according to human canons of judgment and evidences, they abuse and reproach me in a million conversations and a thousand letters. So to avoid bother, I prefer to act in the human way—bother means frictions, waste of time and paper, vociferations etc.

I couldn't finish copying the poem. Since you "sleep" up to midday, I hear, I can send it to you later.

It depends on the time I go to sleep. If it is at 9 or 10 a.m. I may sleep beyond 12. As for poetry, I see it only at night. There is no time in the afternoon except for the letters.

Nag, the A.P. House manager, told me that they publish books only an your school of thought. But whatever you say they do and will do.

That is the principle on which it was started—that it should not be an ordinary publishing concern. How far the principle has been respected I cannot say, since I don't read all its publications. I don't know whether the Mother will take it up.

Evening

[After a long account of G's uncertain medical case.]

... Please clear this point and don't write Delphic oracles. Leave that to me as my monopoly.

September 1935

What is happening really, Sir? Have you stirred sleeping snakes and monsters that are rushing up now?

Excuse me, they were not sleeping at all; they are simply coming into light.

Now I hear that Y is leaving you to go to Raman Maharshi. What next?

You are astonished? Really, you seem to be living like a cherub chubby and innocent with his head in the clouds ignorant of the wickedness of men. I thought by this time the revolts of Y were common knowledge.

Not only that, he is hurling abuses, threats, most offensive words at you!

In his "periods" he was doing that all the time privately among his friends. Now it is publicly that is all. Afterwards he puts on the airs of a saint and howls reproachfully at us for having believed lying reports. Another specimen of humanity.

He had said that he'd die if he went away from here—he's united with you for ever. Are all these mere words? Really have you touched some Frankenstein monster?

My dear sir, he was much worse than that before he came to Pondicherry. I have not touched anything, for the Frankenstein was already there, not of my creation.

No, Sir, I am not reproaching you, but this is an absolutely inconceivable and unimaginable phenomenon, and makes my head reel...

O dear me! Cherub! cherub!

A vast abyss has opened its jaws to swallow Y for ever.

Do you mean Raman Maharshi? He is not an abyss and he has no desire to swallow.

I tell you, Sir, it will be a pathetic failure on the part of the Divine!

Rubbish! It will be a failure on the part of Y. I don't profess to transform men against their will.

Is all this fury not excusable?

Very ignorant at least. Ignorance may be bliss, but it is not a defence or excuse.

On the planes that are above the mind (Overmind and those above it), do the forms exist as we have them on the planes relating to the material creation? The forms of gods we have here in icons etc., do they actually exist on the higher planes? My question is: Do the forms actually exist in those planes, or is it the creation of the mind which gives the forms to those powers, in the sense that it is half the creation of the mind and half the acceptance of our forms by the God-powers?¹⁰⁶

There are no planes of manifestation without forms—for without form creation or manifestation cannot be complete. But the supra-physical planes are not bound to the forms like the physical. The forms there are expressive, not determinative. What is important on the vital plane is the force or feeling and the form expresses it. A vital being has a characteristic form but he can vary it or mask his true form under others. What is primary on the mental plane is the perception, the idea, the mental significance and the form expresses that and these mental forms too can vary—there can be many forms expressing an idea in different ways or on different sides of the idea. Form exists but it is more plastic and variable than in physical nature.

As to the Gods, men can build forms which they will accept; but these forms too are inspired into men's mind from the planes to which the God belongs. All creation has the two sides, the formed and the formless,—the Gods too are formless and yet have forms, but a Godhead can take many forms, here Maheshwari, there Pallas Athene. Maheshwari herielf has many forms in her lesser manifestations, Durga, Uma, Parvati, Chandi etc. The Gods are not limited to human forms—man also has not always seen them in human forms only.

Of course Y's revolt was quite evident. But the fact of his leaving "W" came as a shocking surprise.

No doubt, though not to all. But since then there is no reason for surprise.

One could never imagine that he would call back his old self, so suddenly.

The old self was always there, but for the first year he was always holding it down. It was when Mother began to press for him to get rid of it that the revolts began.

You can't deny that he had bright periods of sadhana, and was going very well until this "monster" caught him by the throat.

Of course he had periods. So had B for a very long time. But after his first outbreak they were never harmonised¹⁰⁷ with the other self.

We were not quite prepared to see him bid good-bye for ever, for we had confidence in your Force and thought you would succeed in bringing him round. This is the reason of our astonishment.

When he went from the W it was distinctly understood that he must settle his problem himself. He did not want any farther influence because that was not consistent with his independence. Under such circumstances he could get help only in proportion as he was sincere.

But do you call this "will" in Y? How can an insane person—for it is nothing but insanity, have any will?

Certainly—the will to be independent, the will to follow the call of his nature—the belief that he had the Light and the realisation sufficiently to follow his own path, as one already almost the equal of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

He gave you his will, his inner sanction, when he came here.

You have never heard of a double being?

If I want to hang myself, would you say, "I can't help him against his will"?

If that were your will and not merely an impulse of the vital being, nobody could stop you.

This is what, perhaps, a human being would say, who has no knowledge of the play of forces?

If I have knowledge of the play of forces, why do you want me to ignore the play and work by violence or a miracle beyond the play of forces? It is precisely the play of forces in Y which brought him where he is.

Another point—you knew that he had the monster in him, and yet you accepted him? Why? Weren't you confident about the success or was it only to give him a chance?...

Practically, D threw him in through the window in spite of Mother's refusal. After that he pleaded and got his chance on conditions, not unconditionally—conditions which he broke after the first year. Still we gave him his full chance, beyond what we had atfirst promised because there was a possibility that he might go through—even if he allowed us to guide and influence, a certitude. But he wanted no more guidance and influence. Hence these tears.

The departure of a person with extraordinary powers is serious.

And what a pathetic and tragic end for him! All the world will laugh at him and won't you share in the laughter?

Pooh! a sincere heart is worth all the extraordinary powers in the world. And why a tragic or pathetic end! He is as merry as a Brig and as sure of himself as a god. He says he has only one step to make and he is going to make it no matter whatever happens or who does what.

Do you think I care? What a very human mind you have! But why want me to share in it? What is in the mind of the sadhaks matters because that is part of my work, but what you call all the world (meaning the small part of it interested in Y outside) can laugh or not—what difference does it make? My bringing down of the supramental does not depend on the নিন্দাস্তুতি¹⁰⁸ or মানঅপমান¹⁰⁹ dealt out from there. And is care for these things part of the ordinary spiritual consciousness even? and if I am to be inferior in these matters to a spiritual man, R.M. for instance, how am Ito be not only supramental and superman but supramentalise others? Have you never thought of these things and will you and the others live always in the ordinary mundane social consciousness and feeling and ideas and judge me and my work from that sorry standpoint?

I hear A.P. House has been taken over by the Mother. There is no chance than for J's book being published there.

None. I asked the Mother, but she is categorical. The A.P.H. will remain the A.P.H. and not become an ordinary publishing house.

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

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

R's pleurisy is much better. The remaining signs are of no importance, only he must not expose himself to cold, neither smoke much nor take wine.

Jehovah! You are recommending him a little smoke and wine? What next? All right except for the last ominous touch.

You remember once you made a prophecy that Y would turn out a spiritual poet. Has it been fulfilled? Now that he has left the Asram, what becomes of your prophecy? I am asking as a perplexed man, not as a 'broken spiritual pot".

As a spiritual poet he is not a failure, it is as a spiritual pot that he is a failure.

You told him also that you would never leave him. Well? How shall we then interpret the promises you have made to others, to me for instance?

I don't propose to leave him, any more than I have left Rene. What I propose is that he should not stay here to play the humbug any longer—he must take one course or the other with his lower nature.

From this I come to a big philosophical question: Why are there failures in Sadhana?... A ready answer to the cause of these failures is—revolt of lower nature, refusal to undergo transformation. Apparently it is so, but is it the root cause? When we go to the origin of creation we find you saying that the soul or the central being came down into evolution for the sake of experience, call of the Unknown and through the depth of the abyss to establish the possibilities of the Divine in the Ignorance and Inconscience.

As you put it, this is not at all my statement of things. One cannot establish the possibilities of the Divine through the depths of the abyss. It is only by the ceasing of Ignorance and the Inconscience that the possibilities can be established. I have never said that the object of the creation is to keep up I + I¹¹⁰ perpetually and realise the possibilities of the Divine in that tenebrous amalgam—(its possibilities of being more and more abysmally ignorant and inconscient?).

If this theory be true, can it be said that when one fails in sadhana due to the lower nature's revolt, the soul has sanctioned it for further experiences of life?

That is only another way of putting the revolt of the lower nature. For it is not the soul, the psychic being, but the vital and the physical consciousness that refuse to go farther.

For those who are running after petty pleasures, doesn't the same answer hold true? When their soul is fully rich and satisfied with its chequered experiences, it will turn towards its ultimate purpose?

How can petty pleasures be rich? Chequered is all right. But it is not when the soul is satisfied, but when it is dissatisfied that it turns towards its ultimate purpose.

Of course when the soul no more wants the Ignorance, it will turn to the Light. Till then it can't. That is what I have always said as the reason why I reject the idea of converting the whole of mankind—because they don't want it.

It can also be said that people really don't know that a greater Ananda, Bliss, etc. can be had, and if they are told this, they don't believe it or, even if they do, they are not ready to pay the price.

Of course they don't, but even if they did, it does not follow that they would prefer to follow it rather than their accustomed round of pain and pleasure. Many deliberately prefer that and say the other thing is too high for human nature—which is true, because you have to want to grow out of human nature before you can have the Ananda.

Many struggle towards the Ananda but cannot reach it because though the soul and even the thinking mind and the higher vital want it, the lower vital and physical want something else and are too animal and strong in them for control. [That is the case at least with some in the Ashram.]¹¹¹ Or the ego wants something that is not that or wants to misuse the Power for its own satisfaction.

All this about man being imprisoned in Maya, and going on swirling in its whirl, seems to me due to the soul clinging to the Ignorance for the sake of experience, if what you say about the origin of creation is true.

What has the origin of creation to do with it? We are concerned with the growth of the soul out of the Ignorance, not its plunge into it. The lower nature is the nature of the Ignorance, what we seek is to grow into the nature of the Truth. How do you make out that when the soul has looked towards the Truth and is moving towards it, a pull-back by the vital and the ego towards the Ignorance is a glorious action of the soul and not a revolt of the lower nature? I suppose you are floundering about in the confusion of the idea that "desire-soul" in the vital is the true psyche of man. If you like—but that is no part of my explanation of things; I make a clear distinction between the two, so I refuse to sanctify the revolt of the lower nature by calling it the sanction of the soul. If it is the soul that wants to fail, why is there any struggle or sorrow over the business? it would be a perfectly smooth affair. [The soul would lift its hat to me and say "Hallo! you've taught me a lot, I'm quite pleased but now I want a little more fun in the mud. Goodbye," and I too would have to say, "O.K. I quite agree. I was glad to see you come, I am equally glad to see you go. All is divine and A.I.¹¹²—all has the soul's sanction; so go and mud away to your soul's content."]¹¹³

I send the poem at last, as your Sunday exercise! Dilipda says that it is good; but it is still incomplete.

From what I have seen of it (first page), Dilip is probably right. However let's gulp the whole whale before pronouncing on the quality of its oil.

What does the abbreviation "Al." mean in your letter of yesterday?

I'm hanged if I know—I was referring to something that had cropped up in the course of the debate, but I must have put the wrong initials and, probably, also failed to finish the sentence. I think I had meant to write "I.I. (Ignorance and Inconscience) is the law" or something to that effect. But it is better to drop it.

A strange incident occurred today. Dr. Becharlal and I worked as usual in the dispensary. After the day's work we shut the doors and went out—Dr. Becharlal to the pier for his habitual walk, and Ito X's place. J also went to the pier at this time. But he somehow did not enjoy his stroll and instead had, what he called, "a very repulsive feeling" when he arrived at the pier, and distinctly felt that he should go back to the dispensary. When he went there, he found a number of people collected near the entrance, knocking at the door; they were waiting for me. J inquired what had happened, and was told that B.P. had been stung by a scorpion and required immediate-medical help. He at once hastened to fetch me. I asked him to find Dr. Becharlal, and bring him also to the dispensary. He went towards the pier looking for the doctor. After going a little distance he met Dr. Becharlal, who was returning without finishing his walk; he said that somehow he did not feel like going to the pier that day. I am a little baffled by the whole incident. Are these just accidents?

No, of course not. But they seem so to all who live in the outward vision only. "Coincidence the scientists do them call." But anyone with some intelligence and power of observation who lives more in an inward consciousness can see the play of invisible forces at every step which act on men and bring about events without their knowing about the instrumentation. The difference created by Yoga or by an inner consciousness—for there are people like Socrates who develop or have some inner awareness without Yoga—is that one becomes conscious of these invisible forces and can also consciously profit by them or use and direct them. That is all.

These things manifest differently, in a different form or transcription, in different people. If it had been Socrates and not Becharlal who was there,—which would have been useless as he was no doctor and highly inconvenient to you as he would certainly have turned the tables on you and avenged me by cross-examining you every day and passing you through a mill of philosophical conundrums and unanswerable questions—but still if he had been there, he would have felt it as an intimation from his daemon, "Turn back, Socrates; it is at the Asram that you ought to be now". Another might have felt an intuition that something was up at the Asram. Yet another would have heard a voice or suggestion saying "If you went back at once it would be useful"—or simply "Go back, back; quick, quick!" without any reason. A fourth would have seen a scorpion wriggling about with its sting ready. A fifth would have seen the agonised face of B.P. and wondered whether he had a toothache or a stomachache. In Becharlal's case it was simply an unfelt force that changed his mind in a way that seemed casual but was purposeful, and this obscure way is the one in which it acts most often with most people. So that's thus.

Have you had time and appetite enough to gulp the little whale? If you had I hope it wasn't nauseating!

The whale taken as a whole tasted very well; its oil was strong and fattening, its flesh firm and full and compact and whalish. Not quite so exquisite as the sonnet minnows, but the quality of a whale can't be that of a minnow. As a whale, it deserves all respect and approbation.

Krishna Ayyar has a cold and slight fever. Given aspirin. Requires Divine help.

One tablet of aspirin and another of aspiration might do.

C has developed ringworm. He wants me to inform you. I hesitate to report these small things, but the general belief is that once they reach your ears they'll be quickly done with. Am I then making a mistake in my refusal?

No. For small things the general force (+ or — the doctor) ought to be sufficient since it is always there. If it is something serious or if it is something obstinate, then it is another matter. Of course if they insist, you can drop a word in passing.

I have three letters of yours before me, and all three require some elucidation. I think and think, but can't get anywhere. Perhaps you will say, "Make the mind silent"! But Descartes says, "Je pense, donc je suis."¹¹⁴

Descartes was talking nonsense. There are plenty of things that don't think but still are—from the stone to the Yogi in samadhi. If he had simply meant that the fact of his thinking showed that he wasn't dead, that of course would have been quite right and scientific.

I forgot to tell you that C has gone back to his old habits.By the way, X has been sending Rs. 2 every month. He doesn't take any other interest in the Asram. Is it of use to correspond with him?

I don't know. Some people say that everything one does in this world is of some use or other known or unknown. Otherwise it wouldn't be done. But it is doubtful. That by the way would apply both to X's lack of interest and C's inconclusive ferocities.

I am going to riddle you with a volley of questions and I am prepared to receive the return-shots.

I was not at all 'floundering about" between "desire-soul" and the "true psyche".

Well, if you were not, why did you represent the experience of the lower nature as such a rich and glorious thing? It is the desire-soul or the life-being which finds it (sometimes) like that.

If failures are due to the revolt of the lower nature, why should that revolt occur in A's case and not in B's? Past Karma? And by what is this Karma decided?

Because A is not B and B is not A. Why do you expect all to be alike and fare alike and run abreast all the way and all arrive together?

[Sri Aurobindo drew an arrow from "what" to his reply.]

It is Prakriti and Karma, so long as the Ignorance is there. The hen lays an egg and the egg produces a hen and that hen another egg and so on ad infinitum—till you turn to the Light and get it.

And this Karma has its past and this past its own past and so on till we come to a state where there is no Karma but only the central being. This central being, it seems, chooses its particular sheath—mental, vital etc.—and upon that choice depend the evolutionary consequences. Is that correct?

What is this central being you are speaking of—the Jivatma or the psychic being? or an amalgam of both?

I don't quite understand. The psychic being is supposed not to choose, but rather to form in accordance with its past and future evolution a new mental, vital and physical sheath each time it is born. But the placid or tacit observation does not seem to apply to the psychic being, but to the Jivatman. Moreover you seem to say this is done at the beginning of the evolution and determines the whole evolution. But that has no meaning since it is through the evolution that the psychic does it. It has not got one fixed mental, vital, physical which remains the same in all lives.

My point then is that because the chicken-hearted central being—I suppose there is a hierarchy of these beings, some lion-hearted, some worm and some chicken—selected or had to select according to its own standard, that I have my own failures.

These words don't apply to the members of the hierarchy.

Since the soul descended into Ignorance through a process of devolution, it has to go back through evolution.

What is this devolution? Let me hear more about it,—for it is new to me. I know of an involution and an evolution, but not of a devolution.

Though the soul may repent for its misadventure, it can't take a leap into the Kingdom of Light or walk straight to its Father like the Prodigal Son...

A leap, no! But if it has got thoroughly disgusted, it can try its chance at Nirvana.

Again the soul gathers the essential elements of its experiences in life and takes up with the sheaths as much of its Karma as is useful for further experience in a new life.

This time it is all right—but what the deuce has that got to do with the original sin?

Now if I say that the soul has failed this time because it took "so much of its Karma" and requires farther evolution through farther experience before it can turn completely, how am I wrong?

Excuse me,—if it goes on with its Karma, then it does not get liberation. If it wants only farther experience, it can just stay there in the ordinary nature. The aim of Yoga is to transcend Karma. Karma means subjection to lower Nature; through Yoga the soul goes towards freedom.

It seems to me that the soul is searching, analysing, experimenting, through contraries and contradictories and thus proceeding by steps and stages. It will move towards the Light and retrace its steps again and by a series of ups and downs finally arrive at its Home. And so the revolts are only steps and stages on the way.

You are describing the action of the ordinary existence, not the Yoga. Yoga is a seeking (not a mental searching), it is not an experimenting in contraries and contradictories. It is the mind that does that and the mind that analyses. The soul does not search, analyse, experiment—it seeks, feels, experiences.

This is how I look at it. Is that all rot? No grain of truth in it?

Logical rot! The only grain of truth is that the Yoga is very usually a series of ups and downs till you get to a certain height. But there is a quite different reason for that—not the vagaries of the soul. On the contrary when the psychic being gets in front and becomes master, there comes in a fundamentally smooth action and although there are difficulties and undulations of movement, these are no longer of an abrupt or dramatic character.

You say that when the soul no more wants the Ignorance, it will turn to the Light; till then it can't.

Perhaps the better phrase would be "consents to" the Ignorance. The soul is the witness, upholder, inmost experiencer, but it is master only in theory, in fact it is not-master, অনীশ¹¹⁵, so long as it consents to the Ignorance. For that is a general consent which implies that the Prakriti gambols about with the Purusha and does pretty well what she darn well likes with him. When he wants to get back his mastery, make the theoretical practical, he needs a lot of tapasya to do it.

This is very significant because, if so, I should say that the soul is the Master of the House and if it says categorically—"No more of Ignorance, vitals and mentals have no go"—it can refuse to go farther. Because the soul wants more fun in the mud of Ignorance, people follow their "round of pleasure and pain".

That is contrary to experience. The psychic has always been veiled, consenting to the play of mind, physical and vital, experiencing everything through them in the ignorant mental, vital and physical way. How then can it be that they are bound to change at once when it just takes the trouble to whisper or gay "Let there be Light"? They have tremendous go and can refuse and do refuse point-blank. The mind resists with an obstinate persistency in argument and a constant confusion of ideas, the vital with a fury of bad will aided by the mind's obliging reasonings on its side; the physical resists with an obstinate inertia and crass fidelity to old habit, and when they have done, the general Nature comes in and says "What, you are going to get free from me so easily? Not WI know it," and it besieges and throws back the old nature on you again and again as long as it can. Yet you say that it is the soul that wants all this "fun" and goes off laughing and prancing to get some more. You are funny. If the poor soul heard you, I think it would say "Sir, methinks you are a jester" and look about for a hammer and break your head with it.

Even their disbelief, lack of faith in Divine Ananda. etc., is due to that!

Due to the soul's sense of fun? It seems to me more probably that it is due to the obstinacy of mental and vital sanskaras. Perhaps that is why the Buddhists insisted on breaking all sanskaras as the seeker of liberation's first duty.

But if you ask me, as you do, "Why then is there so much struggle and sorrow?" well, I am floundered, unless one can say that though the soul has given the last kick, still a longing, lingering look is bound to be there.

You call that a mere look! I suppose that if you saw an Irish row or a Nazi mob in action, you would say "These people are making slight perceptible gestures and I think I hear faint sounds in the air."

My dear Sir, be less narrowly logical (with a very deficient logic even as logic)—take a wider sweep; swim out of your bathing pool into the open sea and waltz round the horizons! For anything that happens there are a hundred factors at work and not only the one just under your nose; but to perceive that you have to become cosmic and intuitive or overmental and what not. So, alas!

Shall I continue attending the hospital?' think I have learned enough about the common eye diseases.

The Mother wants you to go on; she thinks it important.

With great difficulty I have deciphered your Supramental writing. Now it requires to be metabolised. But one point remains to be clarified.

Which diabolical point was that? Some point of a pin on which the whole universe can stand?

I'm thinking why it is so important to go on attending the hospital. When R asked, you replied, "If you feel the need". Why a different decision for me? For my personal profit? For my sadhana or an impersonal play behind?

That was before circumstances took a certain shape. At that time the forces had not so arranged themselves as to make it important. Afterwards when things came to the necessary point, then Mother told R he must continue and it is for the same reason that she asks you to continue. When I say important I don't mean that it is a big thing, but it is a small point in the game (play of forces) and small points, like pawns in chess, can be important—even very important.

It appears the Mother is turning towards manifestation viz. the Town Hall decoration, A.P. House, Art Exhibitation in Paris, etc. I heartily like it, Sir. Many, many valuable years have passed by!

Why valuable years? Are some years valuable and others non-valuable? There is no question of Art Exhibition in Paris before 1937 which may be a valuable year but is still far off.

During the hospital work, I feel myself submerged in Inconscience. No remembrance of the Mother at all

It does not matter. This is not the supramental manifestation—it is simply a little game on the way.

Do you work on those people also and can your Force be invoked in aid of that suffering populace?

What people? Which suffering populace? Mother is not taking up or decorating Town Hall for the sake of any suffering populace.

Apropos of that scorpion incident on the 8th, you explained Dr. B's case, but avoided mentioning J; yet he was an important link. And if the incident could have manifested in so many ways, then surely the whole thing must have appeared before your vision as soon as it happened.

What is this logic? There is no connection between the premiss and the conclusion.

Finding J a receptive fellow, you acted through him. What do you say?

It was not speaking of any personal action but of the play of forces which happens everywhere, but is of course more marked here because of our presence and the work done.

Then it means that there is no such thing as accident, chance, or coincidence; all is predetermined—all is a play of forces. Sir C.V. Raman once lectured to us that all these scientific discoveries are games of chance.

I have not said that everything is rigidly predetermined. Play of Forces does not mean that. What I said was that behind visible events in the world there is always a mass of invisible forces at work unknown to the outward minds of men, and by Yoga, (by going inward and establishing a conscious connection with the cosmic Self and Force and forces) one can become conscious of these forces, intervene consciously in the play, to some extent at least. determine things in the result of the play. All that has nothing to do with predetermination. On the contrary one watches how things develop and gives a push here and a push there when possible or when needed. There is nothing in all that to contradict the great Sir C.V. Raman. Only when he says these things are games of chance, he is merely saying that [...]¹¹⁶ human beings don't know how it works out. It is not a rigid predetermination, but it is not a blind inconscient Chance either. It is a play in which there is a working out of possibilities in Time.

From the falling down of the bottle—Simpson's discovery of chloroform—to the Irish sweepstake, everything seems to be this blessed play of forces, but not Chance! The bottle had to fall for the great discovery!

Why shouldn't it fall? Something had to happen so that human stupidity might be enlightened, so why not the agency of a bottle?

Your old colleague B says that if there were such a thing as "accident", then one can no longer say that there is a perfectly uninterrupted order in this world. Order means a regular sequence. An accident can only happen by disturbing this sequence.

That's nineteenth century mechanical determinism. It is not like that. Things can be changed without destroying the universe.

I suppose I am once again knocking my head against a cosmic problem?

Very much so, sir.

Instead of saying "shut up" you have devised a very nice trick of evasion, Sir! for everything "a play of forces". Therefore no more questions. Long live the play of forces!

It is the truth. Why get wild with the truth? It is like knocking your nose against one of Epstein's statues in the hope that it might turn out to be unreal or change into a faery beauty.

What I am writing now is not about the play of forces, but about confusion, conflict and despair in me.

O Lord God! again despair!

The confusion and despair are because I don't seem to have any go at all.

Pshaw! Pooh! Rubbish!

Not a day has gone when I could say I have aspired strongly for anything.

Well then, aspire weakly and phantasmally—but anyhow aspire..

Of course, I find that after this Darshan the desires and impulses aren't as acute as before, but that's not enough.

Well, well, that's an admission. It is not enough, but it is something.

I am as unconscious as before about the Force and its working.

Doesn't matter. Let the force work anyhow—in time it will have its result.

What most upsets me at present is that there is no current of aspiration.

Low current of electricity? Well, well, let us see to the dynamo.

Is that a very satisfying state or is there any future ray of hope?

Any number of rays—a whole sun.

What I would like to have is something stabilised: peace, force, purity or Presence.

So would I, so would anybody. It is not enough to like, you must get the thing done and peg on till it is done.

Neither can I fix my aspiration on any particular aspect. Now I want peace, now force, now Ananda...

That's the confounded wobbling mobility of your mind.

Isn't it a confusion and isn't it despairing?

It may be a confusion but it is not désespérant. (Despairing in this sense is bad English, by the way.) Plenty of people have had that before you and yet arrived all right.

Once you gave me the formula of Peace, Force and Presence. Shall I try to stick to it?

For mercy's sake, do. Peace first, Force tumbling into the Peace, the Presence at any stage.

But really, Sir, how long to stagnate in this passive pool of the Immobile? Is there no chance of being as dynamic as a flood?

Not so long as you merely ratiocinate and wobble—unless the dynamo begins to work in sheer exasperation at your foolishness—which is quite possible.

When a sincere aspirant like K took so many years to draw in all his limbs into his shell and do what may be called real sadhana, our expectation and hankering is sheer madness.

And who did that feat in a few days, weeks or months, I should like to know? I am sure I didn't.

Real sadhana, he has been doing for a long time. That is why he is now able to draw in his limbs.

Well, expecting to do it in a record time or shouting sorrowfully because that doesn't happen, is rather windy.

I suppose we have to go on dreaming that one day, one year, one Yuga, we shall also come to such a blissful height. Till then, Man of Sorrows is my companion, alas I

No need at all! Call in the Man of Mirth and dismiss the other Applicant.

Another confusion about poetry. I haven't been able to find out any "dissolvent" and I take it that the Muse is treating me in the same way as the Yogi is doing.

Well, it seems to me that the Muse has done a good deal for you already, considering that you did not start with the vocation. O favoured unappreciative!

Since there is no inspiration, the call of the moon, the sky, the sea and the Unknown takes me away to the pier at night.

Absorb the moon, sky, sea and the unknown and trust to the inner alchemy to turn them into poetry.

I am so tired with this "play" of yours, Sir, that sometimes I have a longing to jump into the silence of Nirvana.

Not so easy to do it as to write it.

However, what shall I hear from the mighty pen as a remedy to my chronic despair and impatience?

Now look here, as to the Yuga, etc., if I can be patient with you and your despairs, why can't you be patient with the forces? Let me give you a "concrete" instance. X is a sadhak of whom it might be said that if anyone could be said to be incapable of any least progress in Yoga, X was the very person, blockishly absolute and unique in that respect. Mulish, revolted, abusive. No capacity of any kind, no experience, not a shadow, tittle or blessed pinpoint of it anyhow, anywhere or at any time for years and more years and still more years. Finally some while ago X begins to fancy or feel that X wants Mother and nothing and nobody else. (That was the result of my ceaseless and futile hammering for years). X makes sanguinary row after row because X can't get Mother, not a trace, speck or hint anywhere of Mother. Threats of departure and suicide very frequent. I sit mercilessly and severely upon X, not jocularly as I do on you. X still weeps copiously because Mother does not love X. I sit on X still more furiously but go on pumping force and things into her. X stops that but weeps copiously because X has no faith and does not love Mother. (All this goes on for months and months). Finally one day after deciding to stop weeping for good and all X suddenly finds X was living in barriers, barriers broken down, vast oceanic wideness inside her, love, peace etc. rushing in or pressing to rush; can't understand what on earth all this is or what to do—writes for guidance. Now, sir, if my yugalike persistence could work a miracle like that with such a one, why can't you expect an earlier result with you, O Nirod of little faith and less patience? Stand and answer.¹¹⁷

From what I could make out of your mysterious handwriting about this mysterious X, she must be a plucky girl. With that thrashing—if you are really capable of it—and the Mother's "hard looks" to boot, if she has stuck to you, I must say that she is exceptionally enduring too.

I suppose X was able to stick because X had no brains. It is the confounded reasoning brain that is the ruin of you. For instead of taking the lesson of things it begins reasoning about them in this futile—shall I say asinine—way. My idea however is that X stuck because X had nowhere else to go. Of course that is the outward reason—the real one being that something unknown pinned X down here.

One word about this "patience", Sir, I am afraid there is a big fallacy in that. You can take 50 years to make me at least a supramental ass. And this would still be a short period for you, since in the supramental time-scale 50 years will be 50 days of ours.

If that is so, then you will become a Supramental ass in 50 days—since my years are supramental, that follows. So what's the row about? With this glowing prospect before you!

So I have stood and answered: But no amount of standing and answering will serve the purpose. I shall now learn to "stand and wait" as "they also serve who only stand and wait", says Milton.

Thank God! A most comforting resolution—for me at any rate. Doctor Saheb

I am sending to the dispensary two cases—

1) P—she had tuberculosis? at 19 for six months, she says, and at 25 for a short time, but cured quickly. Sounds queer, for tuberculosis at that age usually gallops, doesn't it? Anyhow she has symptoms which need elucidation by medical authority. To be examined and reported.

2) B.P.—says he "fell from chastity" 7 years ago and had an illness of the organ (sores?) which the Panjab Doctors called by some outlandish word I don't recognise—bedridden 2½ months, cured by injections—twice recurred, but healed of itself—nothing for the last 3 years—coming here cropped up again. (Thanks to the forces at play for that!!). Apprehends. Cross-examine and examine. Does not know English, don't know if you know Hindi. Anyhow Becharlal is there.

Feel inclined to swear, but refrain.

N.B. Keep quiet about the affair, please—strict medical discreetness needed!

SRI AUROBINDO
September 14, 1935

We questioned, cross-examined and examined B.P....

Syphilitic sores or ulcers don't recur in genital parts even if the disease remains untreated or partially treated. And these sores have characteristics which are missing in this case...

As for his previous affection and its existence in the system, well, if it were syphilis, 4 or 5 injections could not have cured him. But there's only one way of being sure about it—blood-exam. But for such things I fed hesitant and ashamed for they reflect upon the reputation of the Asram, don't they? Of course, people don't know that these things are contracted outside and come in...

Where would the blood-examination be made? But I suppose it is better to avoid it if possible. What do you propose to do for his sores if they are not syphilitic, as we must assume since they have not the characteristics?

P hasn't turned up. She doesn't seem to have much faith in medicine.

This is not a question of faith, but of fact.

She has written to me saying Becharlal had already once examined her and found nothing. Will you ask Becharlal about it?

I seize the golden opportunity to ask you to deliver about the Supermind as you had promised. I hope you remember it; if not, the question was: What is exactly the significance of 24th November? Overmental, supramental realisation or what? You say that it was something like the descent of Krishna in the material. Some say that the descent took place in you. But you are not matter, are you? Not very clear.

Why not? Why can't I be matter? or represent it at least? At least you will admit that I have got some matter in me and you will hardly deny that the matter in me is connected or even continuous (in spite of the quantum theory) with matter in general? Well, if Krishna or the Overmind or something equivalent descended into my matter with an inevitable extension into connected general Matter, what is the lack of clarity in the statement of a descent into the material? What does logic say?

By your "trying to get the supermind down into the material", we understand that the ascent is done and now the descent has to be made. Something like one going up to you at Darshan and getting all the bliss, joy, etc. and trying to bring it down and not lose it as soon as one steps out. And what is this again? You say you are in contact with it and then again that you are very near the tail of it! Sounds funny! Contact and no contact?

But, supposing I reached supermind in that way, then under such conditions would it be probable that I should come down again at the risk of losing it? Do you realise that I went upstairs and have not come down again? So it was better to be in contact with it until I had made the path clear between S and M. As for the tail, can't you approach the tail of an animal without achieving the animal? I am in the physical, in matter—there is no doubt of it. If I threw a rope up from Matter, noose or lasso the Supermind and pull it down, the first part of Mr. S that will come near me is his tail dangling down as he descends, and that I can seize first and pull down the rest of him by tail-twists. As for being in contact with it, well I can be in contact with you by correspondence without actually touching you or taking hold even of your tail, can't I? So there is nothing funny about it—perfectly rational, coherent and clear.

Another point: Have you written anywhere what would be the nature of the physical transformation?

I have not, I carefully avoided that ticklish subject.

What would it be like? Change of pigment? Mongolian features into Aryo-Greco? Bald head into luxuriant growth? Old men into gods of eternal youth?

Why not seven tails with an eighth on the head—everybody different colours, blue, magenta, indigo, green, scarlet, etc; hair luxuriant but vermilion and flying erect skywards; other details to match? Amen.

Now you can't say surely that al your points have not been cleared?

By the way, vomiting seems to be a very common complaint at present.

I notice that these things come by epidemics in the Asram. One starts, others follow suit.

H is having vomiting too. Yogic force on the brain?

Jehoshaphat! What has the brain got to do with vomiting? Throwing up excess of Yogic knowledge? That might be with H the philosopher, but it does not fit the others.

I propose, if you approve, to take the three ladies P, K and Sh to the hospital for a screen-examination.

Not advisable. I believe if you could give these people (P, Sh etc.) some nervous balance, their ailments would walk off into blazes.

B.P.'s blood-exam has to be done in the hospital, but it doesn't seem necessary now. He has no other complaints. His sores seem to me like scabies, so we'll try sulphur ointment, otherwise calomel ointment.

All right.

Now, lend your ears, Sir, to my ailment! I was disappointed by your answer yesterday about the Supermind, for it is far from what you had in your mind when you made the promise...

I am disappointed that you could not appreciate the splendidly coloured prospects held out there. But what had I in my mind and what was this promise? Apart from the colours, my two other answers were, though figurative, yet very much to the "point".

Today I caught sight of an atrocious incident in the paper, at Rajshahi, Bengal. I am sure you have read it.

Didn't. Have no time to read Bengal papers.

... You know very well that it is the confounded Raj that is behind and has fomented this communal incident.

It looks as if it were going to be like that everywhere. In Europe also.

I won't say a word about this race, you know my feelings.

Which race?

With the coming of independence I hope such things will stop. Now I would like to ask you something. In your scheme of things do you definitely see a free India? You have stated that for the spreading of spirituality in the world India must be free. I suppose you must be working for it! You are the only one who can do something really effective by the use of your spiritual Force.

That is all settled. It is a question of working out only. The question is what is India going to do with her independence? The above kind of affair? Bolshevism? Goonda-raj? Things look ominous.

Supposing you were able to create a race of Supermen, then there would be two strata: Supermen and men.

There will also be cats. Look at the Asram!

Then the Supermen will no longer concern themselves with the lives and histories of men just as men are at present indifferent to the lives of animals?

Men are not indifferent to lives of animals at least not in Europe. Look at the open-air zoos—hospitals for animals refuges for unwanted cats and dogs—live-farms, etc., etc.!

But what will happen when the supramental comes down is a matter for the supramental to decide—no use laying down laws for it beforehand with the mind. It is the Truth-consciousness, sir—it will act according to the divine Truth behind things.

I am still in the slough of despondency. Really, Sir, no belief or faith in effort at all. I will choose the mulish revolting way and that would be the easiest. What do you say?

I am inclined to say "Pshaw!" Have more faith, not less.

Apart from this, I have observed that whenever I communicate an experience to you, the next moment it stops. What's the truth of it?

That is a thing that we used often to note formerly when sadhana was in the early stages—viz. to speak of something experienced was to stop it. It is why many Yogis make it a rule never to speak of their experiences. But latterly it had altogether ceased to be like that. Why are you starting that curious old stunt all over again?

I remember a story of my childhood. I was dining with my father when I was obliged to go out. I turned round and said, "Papa, see you don't eat my fish!" Well, fathers may not, but Gurus?

No, Sir, I don't eat your fish. I have oceans of fish at my disposal and have no need to consume your little sprats. It is Messrs. H.F. (hostile forces) who do that—the Dasyus or robbers. You display your fine new penknife and they say "Ah! he's proud of his fine new penknife, is he? We'll show him!" and they filch it at the first opportunity.

Do tell us how the Supermind will make us great sadhaks overnight. We are hanging all our hopes on its "tail", which you said was descending.

If you expect to become supramental overnight, you are confoundedly mistaken. The tail will keep the H.F. at a respectful distance and flap at you until you consent to do things in a reasonable time instead of taking 200 centuries over each step as you seem to want to do just now. More than that I refuse to say. What is a reasonable time in the supramental view of things I leave you to discover.

Your Overmental Force seems to have utterly failed in the case of idiots like us. Where then is the chance of this Mr. Supramental who is only a step higher?

Overmind is obliged to respect the freedom of the individual—including his freedom to be perverse, stupid, recalcitrant and slow.

Supermind is not merely a step higher than Overmind—it is beyond the line, that is a different consciousness and power beyond the mental limit.

Please don't think of what India is going to do with her independence. Give her that first, and then let her decide her fate for herself. Independence anyhow—your Super-mind will do the rest.

You are a most irrational creature. I have been trying to logicise and intellectualise- you, but it seems in vain. Have I not told you that the independence is all arranged for and will evolve itself all right? Then what's the use of my bothering about that any longer? It's what she will do with her independence that is not arranged for—and so it is that about which I have to bother. To drag in the Supermind by the tail here is perfectly irrelevant. We have been talking all the time on an altogether infra-supramental basis—down down low in the intellect with an occasional illumined intuitive or overmental flash here and there. Be faithful to the medium, if you please. If you do not become perfectly and luminously logical and rational, how can you hope to become a candidate for the next higher stage even? Be a little practical and sensible.

You have admitted your failure in intellectualising me; now I am waiting to hear at any time the admission that all your attempts to make me a yogi seem to be in vain!

Perhaps that is because for the sheer fun of it I tried the impossible, intending not to succeed—because if you had really become luminously intellectual and rational, why, you would have been so utterly surprised at yourself that you would have sat down open-mouthed on the way and never moved a step farther.

But when did I tell you, Sir, that I expect to become supra-mental overnight? All I asked was whether this Mr. S is going to make us great sadhaks overnight, if so, how? By what supramental logic or intuition, do you heap this great ambition on my head, my human logic fails to comprehend...

You said "overnight", sir, "overnight". It was a logical inference from your desire to become a great sadhak overnight. In this remarkable correspondence I am not using intuition—I am proceeding strictly by mental (not supramental) reason and logic. A "great sadhak" in the supramental Yoga means a supramental—or ought to according to all rules of logic.

Being an ass myself I quite realise that to cross the "asses' bridge" is neither in my power nor do I cherish, harbour, rear any such phantasms.

Asses seldom realise that. If they see a thistle on the other side, they try at once to go after it—so here again your logic fails.

I don't even project my myopic vision towards the splendidly coloured horizon of the Absolute... I want only peace... If the blessed outer nature is on blazing fire, the inner would be calm, terribly calm, in a calm Pacific peace which no Atlantic aggressions can disturb...

And yet you say you are not after the Absolute!!!

About the Supermind, I only wanted to know how this gentleman is going to help us. Minimising our depressions? Breaking our difficulties? Keeping off the waves of the subconscient, etc., etc.?

He can do any or all of these things. But we can leave him to fix his programme after he has got on his feet (subsequent to the bump of the descent) and has had time to look about him.

I know my nature too well to hope for any Supermind, Overmind or any other Mind—overnight. Still you say that I am an irrational, illogical, impractical creature?

Well, but you talked of becoming a great sadhak (if not supra-mental) overnight. So unless you withdraw that—

Some people say that Supermind will establish a direct connection with the psychic and spur it to come to the front quicker.

Well, it can do that, but it is not bound to do that only and take no other way.

In your Yoga the main issue seems to be to bring out the psychic to the front, after which everything becomes an easy walkover.

Not quite that. The psychic is the first of two transformations necessary—if you have the psychic transformation it facilitates immensely the other, i.e. the transformation of the ordinary human into the higher spiritual consciousness—otherwise one is likely to have either a slow and dull or exciting but perilous journey.

You said yesterday that the Overmind is obliged to respect the freedom of the individual. Do you imply then that the Supermind will do no such thing?

Of course I do! It will respect only the Truth of the Divine and the truth of things.

When I said apropos of India's independence, that your Supermind will do the rest, I only meant that before India has any chance of becoming free, the Supermind will descend and guide India's destiny.

How do you know it will do that? It may simply look on, twirl its mustache and say "Ahem"!

I would like to report that my head is very heavy, painful, body feverish and a painful boil in the nose.

Is it the result of your mind bumble-beeing too much around the tail of the Supramental?

I send you a photograph of mine along with the note-book. What do you think of this snap—a Mussolini gone morbid? Anyhow, it looks as if you have at last succeeded in putting some intellect in this brain-box of mine!

Good heavens, what a gigantic forehead they have given you! The Himalaya and the Atlantic in one mighty brow! also, with the weird supramental light upon it! Well, well, you ought to be able to cross the Ass's Bridge with that. Or do you think the bridge will breakdown under its weight?

When one has a mighty pen, Sir, one can wield it in any way one likes. However, I hope you intend to succeed in making me a yogi—not out of sheer fun!

I hope so.

But, really, Sir, I never expected you to take my "overnight" as overnight.

Don't understand your deep expressions—you did not mean that it would happen rapidly and suddenly? "Overnight" in English means that, but if you had some extraordinary supramental meaning (beyond the mental and out of the human time-sense) in your mind—it is a different matter, and then I express my awe-struck, heartfelt, flabbergasted regrets, pleading only as excuse my inability to grasp such a deep and novel use of the language. May I ask, very humbly, what you did mean, if not a sudden and rapid development into great sadhaks?

Is it because you use only the mental? Suppose we use your expression "very near the tail of the Supramental" in our human time-sense?

I supposed that you would take it as a metaphor or as anyone reading English in the ordinary way, would do. No need of a superhuman time-sense or timeless sense to interpret the phrase, although it seems it is needed in order to understand your "overnight".

I am not very clear about the transformation of the psychic. Doesn't it mean a process of change from a gross lower nature to a fine and higher one? But the psychic is a part of the Divine and hence always pure, noble and high. Do you mean a greater evolution?

I fear, I shall have to stop writing altogether, since even the simplest things I write are so unintelligible even to the few "intellectuals" of the Asram. I never said anything about a "transformation of the psychic". I have always written about a "psychic transformation" of the nature which is a very different matter. I have sometimes written of it as a psychisation of the nature. The psychic is in the evolution, part of human being, its divine part—so a psychisation will not carry one beyond the present evolution but will make the being ready to respond to all that comes from the Divine or Higher Nature and unwilling to respond to the Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha or Animal in the being or to any resistance of the lower nature which stands in the way of the divine change.

You have said that the psychic being is at this stage a flame not a spark. Does it apply to the human species as a whole?

I simply meant that there was a psychic being there and not merely a psychic principle as at the beginning of the evolution.

And is there a difference between the psyche of one man and that of another? Since they are portions of one Essential Divine, they should be the same in all, only the difference being that of evolution.

The difference is one of evolution. The psychic being is more developed in some, but the soul-principle is the same in all.

By the way, can't you be a little less indefinite than saying "evolve itself out" regarding India's Independence? When the Yogi B. Babu was asked about the date of India's Independence he replied, "Not within 50 years." Good Lord! Can you give a more definite date or is it again a "play of forces"?

I am not a prophet like B. Babu. all I can say is that the coming of independence is now sure (as anyone with any political sense at all can see). As you do not accept my "play of forces" explanation of things, I can say no more than that—for that is all that can be said by the "human time-sense".

I had a temperature of 100° all day. Arjava threatens that people will lose all faith in doctors unless I cure myself quickly. I fear the Supramental gave me some severe lashes with its tail!

Not at all. You are simply "not well"—the reason you as a doctor ought to discover. Unless you have committed a secret sin (of one kind or another) and the temperature is a foretaste of the heat hereafter. But that also is for you to see.

P doesn't seem to be willing to oil her machine with olive oil!

She wants, I suppose, to rely "only on the Mother's force". I suppose she does not like medicines.

... Just see what you wrote—"The psychic is the first of two transformations necessary—if you have the psychic transformation it facilitates immensely the other, i.e. of the ordinary human into higher spiritual consciousness—..." Evidently then, you speak of two transformations—one psychic, and the other human into something else.

But, hang it all, the psychic is part of the human nature or of ordinary nature,—it has been there even before the human began. So your plea does not stand for a moment.

By that accursed phrase making us "great sadhaks overnight", as I said, I didn't mean anything precise. There might have been something in the subconscious, perhaps an idea about A.B. being a great sadhak.

There you go again! "Grea sadhaks", "advanced sadhaks", "big sadhaks" like X, Y & Z!¹¹⁸ When shall I hear the last of these ego-building phrases which I have protested against times without number? And you object to being beaten!.

I regret to find that this phrase has led to so much froth. If you take such things seriously you will find many occasions for beating me and one day in sheer despondency you might utter, "Useless! useless! All pains, all efforts in vain, in vain!"

It looks like it! "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and vexation of spirit" saith the Preacher! I fear all Preachers have to come to that in the end—especially the vanity of correspondence.

What "secret sin" did you insinuate? Joke or jest? Well, a few days ago I cooked a little "khichuri" here, but that is hardly a sin!

That's all? Only a "little" khichuri? Umph! The transformation seems to have begun already.

I am much tempted to quote to you a very fragmentary touching picture of your brother Monomohan: "Dressed in a grey suit, tall, well-built—the face mysterious like the night, dreamy and tired eyes, Monomohan came to the class and all were spell-bound. A cursed poet fallen from the heaven of beauty onto our dusty earth. He used to read poetry and his sad eyes flamed up in delight. The class would come to an end like a dream..."¹¹⁹

If any part of you has remained human, you will shed two drops of tears on reading this. But there seems to be some similarity between you and him as regards charming the students by an overwhelming personality.

Not even a fragment of a drop! Monomohan had a personality, but it was neither overwhelming nor sweetly pathetic. So even wit' this piece of honeyed rhetoric the tears refuse to rise.

I understand your protesting against "great" or "big" sadhaks, but why against "advanced" sadhaks? It is a fact that some are more advanced than others and so we mention X as an advanced sadhak, don't mean anything else.

Advanced indeed! Pshaw! Because one is 3 inches ahead of another, you must make classes of advanced and non-advanced? Advanced has the same puffing egoistic resonance as "great" or "big". It leads to all sorts of stupidities, rajasic self-appreciating egoism in some, tamasic self-depreciating egoism in others, round-eyed wonderings why X an advanced sadhak, one 3 inches ahead of Y, should stumble, tumble or fumble while Y, 3 inches behind X, still plods heavily and steadily on, etc., etc. Why, sir, the very idea in X that he is an advanced sadhak (like the Pharisee "I thank thee, 0 Lord, that I am not as other unadvanced disciples",) would be enough to make him fumble, stumble and tumble. So no more of that, sir, no more of that.¹²⁰

T says I leave the smell of medicine in the lap of the Mother which she has to breathe every day. Perhaps I smell of that since I come straight from the Hospital. If it is nauseating to Mother and others, I think I should change my clothes before going to Pranam.

Mother smelt the hospital fragrance in you but she does not mind at all, it does not disturb her. As for others, well, I leave it to you. Some are pernickety, some are not; but I don't know if any others go into the first category.

S's abrasion is following quite a normal course. The wound is perfectly clean and healthy. He wants it to take a speedy, supernormal course. But unfortunately doctors can't do that... Our duty ends there and yours begins.

Perhaps S has doubts about what the Doctors may be doing with him, just as you have doubts about what the Divine may be doing with him—hence some nervousness. Better or worse? Where the deuce is the progress? When am I going to be healed? After centuries?

I had a discussion with Amal about the soul-theory. He says it is true the soul comes into evolution for the sake of experience, but once it is in Ignorance, it is divine only in name. It's imprisoned in matter. From there it slowly emerges making its very slight and imperceptible influence felt on the gross matter, then on the lower nature, while all the time a higher Force presses it forward till it becomes the Master.

An incomplete but not incorrect account of the process.

That is why the psychic takes thousands of lives to evolve and turn towards the Divine. Is the involution also a similar process, or is it one single descent all at once into the Inconscient?

No, certainly not. The involution is of the Divine in the Inconscience and it is done by the interposition of intermediate planes (Overmind etc., mind, vital—then the plunge into the Inconscient which is the origin of matter). But all that is not a process answering to the evolution but in the inverse sense—for there is no need for that, but a gradation of consciousness which is intended to make the evolution upwards possible.

What is the first experience that the soul had in its descent?

Partial separation from the Divine and the Truth—these things at the back and no longer in front and everywhere; division, diminished sense of unity with all, stress growing in separate existence, separate viewpoint, separate initiation, aim, action.

You say that if the soul goes on with its Karma, it does not get liberation. But isn't liberation a consummation of the result of Karma, at least according to Buddhism?

Not that I know of, in the ordinary theory. Karma always produce fresh karma' it is only the cut from karma that produces liberation

Buddhism seems to say that we are bound to the chain of Karma and so past Karma is always guiding our present and future. In that case would not Buddha's very attainment of Nirvana be due to his past Karma?

The only truth of that is that by the use of compassion and act of compassion one is helped to become a Bodhisattwa—just as sattwic deeds and feelings help to become less murky with the Ignorance. But it is knowledge that liberates according to both Buddhism and Vedanta, not Karma.

According to Buddhism, one can't explain then the play of forces behind any action, or would it say that even that has been arranged and determined by past Karma?

I suppose so.

But isn't it curious that Buddha did not concern himself with any play of forces?

Why should he? It was the play of sanskaras¹²¹ that interested him, the binding play of wrong ideas, and his whole aim was to get rid of that.

He seemed to have gone in for personal effort and struggle, didn't he?

Yes, because individual salvation was his aim and for him God and Shakti did not exist only the Permanent above and a mechanical chain of karma below. To undo the chain of sanskaras that create the individual is the point; the individual is a knot that must undo itself by disowning all that constitutes itself. The individual must do it, because who else is going to do it for him? There isn't anybody. All else including the Gods are only other knots of sanskaras and no knot can undo another knot—each knot must undo itself. Comprenez?

If Shakti didn't exist for Buddha, and if for the individual, his own efforts must undo the "knot", then I must say that his disciples had a very uphill job—to do everything by themselves.

Buddhist Yoga is an uphill business like the Adwaita Vedanta. You have to do the whole thing of your own bat, and even Tota Puri, Ramakrishna's teacher in Adwaita, was after thirty years of sadhana far from his goal, so much so that he went off to the Ganges to drown himself there—only Ramakrishna and Kali interfered in a miraculous way; that at least is the story.

The Buddhist Church, however, as distinguished from the uncompromising theory of the thing, proved weak and admitted সরনম্¹²² in Buddha as well as in the Dharma and the Sangha.

Didn't he really "pump" his force into his disciples?

Surely not. He would have considered it a wrong thing altogether—even if he had any idea about pumping force, which he probably never had. At least I never heard of his doing this operation. He might have given enlightenment, but I think only through upadesh¹²³—not certainly by pumping light into them. An individual knot of sanskars can tell another how to dissolve itself, but where is the ground for a more direct interference? All that of course is only the conscious theory of Buddha's action. I won't swear that without meaning it he did not influence his disciples in more secret and subtle ways.

Can you tell me why two Atelier workers have been sent to the hospital for simple conjunctivitis without consulting me? I was treating them and they were improving. All on a sudden I found one of them in the hospital. He said that his master had sent him there. I take it to be a breach in medical etiquette.

It is the workmen themselves that complained the eye was worse after the medicine, paining badly and suddenly red all over, and did not want to go back to the dispensary—so of course they have to go to the hospital. You must remember we are dispensing against the law, so we can't stand on medical etiquette.

October 1935

Absolutely in the physical consciousness! Don't find any trace of the psychic anywhere, Sir! Are you handling the blessed subconscient physical or what?

I am handling the handle. Sticky! If you are absolutely in the physical consciousness, so much the better. It shows you are on the way. If you were in your uproarious mental or tragic vital, then there would be little chance for the psychic to emerge. But now that you are in the physical, there is some prospect of your finishing the circle M. V. Ph. Afterwards possibly there will be a chance for the line Ps. HC. S. Rejoice!

What are the abbreviations Ps. HC. S.?

Psychic—Higher Consciousness—Supramental.

You are trying to adopt shorthand now!

Of coursel what to do? Shorthand lessens the labour of the writer, even if it increases that of the reader. Besides the attempt to find out what the abbs mean should stimulate your intuition and sharpen your intelligence.

I told you I'm feeling lazy, have no aspiration, no inclination to write poetry... Is it the physical?

Yes, that's the joker—physical consciousness.

And this, you say, is the better condition?

No, where did I say that?

Why, this is almost next to inconscience.

Of course it is.

I don't know how the psychic is going to emerge from the physical consciousness.

Well, it's the bottom of the first curve, so logically the next thing is to make an upward tangent and get into the second curve.

Suppose one finishes the circle M.V.Ph., it can go round again before one is shifted to the starting of the other line.

That would be very clever, but it is not usually done, except by people with big egos. Yours is no doubt a well-developed chubby chap, but it is not a giant.

The oculist is leaving for Madras; so the charge falls on us. Here was an opportunity for me to do operations, but as I have never done any, it is not possible. Do you think the Yogic Force will enable a doctor, even if he is not trained, to do things like cutting off an appendix or a cataract?

Good Heavens, no! Spare the poor people's eyes. The Force has to prepare its instrument first—it is not a miracle-monger. The Force can develop in you intuition and skill if you are sufficiently open, even if you did not have it before—but not like that. That kind of thing happens once in a way, but it is not the fixed method of the Divine to act like that.

I believe on must know the technique, not by heart only, but by hands as well!

Yes.

Or, is it that in the yogic world operations will be tabooed since the Force alone will dissolve the cataract?

Whatever it does, it will do by a method, not in the void.

You never wrote what Y.F. (yogic force) will do, by citing examples, as you said you would.

Some day. I fixed no date.

Again, about the intuition! You speak of keeping oneself sufficiently open to get the intuition. If I keep myself open and intuition favours me, how shall I know that it is the true thing?

Practise and learn, learn and practise. When you have had a few thousand intuitions, you can get the knack—for there is a recognizable difference between the true ones and the imitations or half-ones.

In one or two cases my off-hand diagnosis was correct. But how far can I take it as an intuition?

It depends on how it came, what was the stuff of the perception and the light in it, and whether it bobbed up as one among potentials though dominant or seized you as an inevitable dead cert. Also whether it was a pure intuition or a mixed mental. Difficult, isn't it?

About how to develop it, I won't ask you—though it would enlighten us; but I suppose you will develop it some day, though a big condition of "sufficiently open" overhangs. Yes, everything one can have if one is "sufficiently open", but there's the rub, for one isn't and can't!

Well, instead of letting your Man of Sorrows sob and grumble all the lachrymose time, you should labour manfully to enlarge the opening.

P has made copies of your letters to me. Naturally, I suppose he will show them to his friends in Calcutta.

No. They must not be shown to people outside

And R has most pathetically requested me to forward him your letters written to me. Then life becomes cheerful by their splendour.

Have you told him they are not for exhibition? It is only on that condition he can have them.

Is there no truth behind animal sacrifices to Kali, or are they useless inhuman practices like vivisection in the name of Science (according to anti-vivisectionists)?

If animal sacrifices are to be made, they may just as well be made to Kali as to one's stomach,—the Europeans who object to it have no locus standi.

Buddhism says the killing of mosquitoes, bugs, snakes and scorpions may be done mercifully or mercilessly for self-protection.

Certainly. One might just as well object to the killing Of germs by fumigation or otherwise.

What about the sacrifice of harmless animals to Kali?

Useless and therefore inadvisable. External sacrifices of this kind have no longer any meaning—as so many saints have said, sacrifice ego, anger, lust etc. to Kali, not goats or cocks.

One can massacre men and nations for the Divine, but what about this then for the Divine's sake?

How does the Divine benefit by it? Very hungry, I suppose would like a nice goat-chop?

I wonder if you know that some Sharma has gone on hunger-strike to stop the sacrifices at Kalighat. Tagore supports him.

Of course, I know. But he objects to animal sacrifice; why does he make a goat-offering of himself to Kali? Is human sacrifice better than animal sacrifice?

The argument is: what does the loss of one life matter if by it other lives can be saved?

I know the South African saying 'How glorious if the whole world were to destroy itself to save the life of a single mosquito'. I used always to wonder what would become of the poor mosquito if the world were destroyed. It seems to my poor common sense that it would perish also in the glorious holocaust.

I suppose you are watching with great apprehension the war-clouds that are gathering?

No, I am not trembling, but I agree that it is a beastly affair.

I hope Mussolini got no indirect impetus from your Essays on the Gita.

He never read them, I suppose.

But however much one may deplore war, that seems to be the only opportunity for India's liberation.

? [Sri Aurobindo put a big question mark.]

By "India's opportunity" I meant that if England is involved, she will naturally fall on India for help with men and money and India would be in a good position to hold out the bait of freedom.

What India? The Legislative Assembly? You think it has force enough to exact freedom as a price of some military help? Must have changed much if they can do that.

England has to be trapped in her own den. We can't depend upon her generosity to give us freedom for the asking.

How you arrange things! If it were so easy as that!

I have become awfully irritated these last two days. Is it due to your exposition of the "chubby chap"?

Maybe. Ego irritated at its own chubbiness? Wants to be rough rude and bossy,—a true he-man?

D. Reddy is running a temperature. Etiology is obscure; I presume it may be yogic.

Rubbish! D.R. is not Yogic enough to have a Yogic fever.

D.R. is all right. No temperature. He wants to come to Pranam.

I suppose he can, Doctore volente (Doctor willing).

Please have a look at Calcutta Review for a criticism by Adhar Das. I don't know if you have seen it already.

Yes, I have read all these sweet things from the sweet adhar.¹²⁴

I gather that he is favourably disposed to your philosophy so much so that he has written a book on it.

He was (favourable), without understanding much, before A.B. butted in and gored him into bitterness.

He doesn't seem to have grasped well the thing, has he?

"Methinks" he hasn't. Grasp of things is not his forte.

His remark about the divinisation of the individual and the emergence of the new race does not seem to be correct.

He seems to think that D.I. = E.N.R. or C.S.R.¹²⁵ So if D.I. is possible,. C.S.R. is superfluous or out of the question. Why, I don't know, for it takes individuals to make a race and if a certain number of individuals are not divinised, I don't see how you are going to get a divinised race. As for it being out of the question, the great Panjandrum alone knows why if an individual is divinised—(one obviously is not enough), it should be out of the question to go on divinising others until you have a new race. But I suppose, unless you create unnecessary quibbles, there can be no "intellectual" philosophy.

He says, "Divinisation of the individual will be instrumental in the emergence of a new race." Is that what you mean by "Our Yoga is not for our sake but for the Divine"?

Not exactly.

I thought there was quite a difference between divinisation and supramentalisation, the one being a step to the other; so you won't stop at divinisation.

Yes, of course, but as I have never explained in these letters what I meant by supermind, these critics are necessarily all at sea. They think, pardonably enough, that anything above human mind must' be supramental.

I suppose it will be a presumption on my part to criticise a philosopher like him from whom, you wrote to T, you learnt your philosophy.

No, no! Not learnt,—say that I am slowly learning from him. For he is kindly teaching me what I meant.

People are longing to see the first batch of the supramental species from your great laboratory, Sir.

Go forward, go forward and show yourself.

Then the critic writes that you are making an extravagant claim in as much as it gives a lie to logic and also to the lives and experiences of past seers. Well, Sir?

Well, I don't suppose the new race can be created by or according to logic or that any race has been. But why should the idea of the creation of a new race be illogical? It is not only my ideas that baffle reason, but Adhar Das's also! he must really be a superman, self-made of course, outside the laboratory. As for the past seers, they don't trouble me. If going beyond the experiences of the past seers and sages is so shocking, each new seer or sage in turn has done that shocking thing—Buddha, Shankara, Chaitanya, etc. all did that wicked act. If not, what was the necessity of their starting new philosophies, religions, schools. of Yoga? If they were merely verifying and meekly repeating the lives and experiences of past seers and sages without bringing the world some new thing, why all that stir and pother? Of course, you may say they were simply explaining the old truth but in the right way but this would mean that nobody had explained or understood it rightly before—which is again "giving the lie etc." Or you may say that all the new sages (they were not among Adhar's cherished past ones in their day), e.g. Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhva were each merely repeating the same blessed thing as all the past seers and sages had repeated with an unwearied monotony before them. Well, well, but why repeat it in such a way that each "gives the lie" to the others? Truly, this shocked reverence for the past is a wonderful and fearful thing! After all, the Divine is infinite and the unrolling of the Truth may be an infinite process or at least, if not quite so much, yet with some room for new discovery and new statement, even perhaps new achievement, not a thing in a nutshell cracked and its contents exhausted once for all by the first seer or sage, while the others must religiously crack the same nutshell all over again, each tremblingly careful not to give the lie to the "past" seers and sages.

In our discussion of yesterday about Adhar Das, if "not exactly", what exactly then do you mean by "Our Yoga is not for our sake but for the Divine"?

Well, I once wrote in my callow days "Our Yoga is not for ourselves but humanity"—that was in the Bande Mataram times. To get out of the hole self-created I had to explain that it was no longer for humanity, but for the Divine. The "not for ourselves" remained intact.

Is it something like the Vaishnava idea of absolute surrender, without even desiring to see Him, have milan with Him; only give, give and give? A very sublime conception, but is it possible and practical?

Quite possible and practical and a very rapturous thing as anyone who has done it can tell you. It is also the easiest and most powerful way of "getting" the Divine. So it is the best policy also. The phrase, however, means that the object of the Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine's sake alone, to be turned in our nature into the nature of the Divine and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine. Its object is not to be a great Yogi or a superman (although that may come) or to grab at the Divine for the sake of the ego's power, pride or pleasure. It is not for salvation though liberation comes by it and all else may come; but these must not be our objects. The Divine alone is our object.

Why not write something about the Supermind, if only to give us an idea about it? Saying that its only a different consciousness, is hardly enough. Any realisation of the Divine would mean that, I suppose. Or have you said something about it somewhere?

What's the use? How much would anybody understand? Besides the present business is to bring down and establish the Supermind, not to explain it. If it establishes itself, it will explain itself—if it doesn't, there is no use in explaining it. I have said some things about it in past writings, but without success in enlightening anybody. So why repeat the endeavour?

Dr. B is going home tomorrow for a month. Please see that Messrs. H. F. [Hostile Forces] may not entangle me into trouble.

For one month you may make yourself like iron and look fierce.

A worker from Cycle House—Cassel (?) has conjunctivitis.

Author of the dictionary? I suppose you mean Keshavalu?

B.P.'s case is contagious. How can we keep him here in such a closed place?

These two people B.P. and R. K. seem rather hopeless physically, but we don't quite know how to deal with them. To send them off is harsh, to keep them is bothersome. So?

Do you advise that B.P. should not work in the D.A.?

Please cast a glance on the typed letters about A.D. I suppose you wouldn't mind a copy being sent to him? I won't send, but if others do?

No, it is not meant for him. It is only a bit of fun between ourselves. If there is any danger of anyone doing that, it is better to keep it to yourself.

I think it is advisable to remove B.P. from the Dining Room and give him a separate work.

I hear he has automatically stopped.

That will obviate the danger of contagion, but what about the other trouble, the sore on which you kept quiet? Am I to take it that by Yoga it may be cured? I remember Mother once saying that there is hardly a disease that can't be cured by Yoga. Can cancer, the deadly enemy of present civilisation, be cured?

Of course it can, but on condition of faith or openness or both. Even a mental suggestion can cure cancer—with luck, of course, as is shown by the case of the woman operated on unsuccessfully for cancer, but the doctors lied and told her it had succeeded. Result, cancer symptoms all ceased and she died many years afterwards of another illness altogether.

However, if you can cure B.P. that way, it would be very good. Only, I think it would require a great development of consciousness and an opening, which he hasn't yet got.

Quite so. No passage.

Tomorrow I'll take him to the hospital as he has developed some ear trouble. I'll get his blood also examined there.

Right you are.

My disgust is becoming more and more acute as regards poetry. I suppose the slightly lit-up channel has closed again. Things are pushing me towards medicine—an absolutely opposite pole! Where is your alchemist, Sir?

Has taken opium probably and is seeing visions somewhere. Perhaps they will come out some day from your suddenly galvanised pen.

In your letter to Somnath you said that what is most needed is an upward aspiration. But then what about the other two movements: rejection and surrender you mention in The Mother?

It was not necessary to mention all that. I was only answering a limited question, not giving a whole theory of Yoga to Somnath.

Don't you think that aspiration being equal, a rajasic man will meet with a greater resistance in rejecting his lower impulses than a sattwic man?

That is implied in what I said about the sattwic man having the advantage. Somnath's question seemed to be about the approach to spirituality, Yoga, not as to what would happen to the two kinds of people in the course of the sadhana. But obviously the rajasic movements are likely to create more trouble than the sattwic ones. The greatest difficulty of the sattwic man is the snare of virtue and self-righteousness, the ties of philanthropy, mental idealisms, family affections etc., but except the first, these are, though difficult, still not so difficult to overpass or else transform. Sometimes however these things are as sticky as the rajasic difficulties.

Since desires are strong in the rajasic man they will surely thwart the fire of aspiration rising upwards, won't they?

All that is logical, but it does not happen in every case. It may be true in your case, but what of St. Augustine, Jagai Madhai, Bilwamangal and the rest? St. Augustine had difficulties, but they do not seem to have been of a very violent character, the others are described as having made a total yoke face, I believe.

If I had been a predominantly sattwic man, you would have had much less trouble from me, wouldn't you?

No doubt. But you are not after all, a thief, debauchee, drunkard or gangster. You may say perhaps that if you had been, you could have been a great saint also, violently sinning, violently repenting, violently sanctifying yourself? Perhaps that was the secret of St. Augustine and the others

So you can see that aspiration per se, however strong and true, cannot achieve much.

Who says no?

Or do you mean that a strong aspiration will necessarily bring in rejection and surrender?

Of course.

Next, though sinners and robbers have been converted into saints, their number must be very small compared to the sattwic type.

It may be so, but that is not my experience. The highly sattwic are few; the abnormally rajasic are few; of the middle sort there are many. According to my observation, this is true not only of this Asram but of others.

If so, can one say that in the evolution of consciousness sattwic people are more evolved than the others? Narrow logic again?

Um! somewhat! There are all sorts among the more evolved, among the less evolved there are many sattwic people also, mere good people who don't amount to much. One pats them on the back and goes farther. But don't twist this into meaning that I prefer the nasty bad ones. I don't; they give too much trouble. Only life, evolution, human character and things generally in this perplexing world are disconcertingly complex and can't be dismissed with a few simpler affirmations.

M says that his head seems to be better but he doesn't know if eruptions will come out again, when the treatment is stopped. So he suggests you will be a better judge to say whether the disease is still inside or not.

How am I to know? The inside of his head is opaque, not transparent. So long as it doesn't come again from outside with a new sowing!

One or two points on your second letter to Somnath. First about sacrifice; you know plenty of young lads have sacrificed their lives for the country by going to jail, being interned, but also by terrorism. They believe in the sacredness of their cause and so have sacrificed themselves by adopting means which they think would best serve their cause. Would you call their sacrifice a "misguided" one and send them to perdition for it? I believe you wouldn't.

Self-sacrifice for the country's sake has certainly a moral value. The "terrorism" brings in another element and assimilates it to the act of a fighter, less sattwic and more rajasic in its nature. I am not sure that I would be willing to call that a sacrifice in the moral or sattwic sense. In Bhisluna's case the element of sacrifice came in not in fighting and killing for the sake of Dhritarashtra bul in his knowing that he must die and accepting it for his ideal of loyalty. Of course, you may say that every man who risks his life does an act of sacrifice, but then we come back to very primitive values. I took the word in Somnath's letter in a less outward sense; otherwise my answer might have been different.

You also know how an ignorant Muslim fanatic killed a Hindu whom he took to be irreverent to his Teacher. He was in turn killed by the Court. He made a sacrifice of his life for the noble cause of his Prophet!

It seems to me that he made the sacrifice of another's life and not his own. In that way a murderer can also be said to make a sacrifice of his life to his desires or his passions, for he risks the gallows. Note that the fanatic tried to escape the gallows. Even taking it that he gave his life, it was for a reward, Paradise. His act is therefore at best equivalent to that of a soldier killing and getting killed. It cannot be called sacrifice, except in the old sense of the word, when you killed a cow or a goat on an altar to get religious merit. For the essence of this kind of act of fanaticism is, admittedly, the killing of the unbeliever and not the giving of your own life. Would you call it self-sacrifice if you offered a goat at Kalighat? it would be for the goat if it assented to the affair, but for yourself? Of course there is the price of the goat—you might pride yourself on that sacrifice. There is nothing noble besides, in fanaticism—there is no nobility of motive, though there may be a fierce enthusiasm of motive. Religious fanaticism is something psychologically low-born and ignorant—and usually in its action fierce, cruel and base. Religious ardour like that of the martyr who sacrifices himself only is a different thing.

It seems difficult to understand when the Mother says that spiritual sacrifice is joyful.

She was speaking of the true spiritual sacrifice of self-giving, not the bringing of an unwilling heart to the altar.

But for those who have tasted the joys of life, plunged into its passions, desires, etc., the sacrifice can hardly be joyful to begin with. Pain, struggle, may not be the essential character of the sacrifice, but there is a lot of it in the offering—especially in this Kali Yuga, I should say.

It simply means that your sacrifice is still mental and has not yet become spiritual in its character. When your vital being consents to give up its desires and enjoyments, when it offers itself to the Divine, then the yajna will have begun. What I meant was that the European sense of the word is not the sense of the word "yajna" or the sense of "sacrifice" in such phrases as "the sacrifice of works". It does not mean that you give up all works for the sake of the Divine—for then there would be no sacrifice of works at all. Similarly the sacrifice of knowledge does not mean that you painfully and resolutely make yourself a fool for the sake of the Lord. Sacrifice means an inner offering to the Divine and the real spiritual sacrifice is a very joyful thing. Otherwise, one is only trying to make oneself fit and has not yet begun the real yajna. It is because your mind is struggling with your vital, the unwilling animal, and asking it to allow itself to be immolated that there is the pain and struggle. If the spiritual will (or psychic) were more in the front then you would not be lamenting over the loss of the ghee and butter and curds thrown into the Fire or trying to have a last lick at it before casting it. The only difficulty would be about bringing down the gods fully enough (a progressive labour), not about lamentations over the ghee. [By the way, do you think that the Mother or myself or others who have taken up the spiritual life had not enjoyed life and that it is therefore that the Mother was able to speak of a joyous sacrifice to the Divine as the true spirit of spiritual sacrifice? Or do you think we spent the preliminary stages in longings for the lost fleshpots of Egypt and that it was only later on we felt the joy of the spiritual sacrifice? Of course we did not; we and many others had no difficulty on the score of giving up anything we thought necessary to give up and no hankerings afterwards. Your rule is as usual a stiff rule that does not at all apply generally.]¹²⁶

You always paralyse me by bringing in Mother and yourself in the argument. I can try to fight my cause against others who are human, or have been so at one time; but you are non-human.

All this about human and non-human is sheer rubbish, your usual red-herring across the path; you use it in order to argue that our knowledge and experience are of no practical value because they apply to us alone and cannot apply to or help human beings. As if no human beings ever had a clear mind and strong will able to make a resolution and carry it out without vital struggles and repinings. There are thousands who have done so. Even most ordinary men can do it when the passion for a cause seizes them. I have seen that in hundreds during the Swadeshi times. And do you think none who were human ever had conquered passion for the Divine?

Somnath suggests that I might try to write humorous stories, since he suspects that there is humour in me, however glum my outer appearance may be. He argues further that "since Sri Aurobindo is so humorous in your letters, you must surely have that element in you, which invites some response to it". Well, Sir?

There is a psychological truth involved in that reasoning. But it may be that it is an appreciation of humour rather than a power of humorous creation.

He asked how is it that sometimes secular literature moves one more, and gives a greater light and illumination than religious literature?

Religious literature inspires only the religious-minded,—and most religious literature, apart from the comparatively few great books, is poor stuff. Secular literature either appeals to the idealistic mind or to the emotions or to the aesthetic element in us, and all that has a much easier and more common appeal. As for spiritual light, it is another thing altogether. Spirituality is other than mental idealism and other than religion.

In literary expression, I think. it is the inner man that counts, But that would be tantamount to saying that an insincere man can't write things which will move the readers with a genuine and concrete something, or even if he does, not so much

Plenty of insincere men have written inspiring things. That is because something in them felt it, though they could not carry it out in life, and that something was used by a greater power behind. Very often in his art, in his writings, the higher part of a man comes out, while the lower dominates his life.

What shall we say then about Y? You seem to have said that his poems have helped many people, yet he was not quite sincere to his mood in his expression. Mother also spoke of his insincerity, it seems, and remarked that if he had been sincere his poems would have had a great force.

The Mother spoke of the poetry written in his bad after-days when he was merely repeating himself. It does not mean that nothing he wrote was sincere.

What about B.P.? His eyes seem cured—what about the rest of the business—sores? syphilis? blood test?

B.P. has trouble now affecting eyes, ears, throat and skin. Blood-test showed syphilis. He needs a very energetic treatment for about 6 months, though usual course is of 2 years, and isolation. A safe solution would be to ask him to go back home...

Can you speak to G, B's brother, and explain to him the situation from the medical and hygienic point of view—conditions, viz. necessity of isolation, 2 yrs course or minimum 6 months, danger to sadhaks of his coming to Pranam, so that he will have to stop the Pranam, etc., etc.? We shall have to decide after communicating with G, but I would prefer if all that can be told to him (with medical authority) rather than have to write at length.

About sacrifice and the rest, I keep silent tonight, since a cyclone is feared.

I am ready for it, but it has not arrived up till now—1 a.m

I am trying hard to understand your "Life Divine", like a dog at his bone. But at places I am at sea. Shall I take X's or Y's help? Who is better?

I know nothing of X's capacity for explaining philosophy—Y? well, he has translated it like everything else. Z would be the best man, but he is probably too busy and too lazy.

N.B. Very secret, these obiter dicta.

I explained to G the situation. But B.P. seems to be quite willing to face the quarantine for 1 or 2 years if necessary.

Can you draw up more precisely necessary rules for isolation? Also see the house where they are living (B, R.K. and R.B.) and what can be done so that there may be least chance of contamination. We might remove R.B., but she would be quite at sea among strangers.

No pranam of course; separate dishes; but the rest?

What's all this that J says, about his inner vital contact with A.B.?

J's inner imaginations, nothing more substantial than that

He says Mother has made this contact.

Rubbish! Mother never even dreamed of doing it.

He says further that he wants a direct contact with the Mother which A.B. doesn't allow, saying that he must do it through him.

Rubbish! A.B. would be the last person to prevent anyone from receiving the Mother's influence.

You have also conceded to this view. Very interesting, if true.

Rubbish! I never did.

They may be interesting, but they are not true

Are all these really true? And does he understand them?

Not at all. These are constructions and imaginations of a very active vital mind.

I wish I had known some of this business, but—

Alas, cult or occult
Nothing do I know;
Blindly, blindly like an ass
Braying incessantly I go.

What a beautiful poem! You wrote it yourself? It is in Dara's most modernist style.

I saw Madanlal going about with bare clothing. Not good for asthma.

What the deuce is bare clothing? I have heard only of a bare body etc. Your Aeschylean expressions are sometimes very puzzling.

About "The Life Divine" class, I would have loved to read with Z, but his Purushalike bearing scares one. You know he refused even to take up and only by Mother's order he did it.

Take up what? You have already asked him for the L.D. and been sent banging? Or is it something else indicated by an Aeschylean ellipsis?

I asked also Rishabhchand but he has no time. Hence those two, thinking that they understand at least better than I.

Which two, Great Heavens, O Aeschylus? R & Z? or X and Y? I suppose the latter. And the elliptical "Hence those two" = Hence I asked about those two? I shall become quite a skilful Aeschylean scholar at this rate.

I shall have to fall back on myself for "The Life Divine".

You might try. Read an unintelligible para from the L.D., then sit in vacant meditation and see what comes from the intuitive gods. They will probably play jokes with you, but what does it matter? One learns by one's errors and marches to success through one's failures.

Nirod Micawber (Talukdar no more). That is a good idea.

S is suffering from neuralgia, no doubt but 2ry to the joint trouble.

[Underlining "2ry"]:

This is worse than Aeschylus. Is it an Egyptian hieroglyph? English? Bengali? Shorthand?

I intend to give him salicylate, iodine or arsenic one after the other.

It looks like throwing stones at a dog in the hope that one of them will hit him.

A screen examination is advisable. these things are intractable and there is a hereditary taint.

Well, you can do the screen exam, but if there is any scream on the screen, be discreet and let us know first before S is informed. After we know what's the matter, can fix medicine.

Do you mean that the method you advised for reading The Life Divine can really do something?

It was a joke. But all the same that is the way things are supposed to come. When the mind becomes decently quiet, an intuition perfect or imperfect is supposed to come hopping along and jump in and look round the place. Of course, it is not the only way.

I read somewhere of people suddenly merging into silence and emerging with a resplendent solution. I wonder how.

What does it matter how it happens, provided it does happen?

I understand that you wrote many things in that way, but people also say that Gods—no, Goddesses—used to come and tell you the meaning of the Vedas.

People talk a stupendous amount of rubbish. I wrote everything I have written since 1909 in that way, i.e. out of or rather through a silent mind and not only a silent mind but a silent consciousness. But Gods and Goddesses had nothing to do with the matter.

But no Goddesses for poor folks like us; they can only cut jokes, play pranks or tease our tails, that's all.

Well, if they tease your tail sufficiently, might not a poem be the result?

I had a dream last night that I found a hidden treasure consisting of silver coins, but at the bottom, bundles of incense sticks.

Silver = spirituality. Silver coins = spiritual wealth. Incense sticks = devotion, bhakti, worship of the Divine.

J says that the dream obviously means spiritual wealth.

Have I got it? When? Where?

It is an offer of these things to you, probably from some tail-teasing God or Goddess.

Anyhow, joke or no joke, I will try the method. But the trouble is that the mind finds it difficult to believe that a vacancy can be filled up all of a sudden without any kind of thinking. The Goddesses may tease you, but not sufficiently enough. Otherwise, why one, many poems would have been the result.

That is the silliness of the mind. Why should it be impossible to fill up a vacancy? It is easier for things to come into an empty space than into a full one. The error comes from thinking that your thoughts are your own and that you are their maker and if you do not create thoughts (i.e. think), there will be none. A little observation ought to show that you are not manufacturing your own thoughts, but rather thoughts occur in you. Thoughts are born, not made—like poets, according to the proverb. Of course, there is a sort of labour and effort when you try to produce or else to think on a certain subject, but that is a concentration for making thoughts come up, come in, come down, as the case may be; and fit themselves together. The idea that you are shaping the thoughts or fitting them together is an egoistic delusion. They are doing it themselves, or Nature is doing it for you, only under a certain compulsion; you have to beat her often in order to make her do it, and the beating is not always successful. But the mind or nature or mental energy—whatever you like to call it, does this in a certain way and carries on with a certain order of thoughts, haphazard intelligentialities (excuse the barbarism) or asininities, rigidly ordered or imperfectly ordered intellectualities, logical sequences and logical inconsequences etc., etc. How the devil is an intuition to get in in the midst of that waltzing and colliding crowd? It does sometimes,—in some minds often intuitions do come in, but immediately the ordinary thoughts surround it and eat it up alive, and then with some fragment of the murdered intuition shining through their non-intuitive stomachs they look up smiling at you and say "I am an intuition, sir". But they are only intellect, intelligence or ordinary thought with part of a dismembered and therefore misleading intuition inside them. Now in a vacant mind, vacant but not inert (that is important) intuitions have a chance of getting in alive and whole. But don't run away with the idea that all that comes into an empty mind, even a clear or luminous empty mind, will be intuitive. Anything, any blessed kind of idea, can come in. One has to be vigilant and examine the credentials of the visitor. In other words, the mental being must be there, silent but vigilant, impartial but discriminating. That is, however, when you are in search of truth. For poetry so much is not necessary. There it is only the poetic quality of the visitor that has to be scrutinised and that can be done after he has left his packet—by results.

You have seen, I think, Prithwisingh's poem. Its very first line was hovering over my mind—I let it go, not thinking much of it, but he has obviously caught it! Often similar instances have occurred. How is one to explain this?

There is no difficulty about explaining. You are as naive and ignorant as a new-born lamb. That is the way things come, only one does not notice. Thoughts, ideas, happy inventions etc., etc., are always wandering about (in thought-waves or otherwise) seeking a mind that may embody them. One mind takes, looks, rejects—another takes, looks, accepts. Two different minds catch the same thought-form or thought-wave, but the mental activities being different make different results out of them. Or it comes to one and he does nothing, then it walks off, crying "O this unready animal!" and goes to another who promptly annexes it and it settles into expression with a joyous bubble of inspiration, illumination or enthusiasm of original discovery or creation and the recipient cries proudly, "I, I have done this." Ego, sir! ego! You are the recipient, the conditioning medium, if you like—nothing more.

Your yesterday's long letter has delighted me much. The burden of it seems to be that for the present we have to take everything on trust since we lack the experience, and so long as the experiences don't come what can we do but go on teasing you with our questions? And you know.

We are not worshippers of you
But your immortal letter!
We do not worship the dumb blue
But his resplendent star!
Which shines and all the night shines
In the dark caves of our mines.

[Underlining "letter" and "star":] Good Lord! I hope you don't imagine that is a rhyme?

But what about my table? Forgotten? Ellipsis? Out of the silence

What is the word that be
About my cane-table, Sir?
Shall I wait till Eternity?
Yes or no, do tell me, Sir;
Either can I take with surrender.

Forgot both the cane and the table. You can have if it is lying about. Good Lord! another! If you rhyme Sir and surrender you don't deserve a table but only a cane and plenty of it.

Rambhai complains of severe pain in the abdomen, due to constipation. Gave a dose of castor oil.

Rambhai is in Gujerat, if you please. If you are administering doses of castor oil to his abdomen direct from here, you must be a siddha Fascist Yogi. But perhaps you mean Ramkumar? Or whom do you mean? Is it—?

B.P. needs many injections out of which only 2 have been given.

By the way B.P. is said to be going to the reading room. Is that permissible? People may get nervous Wile does that.

By the way, what do you think of Prof. R and his immortal homeopathic treatment? I had some respect for the man without knowing much about him, but when I saw what you wrote to Sarat—that R doesn't believe in allopathy at all and considers it almost quackery, I said—a man apparently with sense, having such insensible notions!

But there are and have been plenty with sense who have held that view about allopathy (and homeopathy also and all medicine). What about Moliere? A man of sense, if ever there was one!

But our allopathic medicine is a science developed by painstaking labour—experiments researches, etc.

To a certain extent. The theory is imposing, but when it comes to application, there is too much fumbling and guesswork for it to rank as an exact science. There are many scientists (and others) who grunt when they hear medicine called a science. Anatomy and physiology, of course, are sciences.

I don't decry his homeopathy, and I dare say there are very potent drugs which we don't have...

There are plenty of allopathic doctors who consider homeopathy, Nature-cure, Ayurveda and everything else that is not orthodox "medical science" to be quackery. Why should not homeopaths etc. return the compliment?

Let me quote one or two glaring instances of his ignorance: 1) He said to X that the thyroid gland is at the back of the neck.

I think there are many homeopaths who don't know anatomy at all. I don't think there is any such thing as a homeopathic surgeon.

Poor X was thunderstruck. He almost came to believe it and consulted the Anatomy book!

It does not seem to have destroyed his faith in R. He has demanded "no rice" on full moon and new moon days, to Dyuman's and Mother's great perplexity. I had to tell the Mother, about the Indian "moon" superstition.

2) After trying this and that for X's hydrocele which isn't so by his diagnosis, he applied strong irritants causing inflammation and ulceration, and gave some internal medicines to stop these poisoning symptoms.

His theory is that homeopathy first brings out the disease, then kills it. Something like Yoga, what? i.e. you have to become conscious of things inside you and then remove them. I never heard such a theory before, though from any homeopath.

The latest development is retrenchment of bananas and no rice on new moon and full moon days! Science or witchery?

No. Not witchery nor science, but I suppose the common Indian idea. But don't doctors often make recommendations which are quite as absurd?

3) About A.B. I hear, R has stopped his sun-treatment which caused him headache. R traced the headache to his hot water bath and admonished him to use cold water... And fancy calling my science quackery! But who knows you are not enamoured of his—pathy! I wish I could transfer all my patients to him, and enjoy heavenly freedom, closing my branch.

I don't know anything about R's homeopathic knowledge or capacities. There is an enormous amount of self-assertion, bluff and fantasia in him. But sometimes he seems to be remarkably effective. It is perhaps however due to a great power of suggestion or, if you like to call it so, induced auto-suggestion. But many doctors say it is more the confidence in the doctor and the medicine that cures than either the doctor himself or the medicine. All this is meant not to support R, but to throw some cold water on the "my" in "my science". It sounds like Mussolini almost.

Yes, I was informed of B.P. using the reading room, and I had asked him to go when there were very few people.

His touching the newspapers is not dangerous?

A has been long complaining of ever increasing weakness—uncured by cod-liver oil, I suppose? Mother was suggesting to him to be examined at the hospital.

This silent mind you speak of in your case, [22.10.35] seems to be a result of Yoga.

Of course; the ordinary mind is never silent

Do thinkers and philosophers usually write from a silent mind, but unconsciously?

No, certainly not. It is the active mind they have; only of course they concentrate, so the common incoherent mentalising stops and the thoughts that rise or enter and shape themselves are coherently restricted to the subject or activity in hand. But that is quite a different matter from the whole mind falling silent.

If thoughts come like that [23.10.35], why is there a difference, sometimes a great difference, between the thought-substance of one person and that of another? Why don't thoughts, in some, shape themselves as profoundly, harmoniously and luminously as in others? Question of the opening into higher planes? And why is the beating not always successful?

Well done or badly done; also good condition or bad condition of the mental recipient.

First of all these thought-waves, thought-seeds or thought-forms or whatever they are, are of different values and come from different planes of consciousness. Even the same thought-substance can take higher or lower vibrations according to the plane of consciousness through which the thoughts come in (e.g. thinking mind, vital mind, physical mind, subconscient mind) or the power of consciousness which catches them and pushes them into one man or another. Moreover there is a stuff of mind in each man and the incoming thought uses that for shaping itself or translating itself (transcribing we usually call it), but the stuff is finer or coarser, stronger or weaker etc., etc., in one mind than in another. Also there is a mind-energy actual or potential in each which differs and this mind-energy in its recipience of the thought can be luminous or obscure, sattwic, rajasic or tamasic with consequences that vary in each case.

If I am not to "run away with the idea", you have to tell me definitely how to avoid being led into quagmires by any blessed idea. If the mental being is ignorant how will it discriminate or be impartial?

Experientia docet—experience is the doctor. Also the habit of intuitivising if it is honestly done develops a discrimination that begins to know how to sort the sheep from the goats or the demis and semis and semi-demis from the real thing. By honestly I mean without ego or parti pris.

As for the ego—can pride myself in being an instrument a medium, can't?

No, you can't—or if you do, you'll make an unblessed mess. Why should the chisel pride itself because the sculptor uses it? He could just as well have used another and it would have done as well. But anyhow the point is that ego brings a lack of poise and lack of receptive honesty and meddles with what is received.

You said on the 18th, "As for spiritual light, it is another thing altogether." What do you exactly mean by it? Do you mean that it can very well be had from anything—either high or low?

No. I did not mean that. I meant simply that an idealistic notion or a religious belief or emotion were something quite different from getting spiritual light. An idealistic notion might turn you towards getting spiritual light, but it is not the light itself.

We hear that one word, one sign, one line may put the spark to the powder and ignite the whole thing. But how? Because the psychic being was ready without one's knowing it?

It is true however that "the spirit bloweth where it listeth",and that one can get some emotional impulse or touch of mental realisation of spiritual things from almost any circumstance, as Bilwamangal got it from the words of his courtesan mistress. Obviously it happens, because something is ready somewhere,—if you like, the psychic being waiting for its chance and taking some opportunity in mind, vital or heart to knock open a window somewhere.

How does one get the "habit of intuitivising... honestly"? Is it by trying to have an inner silence and calm, and stopping all thoughts, as you point out in your letter?

That is the first condition, but not the whole process. I told you that one could not safely take whatever comes as the intuition and I gave you the reasons.

What I try to do now is to make my mind silent and pre scribe the drug that crops up...

Umph! But how are you sure that what sits¹²⁷ up is not a mental suggestion?

And what has ego to do with all this? What one has to do is to remain just silent; I don't see how ego can come in the way unless you mean that the mind won't tolerate being made a passive Brahman, and will assert its right.

Ego interferes in a general way—not of course in choosing medicines—and many ways, e.g. inviting pseudo-intuitions which flatter the ego. Also it may interfere when a mistake has been made and prevent you acknowledging it or even call in more pseudo-intuitions to justify and back up the original error. Innumerable are the tricks of the ego. Also, if you feel yourself becoming intuitive, rightly or wrongly intuitive, (more so if it is wrongly), then a too strong ego may develop in you megalomania and then you are gone. So don't justify ego.

I understand that Intuition will be one of the outstanding features of your Supramental creation; we will only have to shut our eyes and come off with an illumined intuition! The result will be epoch-making discoveries, inventions, etc., etc. By Jove! What a grand period it will be!

Good Lord, no! At least not till you live in the gnostic Intuition as your ordinary consciousness. So long as you are only receiving all sorts of things from everywhere, you will have to be on the qui vive to see that you don't make a pseudo-intuitive fool of yourself.

Nirod [Underlined]

28-10-35

M still complains of having fever after his evening meal. We should like to know whether it is real fever or only some heat and uneasiness in the body. There is cough still, but it seems to be looser according to his last statement.

SRI AUROBIND
October 28, 1935

You will agree that to develop literary style, two things are necessary: reading and writing...

Reading of various novels, stories, fictions is fruitful because their contribution is decidedly the richest. Now the trouble is that when I read these fictions, English or Bengali, though delighted by the style, I can't detach myself from the subject-matter. At times it may mean even the lowering of consciousness.

Why the devil can't you separate yourself from what you read—taking from it only what you need or what you choose?

For instance I read a book by Wodehouse. The fellow, as you know, has some charm of expression, and my vital takes part in the enjoyment.

I don't. I find him damn silly with a repetition always of the same trick humour. At any rate, I hope you don't call that style.

For literary creation and effective expression, who will deny that style has a great force?

Of course; without style there is no literature—except in fiction, where a man with bad style like Dickens or Balzac can make up by vigour and the power of his substance.

Aren't all your letters so refreshing, stimulating to us because of your superb style? And to manufacture your style, you will hardly deny that your enormous reading contributed to it.

Excuse me! I never manufactured my style; style with any life in it cannot be manufactured. It is born and grows like any other living thing. Of course it was fed on my reading which was not enormous—I have read comparatively little—(there are people in India who have read fifty times or a hundred times as much as I have) only I have made much out of that little. For the rest it is Yoga that has developed my style by the development of consciousness, fineness and accuracy of thought and vision, increasing inspiration and an increasing intuitive discrimination (self-critical) of right thought, word form, just image and figure.

I don't know what to do with R.K There is virtually no improvement in his trachoma. Today he says he has great pain in right pain and wants it to be reported.

You are certainly a born supramental. "To have great pain in right pain" is of a supramental depth.

Why can't I separate myself from what I read? Well, Sir, it is the devil that flares up and goes on lamenting over the loss of "ghee and butter" (by which, I suppose, you meant sex-enjoyment?) [17.10.35].

You mean then that you can't separate yourself when you are reading of sex? But surely even modern novels caret be nothing but sex enjoyment from start to finish? Why not separate the rest of the time, practise separation at least, even if you have to splash in when the sex comes rolling by?

I have seen your letter of today to Dilip. When I finished reading it, I let out a sigh and exclaimed—How cruel! after raising our hopes you mercilessly cut them of because the letter would be too long? Nothing is too long for us, especially such personal examples which are more valuable for the likes of us than any promises and possibilities...

Good Lord! I never said it was too long for you to read, I meant it was too long for me to write now. And I can't write such things by themselves as an autobiographical essay—it is only if they turn up in the course of something that I can do so. Last night I had no blessed time to illustrate. I thought of writing it because it seemed very appropriate, but when I couldn't, I just mentioned it in order to hint that what I had written was not mere theory, but provable by solid experience. No fell intention to tantalise.

But it is unthinkable and almost unbelievable to have any experience of Self, in the circumstances you have described! [In Dilip's letter.]

I can't help that. It happened. The mind's canons of the rational and the possible do not give spiritual life and experience.

But can you not tell us what the experience was like? Was it by any chance like the one you speak of in your Uttarpara Speech¹²⁸—the Vasudeva experience?

Great Jumble-Mumble! What has Vasudeva to do with it? Vasudeva is a name of Krishna, and in the Uttarpara I was speaking of Krishna, if you please.

But didn't you begin Yoga later on in Gujerat?

Yes. But this began in London, sprouted the moment I set foot on Apollo Bunder, touching Indian soil, flowered one day in the first year of my stay in Baroda, at the moment when there threatened to be an accident to my carriage. Precise enough?

By the Self, I suppose, you mean the individual Self?

Good Lord, no. I mean the Self, sir, the Self, the Adwaita, Vedantic, Shankara Self. Atman, Atman! A thing I knew nothing about, never bargained for, didn't understand, either.

I had a dream of the Mother: we were all sitting in the pranam hall, when a very rich man came with his sick child. He said to Mother that if she accepted the child, he would give her lots of money. Mother thought awhile, drew out something like a horoscope which seemed somewhat like- the Taj Mahal. Through a tubelike instrument, she gazed at the design. She found that this child had a counterpart in Delhi whom if she secured, she'd cure this child. This man seemed to have some connection with the millionaire Hukumchand. What are these things now?

Dreams of the vital plane corresponding to some reality there, but not necessarily to any exact reality in the physical, though it does sometimes touch on physical realities. The connection with Hukumchand was either a touch of the vital mind or else only an indication of the class of men this belonged to, if it touches the physical.

November 1935

There was a small gale over the servant business. When his fault was shown, he went on arguing with me with an insolent attitude which I couldn't bear.

Why not? He is using the freedom of his reason and asserting his sovietic equality with you, his "comrade" and fellow human. Ask H.

Really, Sir, your Karmayoga has lost all charm for me. To go on all the time driving a fellow, rebuking him, is an unaesthetic business; besides, one can't pour out the venom as one doesn't know the language. But you harp on your dictum that all this is necessary for a great transformation.

Exceedingly good discipline for you.

Methinks you are making just a little too much of the Yoga-Force, when you speak of poetry, music, painting, etc. I will take Dilip's classical example, to illustrate my viewpoint. He himself and everybody, agrees that what progress he has made in music and literature has been greatly accelerated by the Yogic Force. But why? Well, because the things were in him, and if he went on cultivating them as assiduously, sincerely, earnestly, outside as he has done here, can you say that he wouldn't have taken such strides in those directions? For any real and remarkable achievement, the main issue is to be born with the capacity and then to have the determination to develop it. Then Force or no Force, one will have the result. Well?

Will you explain to me how Dilip who could not write a single good poem and had no power over rhythm and metre before he came here, suddenly, not after long "assiduous" efforts blossomed into a poet, rhythmist and metrist after he came here? Why was Tagore dumbfounded by the "lame man throwing away his crutches and running" freely and surely on the paths of rhythm? Why was it that I who never understood or cared for painting, suddenly in a single hour by an opening of vision got the eye to see and the mind of understanding about colour, line and design? How was it that I who was unable to understand and follow a metaphysical argument and whom a page of Kant or Hegel or Hume or even Berkeley left either dazed and uncomprehending and fatigued or totally uninterested because I could not fathom or follow, suddenly began writing pages of the stuff as soon as I started the Arya¹²⁹ and am now reputed to be a great philosopher? How is it that at a time when I felt it difficult to produce more than a paragraph of prose from time to time and more than a rare poem short and laboured, perhaps one in two months, suddenly after concentrating and practising Pranayarri daily began to write pages and pages in a single day and kept sufficient faculty to edit a big daily paper¹³⁰ and afterwards to write 60 pages of philosophy every month? Kindly reflect a little and don't talk facile nonsense. Even if a thing can be done in a moment or a few days by Yoga which would ordinarily take a long, "assiduous, sincere and earnest" cultivation, that would of itself show the power of the Yoga-force. But here a faculty that did not exist appears quickly and spontaneously or impotence changes into highest potency or an obstructed talent changes with equal rapidity into fluent and facile sovereignty. If you deny that evidence, no evidence will convince you, because you are determined to think otherwise.

So about your style too; as you say you were born with it and it flourished by your great endeavours. It is difficult to understand how much the Force has contributed towards its perfection. But I have no doubt about the potency of the Force as regards matters spiritual, though even there one must have the opening, faith, etc., etc.

It may be difficult for you to understand, but it is not difficult for me, since I have followed my own evolution from stage to stage with a perfect vigilance and following up of the process. I have made no endeavours in writing; I have simply left the higher Power to work and when it did not work, I made no efforts at all. It was in the old intellectual days that I sometimes tried to force things, but not after I started the development of poetry and prose by Yoga. Let me remind you also that when I was writing the Arya and also since, whenever I write these letters or replies, I never think or seek for expressions or try to write in good style; it is out of a silent mind that I write whatever comes ready-shaped from above. Even when I correct, it is because the correction comes in the same way. Where then is the place for even a slight endeavour or any room at all for "my great endeavours"? Well?

By the way, please try to understand that the supra-intellectual (not the supramental only)—is the field of a spontaneous automatic action. To get it or to get yourself open to it needs efforts, but once it acts there is no effort. Your grey matter does not easily open; it closes up also too easily, so each time an effort has to be made, perhaps too much effort—if your grey matter would sensibly accommodate itself to the automatic flow there would not be the difficulty and the need of "assiduous, earnest and sincere endeavour" each time. Methinks. Well?

I challenge your assertion that the Force is more easily potent to produce spiritual results than mental (literary) results. It seems to me the other way round. In my own case the first time I started Yoga, Pranayama etc., I laboured 5 hours a day for g long time and concentrated and struggled for five years without any least spiritual result¹³¹, but poetry came like a river and prose like a flood and other things too that were mental, vital or physical, not spiritual richnesses and openings. I have seen in many cases an activity of the mind in various directions as the first or at least an early result. Why? Because there is less resistance, more cooperation from the confounded lower members for these things than for a psychic or a spiritual change. That is easy to understand at least. Well?

You say that my "grey matter does not easily open; it closes up also too easily" but where is "the automatic flow' to which it can accommodate itself, Sir?

The automatic flow would be there but for the grey matter being adverse and perverse.

I find that if a current has opened up a little, a blessed counter-current of depression, dissatisfaction comes down and sweeps me away.

Exactly. That's its way of closing up. The three Ds seem to be your grey matter's forte—doubt, depression, dissatisfaction. If it were not for them, when something came you would get the Ananda of creation and things would move a little.

If you advise me to go on sitting and racking my brain—inspiration or no inspiration—and then only the grey matter can open up, I'll say it is not a very royal road that you show me.

I don't think the inspiration usually comes in that way! It is better to put yourself in receptive attitude and let it come. If it doesn't come, try, try again but no need to sweat and swear and writhe.

Some are of the opinion that one shouldn't try to force the inspiration.

It can't be forced but it can be invited

About J's blessed novel-tangle—the first instalment will appear in the next issue of Uttara. Wouldn't it be advisable to inform X beforehand?

Good Lord! he does not know it yet? I thought he knew "she had put it in other hands". Well, well!

I said to J long ago to inform him; naturally she didn't listen... I am sick, sick of it and curse myself every minute. But since I have sown the wind, I have to reap the whirlwind.

"Cast your bread upon the waters and it shall return to you"—rather sodden!

Even if the three Ds were my forte why can't the Force push me on? Because of lack of cooperation?

Yes, of course.

But I find that D's best creations come when he's depressed and his depression itself is worked out in that manner. In spite of it he's as active as a giant.

D has a different temperament from yours. He has a magnificent vitality which, whatever road he goes on, can carry him galloping towards the goal. Only he has not yet learned how to put it at the service of the inmost psychic for spiritual realisation. He has been trying to do everything with his mind. One can do that up to a certain point provided the vital can accept the mind control and the mind itself is wholly on the side of the central mind's will. But that has not yet happened. But the vitality serves to keep up his powers of activity and also to react at a certain point and drag him out of the depression.

Yours on the contrary is a slow plodding vitality. You can't expect it to give the same results. It can only go fast when the road has been prepared and opened. The road for the poetical self-expression is not yet sufficiently prepared and open.

On the other hand I see quite a number of people remaining cheerful and happy though the outer nature seems rather uncontrolled. I wish I could be at least happy and sunny.

That is a mere matter of temperament. There are plenty of people whose ordinary nature is sunny and cheerful.

However, a yogi astrologer predicted that all my dark age will pass away at the age of 32 and the golden age will set in. The age of 32 has come but where is the gold?

Glorious! you must begin glittering at once—even if there are other things than gold that glitter. But are you through the wonderful year, already? and is it the age of 32 or the 32nd year?

By the way I learned that Datta once belonged to this lamenting and repining group and spent about 5 years in such a crisis. True? who will believe it now?

You are asking very delicate questions. I can only say that Datta has been with the Mother from the pre-Asram, even the pre-Yoga-times—her case is uniquely difficult...

Only my expressions are puzzling, Sir? Your supramental ones are no less—especially when you want to be "elusive", "non-committal". Example? Well, I asked you about the advisability of informing X about the Uttara business, an you wrote: "...he does not know it yet? I thought he knew 'she had put it in other hands'..." I don't know what to make of it. Anyway, your opinion is not needed now, as J has her own opinion about it. But what do you mean by "she has put it in other hands"? Has X said that to you?

Well, it means what it says "I thought he knew she had put it in other hands," I put the phrase in inverted commas because I seemed to remember somebody having written it. It may have been X. He wrote once about J having dropped him although he had done what he could for her.

But I can't swear to it.

Can you tell me why D's friends kick him back for the good he has done them? Because he expects a return?

Yes, partly for that, But only some are really grateful for benefits done except for the moment. A great many kick under the burden of an obligation. Human nature! You know Vidyasagar's immortal saying on the subject, I suppose. "Why is he so furious against me? আমি ত তার কোন উপকার করিনি"¹³²

Can you, by the way, summarise my case and put the points before my myopic eyes apart from the three Ds?

Good Lord! don't expect me to be diagramming people all the time. Besides your personalities are not clearly marked out like D's. Wait till they separate themselves to join in the Dance of Harmony!

About Datta, it was in one of a series of articles written by Barin about her. So everybody knows what I know.

Ah, then I understand. Barin's statements are always inaccurate. The 5 years must have been his own construction.

A is complaining loudly of her stomach pains—can't even walk in her room etc. What are they? a little medical light, please.

Nirod,

I had forgotten to write to you last night that the Mother was sending Ambu to you. He said he would not be able to explain what was the matter with him, so we said we would write. He is constantly feeling weak, extremely tired and unwell without any specific cause. You might try by examination and otherwise to find out what is the matter and report to the Mother.

SRI AUROBINDO

A has been getting pain in the right abdomen only while walking. On examination I find that the pain is in the stomach, liver and kidney regions—mostly liver which is enlarged and she has movable kidney... Since there are no inflammatory signs, a few days of inactivity—not even walking, will set her right. Or she can wear a strap on the abdomen and move about a little.

Perhaps—if it is liver; the Mother always thought she looked bilious. But if it is moving kidney? She can't remain a non-walking statue all her life. The strap would then be, I suppose, the only resource.

Her fever of yesterday doesn't throw any light on the main issue. Any supramental light?

None. Supermind says "O bother! don't trouble me with that, yet."

I send you a photograph of an intimate friend, Jatin Bal. Please have a look at it and tell me what you find—yogic or unyogic.

Refinement in vital, strong will, capacity for idealism can't say note from a small photograph.

Don't mind the side show! If you had seen me before, you would have exclaimed: "This fellow has no scrap of a chance for yoga!" But you will admit that I had health and vigour!

The general impression is martial and pugilistic. To be recommended to the Negus for Gorrahei or Gerlogubi.

You will see from J's letter what has happened. I am absolutely moribund and gasping; don't see the way. Cursing myself every minute.

All that is rather excessive. It would be better to stop dying, gasping and cursing.

What have all these to do with Yoga?

It has nothing to do with Yoga. Usual human tangles, sir.

The Yoga of oblation, sacrifice and severe austerities would be better.

There is no such Yoga.

—No hankering for fame, name or meddling with others' affairs.

That also is not Yoga.

I have lost all faith, confidence, hope, and if all that is gone, what else remains for me to do here?

Good God! What a shipwreck in a teacup! Kindly cultivate a sense of proportion. Learn the lessons of experience, ponder them in silence and do better next time—that would be more sensible.

There is much wind and storm around which is affecting me. Do give a timely elixir, Sir...

Why be so much affected by the weather? You have no umbrella? If there is wind and storm, it is surely your own—I am not responsible.

What's the use of giving an elixir when you won't drink it?

How can I refuse the elixir? Only give it tangibly, concretely.

A concrete elixir is your business, not mine—as you claim to be a scientist.

S is down again, after taking yellow rice (oily). I was called this morning and found him writhing with burning pain in the abdomen... Had vomiting. It is the blessed liver again.

He medicated himself yesterday by taking 10 or 12 black peppers with salt to counteract the intense burning! Look at the fellow. I don't know how to counteract the poisonous effect.

The fellow is terrible. You mean there is no medicine for it in the allopathic pharmacopoeia?

Again about the novel-tangle. X told J in your name—"All she did with regard to her novel was because of egoism and her love of vital drama." J was very much upset by hearing it said in your name.

That is what you might call applied mathematics. I made a general statement which could cover the whole animal and human creation up to Mussolini and the Negus and avoided all mention of the novel. added that since he had received an amende honorable, the matter tight be dropped and peace declared.

J says X might write all about it.

hope not!

Nirod [Underlined]

14.11.35

Is the condition of S dangerous or critical? If it is so or if it becomes so, it will be better to send for a French doctor who will take the responsibility of the case.

SRI AUROBINDO

Was surprised to get your note, Sir. S's condition is neither dangerous nor critical, but apprehending that it might be come so, we want to fetch a doctor. Rest is advisable.

I heard from S that R is anxious to treat him. I replied that I have not the least objection.

According to R it was S who was anxious and requested him three times to treat him, while R himself was circumspect and indifferent They both wrote about it, but that was three or four days ago before S's condition got bad. Versions, versions!

What do you say about giving R a trial in place of the French doctor? Won't that be good for S?

As he is getting better, we can do without either

The Mother was knocked up in the small hours and informed that S was very bad and hiccoughing. I presume the French Doctor has been sent for by this time. If it is serious, let us have news 2 or 3 times a day.

No meal as yet, Sir. It is 9.30 p.m. No sleep, no rest. And still you express your surprise and grudge a doctor being given a certificate! What a sorrowful world, to say nothing else!

Poor doctors who give up rest and sleep and food, yet remain all unwept, unhonoured and unsung! Never mind! Perhaps in heaven they will have a big address given them one mile long and signed by all the angels—cherubim and seraphim together.

Nirod, [Underlined.]

15-11-35

As the Doctor has approved of R's treatment and S himself says he feels better under it, it is better to continue it. I expect you to put your medical feelings under a glass case in a corner for the time and help the unspeakable Homeopath so far as nursing and other care for S goes. To quote Dilip "qu'en dites-vous?"

SRI AUROBINDO

Very well, sir. What the Guru expects, the disciple respects. I shall obey your command. You have heard all about the diagnosis. You can judge for yourself. I won't say a word on it. I fervently hope no occasion will arise to break my seal.

Let us hope so. The French doctor (Val, Vahl, Valle? What the devil is his name?) said the case was not dangerous except for the possible crisis of the heart. So let us hope for the best in spite of the differences of doctors.

So you see I had to break the seal this morning. You read the report I sent to the Mother through Nolini. I don't think I was unjustified in secretly informing you. I don't understand why R objects and doesn't want to let you know the exact report. Let me ask you how much you are guided by our reports, whether an accurate report is essential for your action. If so there are quite a number of things that one would object to in R's report.

It is absolutely essential. Wrong information or concealment of important facts may have disastrous consequences.

He has been passing copious black vomit since last night. It decreased during the day. He says in the evening's report that he didn't want to stop the vomiting; he has done that only because you wished it.

He has reported at 9 o'clock to Pavitra that he has succeeded in entirely stopping vomiting and hiccough. Is it true?

He expected to stop the hiccough in half an hour, but has failed. His condition at night will be critical; are you sure about his life?

No. From the beginning of the case I have not been at all sure of it. I understood however that Valle had said it was not a dangerous case, apart from the danger of heart-failure which he did not suppose to be very great and could be avoided. But the circumstances have been very contrary and there has not been the usual response to the Force which makes recovery only a matter of time. It seems to me that it is an old illness which has suddenly taken an acute and perilous form. If tomorrow morning there is no improvement, we can call Philaire (I hope it will be in time). Pavitra is typing a letter which you can take to Philaire and learn from him when he will come over. If you and Philaire can understand each other, it is all right. Otherwise inform Pavitra of the hour and he will go at that time.

Accidentally I met Valle in the hospital. He asked me to call Philaire, as it is a surgical case.

He did not say that then, but gave an optimistic view of the case. But is surgical intervention possible in a state of extreme weakness?

You have heard of S's sudden good turn, putting him almost out of danger. It came about in this way: at 9.45 a.m., the time when Mother came down for Pranam, he went into a sound sleep and I too into a little concentration. I found, on opening my eyes, S in deep sleep with the cessation of hiccoughs. At once I had the impression that he was out of danger. R says that he himself was deep in meditation in the Pranam hall, when a great sense of joy pervaded him along with the idea that S had passed the danger zone. He opened his eyes and caught Mother looking at him. Mother's fixed reassuring grip of his hand confirmed his intuition. Is all this true?

There was something—a sense of a danger passed and a Force put out. There was also a pressure on R which amounted to this "No more bluff—bluff won't do here. You must now justify your bluff and cure S."

Things must have changed after you wrote to me that you were not sure of his life. You must have done something definite and imperative meanwhile. Can you reassure us now?

There is a change in so far as S's physical has begun to respond while before it was not responsive at all. There is therefore no longer the predominance of the dark forces that there was before. But the response has to increase before one can be absolutely sure of the result. The obstinacy of the hiccough is a dark point that ought to disappear.

I don't agree. with R when he says that hiccough will have some good effect on the intestine!

!!!

In this great consternation, I could not ask anything about myself I forgot to ask even for your blessings.

The blessing is there all right.

R showed me your reply regarding your disapproval of Bovril and remarked that you did it from motives we don't understand. But have you disallowed it because of my disapproval or do you and Mother concur with my opinion?

We concur. Besides she considers it too heavy for a patient like S. Even as a convalescent—which he is not yet—he cannot be treated like other convalescents or fed up without consideration of the fundamental and constant weakness of his digestive organs.

S complained of acidity because he was given too much lime-juice.

Why do you all call it lime-juice? It is orange-juice that is being sent. If it had been limes, I suppose S would have been dead by this time. But even this orange juice represents more than 20 oranges a day. Mother looks askance at this enormous quantity—how can he digest and will it not increase the hyperacidity, burnings, eructations, hiccough?

R resented S's complaint and wants to stop treatment. I said it would be absurd.

That is what he wants to do. We have said "no".

Shall I write to you my opinion about things as in the Bovril case or would I put you in a fix as to whom to listen to?

It is better if you write.

No, the fix is how to get R to be reasonable.

You must have marked that he has suspended giving him brandy.

If he has stopped it, all right. But it was a monstrous imprudence. He does not seem to realise that S's is a special case—that of a man who even in convalescence and apparent good health cannot be allowed to take what others take.

He told me just now that S's black vomit was of blood but he kept it from me because it would make me nervous! In the report also he wrote "Black vomit of yellow fever". Did he write to you that it was blood?

No, he did not write it was blood—only that absurdity about yellow fever.

By "lime-juice", I meant orange-juice. R would call it "sweet lime juice", not orange which is supposed to be different.

Perplexing Why should juice of oranges be called 'sweet lime' juice? I suppose in that case juice of sweet limes should be called orange juice? Vice versa? mutual transmutation? or what? Orange is certainly "supposed" to be different from sweet lime and it is oranges and not sweet limes we are using. R seems to live in a world of his own mental constructions, which has nothing to do with this poor earth and common "humanity".

R complains of the delayed supply of food and has written to Mother about it, he says.

He seems to think that things can be supplied at his order by some process of magic.

R told me that somebody has written to you about the orange juice and its production of hyperacidity.

Rubbish! It was the Mother who from the first had this objection long before you wrote about it. She gave the juice in the quantity asked for only because R insisted on it.

He adds that you come down to common human consciousness level and listen to these suggestions!! He also says you have no time to go into higher consciousness to ascertain the validity of these statements.

What an imbecile! As if one could not know about orange juice and its effects without shooting up into the Supermind. Does he think his extraordinary theories are supramental?

Now that S has been resuscitated—without any impending danger—I would like to know how far R's treatment has contributed to it. Dr. Nibaran said he doesn't believe at all that R had anything to do with the cure. It was pure and simple Mother's Force throughout. What was wanted by the Mother was complete suspension of medicine, but since the patient didn't have so much faith, homeopathy was allowed—which is as good as no treatment.

That is the allopath's prejudice.

I quite believe that homeopathy has a place. I've heard from Mother to that effect and, from other authoritative sources, of some miraculous cures by it.

Dr. Valle himself, who is an allopath and not likely to be bamboozled, has studied homeopathy and uses it in many cases.

I asked Mother about R, and she said that he has a magnetism around him, which he can put into his patients. I have also marked that he has enormous self-confidence and a capacity to create confidence in others.

That is his real strength along with the magnetism and power of suggestion. The man is a tower of vital strength and a dynamo of vital force—but with all the turbidity of a vital force.

I can't altogether dismiss his treatment as rubbish and make-believe, because you yourself have said that if the diagnosis is correct and appropriate medicines are administered the Force can work quickly and effectively.

Yes, certainly. On the contrary, when there is a grave error in the treatment, as in R's encouragement of the bilious vomiting and of the orange-fed hyperacidity, then the Force has to fight that as well as the illness, and it becomes difficult.

I hear you have said that it's because S surrendered himself to the Mother that he was saved.

? No, certainly not. I never said that—to whom should I say it? Besides, he was not saved till now. And S's surrendering would be a greater miracle than anything else.

... Anyway, even if his explanations are exasperating, I've learnt something from R—calmness, self-confidence and faith.

Right—that is the thing every physician should have

But a few days' dealing has shown me that if my ego is a "chubby chap", R's seems a giant.

Pretty big at any rate.

But big egos are a sign of greatness, it seems, since only big people have them.

Not always, sometimes only a sign of great egoism.

Those who are non-entities, what can they egotise on? Poor man as I am, I can't boast of wealth. I can't say I have done miraculous cures, because I haven't.

Yes, but even if R had not done miracle cures,- he would say he had and people would believe him.

All that about S's surrender is rubbish; he is not surrendered at all, ... But the man has a belief in Yoga-force and that helps; only he had gone so wrong that at first his body was not responding. Even I was not able to put much force, the contrary forces surrounding him were so thick that the higher Shakti refused to act except in a half-hearted way. I was hoping you and Becharlal being accustomed to him would pull him out as the old Doctor who knew the right way with him had done—in spite of the greater danger this time, with the limited help I could give. It was only when the heart began to misbehave seriously, that, as often happens, in response to the danger a big Force began to come down and S's body also responded—it was that response that saved him, not any surrender. At the same time I resolved to give R a chance—because energy and élan were needed and he had them, also I had certain [proofs of] how effective he had been in one or two cases of which I had knowledge.

All the same I think the Force can take more credit than R's medicines, although the latter were very useful, one might say an indispensable assistance. Yet it was whenever a big Force came in that S made a bound forward and each time on the lines indicated by the Force, first the heart's recovery, next the deliverance of the liver, third the overcoming of the hyperacid excesses. R was an obstacle as well as a help,—twice. First, in his confounded decision to encourage "yellow fever"—the bile had to be cleared out of course, but not in that dangerous way; next in his "lime-juice" excesses, the orange-juice was useful, but frantically overdone. As soon as he dropped his first mistake, the bile set itself right—as soon as he dropped his second to some extent and administered orange juice + medicine reasonably, the rest ameliorated. That is at least how I read it. And if so, it was because the Force got a chance to work straight—helped and not impeded. Now the only thing is to confirm the cure and convalesce—I hope there will be no farther difficulties. But that is R's weakness, he is as energetic in going wrong as in going right and his colossal bluff and bunkum in trying to show himself in the right even when he knows he has made a mistake or rather most when he knows that doesn't help at all. There

N.B. Please keep your eye on S. I don't feel safe with the animal.

I'm glad to announce that R has again become active. He has taken up the suggestion of milk and S is digesting it well.

That is good. I suppose it is the best diet if he can digest it.

Dr. Valle was right about S's case being ulceration of the duodenum and inflammation of the gall-bladder.

After so careful an examination and with his long experience he was not likely to be wrong.

Now all symptoms are subsiding, pt will soon become all right.

What the deuce is pt, O Aeschylus?

If you could induce the "big Force" to come down once more, we shall see S safely landed on the shore of convalescence.

Shall try, but that kind of Force comes when it wants. To stimulate it gives only small results.

What about R's subtle suggestion to take up the case of B.P. now?

A subtle silence.

R gave S soup with a very strong dose of pepper and ginger; he said he had sent Mother a sample of it...

Mother has told Dyuman now that pepper, ginger etc. should not be put.

My mistake was that I didn't ask Dyuman what soup he intended to give and I should have tasted it myself

Yes, it is better to see to these things. It is difficult for the kitchen in these, darshan days to do things specially, so they must be giving the soup of the vegetables cooked. But all vegetables are not proper for an invalid, esp. an invalid of this illness. So it is better if you see to that. R is of no use for this, he seems to be entirely ignorant. He actually asked for soup of spinach. But spinach water is poisonously unwholesome and spinach is never boiled in its own water which is carefully thrown away. This is done more than once even so that no trace of it shall remain. Then fancy soup of spinach—S would have sailed on it to Paradise. But R's syllogism was simple. Greens are good for health—Spinach is a powerful green—So spinach soup must be powerfully good for S's health. You see how logic can mislead

Now R is thinking of presenting his exhibit,S, to you on Darshan. Has he gone mad?

He has threatened us that if S is not allowed for darshan he is likely to get another crisis through which he may not pull this time!

You have got the report of the signatories on the wonderful state of the patient rescued by R—his high eulogies on them, etc. seem to prove that R has a pucca dramatist in him.

A lyrist, dramatist, epist, everything.

Do you want me to write S's report, tomorrow being the eve of the Darshan?

Not tomorrow evening. No correspondence allowed then.

S is now almost all right. I've nothing to say against the treatment except that R gave the patient potato salad supposed to be prasad! Fortunately the patient vomited at once.

Merciful Heavens

So shall I take leave now and resume my hospital attendance?

Yes. [Underlined.]

Well, Sir, what about your brand new formula? [16.8.35] How has it worked out?

My formula is working out rapidly, but it has nothing to do with any Darshan descent. It is my private and particular descent, ii you like, and that's enough for me at present. The tail of the supermind is descending, descending, descending. It is only the tail at present, but where the tail can pass, the rest will follow.

After so much expectation everything seemed to me so quiet, homely and comely. It seems as if the Darshan passed away long ago.

Quiet was all I wanted—there were so many alarms and excursions. Just before that it looked as if the 24th would be a day of mud, whirlpools and tempests (in certain quarters of course). However all quieted down by magic—and everything was peaceful, peaceful.

I hope others felt the Force, the Descent. Some say there was a great descent; others say that nothing came down.

How do they know, either of them? Personal experience? Then it was a personal descent or a personal non-descent. No General de Bruno yet.

Some say there was so much resistance that Sri Aurobindo could not do much in spite of himself.

Didn't try, sir, so that's bosh. The attempt to bring a great general descent having only produced a great ascent of subconscient mud, I had given up that as I already told you. At present I am only busy with transformation of overmind (down to the subconscient) into supermind; when that is over, I shall see if I can beat everyone with the tail of the supermind or not. At present I am only trying to prevent people from making hysterical, subconscient asses of themselves, so that I may not be too much disturbed in my operations—not yet with too much success.

I went to see Sat about 6 p.m. He whispered to me that R is overfeeding him with things that one wouldn't venture to give. In consequence he had a heated condition of the stomach, vomited copiously.

Why did he not object to being stuffed like that—if what he says is true? When the old Doctor was treating him, S was always fighting to eat but found the Doctor adamant. Now he has got what he wanted—a doctor who will stuff him to repletion. I don't want to interfere, for if I do, R will want to throw up the case.

R told me S hasn't been happy all day because he took coconut water in the morning without telling him! You can see, judge and act.

I can't if the patient himself swallows without a murmur

Dr. Manila! prescribes for J's asthma, sneezing, eczema etc., thyroid extract, adrenaline, calcium-lactate; milk injection for protein shock. He wants your opinion.

It sounds rather formidable. I can't pronounce my opinion. It is your business to opine.

N dropped in, complaining of urgency of micturition. Dr. Manilal and myself found nothing serious. N wants a microscopic examination of urine to exclude T.B. bacilli. I told him that it is very difficult to do this for we have to inject a guinea-pig. Shouldn't we avoid it? Dr. Manilal suggests enema and pepsin mixture.

Unless it is imperative, I think I prefer not to awaken the suggestion of T.B. in the breast of N—also to spare the harmless guinea-pig. Let us rather put our trust in enema and pepsin-mixture.

J is being lactated and adrenalised with some good effect.

Lactate away then.

I am wallowing again in the morass of the 3 Ds, now that I am free from my attendance on S.

Stand up, man, and don't wallow! Stand up and fix your third eye on the invisibly descending Tail of the Supramental.

If I could apply myself to some pursuits that would be obligatory!

How to make them obligatory unless you do something which will take you to jail!

Interest in poetry and in reading has dwindled, and now I'm on the way to be a "subconscient ass".

Why not become a conscious one?

December 1935

But what is this, Sir, I felt last night? It was a warm touch on my forehead, as warm as your feet at Darshan. But it was so sudden that I doubted it almost. Possible such touches?

Possible! What an absurd question to ask! Such touches are quite a common experience in sadhana. There are however different touches. Sometimes the touch is personal, sometimes it is the touch of the Power or Presence from above. Many feel not a warm touch but a wave of something warm descending, etc.

Naik and I had an interesting discussion about the prognosis of sex-glands in consequence of Yogic abstinence, or any abstinence, for that matter. Naik said that since sex has no place here, there is a possibility of the sex-glands undergoing atrophic degeneration. I could not agree with him and told him that had it been the case, people who practised brahmacharya, would lose all their virility, energy, radiance, etc. Don't the Yogis say that ojas and tejas can only be produced by such abstinence?

That is correct. The whole theory of brahmacharya is based upon that by the Yogis. If it were not so, there would be no need of brahmacharya for producing tejas and ojas.

Naik argued that what is seen as vigour, energy, etc., may be due to the spiritual force descending and flooding the system, and have nothing to do with the sex-gland secretions at all.

It is not a question of vigour and energy per se, but of the physical support—in that physical support the ojas produced by brahmacharya counts greatly. The transformation of retas into ojas is a transformation of physical substance into a physical (necessarily producing also a vital physical) energy. The spiritual energy by itself can only drive the body, like the vital and mental, but in driving it it would exhaust it if it had not a physical support—(I speak of course of the ordinary spiritual energy, not of the supra-mental to be which will have not only to transmute retas into ojas but ojas into something still more sublimated.)

How is it then that scientists attach no value to sex energy except its use for procreation? The current theory is that sex is a physiological necessity. If the sex-glands run the risk of an atrophy due to abstinence, you see how dangerous it would be medically. What does your spiritual science say on the matter?

You mean the doctors. But even all doctors do not agree on that; there are many (I have read their opinions) who say that sex-satisfaction is not an absolute necessity and sex-abstinence can be physically very beneficial and is so of course under proper conditions.

As for scientists, the product of the sex-glands is considered by them (at least so I have read) as a great support and feeder of the general energies. It has even been considered that sex-force has a great part to play in the production of poetry, art etc. and in the action of genius generally. Finally, it is a doctor who has discovered that the sex-fluid consists of two parts, one meant for sex-purposes, the other as a basis of general energy, and if the sex-action is not indulged the first element tends to be turned into the second, (retas into ojas, as the Yogis had already discovered). Theories? So are the statements or inferences of the opposite side—one theory is as good as another. Anyhow I don't think that the atrophy of the sex-glands by abstinence can be supported by general experience. N's contention is however logical if we take not individual results but the course of evolution and suppose that this evolution will follow the line of the old one, for these useless organs are supposed to disappear or deteriorate. But will the supramental evolution follow the same course as the old one or develop new adaptations of its own making—that is the uncertain element.

1) What about P's eyes? She complains that they only repeat ancient history—cure and recure and you seem to be quite callous about her hard hard case. What?

2) What about N? He writes that he has realised he was having fever all the time, though it did not occur to him that it was fever. I hope this is not the result of the tuberculous suggestion of Manilal.

3) What happened about A? He was to have another urine examination by Becharlal. Did it take place?

Dr. Valle suggests a radiogram to be taken of S's stomach and intestine.

It might be better. But I understand it can't be properly done here. Must be done at Madras or Calcutta.

Prasanna is better in every respect. But how am I to impress upon her that trachoma is a nasty business, that it takes a long time to cure completely?

She does not care about all that. Her point of view is that the doctor is there to cure her and why doesn't he do it? Very careless and callous of him. It is something like the attitude of many to us and our Yogic force.

By her own confession, you will see that there is at least some improvement. Isn't it something?

Obviously.

I intend to try a new medicine on Prasanna's eyes, brushing the lids with sodium chlorate powder which is supposed to give good results. But it is rather painful. She has already become aprasanna with our callousness and futile treatment. Who knows what she will be if we give her excruciating pain with sodium chl. and make her from bad to worse?

Good Lord! she will make a worse noise than Hercules in the shirt of Nessus!

If you give us courage, we may venture.

Not possible. Prasanna will become more than aprasanna, she will become abasanna and do dharna.¹³³ Won't do.

I knew nothing about N's fever. He swept in today and said he was feverish. Temperature was normal, his feeling can't be due to T.B. suggestion, for he doesn't know what T.B. is.

He is writing very aghast notes and demanding an explanation from me of his perilous condition—so I thought it better to refer the matter to the medical authorities.

A's urine was examined. The specific gravity was rather high and we advised him to take less sugar, after that we didn't enquire and he didn't complain.

He does not complain—I simply wanted to know what had happened.

About S's stomach—if there is no radiogram, then we can make at least a screen examination.

It might be done—only R is in charge. He might object to an allopathic screen pushing into the stomach and upsetting his homeopathic effects, what?

To take up our yesterday's discussion—I think Vivekananda said that by observance of brahmacharya, one acquires a prodigious memory. He himself proved it by reproducing anything he was asked from the Encyclopaedia Britannica though he just took some glances at it. But it was said that only Vivekananda and Anandas like him can do the feat. We have heard about your doing such feats of memory also, on a miniature scale.

Hallo!!

But everybody knows that you are a much greater "Ananda", Sir! So perhaps possible.

Possible, of course.

What I wanted to say however is that poets and artists, as a class, are rather loose and lavish in their sex economy. If they indulge much in sex, how can their sex-force produce great things?

You have not understood. I was answering the statement that scientists don't attach any value to sex-gland—product and think it is only of use for an external purpose. Many scientists on the contrary consider it a base of productive energy ; among other things it plays a part in artistic and poetic production. Not that artists and poets are anchorites and Brahmacharis, but that they have a powerful sex-gland activity, part of which goes to creative and part to (effectual or ineffectual) procreative action. On the latest theory & Yoga theory, the procreative part would be retas, the creative part the basis of ojas. Now supposing the artist or poet to conserve his retas and turn it into ojas, the result would be an increased power of creative productivity. Q.E.D., sir! Logic, sir!

I suppose Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa were complete abstainers, though there is doubt about the last two.

Excuse me, there are no doubts about Kalidasa. Very much to the contrary.

I asked R about S's screen examination. He said he would write to you. I am doubtful about his consent.

He is sardonically permissive—displeased with S's bull-like unmanageableness and says he does not care whether he is rayed or remains rayless all his life.

I am now caught up in a triangle of confusion: one side of the triangle is story writing, another is poetry and the base—concentration, meditation, etc.

Make it a triangle of harmony

Now all on a sudden an onrush of all these three. I've actually completed half a story. Not that it is something great or good.

All right—great or not, complete it.

My main idea is to attempt to develop a style by constant practice, and to open up my grey matter if possible, though I doubt it very much. Again doubt! Yes, Sir, doubt at every blessed nook and corner.

You must have been St. Thomas in a past life, also Hamlet, an Academic philosopher, and several other things.

If I can develop the style, I hope the rest will follow—at least you have made me believe so.

Of course

As regards poetry, there again I am inundated by hazy ideas for 2 or 3 compositions and many lines seem to peep out.

What is the meaning of this "seem"? Do they peep or do they not Peep?

But they seem more bent on tantalising me than meaning anything serious, because as soon as I sit down to transcribe them, they evaporate like ether or camphor.

What do you mean? Why should you sit down to transcribe them? Keep hold of the lines and expressions by the nose as soon as they peep out, jump on a piece of paper and dash them down for prospective immortality.

It appears so easy to catch all these amorphous beauties and put them into morphological Grecian statues!...

Why amorphous, if they are lines and expressions?—lines and expressions are either morphous or they don't exist. Explain yourself, please.

The one thing you have not written is how the third side of the triangle manifests its activity. You say, all are active together?

Can you solve this eternal disharmony and is there any possibility of harmony?

Every possibility if you will cease to Hamletise and go straight or go baldheaded for the thing to be done when there is a chance.

If poets have powerfully active sex-glands, I suppose I can also be called a poet, at any rate an embryonic one! Q.E.D. Logic, Sir! n'est-ce pas?

No, sir—ce n'est pas ҫa. You are illegitimately connecting two disconnected syllogisms. Ist syllogism—all poets are sex-gland-active, Nirod is a poet, therefore Nirod is sex-gland-active. 2nd syllogism—all sex-gland-actives are poets, Nirod is sex-gland-active, therefore Nirod is a poet. The second proposition does not follow from the first as you seem illogically to think. All poets may be sex-gland-active, but it does not follow that all sex-gland-actives are poets. So don't start building an epic on your sex-glands, please.

What shall we do about S? Ray him or leave him?

Wait a while till the present imbroglio is over.

We allopaths are concerned with diagnosis. We open up even a dead man's viscera not to speak of sacrificing so many guinea-pigs which, according to Moni, is much more abominable than goat-sacrifice before Kali.

I suppose the objection is to the suffering inflicted which is avoidable in the other cases.

Shall we continue giving K cod-liver oil? He seems all right.

It might be stopped. Perhaps Nergine may be given instead. He will have hard work now, so a little support may be necessary.

You are asking why" amorphous"? The lines, expressions, words that I feel swarming all around me, but I cannot put into form, what else shall I call them?

If you simply feel things swarming without a shape, then you can't call that lines and expressions—it is only the chaotic potentiality of them.

One begins with the morphous lines hoping that the amorphous chaos will sweep in ecstatically and help me build splendidly original cosmos, and what do I find? Either the elude me or what comes is something fictitious and corn monplace.

That's another matter. It's like dreams in which one gets splendid lines that put Shakespeare into the shade and one wakes up am enthusiastically jots them down, it turns out to be "O you damned goose, where are you going While the river is flowing, flowing flowing?" and things like that.

Do you mean that I should scribble down all these expression as soon as they hop in? Good Lord! there will be parts and pieces only. How shall I make a whole poem out of them?

Many poets do that—jot down something that comes isolated in the hope that some day it will be utilisable. Tennyson did it, I believe. You don't want to be like Tennyson? Of course it is always permissible for you to pick and choose among these divine fragments and throw away those that are only semi-divine.

Already words and lines of four or five poems in halves and quarters are lying in a comatose condition, without any hope of resurrection.

Well, well—all that shows you are a poet in the making with hundreds of poems in you also in the making, very much so. The mountains in labour, you know—what?

I have told you—by some magic there is now a manifested tendency to concentrate. 3-4 duty, 4-4.30 tea, 4.30-6 writing reports, 6-8.30 meal, meditation, duty, 8.30-9 prayer class, 9.30-10.30 or 11 left to me exclusively. So only 9.30-11 is the solid time. What can one write in one or one and a half hours?

Lucky man! Ample time, sir, ample time, both to realise the Brahman and to write another Iliad—or Nirodiad.

Good Lord! what can one write in 1 or 1½ hours? If I could only get that time for immortal productions every day! Why in another three years Savitri and Ilion and I don't know how much more would be all rewritten, finished, resplendently complete.

I can write at the most 10 lines which seem so poor a stuff!

The question is whether they are really poor or something can be made out of them.

Today I have produced 8 unchiselled lines in the afternoon—so I couldn't do any meditation.

What of that? Chisel them at the next opportunity.

Please don't ask me to fix the consciousness high while writing, for that is impossible. This is the difficulty I've been facing all along: one part bounding for concentration, another plunging into literature. How can I go straight or baldheaded?

Well, but what I mean is to stop this profitless debate in your stomach and do what you have to do. When you are moved to concentrate, concentrate—when you are moved to cosmicise chaos, cosmicise away. And don't waste time in remorses for having done either. Remorse is a damned useless affair, very depressing, de-fertilising etc. Even if you murder somebody or, what is worse, write lines which amount to a murder of the Muse, remorse is out of place. In the first case, the useful thing to do is to bury the corpse and in the second to seek the capacious arms of the W.P.B.¹³⁴ for your misdeed or try to cover it up by doing better.

I was perplexed by your reply about Kalidasa [4.12.35]. You mean he was an abstainer? You seem to know his life very well; then is there any truth in the conjecture that you were Kalidasa?

Don't know anything about that. But I said "There are no doubts, very much to the contrary"—meaning that everybody knows he was a sex-gland-active.

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

No fear. Mathematics are more likely to send me to sleep than give a shock.

We have no Nergine in the Dispensary.

No. You can take a box from Dyuman for K.

My, what flattering phrases you use, Sir! "Perfective immortality", etc., etc.

Rather startled by this phrase. Can't find it, but don't believe it is a correct reading.

J stormed in like a meteor and exclaimed, "Mother has achieved a great victory tonight. Sex-energies of some people have surrendered." I asked, "All occult business, I suppose?" "Of course!" he answered.

Good Lord, no! J's imaginations, that is all.

Then he said that Mother reveals to his higher mind all her workings. Must be wonderful if it is a fact.

The usual delusion! Voices, voices—the Mother in a confidential mood on the 7th storey!

A very big "if".

We have found that his knowledge is not always true e.g. A.B.'s story I wrote to you about, for instance.

Don't remember. He was writing an absurd affair of A.B.'s trying to take possession of him and substitute himself for the Mother—is it anything to do with that? I told him not to allow himself to be invaded by absurd delusions. But he seems to have only given it another form.

He says that very few vitals are free here (not sexually)

[Sri Aurobindo drew a line to the word 'free".]

That seems to be the one thing true in all that he said.

One is linked up with another, e.g. D's lower vital with N's.

Rubbish!

If D wants to meet the Mother in the vital, he has to go through N's vital, he says.

Bejabbus!

Ramchandra wants S's stove, sign (?) and coals, kerosene, spirit, cocoa and barley to be removed from his room bodily and summarily. We don't know how to organise this raid. Mother suggests that you might undertake it, the things to be distributed afterwards to the proper quarters. Ready for the heroic deed? As for S, you can tell him "Doctor's orders!"

I had been plodding at a poem and now it is ready. I called in NK who did in five minutes what would have taken me five hours, and with what result. Do our styles harmonise?

What of that? The result is all right. H used to write ten or twelve poems in a day or any number more. It takes me usually a day or two days to write and perfect one or three days even, or if very inspired, I get two short ones out, and have perhaps to revise the next day. Another poet will be like Virgil writing nine lines a day and spending all the rest of his time polishing and polishing. A fourth will be like Monomohan, as I knew him, setting down half lines and fragments and taking 2 weeks or 2 months to put them into shape. The time does not matter, getting it done and the quality alone matter. So forge ahead and don't be discouraged by the prodigious rapidity of Nishikanta.

It is certainly a little difficult to keep them together, especially as Nishikanta's stanzas are strong and fiery and yours are delicate and plaintive. It is like a strong robustious fellow and a delicate slender one walking in a leash—they don't quite coalesce.

Here is NK's poem. Just think of it—a fellow who never has written a single line in English and doesn't know it well, translates his own poem at a shot into a more beautiful, richer poem! Look at his astounding mistakes in spelling but does it matter?

No, so long as there is somebody to correct it.

And on the whole the metre also seems all right.

What metre? Is it the one I indicated?

Amal has corrected the whole thing, he says some of the lines are striking. What would you say, and will you kindly retouch, if necessary?

It is very beautiful. Amal has worked much upon it, so it is so surprisingly perfect. The original form is very poetic, but it is only the first two lines of it and the first two also of the second stanza that are quite successful. All the same it is a remarkable endeavour.

NK says that before writing or painting he bows down once before the Mother and you. If that is the secret, why, I shall bow a hundred times, Sir!

It depends on how you bow.

Amal says that he wanted to make a metrical experiment by a sort of combination of iambic and anapaest. You write that after Amal's correction of NK's poem, it is surprisingly perfect. Can it be called. a poem, with so many irregular variations? Or would it be called free verse, with some metrical arrangement?

What on earth do you mean? Iambics and anapaests can be combined in English verse at any time, provided one does not set out to write a purely iambic or a purely anapaestic metre. Mixed anapaest and iamb make a most beautifully flexible lyric rhythm. It has no more connection with free verse than the constellation of the Great Bear has to do with a cat's tail. Free verse indicates verse free from the shackles of rhyme and metre, but rhythmic (or trying to be rhythmic) in one way or another. If you put rhymes, that will be considered a shackle and the "free" will kick at the chain. The rhythm and metrical arrangement is perfect on the iamb-anapaest basis. I only wanted to know whether that was what Amal intended. For the rhyme scheme of the poem is that of a sonnet and in English the sonnet is always written in iambic pentameter—the combination of a lyrical metre with sonnet rhyme scheme is a novel adventure.

If Nishikanta can learn the English metre, he will produce some splendid poems. What do you say?

Possibly and even probably—only he must learn also what is and is not possible in English poetic style.

I hope you didn't fail to notice in Nishikanta's poem—"With profuse success, each pot of my every dot fulfils," word for word a translation by him of his Bengali line—প্রতি বিন্দুর প্রতি আধার

Amal and I had a hearty laugh!

Yes, it was a stroke of genius.

Amal said "Better send NK's poem, as it is, to Sri Aurobindo and ask him whether it would not be better to write such poems in free verse."

Free verse would very likely be the death of his new possibility. His genius runs naturally into rhyme.

But don't you agree that it is a very striking piece with much original imagery?

It is indeed a remarkable effort, full of beauty and power. You will see that by some changes (for the sake of metre and correct language and style) it becomes a poem of great original beauty.

It seems to be better than the previous one—both in force and imagery and yet it doesn't seem to be so oriental. Am I right?

You are right; it is much more possible in English.

I believe that Nishikanta will profit immensely if he tries to learn the metre.

Yes. This one I have turned into a very flexible amalgam of iambs, trochees and anapaests. It gives to my eye a very attractive and original effect.

I have grave doubts about the success of the orientals in the field of English poetry. It is very difficult for us to enter into the subtleties of English language; and our oriental nature is also unappealing to the Westerners.

What you say is no doubt correct, but on the other hand it is possible that the mind of the future will be more international than it is now. In that case the expression of various temperaments in English poetry will have a chance.

Look at HarM's poetry. We're so ecstatic over it here, but outside he hardly gets a good audience; not even K seems to like his poetry.

I don't think I can put as much value on K's literary judgments as on his comments on Yoga etc. Some of his criticisms astonished me. For instance he found fault with Harin for using rhymes which Shelley uses freely in his best poems.

You must remember also that Harin's poetry has been appreciated by some of the finest English writers like Binyon and De la Mare. But anyway all growing writers (unless they are very lucky) meet with, depreciation and criticism at first until people get accustomed to it. Perhaps if Harin had published his poems under the name let us say of Harry Chatto, he would have succeeded by this time and no one would have talked of Oriental inaptness.

I always look with pity at our people trying poetic exercises in English, except HarM, and always think of Michael Madhusudan's failure. But I suppose you think otherwise, because you have a big trump up your sleeve—the Supermind.

My aim is not personal glory, but to arrive at the expression of spiritual truth and experience of all kinds in poetry. The English tongue is the most wide-spread—if it can be used for the highest spiritual expression, that is worth trying.

How do you explain Nishikanta's miraculous feat? He can't speak at all correctly in English, whereas he writes wonderful poetry!

That has nothing to do with it. Speech and Poetry come from two quite different sources—Remember Goldsmith who wrote like an angel and talked like a parrot.

You can't say that it is all due to Yoga. He has been here only for a year and D for so many years, yet the difference between them as poets, is striking. I can understand your yogic success in his Bengali poetry, because the field was ready, but the opening of his channel in English has staggered me. I can't explain if it is your success or his.

What do you mean by Yoga? There is a Force here in the atmosphere which will give itself to anyone open to it. Naturally it will work best when the native language is used—but it can do big things through English if the channel used is a poetic one and if that channel offers itself. Two things are necessary—no personal resistance and some willingness to take trouble about understanding the elementary technique at least so that the transcription may not meet with too many obstacles. Nishikanta has a fine channel and with a very poetic turn in it—he offers no resistance to the now of the force, no interference of his mental ego, only the convenience of his mental individuality. Whether he takes the trouble or the technique is another matter.

I had written to you that Nishikanta bows in front of your photograph before he sits down to write, and that I am ready to bow,a hundred times, if that is the trick. You answered that it depends on how one bows. Methinks it does no depend on it. Even if it did I don't think Nishikanta know, it. Or was it in his past life that he knew it?

Well, there is a certain faculty of effacing oneself and letting the Universal Force run through you—that is the way of bowing. It can be acquired by various means, but also one may have the capacity for doing it in certain directions by nature.

After hearing what you have written regarding the learning of metre, Nishikanta approached Ramchandra for learning it; because it was he who had given him the push to write in English. But Ramchandra wants to read with him English poetry, so that he may plunge into the spirit before learning metre. To develop the English poetic style, I suppose, it would be the best plan.

It is not English yet. But they can do like that if they prefer. Right rhythm however is the one thing still lacking and, until he learns it, these efforts will he only a promise.

Are we taxing you too much by this occupation with our poetry? If not, Nishikanta proposes to send you one poem a day. How would you like having the dish every night?

You can send it. I will look at the dish even if I don't devour it.

Here is a lyrical dish prepared by Nishikanta all on a sudden after reading a book on metre. How do you find it?

For a first attempt remarkable—but he has not yet the necessary niceties of phrase and rhythm. The first three lines of the second stanza are very powerful, as good a thing as any English poet could have written. With some doctoring it makes a powerful lyric.

Nishikanta has got the metre all right this time.

Almost—he has the gift. But there are defects—e.g. he sometimes gave 3 ft. for 2 ft. lines and vice-versa. Having made a scheme he should keep to it.

He wants to know how to get the right rhythm and the right poetic style. I said by reading English poetry.

Yes, reading and listening with the inner ear to the modulation of the lines.

About myself—as I go on writing, the lines, expressions, images seem so commonplace that I distrust the value of my work.

It is no use being too squeamish at first. By that distrust you can depreciate good as well as cheap values.

Secondly, I get tired of waiting and leave of say after an hour. What else can one do? Where is the ego or personal resistance you speak of?

I didn't mean all that. I meant that a certain Nirod gets in the way, is too active or too blocky. Too subtle for farther explanation, you have to feel.

It is not the question of "being open" or "knowing how to bow", but having a poetic being open or semi-open...

It has nothing to do with the poetic being.

"Personal resistance, mental ego" are phrases, for there must first be a poetic being, for an ego to resist.

The poetic being is not burdened with an ego. It is the outer being which contributes that.

Nishikanta started with a desire to write after reading about metre, but without any central idea. After an hour or so he felt a power descending, then the poem began to unroll itself. But he had no sleep at night.

That is all right—except for the no sleep which I don't exactly advise.

It means one need not have any preformed ideas, not even inspiration, a simple desire will do.

But that is the inspiration when something descends.

Will sun-treatment do any good to A's eyes?

Mother does not think it is safe for A. It might help her eyes, but her system might suffer from the sun exposure.

Something great, something big you have done, Sir. Will you kindly whisper?

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

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

Eh, what? [Underlined.]

There is again a quarrel between. X and Y, and I am asked to intervene; if I don't there'll be a row. I must have your permission.

Permission for the row? I am utterly against rows. If sadhaks want them, it must be done on their responsibility. I neither permit nor refuse.

X says that she is suffering a lot. It.seems to me at times that she is a being of another world and incompatible with this world. What is the cause of her suffering?

Ego, foolishness, insincerity—a false claim that she is more noble and ideal than others—while in reality her vital is made just like any other human vital ... I am afraid your idea that she is a superior being from a more beautiful world (if that is what you think) can't hold water.

I am sorry for X, but she creates her own difficulties. She will not do what is necessary to have peace. If she went back from her ego, her demand on others, she would have peace soon enough.

I hate to disturb you with all these stories. Is it an individual affair that one should decide for oneself?

Surely it is an individual affair, being a clash of egos. There ought to be no such individual affairs in a Yoga Asram, but ought and is are far asunder.

About the individual affair, it may be so, but aren't most of the affairs that happen in the Asram, individual?

That is why we never take sides in these "affairs".

But have you not yourself said that very often when subtle planes are touched for transformation, all these impurities surge up in sadhaks?

In that case, there is nothing but touching and surging and if we go on touching by interventions there will be surgings for ever and ever.

And these individual affairs are bound to be there so long as our nature is what it is, especially when we are allowed so much freedom, a long rope. I am not justifying our weaknesses.

If there is no freedom, there can be no change—there could only be a routine practice of conformity to the Yogic ideal without the reality.

I was speaking of course of quarrels when I referred to individual affairs. If I intervene, that means in practice I "take sides" as people put it, by passing judgment. X herself has often accused us of refusing to protect her self-righteous and noble self against the wickednesses and unprovoked oppression of Y ... If I "support" X, Y will be at once a candidate for departure and suicide. And yet you say I ought to intervene!

These individual affairs are sure to end ultimately by reaching you, for people will write letters from all sides; and you letters of pacification will follow.

I have been answering such letters by more and more brief replied and now very few write to me.

X says that I should support her at least on the basis of old family relation.

What a wonderful principle of conduct for an Asram! It might serve in Arabia. Corsica or ancient Greece.

About X's novel-affair, you said it is her individual concern True, but poets and artists have to take their occupation as sadhana.

There is no objection to that, but an egoistic quarrel is not sadhana.

But you will say that it is a mixture of ego, desire for, fame etc.

The whole thing was that and nothing else.

When the whole situation became too complex one had to seek for your advice.

The people who quarrel don't come for advice, but for support against the other fellow.

You came for permission, but permission would have meant support from me to X. So my answer "I neither support nor refuse."

As a consequence of all this, X is upset, causing a fall in her sadhana. One has then to approach you and explain why it is so.

No doubt, but why should she expect a support for her ego which is the cause of her fall from sadhana, the affair being only an occasion for the said ego?

Can you then silence me or be indifferent to my condition by saying that it is my individual affair?

I did not say it was yours—it is not yours at all. It is individual to X, Y, Z...

If two of us quarrel and break our heads, will you keep quiet saying that it is an individual affair, look out for yourselves?

Yes, certainly, I keep quiet. Formerly, I used to intervene, the result was more and more quarrelling, each side either quoting me in self-justification or else abusing Mother and myself and doubting our divinity because we did not side with them. Now we have resolved never to intervene. When C, S etc. write about their quarrels, (they do it very seldom nowadays), we say nothing about the quarrel, we only answer "Restrain your passions, overcome your vital and your ego. You are concerned with Yoga; don't be upset by what C (or S) says or does or anybody says and does." Or we keep quiet and answer nothing.

You can say Karmayoga but no ego, please.

Karmayoga does not mean the free indulgence of ego.

True, but through imperfections, perfection has to be attained.

Not by indulging the imperfections and calling for the Guru's support for them.

Sending you one more poem by NK. Seems a very interesting piece. If it could have been done well, it would have been very attractive and original.

It is indeed matter of which a fine poem can be made. Nishikanta has imagination and the ideas carry beauty in them, the language also, but he has not yet knowledge of the turns of the English tongue which make the beauty effective. I have tried to make it as perfect as an hour's work can do—but that is not enough, it might b better.

But from the immensely profuse amount of corrections you have made and have to make, I wonder whether we are taking too much liberty with your precious Supramental time. But Supramental is beyond Time—that is the hope.

If I have not time, I shall keep till I have. The poems are such good matter of poetry that it is worth the trouble.

Amal says you take very little time in these things.

Usually, yes. A quarter of an hour is enough; but these last two took more time.

If Nishikanta goes for the proper technique at present, there may be a check on his flow, no?

Possibly, though fidelity to metre can be a help as well as check as it makes the God of Words more alert, skilful and subtle.

About my metre, shall I approach Amal or Arjava? Amal is willing.

Either.

Everyone is doing something. I am only Tennysonning. Don't you feel pity for me, Sir?

Not so much. If you were browning, I might.

On second thought, I keep the poem one day more.

I don't say that images, expressions may not sweep in, but one has to beat, beat and beat.

Beat-beating is not sweeping in.

I have found that a poem may follow automatically, spontaneously with rich images and expressions, though one doesn't know what will follow next. That gives a real delight and what comes is genuine stuff.

That is the proper way of inspiration.

Two of my poems that you liked very much came in that way. But unfortunately all don't and one has to work hard. Sometimes there is success, at other times failure. Can you tell me on what these variations depend?

It depends on whether the inspiration flows in or the fabricating mind labours. You are obliged to have a mixed method, part inspiration, part mental, because the inspiration is not yet free to pass through. Beat-beating is the sign of the mind at work like a God-forgotten blacksmith; the flow is the sign of the Muse pouring down things at her ease.

What's up with J? Trying to bring down the Supermind or going off the deep end?

I fear he is wandering in the intermediate zone. How much is occultifying drama and how much is real aberration is the question.

I can't ask him to work when he's in such a mood.

Don't

You can keep this note-book, but what about the one lying with you?

I was returning it this morning, but I found one place all wrong and have been beat-beating at it—penultimate stanza 2nd and 3rd lines. Made something at last but not very very right.

Two poems by Nishikanta enclosed; one old and the other new. But no use asking what the metre is. He has already begun learning it.

All right, I think. Rereading it, I find it très joli. Congratulation to myself and Nishikanta with Nirod Talukdar in the middle.

Why bother about the metre, precise English, etc? They will come some day and in the meantime let him go on writing and learning by corrections, lessons, so on.

That's all right—but I rub in a bit about metre and stresses so that his ear may learn—and yours also. Judging by the last poem there is a distinct progress—but where is the credit? Corrected by Amal? or only by your sole poetic self?

How do you rhyme "life" and "cliff', "smile" and "will", "came" and "whim"? Are they all whims?

These are called in English imperfect rhymes and can be freely but not too freely used. Only you have to understand the approximations and kinships of vowel-sounds in English, otherwise yon will produce illegitimate children like "splendour" and "wonder" which is not a rhyme but an assonance.

By the way you didn't like my poem or you hesitate to call it mine, because of so many corrections by Nishikanta? Others say that it is very fine.

It was very good; mixed parentage does not matter, so long as the offspring is beautiful.

Nishikanta has written:

"I am tuned in thy tremolo of dreamland, heaven and earth." Is the word tremolo all right?

It is rather strange, but perhaps it will do.

The credit of this poem goes entirely to him. You'll be glad to see that your effort at metrical lessons has proved fruitful.

Evidently with a little care and practice Nishikanta ought soon to be able to handle English metre. He has the gift.

I have no objection to being the trait-d'union in the "mixed parentage", but for heaven's sake drop that appendage Talukdar¹³⁵, Sir. It is absolutely prosaic when I am trying to be poetic!

All right. Only it is a pity—it was such a mouthful! It may be prosaic in Bengali, but to one ignorant of the meaning it sounds as if you were a Roman emperor.

As for the next poem, it is as usual, of mixed parentage. Please see if it has blossomed as a beauty! Nishikanta finds it one of my best, but when I completed it, I said "Won't do! Won't do!"

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "Won't do! Won't do!"]

Rubbish! It is exceedingly fine and your won't do is nonsense

If NK is right, then my poetic sense is no good, or am I too self-critical?

Your poetic sense seems all right when you judge NK's or other poetry.

Not self-critical, self-depreciatory.

While I was having a nap in the afternoon, I had a vision of a very beautiful woman sitting under the sun. The rays of the sun were either surrounding her or were emanating from her body—I can't precisely say which. The appearance and dress seemed to be more European than oriental.

It is not a woman. A woman does not radiate and is not surrounded by rays either. Probably a Sun-Goddess or a Shakti of the inner Light, one of the Mother's Powers.

J is of the opinion that too much colour and imagery conceal the thought-substance in poetry. It is better to be as simple and direct as possible.

One can't make rigid rules like that. Wordsworth is as simple and direct as possible (not always though), Keats aims at word-magic. One can't say Wordsworth is a greater poet than Keats.

Whatever style is poetically successful, is admissible.

Next point she makes is that it is better not to close a poem too often with a direct prayer.

Too often, of course not. For then it becomes a mannerism.

The last 2 lines of the poem I've sent you, are weaker than the preceding lines, because they are a prayer.

They are weaker, but not because they are a direct prayer. Why can't a prayer be strong? I will send you one day a poem of mine where there is a direct prayer.

Can you not give some suggestions for improvement? Don't plead on your ignorance of Bengali; surely you can point out the defects.

I can tell my impression, but I can't say how it will affect a Bengali reader. My mind may be too international to coincide with the Bengali reader's. I may also miss fine distinctions which he can make,—I mean, shades of language, what is or is not possible, or is or is not native to the language.

You will be glad to know that I am working like a devil, at poetry; anyway, it will keep the d—out, won't it?

Of course

I seem to understand that trochees are to be avoided in an iambic-anapaest poem; but maybe I am wrong, for in a book on metre I find that trochee is a common modulation of iambs, specially in the first line.

By the change you have made in the line "Crystals at her feet" into "Is a crystal at her feet", does it mean that in an iamb-anapaest poem every line must have at least one iamb-anapaest foot?

Trochees are perfectly admissible in an iambic line as a modulation—especially in the first foot (not first line), but also occasionally in the middle. In the last foot a trochee is not admissible. Also these trochees must not be so arranged as to turn an iambic into a trochaic line.

My dear sir, this is an instance of importing one's own inferences instead of confining oneself to the plain meaning of the statement. First of all the rules concerning a mixed iambic-anapaestic cannot be the same as those that govern a pure iambic. Secondly what I objected to was the trochaic run of the line. Two trochees followed by a long syllable, not a single iamb or anapaest in the whole! How can there be an iambic line or an iambic anapaestic without a single iamb or anapaest in it? The line as written could only scan either as a trochaic, therefore not iambic line, or thus, —ᴗ/ ᴗᴗ—/, that is a trochee followed by an anapaest. Here of course there is an anapaest, but the combination is impossible rhythmically because it involves three short syllables one after another in an unreadable collocation—one is obliged to put a minor stress on the "at" and that at once makes the trochaic line. In the iambic anapaestic line a trochee followed by an iamb can be allowed in the first foot; elsewhere it has to be admitted with caution so as not to disturb the rhythm.

I find the English metre very difficult because the same word is stressed or non-stressed according to the combination. How can one then be guided?

You mean the same syllable? It is syllables, not words that are stressed.

About the modulations, any numbers can be crowded in, it appears; only foot-numbers should be equal for the sake of harmony.

What numbers do you mean? The rules are perfectly clear and intelligible; only of course you must know what are the accents and what modulations are or are not possible. That means that you must know something about the language; that is all.

I have given you however some rules for the modulations in iambic verse—they are not exhaustive: In modern verse one can pepper an iambic line with anapaests—I have done so myself in the sonnets. But one must be very careful how one does it. This license is not for beginners.

If poets were to be guided by such metrical rules, they'd stop writing altogether!

How did the English poets write then?

What about the poem you promised yesterday? Golden chance, tomorrow being Sunday!

What poem? Sunday is not a golden chance because I have any amount of work to do on that day—wiping off arrears. People also often choose to forget that it is Sunday.

Don't you always tell the Mother what we write? She didn't know that the oculist is on leave.

I told Mother what you said, but you gave no date for the oculist's leave, only put it in the future.

Whet poem, indeed! Didn't you say you'd send me a poem showing the force of direct prayer? You forget so easily!

Excuse me. I said I will send one day. One day may mean after some weeks, some months, or some years.

I heard that R was called to see a case outside, which has been given up as hopeless by the French doctors, including Valle.

By the best doctors in Pondicherry, Valle, Amaladasan and others. They dosed and injected and he was near to his last gasp when Valle ran to R as a last chance.

Today R comes and tells me that the patient has gone to his office!

A fact.

And that you have congratulated him on his success!!

A fact. Why should I not, when an almost dead man rises full of life and energy in a few hours?

A miracle! I am flabbergasted, really!

Well and then? It should raise you up, not cast you down

R showed me some observations made by those doctors on blood-pressure, urine, etc. and asked me their significance. I found that the case was probably chronic interstitial nephritis.

That was reported to me by R from the first.

From a further talk I discovered that R has very little idea of what it is. And yet he goes and saves a dying man!

Do you deny the fact?

Again, it seems to me that he acted as an instrument or medium and nothing else.

What do you mean by nothing else? A human instrument without capacity can do things like that? That would be far more miraculous, impossible, incredible, surely, than a homeopath whose whole system is founded on symptomatology curing people.

R says findings of urine are not necessary. Leave the patient to nature. I said—albumin is a danger sign, it has to be eliminated through diet and medicine etc., otherwise there is a possibility of relapse. He replied, but he wants now to take meat, drink, etc.

A relapse is always possible, if, as R wrote to me, the man is a reckless bon vivant going strong and drinking. But that is his affair; his resuscitation remains a fact.

This instance has proved to me that homeopaths are concerned with symptoms, not with the disease itself, of which they have not much knowledge. If relying on symptoms alone, he has cured this man, I shall be the last person to believe it.

Because you are tied in your own system and do not understand that Nature is not so rigid as your mental ideas.

All big homeopaths I've heard of were allopaths before, i.e. they knew anatomy, physiology, pathology, etc. But R is unique and his cures are unique. So I am puzzled, puzzled about the real mystery behind...

Did they cure by allopathic treatment, then? Is it not the very principle of homeopathy that it cures the disease by curing the symptoms? I have always heard so. Do you deny that homeopaths acting on their own system, not on yours, have cured illnesses? If they have, is it not more logical to suppose that there is something in their system than to proclaim the sacrosanct infallibility of the sole allopathic system and its principle? For that matter I myself cure more often by attacking the symptoms than by any other way, because medical diagnosis is uncertain and fallible while the symptoms are there for everybody to see. Of course if a correct indisputable diagnosis is there, so much the better—the view can be more complete, the action easier, the result more sure. But even without infallible diagnosis one can act and get a cure.

When all doctors have failed, how does R proclaim that he will pull a man out without knowing anything of the nature of the disease?

Because he has confidence in himself, like all who are able to do in any field big things.

He knew there was blood-pressure and he fixed his whole energy in bringing that down and did it.

Does he have an immediate intuition or does he hear voices?

Well, he believes in his intuition and his faith justified itself. I never heard that he hears voices.

If he doesn't know that, his self-confidence, however strong and enormous, can't make him commit himself to such an extent. It would be foolish in some places.

Why can't it? How dreadfully downright and sweeping you are in your demands! What ground had Mustapha Kemal for his strong and enormous confidence when he defied all Europe and all the probabilities and possibilities and undertook to save three-quarters dead Turkey?

What does that matter if it succeeds in some places? Napoleon's self-confidence and intuition tripped him up at Waterloo, but before that it had won him Marengo, Jena, Austerlitz.

Was there some extraordinary power behind R before he came here that was responsible for the marvellous results?

Certainly. It was because the Mother saw a great force in him that she accepted him in the Asram.

I hear he is a very good medium and is a tower of vital strength.

Which means of course full of a massive vital force which can be used by the Yoga-force for its purposes and being massive can produce striking results.

Is the strength then the real cause of his success and medicine negligible? But I don't understand how a tower of vital strength can cure a dying man! If that were possible, whatever medicine he might have administered, would have been equally successful.

Why the flabbergasts not? What's the use of strength if it can't do things?

You are very much behind the times. Do you not know that even many doctors now admit and write it publicly that medicines are an element but only one and that the psychological element counts as much and even more? I have heard that from doctors often and read it over reputable medical signatures. And among the psychological elements, they say, one of the most important is the doctor's optimism and self-confidence, (his faith, what? it is only another word for the same thing) and the confidence, hope, helpful mental atmosphere he can inspire in or around his patient. I have seen it stated categorically that a doctor who can do that is far more successful than one who knows Medicine better but cannot.

You said in S's case that the Force has to count on right medicines for rapid effects.

I did not mean that it cannot be done without medicines. But if it is to be done with the aid of medicines, then the right medicine is helpful, the wrong one obviously brings in a danger.

How does R choose the right medicine? Not by intuition; because I saw him consulting his books for the choice of medicines.

Of course. He learned homeopathic medicine in America and his ideas of homeopathy are the American ideas. But how does his knowledge prevent intuition? Even an allopathic doctor has often to intuit what medicine he should give or what mixture—and it is those who intuit best that succeed best. All is not done by sole rule of book or sole rule of thumb even in orthodox Science.

How could a patient, as good as lost, leap up, although he knew nothing of faith in yogic force?

That often happens. It is even sometimes easier to deal with a man of that kind, provided he does not know what is being done,—so that there is no room for doubt or mental resistance.

He himself admitted that he could not expect such a miraculous result from his treatment. It was the Mother's force that did it.

Naturally.

Is it then the question of mediumship? If so, I dance in rapture thinking that yogi-doctors have a vast possibility!

Yes, provided they do not entrench themselves in doubt and rigid materialistic orthodoxy.

I am thrown out of joint at two miracles, Sir: (1) R's treatment or yours: (2) NK's English poetry, though Madam Doubt still peeps from behind. Anyhow, no chance for me! কপাল¹³⁶, Sir! What to do?

Why out of joint? It ought to strengthen your joints for the journey of Yoga.

Not at all কপাল, sir. Mind, sir, mind. Madam Doubt, sir, Madam Doubt! Miss Material Intellectualism, sir! Aunt Despondency, sir! Uncle Self-distrust, sir! Cousin Self-depreciation, sir! The whole confounded family, sir!

I congratulate you for having such a fine instrument, and him as well for being so for the Divine's action.

I will try to make it clear, but no time tonight as it is 4.40 a.m. already.

You have shown me my fallacy, but I am afraid, the fundamental points of perplexity remain unsolved ...

I don't deny G's resuscitation, nor do I object to your congratulating R. I don't even say that homeopathy is all bosh and allopathy is heaven's reward. Well, there were evidently three factors at work in this case: Mother's Force: R's mediumship which was constituted of faith, confidence, vital power, intuition, etc. and his drug treatment.

Now what I am puzzled about is the exact contribution of R's medicines in this case.

Exact? How can one measure exactly where vital and mental and spiritual factors come in? In dealing with a star and atom you may (though it appears you can't with an electron), but not with a man and his living mind, soul and body.

If R were an allopathic homeopath, with a difference only in treatment and not in pathology, I wouldn't doubt his explanations.

Why on earth? What is an allopathic homeopath? Homeopathic principles are just the opposite of the allopathic. So why must the dealings be fundamentally the same with only a difference of drugs? In spite of what you say you have the solid belief that allopathy alone is true. I suppose allopathic homeopathy is something like a biped with four feet.

If you say that homeopathy is quite different from allopathy, as regards the treatment, the pathology must be the same.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined the last part of the sentence.]

Not necessarily in all cases or in all respects.

How can a homeopath ask a high blood-pressure man who has just risen from the grave, to attend to his duties in the old way and give him the usual food?

Why can't he, if he has some other means of combating the possible bad results? I have not heard that R asked G to resume his duties. He represents it as if he remained neutral and it was G's own choice with which he did not interfere. That may have been imprudent; but R is daring in everything and that means a stiff dose of imprudence. Besides he has his theories also which may or may not be true, but I cannot say they are prima facie impossible if I can judge by the daring one he put forward for making S eat the full Asram meals. If S's accounts of his condition are true, they seem to have been justified by a considerable amount of success.

A symptomatic treatment can't be applied in cases where the same symptom is produced by two or three different diseases because the symptoms will always recur so long as one doesn't go to the root.

Why can't it? There is a possibility that you can strike at the cure, whatever it be, through the symptoms and you can kill the root through the stalk and leaves and not start by searching for the roots and digging them out. That at any rate is what I do.

Don't speak of your own cures, please; I can't fight you there!

Why should I not speak of my cures? When they are perfectly apposite and a proof that you can cure by symptomatic treatment?

You mean you don't want to give me the lie or say I am under a delusion?

If you say R is led by intuition I'll stop my argument and give you a chance of a hearty laugh. But then how did he ignore so important a factor as albumin in G's case?

He has intuition but not always the right intuition to fit the case. It is a mental intuition he uses, and mental intuition is a mixed movement.

I have answered all that already. I do not say R was right; but he did not act at random; he gave his reasons for neglecting the albumin which I am not medical enough to understand. I would have preferred if he had dealt with and had kept G under observation, before letting him loose, but it is not my funeral. I don't expect G to live long and I don't think R expects it either. But in the case of S he has for the time being at least proved his case. He is by the way dealing with G's kidneys today and admits it is a ticklish job; but the first effects he says were successful and he is waiting for the night to pass to see what will be the sequel. For the drug, he says, is highly potentised, (that is American language), but may produce an upheaval. Well, there you are, that is the man. Right or wrong? God he knows. I put a force behind him and also await the results.

He had by the way hesitated to act at once on the kidneys because the body needed to be accustomed to renewed vigour (so far as I understand) before risking the coup. Contrary to allopathic pathology? Maybe. But it has some similarity to what I have seen in my experience of action by Yoga.

His faith, hope, self-confidence, I suppose, help to produce a favourable nidus in the patient's mental atmosphere.

Certainly, if you are dejected, diffident, despairing, full of doubt you can't produce a favourable nidus in the atmosphere.

Self-confidence necessarily presupposes knowledge and experience; though the converse may not be true.

What an absurd statement! Self-confidence is an inborn thing; it does not rest on knowledge and experience.

If Napoleon had been a little less self-confident, he might have been a victor at Waterloo.

Who says that? I never heard that Napoleon failed at Waterloo for want of self-confidence. I have always read that he failed because he was, owing to his recent malady, no longer so quick and self-confident in decision and so supple in mental resource as before. Please don't rewrite history unless you have data for your novel version.

About Kemal Pasha, well, I hear you pumped into him a lot of force.

Napoleon had a lot of force pumped into him also.

Even then these personalities had the stratagems of war and current politics at their finger-tips, like Japan which is reaping a golden harvest out of European tangles. If I could say that about R in his field, then all my doubts regarding his drug-effect wouldn't arise...

Please remember that R has studied homeopathy and he has knowledge of homeopathic medicines if not of allopathic pathology. He took a degree in America and the Mother tells me that many of his ideas of which we were so impatient and thought them his own inventions are the ideas of the American school of homeopathy which is more meticulous, intolerant, intransigent, dead against allopathy, particular about the subtle properties of homeopathic drugs and their evanescence by wrong contacts (quite Yogic that) than others.

His self-confidence and intuition may produce some striking results at the time of crisis, but it must blend with knowledge to give permanent results.

How do you know he has no knowledge of homeopathic drugs?

His lack of sufficient knowledge of things makes me doubt and throw almost the whole balance on the side of your Force. If he had been as successful outside with such a scanty knowledge, I would have said then, all luck! or now that I know, action of some greater Power behind.

He was successful outside. While he was outside the Asram, not yet accepted, he was making remarkable cures and already getting a name. I had to stop him as soon as he became an accepted disciple, even before he came into the Asram, because his practice was illegal. But I had to refuse applications from the town for allowing him to treat patients because he had succeeded so remarkably with them that they wanted to continue. I was not concerning myself in the least with his cures and knew nothing at all about them. And you say all that was luck because his ideas differ from yours? Are you not reasoning like Moliere's doctors who declared that a patient's audacity in living contrary to the rules of Science was intolerable or like the British Medical Council which refused any validity to Sir Herbert Barker's cures because he was an osteopath and had no qualified medical knowledge?

I wonder, then, whether our mode of looking at things is altogether wrong. And if there are really such drugs in homeopathy which can give results in cases in which we have almost none, then it would be worth trying to study it and combine both systems.

Certainly there are—the universe is not shut up in the four walls of allopathic medicine. There are plenty of cases of illnesses being cured by other systems (not homeopathy alone) when they had defied the allopaths. My experience is not wide but I have come across a good number of such cases. And if it is not so, why then did Dr. V come to R for help surprisingly when he and A had failed with all their capacity and experience? V has known and practised homeopathy to some extent. May we not infer that he knew there were cases in which homeopathy (not allopathic homeopathy but pure) might be successful?

Or is it only a question of personality apart from Yoga-force? If R had taken up allopathy, could he not have done big miracles like these, where Valle and others failed? And if I were asked to administer the same drug to this dying man, could it have produced such a striking effect?

It is not a question of drugs alone. The drug is only a support. If you had not intuition and self-confidence and the same thoroughgoing belief in your own action and the Yoga-force behind you, you might have done some good but not had the same rapid effect. R believes in his medicines, but he does not believe that they are infallible in their effect or rely on them alone. He believes in the man behind them and in the Force behind the man.

You can try to logicise me but do try to satisfy me, also!

How can I "satisfy" you when my point of view and basis of knowledge is quite different from yours or R's either?

I could go on writing and writing and multiplying, but I have tried to squeeze my thesis into this space. You said you would try to make it clear. Please do so...

I haven't cleared up anything, I suppose, only logicised and not satisfied you. To clear up things it would be necessary to go to first principles as well as my own experience and view of things (to which you object because you can't fight me there), and that would be going into country foreign to the allopathic and scientific reason.

Let me say however about R: He is a man who seems genuinely to believe in the Force—even when he was not an accepted disciple and was treating cases in town, he was attributing his cures to the Force (ours), although we did not consciously preside at all over his cases or send him any particular help. So he has the first requisite for being a "medium" of Force. Next, he is a man of great vital push, self-confidence, abounding enthusiasm and energy; such men are the best instruments, not for knowledge, but for successful action. Second requisite there. Next, he is a man with a great power of suggestion and also of inducing auto-suggestions in his patients, and these become remarkably effective, provided they do not resist too much. He is the kind of man who can give pure water, saying, "This is a potent medicine", and the patient would immediately feel better after taking it. (By the way, many allopathic doctors do that, when they think it necessary, according to their own confession). Third help (though the trick would be unYogic); the power of conveying one's own thought-formations, vital energy, will—decisions etc. to others being an element in Yogic action: he has that. Fourth, a knowledge of homeopathic medicines and what seems to me a very supple and daring use of them. Dangerous? perhaps or rather, no doubt; he himself admits that with his more potent medicines a great disturbance occurs before the cure or can do so and a great disturbance means a great risk; but a daring man is a man who takes risks in the hope of great results. He might have killed S? Certainly, but so might an allopathic doctor. My grandfather and cousin were patently killed by the medicine administered by one of the most famous and successful allopathic doctors of Calcutta. An allopathic doctor also takes risks and those who are the most successful are also the most adventurous and decisive in their methods. All that does not militate against his capacity as a healer. They are points in his favour.

On the other hand there are big defects. He is a bluffer; he makes big mistakes and does not admit them even when he knows he has made them—he covers it up by an absurd statement which he thinks the others will swallow. But he does not persist in his mistakes—he sets them right without admitting them. He is not truthful and truthfulness is a great help for the Force, while the opposite induces a wrong vibration. He is vain, arrogant etc.—and men with such defects can easily fall into great blunders. He pretends to have knowledge where he has none. He is ignorant of many things a healer ought to know.

Well, in spite of all he has done remarkably with S. Whether he will carry G through remains to be seen; but that for the time being he raised him up from the half-dead is beyond question. The man has parts—whether his parts will become a whole is a matter of the future. A man being a man can be neither perfect nor worthless. One has to see what can be made of him or what he allows himself to be made or to become. Let us Asquitheanly, for him as for others, wait and see. Why either condemn wholly as a fraud or boost up as a miracle?

There would be much else necessary to say, about allopathy, homeopathy and the elasticity of Nature, about the place of medicine, Force and the medium, about spiritual force, intermediate occult forces and material forces, about the complexity and relativity of "truths" that are only convenient formulas and the inadvisability of turning them into absolute and all-covering truths, etc., etc.—but all that would be long, would carry us into too deep depths- and can be postponed till the blue moon rises in your heavens.

Guru, I hope this letter will catch you before you start for the Supramental sleep!

At about 5 a.m. I was called by P as K was having blood-vomiting. R was also there with his medicines. Seeing K's vomiting, I had the impression that it was from the lungs. An examination led me to suspect apex of rt. lung. I don't know what R thinks about it; but at first sight he said it was vicarious menstruation. Anyway he gave her medicines. The bout subsided and she slept quite peacefully. Then again she had blood-vomiting. According to his treatment, food and nourishment have to be given. R told me that he will write to you and give her charge to me as he is busy with many other cases, and his temporary treatment won't clash with mine.

I don't know what to do now. I am at Thy service, Sir.

If you and R don't agree as to diagnosis, it is better to send for a third person, (Dr. Valle is indicated, I suppose), to consult and advice. It is necessary to know what she has. We are informed that K had this once in Gujarat. You can ask P about this and, if it is correct, find out what was the diagnosis and treatment.

I suppose in any case (if it is lung trouble, also) food and nourishment have to be given and it is only if it is liver or stomach that it would be otherwise?

6.30 a.m.

By "allopathic-homeopath", I meant a homeopath having studied allopathy who will have a very sound basis in Medicine. All homeopathy schools are now teaching pathology, etc...

They may all study pathology, but I don't think they all bind themselves to the same conclusions as the allopaths. If they did, they would not be able to have an entirely opposite system.

I don't deny that personality is a big factor though I don't know exactly whether hope, faith, etc., operate physically more or bring some occult forces into the field.

You have only to admit that the mind and vital can influence the body—then no difficulty is left. In this action of mind and vital on the body faith and hope have an immense importance. I do not at all mean that they are omnipotent or infallibly effective—that is not so. But they assist the action of any force that can be applied, even of an apparently purely material force like medicine. In fact however there is no such thing as a purely material force, but the action may be purely material when it is a question of material objects. But in things that have life or mind and life one cannot isolate the material operation like that. There is always a play of other forces mixed with it in the reception at least and for the most part in the inception and direction also.

I don't understand why I came into this world with doubts and Co. whereas others did so with self-confidence. Why some people go on patiently and honestly and still end their days in misery, whereas frauds etc. flourish so well! I would say Kismet. You may say blessed Karma—it is only another name.

Well, the frauds are capable and clever in their fraudulency, I suppose. And why should not capacity have its results? The others are only moral and the reward of morality is not worldly success but the satisfaction of a conscience at rest. Virtue is its own reward—it can't ask for success in life also!! What would the poor frauds do if having the torments of a bad conscience (?) they had no success to soothe their tortures?

Karma is not luck, it is the transmission of past energies into the present with their results.

Do you hope that a "blue moon" will ever rise in my heavens?...

I trust that a blue moon will rise in everybody's heaven who has on one side the patience to go through and on the other no fundamental and self-expulsive wickedness in his nature. Even for these others the blue moon will rise one day, though later,—if they have, once sought for it.

Even if it does, I would prefer your "blue moon" letters dilating a little the last para regarding mediumship and medical aspects—if you can.

Well, we'll see.

You have seen Valle's observations about our patient K. My intuitive diagnosis IS then correct only the intuition was distorted by the mind in misjudging the side affected by the lesion.

It was intuition? I thought it was the result of a prosaic examination.

Still I am not sure that her right side is free; but that can be ascertained by X-ray. R had that "vicarious" impression to the last. I actually asked Valle if it was so, he negatived it at once.

Why not pool results and say it was a vicarious monstrosity that produced a lung lesion in the middle-left together with the right apex? Excuse the levity—the temptation of a joke at doctors has always been too much for any lay resistance.

History and symptoms were so obvious.

But what was the history? I asked for it and you have not told me. Mother was informed it had already happened in Gujarat.

It is for such instances, Sir, that my faith in his drug treatment gets shaken.

I don't know. There are several people besides S and G with whom he seemed to me to have a remarkable success.

If a homeopath went by symptoms only, he would perhaps cut off the leaf but I am afraid the roots would flourish as strongly as ever.

That is what A told G, that homeopathy only gives a transient palliation followed quickly by a worse catastrophe. But after all, if it can raise up a man at the last gasp condemned by a unanimity of the whole allopathic faculty almost with the sentence "No more can be done" and send him walking about for a few more days of cheerful life, it is a rather big palliation. Moreover, in some cases I have watched, I have seen R's drug produce not only a rapid, even an instantaneous improvement, but in the end what seems up to now a lasting one and this in cases of illnesses of ancient standing. However that does not cover K's case which looks more like a lung affair (Mother always was apprehensive that she may be a consumptive case) than a vicarious menstruation or monstrous vicariation one. R however says that it is his principle to make a diagnosis and never change it or say anything more about it but just go and prove his case by a cure!! What say you to that, sir? Confidence, if you like! However what bothers me about diagnosis is that if you put 20 doctors on a case, they give 20 different diagnoses (in S's we had three doctors with three quite different theories of the illness)—and such jokes as a doctor shouting "Appendix", opening up a man, finding illness neither of appendix nor volume nor chapter and cheerfully stitching him are extremely common. So if a layman's respect for allopathic pathology and diagnosis is deficient sometimes and R's sneers at doctors' diagnoses find occasionally an echo,—well, it is not altogether without "rational" cause.

A had mild diarrhoea; his relatives made a great fuss over him by caressing, fondling and surrounding him all the time!

Killed with kindness?

I hear that R has prescribed butter-milk for K. Valle himself prescribed light food.

I hope you don't prescribe "absolute repose". R wants her to move about, do light sedentary work not involving any pull on the body and, generally, so arrange that she may not think herself seriously invalided. This has always been the Mother's principle in dealing with illness, or she approves that wherever possible.

While crushing my rigid mind, do you want to establish the long-neglected and much-maligned merits of homeopathy as beyond all dispute and harangue by allopathy?

Not at all. I don't care a penny for homeopathy (or allopathy) I only wanted to poke some jokes at your allopathic mind.

My attack is against two things: R's efficiency and capacity as a doctor; and the rationale of homeopathy on symptomatology alone.

If you question that, you destroy homeopathy altogether.

I asked R about his patient G: "Is there no thickening of the blood vessels, high blood-pressure, no dyspnoea, etc.?" He said, "None at all." Yet Dr. Prasad Rao found all these and signs of heart-failure.

You went when G had a setback. R had written to me about headache, liver and some other difficulties before you went.

Dr. Rao further said that the patient was still in the danger zone. Any exertion, indiscretion might bring about another attack.

But it seems Valle has different ideas; he does not find G in a dangerous state or on the point of death, as he was before. Admitting P.R.'s infallibility, is Valle then a fool? Why does he give credit to R or keep him there? If R is such an incompetent ass, why does V support him, cover him, keep him there? This is a thing which seems to me a little unintelligible. Doctors differ? Why so much in this case? Valle who does not believe in Divine Force, is I think, the only doctor here who has a practical knowledge of homeopathy—he was struck with the justice of R's treatment from the first in S's case; he approves of his treatment in G's. Would he do so if R were merely a blundering ignoramus?

R gives a high blood-pressure patient on the verge of heart-failure "moderate" licence in eating, drinking, etc. He calls it "leaving to Nature"!

Well, I have followed that system with myself and others and gone on the basis that Nature is very largely what you make of her—or can make of her.

Since his heart, kidney cannot be regenerated, his habits have therefore to be adjusted accordingly. He can't remain a "bon vivant" any more.

In that case isn't it better that G should die? What's the use of life under such conditions?

If R is concerned only with symptoms, why does he ask me to find out the signficance of high blood-pressure etc. or ask Valle to build up a diet for G?

Because he found you very competent at it. As for the diet he had to cede something to Valle so that the family might see there was a necessary collaboration.

... People will acclaim that allopathy has failed and homeopathy has succeeded. But my point is that Valle, an allopath, would have been as successful as R if he had the backing of your Force.

The Force needs an instrument and an instrumentation also sometimes. The instrument was R, the instrumentation partly at least his drugs. I don't believe in the story of the inefficiency of homeopathic drugs only because they are homeopathic. Also, I don't believe that R knows nothing about them and can't properly apply them. I have noted almost constantly that they have a surprising effect, sometimes instantaneous, sometimes rapid, and this not in R's evidence alone, but in the statement of his patients and the visible results. Not being an allopathic doctor, I can't ignore a fact like that.

I quote to you an instance of the symptomatic riddle. Some symptoms like headache, vomiting etc. may be caused by many diseases such as brain-tumour, syphilis, blood-pressure and others. If you tell me that a homeopathic medicine for headache and other symptoms will be a panacea for all of them then l am afraid it will be difficult for me to accept it.

Tumour, syphilis etc. are specialities, but what I have found in my psycho-physical experience is that most disorders of the body are connected, though they go by families,—but there is also connection between the families. If one can strike at their psycho-physical root, one can cure even without knowing the pathological whole of the matter and working through the symptoms is a possibility. Some medicines invented by demi-mystics have this power. What I am now considering is whether homeopathy has any psycho-physical basis. Was the founder a demi-mystic? I don't understand otherwise certain peculiarities of the way R's medicines act.

Now the diagnosis, about which you have joked. Why take a muddle as an instance and ignore other cases? I should say that a mistaken diagnosis of the appendix, for example, is very rare.

Good heavens! It happened in scores and scores of cases when there was the appendicitis mania among doctors in France—and they have other manias also.

Why ignore wonderful things due to thousands of right diagnoses and let sporadic cases of error loom large in your eyes?

Sporadic cases! I have heard of any number of them; they are as plentiful as blackberries in Europe. And as for difference of diagnosis it is almost the rule except when doctors consult together and give concessions to each other. Don't try to throw allopathic dust in my eyes, sir! I have lived a fairly long time and seen something of the world before my retirement and much more after it.

We know only a few big cases of success of R, but how many of his failures do we know? In the Asram itself Rajangam is one. I saw R's most furious letter to you, on Rajangam's lack of faith.

But I have Rajangam's letters also. He seems to have had a curious mixture of superstitious hope and strong doubt, especially as R bungled badly at one point. However the body of an allopathic doctor can't be expected to respond to a homeopathic fellow, can it?

Then I hear he has failed in L's case also.

If L's case failed, then L in her letters lied to me. She related a complete cure of all that she had been suffering from for dreary months and years in which she was writing blood-curdling letters to me relating all her symptoms and miseries in voluminous detail. Once feeling well, she declared she did not believe in treatment but in Divine Force only, gave R a kick and sent him away. He was of course furious. For some time I had no letters, then little by little they began again, but as yet they are not so blood-curdling as before. Question: If D.F. alone does it without drugs, why is not L cured now as she was then under R?

I don't know of the other miraculous cures, nor do I know what rational grounds he has put forward for S's taking Asram food.

Rational, from the point of view of his experience only—not from allopathic pathology.

I think an allopath like M would be able to cure many people just as R has done—and also without some of R's mistakes.

M has an admirable knowledge and masterful movement in his treatments, but Mother finds that he is an overdrugger. He pours drugs on his patients as some painters overload their canvas with colour. He almost killed himself in this way, and we had all the trouble in the world to tone him down. He admitted it frankly, but since professional bias was too strong for him, when he fell ill, he could not help drugging and drugging.

Now about K's case. R boasts that it is not his principle to make a diagnosis, but to prove a cure and you ask me what I say to that. Well, R proclaimed after hearing the symptoms that it was a case of vicarious menstruation, even after seeing the blood-vomit which is characteristic of T.B. I call it bluff Sir. Let him stick to his sacred principle and not bluff us with his queer vicarious animal! Dr. Valle who has a big experience to his credit has clearly pronounced it to be T.B. And why vicarious, pray? because she was having some menstrual troubles? But her last period was quite normal. And what about her past history of cough, pain in the chest, blood-vomit?

K's case may be T.B., though Valle dragged in a "vraisemblablement"¹³⁷ and X-Ray is required—very probably it is, though I am not quite sure. R swears that ordinary doctors who have not had sufficient gynaecological experience can and do take V.M. for T.B. It does not follow that it is so in this case and his statement may be all bluff ... Now if we look beyond pathology to what I may call psycho-pathology (non-allopathic, non-homeopathic), this hysteria is usually accompanied with some disorder of the genital parts; wrong menstruation is itself often due to sexual trouble. T.B. again is always (psychologically) due to a psychic depression—I use psychic in the ordinary, not the Yogic sense; this psychic depression may arise from sex-frustration of one kind or another or from some reaction of the sexual order. So if R is wrong in suspecting V.M., psychologically he may be right—there may be, not vicarious menstruation, but its psychological equivalent. All that may no doubt be Greek (not medical Greek) to you, but I know what I mean—and so long as that is there, the cure of the T.B. by D.F.¹³⁸ is rather problematical. In X's case I saw at once that nothing could be done. That is why R got his chance. The allopaths could have cured the T.B., but it would have come back worse than before. However he is so disgusted with the storm of opposition raised against him that he seems inclined to throw up the cases and even (other things aiding) to leave the Asram. If so, all will be peace in Jerusalem, S will go back with his fiver into orthodox hands, G fulfil his allopathic destiny and an interesting phase will be over.

"I don't care about all that," he will say. "I will prove by my cure." If one is dealing with a case of T.B. or of heart-disease, I assert that some knowledge of pathology is necessary so that one can understand how far other organs have been involved. R would be quite ignorant of it and therefore can't treat the case effectively whereas an allopathic-homeopath would be in a better position...

But the allopaths can? Then how the devil do non-allopathic homeopaths (R is not the only example) succeed at all in their pathological cases? They do, you know, and that needs some explaining.

Actually, apart from anti-allopathic jokes and speculations, I don't say anything. I am not in the habit of jumping at conclusions when there are many possibles without a complete certitude, but wait till knowledge comes. I do not believe that D.F. has done everything in all these cases and they would have been ameliorated equally well if anybody else had been there. I count R for a remarkable though too resonant instrument. I see there is something in his treatment and medical ideas which is out of the ordinary and cannot be gauged by traditional standards. I am trying to see what it is. Is it that he has an intuition into psycho-physical forces and throws his drugs at them in a successful way, partly intuitional, partly experimental, while his physical renderings of them (attempts at diagnoses) are mere facade or error—except when they happen to be right? It may be, but that sounds too easy and plausible an explanation to be true.

About my Bengali poem—I wrote the lines marked and then the Muse failed. NK saw them, picked them up and completed the poem. Naturally he has expressed his own sentiments. They are not mine, neither did I know what they would be when I started. I intend someday to write one myself with those lines as they seem quite good. What's your opinion?

Your lines are very good. N's poem is very fine; but his style is too strong to agree with yours. It is as if a trumpet were to take up the notes of a flute.

By the way, J all on a sudden told me, before B, about a correspondence regarding the supramental descent on some anonymous sadhak and your remarks—exaggerated ego etc.; I hope J didn't mean B and myself, because very often we cut many jokes about your Supermind.

Not yourself—He quoted some silly remarks of X about Mother being Jivatman and myself Paramatman and his own atmajnan¹³⁹ and of Y having the Supermind descending up to his chest etc. I keep back the names. I said if anybody made such a claim it was only exaggerated ego.¹⁴⁰

I now close the chapter for ever on R and his treatment, with this last note that I quite agree with you in your psycho-physical theory of T.B. etiology ... though I don't understand at all how blood-vomit can be vicarious menstruation and not T.B. in origin ...

Well, even experienced doctors can make a mistake!

R has left some reports of blood-urine analysis for you to see. Yesterday he took me again to G and I found he looked much better. His blood-urea has come down to normal. Something! How? Don't know!

Of course not. The Py doctors say it is magic and contrary to science; others refuse to believe it unless they see the analysis. A little too much noise about the matter.

You are silent on B.P.'s New Year pranam! In a fax?

Forgot all about it. He can come.

I have made quite a vigorous programme to start from the New Year: English metre with Arjava—he is willing to teach, and French with Sarala, provided Mother finds no objection. So?

No objection at all. Enthusiastic approval

May I ask you for that promised poem as a New Year present?

You may ask; but who has time for it? Not yours truly.

My friend I whose photo I sent you the other day, expresses a desire to come here.

No recollection of it at all! But the Mother remembers and she has given me a glimmering and gleaming reflection of a recollection. Yes it was the photograph in which you qualified for Abyssinia. Right.¹⁴¹

Is permission for Darshan possible though he hasn't asked for it, because I suppose he doesn't know about it?

It's the only thing possible for a beginning.

P is complaining of shooting headache due to her eyes etc. Can't you do something to make the shoots and her also quiet? She says, "What can poor Nirod do? He is trying all he can." Poor Nirod, what!

1936

January 1936

R asks me to send you these medical reports of G.

Reports no use unless the medical hieroglyphics are interpreted.

Today P came for her eyes. All on a sudden she burst into sobs—God knows why!

God doesn't.

P is a sort of weeping machine—touch a spring even uninten tionally and it starts off.

I am sending the 4 reports—3 on urine and I on blood. The first ones will give you an idea of the progress of the disease up to the present stage of cure. You will see that blood-urea has come down to normal. Albumin—an abnormal product in the urine—is present indicating heart-failure in the absence of any kidney lesion. The presence of blood in the urine is due to the same reason. I hope this set of "hieroglyphics" is now as clear as water.

I am afraid it is not so clear, though it is sufficiently watery. What I wanted to know was whether there had been such a miraculous change as Valle and the Pondicherry doctors seem to say and which were the medical facts on which they based their opinion—in other words whether the Force had really acted or not and, if so, to what extent—of course from the "pathological" point of view; for it is evident that the man is not dead and is in much better health than before. He had nephritis, blood-pressure, albumin and a number of other pleasant things whether as "symptoms" or as root-illnesses. I gather that these have gone practically. But I also gather or seem to from your remarks that G's appearance does not amount to much. But I am not clear about that. However, it is not of much importance.

This year is said to be your brightest year according to the horoscope, Sir.

Horoscope by whom? According to a famous Calcutta astrologer (I have forgotten his name) my biggest time comes much later, though the immediately ensuing period is also remarkable. Like doctors, astrologers differ.

But whatever miracle might happen, I don't see any chance for my caravan!

Too many dogs of depression bark?

What about B.P.'s work? Forgetfulness?

Not forgetfulness; but these things are not always easy to arrange.

A is suffering from chronic dysentery. Shall we give emetine injections?

Mother does not favour emetine, it is not without its disadvantages, at least from our point of view.

Please read C's letter regarding M.S.'s opinion on your philosophy. But I don't understand how a man who is supposed to be an authority on your Yogic philosophy can compare your Yoga with Ramakrishna's!

In a way he is, i.e. he is an authority on his own ideas about my Yogic philosophy. But from whom can you expect more than that?

Yes, but he is an authority on my philosophy, not on my Yoga. There is a difference.

Why, Sir, G's reports not so clear? Judging from the pathological reports alone [3.1.36] the change is nothing short of a miracle, leaving out the possibility of an inter-current affection which might take him away.

I am interested to see today that Valle pronounces "a perfect cure"—according to R, heart and pulse normal at 70-72, blood tension normal, oedema of feet, chill and headache gone, while kidney of interstitial nephritis of 8 years standing cured, urinary symptoms normal, enough vitality to walk on verandah and attend business freely, solid food from tomorrow. He has asked R to look in now and again—perhaps to be sure that solid food does not upset him. But all the same this is more than I expected as yet, though not more than I tried for—for one should always in these things have moderate expectations but a big endeavour. I don't overlook the possibility of a fall back or a sudden catastrophe by a reverse movement; but if he can stand normal diet and not go to excess again, he may live longer than was at all probable on any rational forecast before. Let us see.

But there is chronic heart-failure, and a chronic high pressure has altered the condition of the vessels so that a normal healthy life is impossible ...

That is not impossible to alter. It is doubtful because G is not a favourable subject and sheer matter (this is a very material degeneration) is not yet conquered. But all the same I have myself been surprised by the massive rapidity and scrupulous exactness (an unusual combination) of G's responses in this rather extravagant experiment. It is why I gave much of the credit to R's mediumship and the rapid action (that I find undeniable) of his drugs.

Too many dogs of depression, Sir, too many! And not only dogs, but cats and jackals and a host of other friends have made my life a misery!

Why are you so fond of this menagerie as to keep it with you? Turn them out into the street. Or, if that is not charitable to others, drown them in the sea. Don't shake your sorrowful head and say it is easier to say than to do. It is quite possible. It is only the Man of Sorrows that prevents it.

I had a look at J's rashes and eczema with your questinnaire on it. Since our treatment is only symptomatic I wonder if we can try R.

I am not very enthusiastic about this idea. R demands an implicit obedience from his patients which 3 would not give—and they would certainly clash very soon. There are other reasons also.

When a medicine is a specific, it is scientifically supposed to be active on one particular disease and therefore quite successful: for instance emetine in dysentery and quinine in malaria. But you don't give your approval even though these medicines are specifics in these particular diseases.

It is not enough for a medicine to be a specific. Certain drugs have other effects or possible effects which can be ignored by the physician who only wants to cure his case, but cannot be in a whole-view of the system and its reactions. The unfavourable reactions of quinine are admitted by medical opinion itself and doctors in Europe have been long searching for a substitute for quinine.

Z complains of vomiting, giddiness etc. I'm afraid these three Punjabi brothers and sister are rather—I mean physically.

Very bad health, all of them. The "stalwart Panjabi" is not much in evidence. One of the type who came could not progress. Another was tall but thin and ill. These—

I send a poem retouched by Nishikanta. Do put a few of your comments against the lines or expressions which are not quite right.

That is beyond me. I can only give my personal impression which amounts to "I like it exceeding well".

Henceforth I shall send you two note-books: one exclusively for medical reports and the other for personal matters.

Yes, this will be very good.

I hope this innovation won't be a burden to you—I won't report about small cuts and bruises, of course.

No burden at all.

Now, I would like to have your expert and thoroughly satisfying opinion on the following question:

There has often been a discussion and hence a difference of opinion on the relative greatness of different branches of Art. Some of us are disposed to think of music as the highest: poetry, painting, architecture, sculpture, embroidery following thus in order of merit. Though one may not agree to such a classification, still because of the universality and most direct appeal of music, cannot one give it preference? Poetry is rather limited in its scope and painting even more so. They have to be understood in order to be appreciated in their fullest measure whereas music, apart from the technical aspect which is not absolutely obligatory for an appeal, need not. You know of the stories of beasts and snakes being charmed, not to speak of the hard-hearted Yamaraja, by music! Take your "Love and Death" as an example of poetic excellence. I am afraid people would throng round a piece of music sung by one of the renowned singers, more than round the recital of your poem. Yes, you may have the satisfaction of having an audience of intellectuals and then it will prove my contention that poetry has a limited appeal. Now about painting. I hear quite a number of people have lost their heads over Mona Lisa, even over a copy of it, but I have come away quite sound and strong without even being touched in the heart and I am sure many others have done so. This substantiates again my theory that painting is restricted in its scope. But will you turn the tables by this very fact of the restricted scope and difficult technique of painting and poetry and frame the order: Painting, Poetry, Music and so on? Is there really a hierarchy of planes in the Occult?

I fear I must disappoint you. I am not going to pass the Gods through a competitive examination and assign a highest place to one and lower places to others. What an idea! Each has his or her own province on the summits and what is the necessity of putting them in rivalry with each other? It is a sort of Judgment of Paris you want to impose on me? Well, but what became of Paris and Troy? You want me to give the crown or the apple to Music and enrage the Goddesses of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Embroidery, all the Nine Muses, so that they will kick at our publications and exhibitions and troop off to other places? We shall have to build in the future—what then shall we do if the Goddess of Architecture turns severely and says, "I am an inferior Power, am I? Go and ask your Nirod to build your house with his beloved music!"

Your test of precedence—universal appeal—is all wrong. I don't know that it is true, in the first place. Some kind of sound called music appeals to everybody, but has really good music a universal appeal? And, speaking of arts, more people go to the theatre or read fiction than go to the opera or a concert. What becomes then of the superior universality of music, even in the cheapest sense of universality? Rudyard Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads exercises a more universal appeal than was ever reached by Milton or Keats—we will say nothing of writers like Blake or Francis Thompson; a band on the pier at a seaside resort will please more people than a great piece of music with the orchestration conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham. In a world of gods it might be true that the highest makes the most universal appeal, but here in a world of beasts and men (you bring in the beasts—why not play to Bushy¹⁴² and try how she responds?) it is usually the inferior things that have the more general if not quite universal appeal. On the other hand the opposite system you suggest (the tables turned upside down the least universal and most difficult appeal makes the greatest art) would also have its dangers. At that rate we should have to concede that the cubist and abstract painters had reached the highest art possible, only rivalled by the up to date modernist poets of whom it has been said that their works are not at all either read or understood by the public, are read and understood only by the poet himself, and are read without being understood by his personal friends and admirers.

When you speak of direct appeal, you are perhaps touching something true. Technique does not come in—for although to have a complete and expert judgment or appreciation you must know the technique not only in music and painting where it is more difficult, but in poetry and architecture also, it is something else and not that kind of judgment of which you are speaking. It is perhaps true that music goes direct to the intuition and feeling with the least necessity for the use of the thinking mind with its strongly limiting conceptions as a self-imposed middleman, while painting and sculpture do need it and poetry still more. At that rate music would come first, architecture next, then sculpture and painting, poetry last. I am aware that Housman posits nonsense as the essence of pure poetry and considers its appeal to be quite direct—not to the soul but to somewhere about the stomach. But then there is hardly any pure poetry in this world and the little there is is still mélangé with at least a homeopathic dose of intellectual meaning. But again if I admit this thesis of excellence by directness, I shall be getting myself into dangerous waters. For modern painting has become either cubist or abstract and it claims to have got rid of mental representation and established in art the very method of music; it paints not the object, but the truth behind the object—by the use of pure line and colour and geometrical form which is the very basis of all forms or else by figures that are not representations but significances. For instance a modern painter wishing to make a portrait of you will now paint at the top a clock surrounded by three triangles, below them a chaos of rhomboids and at the bottom two table castors to represent your feet and he will put underneath this powerful design, "Portrait of Nirod". Perhaps your soul will leap up in answer to its direct appeal and recognise at once the truth behind the object, behind your vanished physical self,—you will greet your psychic being or your Atman or at least your inner physical or vital being. Perhaps also you won't. Poetry also seems to be striving towards the same end by the same means—the getting away from mind into the depths of life or, as the profane might put it, arriving at truth and beauty through ugliness and unintelligibility. From that you will perhaps deduce that the attempt of painting and poetry to do what music alone can do easily and directly without these acrobatics is futile because it is contrary to their nature—which proves your thesis that music is the highest art because most direct in its appeal to the soul and the feelings. Maybe—or maybe not; as the Jains put it, syâid vâ na syâd yâ.

I have written so much, you will see, in order to say nothing—or at least to avoid your attempt at putting me in an embarrassin, dilemma. Q.E.F.

SRI ADRORINDO

N.B. This is my answer, not the Mother's.

I don't understand at all, Sir, what to make of your reply or Art!

If you did know, it would mean I had committed myself, which was just what I did not want to do. Or shall we put it in this way "Each of the great arts has its own appeal and its own way of appeal and each in its own way is supreme above all others"? That ought to do.

[In the medical report I wrote Achanchar instead of Achanchal. Sri Aurobindo underlined "r".]

Is this r or l? If r, please transform into l.

I have no objection to N's eyes being treated by R.

It is not a question of his eyes. If R treats him, he will forbid all allopathic medicines for his other ailments. That is the point I put to N which he seems not to understand at all.

If it is I and not r why do they pronounce Achanchar? Is it like our saying আঁব¹⁴³ (mango) instead of আম¹⁴⁴? Oh, the very word আম takes you, Sir, to the land of—!

God knows! I have not heard their pronunciation. But it is l all right. R & l are however supposed to be phonetically interchangeable since the beginnings of human speech.

Is it true that poetry leads to the realisation faster than music, painting, etc.?

What the deuce is meant by leading to the realisation?

About poetry or any literary work, you have said that very often one's inner being comes to the front, and that is used by a higher Power. Is that the reason then why Poetry is such a quick process?

Don't recognise the quotation or recall the context. But the inner being can come to the front under any provocation, why of Poetry alone?

Venkataram says that he feels something when he takes up music—something different from what he feels in his other activities.

It all depends on what the something is.

Will you now say something about art, or do you think it risky?

Very.

Whatever little experience I have of sadhana through works, makes me incline to the view that work as sadhana is the most difficult thing.

Why argue from your personal experience great or little and turn it into a generalisation? A great many people (the majority perhaps) find it the easiest of all.

In poetry, though I may be unlucky as regards experiences, while I write, I try to think of you even if mentally. I can even say that it is only by thinking of you that I can compose poetry.

Many find it easy to think of the Mother when working; but when they read or write, their mind goes off to the thing read or written and they forget everything else. I think that is the case with most. Physical work on the other hand can be done with the most external part of the mind, leaving the rest free to remember or to experience.

In that case Music should have the greatest gift.

Why?

I won't dilate any more, but ask you to do it.

Why should I dilate either—at the risk of bursting? Besides tonight I have other dilatations (I can't call them delectations) occupying me.

Is there no real love in the human world?... Where is the crux of the trouble?

In the self-delusion of the vital. Human love is mainly vital, when it is not vital and physical together. It is also sometimes psychic + vital. But the Love with a dominant psychic element is rare.

I am in agony; a great upheaval is going on. Oh, how I wish for something real! real love! Can you not give me, make me feel, overwhelm me—even if for 10 minutes—with your love, and make life worth living?

What is real love? Get clear of all the sentimental sexual turmoil and go back to the soul,—then there is real love. It is then also you would be able to receive the overwhelming love without getting the lower being into an excitement which might be disastrous.

"Like a flame of flowers on yonder tree,
Like the rippling waves of the sea,

Dance, dance, O my soul, thou playmate of Light,
Winging the sapphire height.

Into the luminous calm of skies
Uplift my leaden eyes
And on a widening vision pour
The sun-wine of thy soar."

A small poem. Trickle? Opinion, please. soul dancing too much? The first stanza came quite easily, but I got stuck after that. Then Amal hopped in and helped me with the second stanza.

I have no objection to the soul dancing, but to make it dance and wing a height at the same time is a little acrobatic. Also to pour wine (even of a soar, though what the wine of a soar may be I don't know) on the eyes would hardly be beneficial to the vision—in most cases. I admit however that these are perhaps rather too prosaic and Johnsonian objections to the sunwine of your or Amal's dancing soar.

Here are some new lines:

Trickle, trickle O mighty Force divine.
Pour, pour thy white moon dreams
Into my stomach, heart and intestine
In little silver streams.

Two most damnable blunders, sir. "Intestine" is stressed on the second syllable and pronounced intestin, so how the blazes is it going to rhyme with divine? A doctor misstressing "intestine"—shame! How are you going to cure people if you put wrong stresses on their anatomical parts?

Second blunder—

Yogically, psycho-physically etc., etc. stomach, heart and intestine lodge the vital movements, not the physical consciousness—it is there that anger, fear, love, hate and all the other psychological privileges of the animal tumble about and upset the physical and moral digestion. The Muladhara is the seat of the physical consciousness proper. So you have to emend the third [Image 4] make it poetically beautiful and psycho-physically correct.

Nishikanta has written a poem from a vision. He says that he is going to paint his vision of the violet stream and the golden cup; so he would like you to illumine him regarding its significance.

"Violet" is the colour of benevolence or compassion, but also more vividly of the Divine Grace—represented in the vision as flowing from the heights of the spiritual consciousness down on this earth. The golden cup is I suppose the Truth consciousness.

Almost all whom I know have come here solely for the Divine, while I have just glided in. I don't know that I was actuated by the sole motive of drowning myself in the Divine...

The push to drown oneself in the Divine is very rare. It is usually a mental idea, a vital fumbling or some quite inadequate reason that starts the thing—or else no reason at all. The only reality is the occult psychic push behind of which the surface consciousness is not aware or else hardly aware.

I don't see any vestige of a yogi in me. It will be three years in February, since I have come here, and I haven't seen even three signs! It is your letters, Sir, that have bound me.

What the deuce is three years in Yoga? There are people who have to wait twice or three times or four times that time before they get the real sign. A child of nine might say Look here. I have been studying for 2 years and yet nobody has decided to propose me as the Vice Chancellor of the Calcutta University.

You have had signs that you can get Ananda, that a channel can be made through your physical brain (your poetry) for something that wasn't there before. That's sign enough.

I hear J jumped down from the train when it was leaving! He still seems uncertain. A problem indeed!

Everybody is a problem in his own way—the world itself is a problem and so are all the creatures in it.

I send you a letter of my friend J.B. He wants to know if he can write to you personally?

The difficulty would be about the answer—If I had to do it myself, he would get an answer every three years.

And can some general correspondence be sent to him?

It can be done sometimes.

What does he mean by "the overmental and supramental stages" which he doesn't want to leave?

I am puzzled by the sentence.

I suppose he takes anything beyond mind as Overmind and Supermind.

I suppose so, people always do at first. But even so, I don't understand why he writes of it as a stage he does not want to leave. What he has is not of course overmind or supermind, but some sense of the cosmic Force of the Mother behind the action of the personal being.

He feels some dynamic force working in him. He feels that he hasn't clung to the Divine, the Divine has clutched him.

That is very often felt.

People outside feel all these great experiences, while we feel a vacuum. Glory to God!

Lots of people feel that outside or similar things. Also they feel a bhakti and faith outside which is spoiled or gets rude shocks if they come and stay for some time in the Asram and converse with its enlightened sadhaks. But that I suppose is all in the game. At any rate it used to be like that. Nowadays I notice some improvement—let us hope that soon it will be an entire change.

Do you really think that I have done something in poetry? People say that one can't take your remarks on poetry, painting, etc. too literally, because you want to encourage us.

A very good beginning. Not yet Homer or Shakespeare, of course.

Mother is giving us doctors a very good compliment, I hear! that we confine people to bed till they are really confined!

Yes. Mother did pass on that epigram. Doctors were born to hear such remarks.

Why are you so afraid of P's screams? Surely yogis ought to be able to bear a little suffering and you ought to encourage or allow it, Sir!

She is not that kind of Yogi. She would only scream and get as wild as Durvasa¹⁴⁵ and stop going to the dispensary—apart from copious weeping etc.

R.B. is all right. I thought she has been doing some work, but now I find she is taking a holiday.

True, she is very lazy. You can perhaps tell her that work now ought to do her good and recommend it as part of the treatment!

J is suffering from eczema. Don't know what to do except go on experimenting. Please ask Mother to guide me.

Mother can't say. Her experience is that strong medicines are not good for these skin things—toilet products are more effective; but this is only a general observation. I myself cured mine by spiritual force and stingingly hot water, but I don't know if it would work for others.

If you have cured yourself by spiritual force and hot water, why not apply the same here?

Can't say if it will succeed. Differs with people. Sahana cured hers once by icing it.

I am not giving anything except zinc oxide ointment which is very bland. Spiritual force, I have none; so can't give it!

Then?

I realise at every moment that I am neither made for the path of the Spirit, nor for any big endeavour in life. I know I shall be unhappy, but are all men born to be happy?

Man of sorrows man of sorrows!! Knock him of man, knock him off!

Man of Sorrows? Knock him off? Well, he is too cryptic or brief for me. I'm not much satisfied with the answer.

The most fundamental difficulty I find in me is that I can't believe that the Divine will do everything for me. My experience has shown me that—please don't say my experience is nothing. Take for instance this Poetry business. It has always been rare for me to write any poetry without a heavy dose of mental exercise—you know it very well. I have not, except once or twice, as I said, felt some force coming down and delivering a poem out of me, even a worthless one, in a second. If I don't write, I don't write, and even when I try to write, it takes me so many, so many days and so much labour. You will give the usual reply—What of that? That's all very well, but it means that I must labour—my own quota has to be enormous in-order to get any success. But I haven't got that leechlike tenacity. Since I haven't, I can't as well believe that someday the Divine Force will pour down, or gush out and do the miracle. You yourself had to concentrate for 4 or 5 hours a day for so many years, after which everything flowed in a river. But I am not Sri Aurobindo I I am not born with such a will and determination. Since I don't possess them, the most politic thing would be to rely on the Divine, but I can't believe in any such thing. You had to concentrate, Dilipda had to and so had everybody. Since I can't spend so much labour, I have to conclude that such big things are not for me. Even then I sit down for 2 or 3 hours, 3 or 4 or 5 days pass away and I am just where I was—result: depression. Where is the Force?

Now about Yoga: you know how much progress I have made. I don't blame you. I can't meditate, I can't pray, I can't aspire. Without them, I don't see how I am to get anything. Why not do them—you ask? If I could, would I have troubled you with all these wailings? Since I can't, I have no peace, no joy! You can't give them without any urge or aspiration for them, can you? I know, I understand, I gather how much one has to aspire for all these and even then the result is sometimes zero. Then if one can't aspire at all, where is his hope?...

Sometimes I think—don't bother your head. Eat, drink, be merry—with yogic reservations! no thought, no worry. I thought I would go on chatting, eating, reading novels, etc. But I can't. I don't get peace, though I find some are all right. Anilkumar, for instance (I don't mean any offence, though) reads novels the whole night practically. How can he? He must have got something. If I could do it, I would, but how would that bring me peace, progress in sadhana? As you have said, personal effort is absolutely imperative and a sustained effort too, until your Grace descends. God knows what will happen then! I don't see anywhere that effort nor the capacity nor even the will for it. So with what shall I hope, on what shall I rely? Neither can I try it myself nor can I believe that you will do everything for me. Hence all these precious agitations, disbelief ... I am not meant for any big endeavour.

Give an answer that will pierce the mind-soul. By an answer only. I don't expect more!

As there are several lamentations today besieging me, I have very little time to deal with each separate Jeremiad. Do I understand rightly that your contention is this, "I can't believe in the Divine doing everything for me because it is by my own mighty and often fruitless efforts that I write or do not write poetry and have made myself into a poet"? Well, that itself is épatant, magnificent, unheard of. It has always been supposed since the infancy of the human race that while a verse-maker can be made or self-made, a poet cannot. "Poeta nascitur non fit", a poet is born not made, is the dictum that has come down through the centuries and millenniums and was thundered into my ears by the first pages of my Latin Grammar. The facts of literary history seem to justify this stern saying. But here in Pondicherry we have tried, not to manufacture poets, but to give them birth, a spiritual, not a physical birth into the body. In a number of instances we are supposed to have succeeded—one of these is your noble self—or if I am to believe the man of sorrows in you, your abject, miserable, hopeless and ineffectual self. But how was it done? There are two theories, it seems—one that it was by the Force, the other that it was done by your own splashing, kicking, groaning Herculean efforts. Now, sir, if it is the latter, if you have done that unprecedented thing, made yourself by your own laborious strength into a poet (for your earlier efforts were only very decent literary exercises), then, sir, why the deuce are you so abject, self-depreciatory, miserable? Don't say that it is only a poet who can produce no more than a few poems in many months. Even to have done that, to have become a poet at all, a self-made poet is a miracle over which we can only say 'Sabash Sabash!'¹⁴⁶ without ever stopping. If your effort could do that, what is there that it can't do? All miracles can be effected by it and a giant self-confident faith ought to be in you. On the other hand if, as I aver, it is the Force that has done it, what then can it not do? Here too faith, a giant faith is the only logical conclusion. So either way there is room only for Hallelujahs, none for Jeremiads. Q.E.D.

By the way what is this story about my four or five hours' concentration a day for several years before anything came down? Such a thing never happened, if by concentration you mean laborious meditation. What I did was four or five hours a day pranayam—which is quite another matter. And what flow do you speak of? The flow of poetry came down while I was doing Pranayam, not some years afterwards. If it is the flow of experiences, that did come after some years, but after I had stopped the Pranayam for a long time and was doing nothing and did not know what to do or where to turn once all my efforts had failed. And it came as a result not of years of Pranayam or concentration, but in a ridiculously easy way, by the grace either of a temporary guru (but it wasn't that, for he was himself bewildered by it) or by the grace of the eternal Brahman and afterwards by the the grace of Mahakali and Krishna. So don't try to turn me into an argument against the Divine; that attempt will be perfectly ineffective.

I am obliged to stop—if I go on, there will be no Pranam till 12 o'clock. So send your Jeremiad back tonight and I will see what else to write. Have written this in a headlong hurry—I hope it is not full of lapsus calami.

I send you the "Jeremiad", Sir. My observations are reserved. Anyway, you have succeeded in almost chasing away the clouds of depression.

To continue. The fact that you don't feel a force does not prove that it is not there. The steam-engine does not feel a force moving it, but the force is there. A man is not a steam-engine? He is very little better, for he is conscious only of some bubbling on the surface which he calls himself and is absolutely unconscious of all the subconscient, subliminal, superconscient forces moving him. (This is a fact which is being more and more established by modern psychology though it has got hold only of the lower forces and not the higher, so you need not turn up your rational nose at it.) He twitters intellectually (= foolishly,) about the surface results and attributes them all to his "noble self", ignoring the fact that his noble self is hidden far away from his own vision behind the veil of his dimly sparkling intellect and the reeking fog of his vital feelings, emotions, impulses, sensations and impressions. So your argument is utterly absurd and futile. Our aim is to bring the secret forces out and unwalled into the open so that instead of getting some shadows or lightnings of themselves out through the veil or being wholly obstructed, they may "pour down" and "flow in a river". But to expect that all at once is a presumptuous demand which shows an impatient ignorance and inexperience. If they begin to trickle at first, that is sufficient to justify the faith in a future downpour. You admit that you once or twice felt a "force coming down and delivering a poem out of me" (your opinion about its worth or worthlessness is not worth a cent, that is for others to pronounce). That is sufficient to blow the rest of your Jeremiad into smithereens; it proves that the force was and is there and at work and it is only your sweating Herculean labour that prevents you feeling it.

Also it is the trickle that gives assurance of the possibility of the downpour. One has only to go on and by one's patience deserve the downpour or else, without deserving, stick on till one gets it. In Yoga itself the experience that is a promise and foretaste but gets shut off till the nature is ready for the fulfilment is a phenomenon familiar to every Yogin when he looks back on his past experience. Such were the brief visitations of Ananda you had some time before. It does not matter if you have not a leechlike tenacity—leeches are not the only type of Yogins. If you can stick anyhow or get stuck that is sufficient. The fact that you are not Sri Aurobindo (who said you were?) is an inept irrelevance. One needs only to be oneself in a reasonable way and shake off the hump when it is there or allow it to be shaken off without clinging to it with a "leechlike tenacity" worthy of a better cause.

All the rest is dreary stuff of the tamasic ego. As there is a rajasic ego which shouts "What a magnificent powerful sublime divine individual I am, unique and peerless" (of course there are gradations in the pitch,) so there is a tamasic ego which squeaks "What an abject, hopeless, worthless, incapable, unluckily unendowed and uniquely impossible creature I am,—all, all are great, Aurobindos, Dilips, Anilkumars (great by an unequalled capacity of novel-reading and self-content, according to you), but I, oh I, oh I!" That's your style. It is this tamasic ego (of course it expresses itself in various ways at various times, I am only rendering your present pitch) which is responsible for the Man of Sorrows getting in. It's all bosh—stuff made up to excuse the luxury of laziness, melancholy and despair. You are in that bog just now because you have descended faithfully and completely into the inert stupidity and die-in-the-mudness of your physical consciousness which, I admit, is a specimen! But so after all is everybody's, only there are different kinds of specimens. What to do? Dig yourself out if you can; if you can't, call for ropes and wait till they come. If God knows what will happen when the Grace descends, that is enough, isn't it? That you don't know is a fact which may be baffling to your—well, your intelligence, but is not of great importance—any more than your supposed unfitness. Who ever was fit, for that matter—fitness and unfitness are only a way of speaking; man is unfit a misfit (so far as things spiritual are concerned)—in his outward nature. But within there is a soul and above there is Grace. "This is all you know or need to know" and, if you don't, well, even then you have at least somehow stumbled into the path and have got to remain there till you get haled along it far enough to wake up to the knowledge. Amen.

[Image 5]

Now then, what do you think of the vision poem by NK and its illustration by my "noble self', and its significance? Qu'en dites-vous?

Very remarkable—the poem, I mean. As for the vision I know it only through your work of art which leaves me stunned with astonishment if not admiration and therefore unable to articulate. Its greatest point is the bird which is a chef-d'oeuvre.

January 21, 1936¹⁴⁷

Nishikanta sends another poem. He is determined to go at you with his literary volleys.

Kept them till tomorrow. Am racing with time to get work finished before 8 a.m. in the morning, so no time to receive today's volley.

J says she has been feeling terribly lonely for the last few days, had a terrible impulse to go away.

The usual terrible seems to have come simultaneously to you, D and her after leaving some others.

She says that if it happens off and on, it would be a hard job to stick.

Some people had it terribly once a week or even once a day for months together, yet they stuck or got stuck.

But what is this loneliness due to? Her isolation?

No way. It is the usual hubbub of the vital. D used to get this "loneliness" in the full swing of his tea parties, concerts and daily meetings. Nothing to do with isolation. Many isolated people don't feel lonely at all.

When a person with few or no friends, comes to see you, how to turn your face away? If any disturbance results from it I can bear if it is helpful, but when it becomes too frequent it'll be unbearable.

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

P was given pomegranate juice, she vomited it at once. It may be due to the reflex atony of the stomach.

That was the Mother's impression. Of course pomegranate juice may well have assisted (as she vomited after it), if it was the wrong (medicinal) kind of pomegranate and crushed out of the grains and seeds (becoming strong and bitter) instead of pressed out without crushing. Ordinary pomegranate juice many people take and there are no such results.

I myself was taking it daily at one time; I took it once or twice even prepared in the wrong way without any inconvenience. But if the bitter medicinal kind were given her in a weak condition of the stomach, it might well aggravate.

R showed me Gaudart's blood-urea report which was .025%. The lowest figure given was .02%. Dr. Valle has asked R to be on the look-out lest it fall lower.

Is he still treating Gaudart? He wrote that Valle had said he (V) would go no longer to G's and so R also had to leave G to himself. Valle has gone back then?

What did N.P. do after he stopped coming here? Left to the Force or to R?

Nothing to do with R. Says the Force is curing him.

I am surprised, Sir, that you are still complaining of time!

Are you? You wouldn't be if you were in my place.

No time, no time! it is going to be an eternal problem with you, it seems! After the reduction of correspondence—cutting off the evening mail—it leaves you absolutely free for other things. I suppose you are working at your "Savitri".

Where is the reduction of correspondence? I have to be occupied with correspondence from 8.0 to 12 p.m. (minus one hour), again after bath and meal from 2.30 to 7 a.m. All that apart from afternoon work. And still much is left undone—And you think I can write Savitri? You evidently believe in miracles t

What about the poem you promised, Sir?

I have no time even to think about it or about writing poems at all.

Muthu K. Swamy & Co., are starting a journal. I said I would give one of Nishikanta's English poems. May I?

I don't know whether it will be suitable to the kind of "Journal" they can produce.

But do you really mean that till 7 a.m. your pen goes on at an aeroplanic speed? Then it must be due more to outside correspondence. I don't see many books or envelopes now on the staircase. Is the supramental freedom from these not in view?

Your not seeing unfortunately does not dematerialise them. Books are mainly for the Mother and there is sometimes a mountain, but letters galore. On some days only there is a lull and then I can do something.

A most stimulating formula I find in your letter—"within there is a soul and above there is Grace"—about which you say "This is all you know or need to know." Is that all really?

For anyone who wants the spiritual life, yes, it is enough.

Can one arrive at what is called "a state of grace" simply by sticking or simply because there is a soul within?

Yes, one can, plenty of people have done it.

But then the soul is there in everybody and Grace is above everybody. How is it that people have turned their backs on the Divine?

Because of rajasic ego, ambition, vanity—because they believed in their own efforts and not in the Grace.

I have never heard that Grace did everything. And, where it seems to do so, how do we know that somebody has not done sadhana in his past life? You can't deny it, can you?

I could point you at many instances in spiritual history—beginning with the famous Jagai Madhai. But it is no use against a brain that does not want to admit that 2+2=4.

You can't affirm it, can you?

Simple sticking won't do. In that case our Asram cat Bushy would have a chance.

Of course she has—of rising to a new grade of birth with all in her favour in the next life.

Because we have to make a Herculean effort in sadhana I rather hesitate to believe much in Grace. Is not Grace something that comes down unconditionally?

It does not depend on conditions—which is rather a different thing from an unconditional surrender to any and every sadhak.

Even Ramakrishna's baby cat type of sadhak has to make a decisive movement of surrender and compel the rest of the being to obedience, which, let me tell you, Sir, is the most difficult thing on earth.

I never heard that the baby cat was like that—if it were it would not be a baby cat. (It is the baby monkey trying to become a baby cat who does that.) But you have evidently so great a knowledge of spiritual things (surpassing mine and Ramakrishna's) that I can only bow my head and pass humbly on to people with less knowledge.

If anybody can do the baby cat surrender at a stroke, it is not because his "unfinished curve" in the past life has finished it in this.

Hail, Rishi, all-knower! Tell us all about our past lives.

Now, if the soul instead of sleeping has to aspire etc. to call down its Lord the Grace, where do you see that aspiration in me? If you build my spiritual castle on those one or two minutes' brief visitations of Ananda, and that too once or twice only, excluding the moments of darshan of your great self, which also have been sometimes marred in these three years—and if you build my poetic mansion on little trickles, then I can only say—well, what shall I say?

Better say nothing. It will sound less foolish.

You have often inveighed against my asking you not to use yourself as an argument against the Divine. But what is the history of your sadhana in your own words—a Herculean practice of Pranayam, concentration and what not and then after years and years of waiting the Grace of Brahman. Still you are pañcamukha¹⁴⁸ in praise of Grace!

What a wooden head! What is the use of saying things if you deliberately misinterpret what I write? I said clearly that the pranayam brought me nothing of any kind of spiritual realisation. I had stopped it long before. The Brahman experience came when I was groping for a way, doing no sadhana at all, making no effort because I didn't know what effort to make, all having failed. Then in three days I got an experience which most Yogis get only at the end of a long Yoga, got it without wanting or trying for it, got it to the surprise of Lele who was trying to get me something quite different. But I, don't suppose you are able to understand—so I say no more. I can only look mournfully at your ununderstanding pate.

Calling for ropes and waiting till they come is all right, but who knows what may happen meanwhile. Won't the expeditionist expire in the jungles, in trying to scale the Himalayas?

Who asks him to explore the jungles (of his own logic, I suppose) or climb the Himalayas? What has this to do with what I said? I did not tell you to make Herculean efforts.

I remember instances where people have failed in their sadhana and gone away. The Divine couldn't do much because he says he doesn't propose to do anything against the will of the individual, which means aspiration, rejection, surrender, before the Grace comes down.

It can mean also waiting on the Grace of the Divine! The will of the individual in this respect does not mean anything like that. If the will of the individual is towards perdition, if his ego becomes hostile to the Divine, then the Divine is not bound to show him a Grace he does not want at all and kicks at.

It seems to me that behind any difficult endeavour, there is the seeking for Ananda which acts as the motive-power, isn't it so?

Not that I know of!

Take the case of X. My God, to think that after all those Napoleonic efforts in poetry, and having succeeded, one is still driven to madness because, after all, one has obtained nothing spiritually in spite of aspiration, meditation, etc.—this is blood-curdling and at once smashes your theory of Karmayoga through poetry.

Napoleonic rubbish! He was the worst poet in the world before he came here and here immediately as soon as I put my force he began writing beautiful poems. Yet it was by his Napoleonic efforts that he did it? Imbecility, thy name is ego.

I was not putting any Karmayoga theory—I was simply mocking at your absurd idea that it was by your own mighty efforts that you had succeeded in writing poetry which any good judge (you are not one) would call genuine poetry.

I would not like to invite the same inevitable fate on my weak bony shoulders. So in every way is there room for Hallelujah or for Jeremiad.

All right, sir, Jeremy away.

To think that five or six years more of barren desert stretch between me and the Divine Grace, coagulates my blood!

Coagulate! coagulate! coagulate!

Please give an answer to these points—if no time tonight, tomorrow.

Non, monsieur,—j'ai d'autres chats a fouetter. I have other cats to whip—I can't go on whipping one cat all the time. A few lashes in the margin are all I can spare for you just now.

There are three main possibilities for the sadhak—

1) To wait on the Grace and rely on the Divine.

2) To do everything himself like the full Adwaitin and the Buddhist.

3) To take the middle path, go forward by aspiration and rejection etc. helped by the Force. The first, it appears, is too easy for you to do it, the second is too difficult for you to do, the third being easy in parts and difficult in parts is as impossible for you to do it. Right? Amen!!!

K's X-ray finding reveals that it is the right side that is affected—the lesion has just started...

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "right side".]

Right side where? lung? T.B.?

But why is she thrust on us again? She was evidently making good progress with R.

Because she insisted on being treated by Becharlal, not by R.

N is passing excessive phosphate. Shall we make a microscopic exam?

Do you want to microscope him out of existence? The loss of phosphates, I suppose, explains his weakness.

Very well, Sir, whip the cats and dogs, bulls and hogs, to your heart's content! Only the whipping has been rather severe in my case, but no help since I have surrendered my life and death at your feet. 0 cruel one, I shall accept all whipping as a gift of your compassion.

Righto.

I was grieved to see that after writing such a lot, you struck off all of it—it would have perhaps helped me. My difficulties run parallel to X's, I find; only there's a difference of degree.

Say rather that you have borrowed your difficulties from him or, say, run in his wake—a big steamer throwing a yacht into stormy waters.

But he has the great advantage of having a magnificent vital.

You have a sturdy but very sluggish one.

X has on the one hand your love, affection, letters, etc., on the other his sufferings, paroxysms of despair, depression, etc.

His paroxysms of despair were not caused originally by the Yoga but by disappointments of the vital,—this one's behaviour, that one's refusal to be under his influence, ingratitude etc. These things had nothing to do with Yoga. But the devil once admitted turned itself upon his sadhana also.

He has passed seven years here, Sir, and still he groans and groans...

And why please? Because he has never practised my Yoga, he has done his own. He has always put up some extremely traditional ideas about Yoga, jap, bhakti etc. etc. and challenged my own teachings with his reasoning mind which had no real conception of the things they meant. It is with great difficulty that I could sometimes get him to any direction by a secret pull and when I could do it he has always made some progress—which afterwards he refused to admit. And yet he made my incapacity as a Guru and the difficulty of my sadhana responsible for his failure—when he had never even given it a trial. That is a thing others beside him have done, also.

Don't tell me that because he takes butter and tea, enjoys good company that the Grace is afraid of coming down, for that would not solve the problem.

There is no problem at all. It is simply because he has been pulling his own way with a savage tenacity instead of allowing his Guru to Lead him. He now speaks of making his surrender. If he does it inwardly as well as outwardly, there may well be some considerable change.

Just one word about his poetry. I admit he had no vestige of poetry before he came here and that the Force has done it. But how shall I forget that he had to labour a lot at it?

It is ridiculous to talk of his labouring at it. He has an easy flow which ninety-one poets out of a hundred would envy him The only thing he laboured over was his prosody and metrical experiments, but prosody is not poetry. The rhythm, the capacity for chhanda came to him at once when he started writing here—although till then he had been absolutely and hopelessly inefficient in that respect.

I admit the Force, but you have to admit the big personal contribution, the collaboration. If you aver that the contribution also was done by the Force you will throw me into shallow or deep waters.

I don't admit it. It is a legend he has foisted on you. If you mean his writing for many hours a day that is no labour when one has the capacity. That is use of the power given, it is not effort and straining to get the power.

Anyway, I suppose I am again talking rot. These are funda mental wooden-headed difficulties.

Terrible rot.

Lastly, I have embraced your waiting on the Grace. I'll now dance and prance. A little khichuri, ālublājā,¹⁴⁹ a little; harmless platonic love. Agreed?

I have no objection to alubhaja, but to the devil with your platonic love!

Last night I dreamt that you were most affectionately patting me for a long time; but before that, somebody asked me to promise that I would never indulge in any lower vital movements. And I promised. What's this?

Quite natural. If your vital makes that promise, the pat is normal.'

But why this promise at all when I had no intention of that sort of vital movement?

You may not have intended, but something in your vital may have had dark intentions of its own.

I send you a poem by Nishikanta. He says: "What is the use of writing if Sri Aurobindo doesn't read?"

I read and correct—so he has no cause for complaint. The Bengali ones—can't read them unless I have a clear time—even only quarter of an hour. I have not had it the last few nights.

What about N's complaints? Shall we then turn a deaf ear to them?

What complaints? Micturition and phosphates? Tell him to economise his phosphates instead of squandering them and he will become strong and healthy as a tiger.

I understand that Dr. Banerjee examined I.K. and told you of her case. Do you remember?

Good Lord, no. It is ancient history.

[Purani had reported to Sri Aurobindo Mulshankar's accident and subsequent admission to the Hospital.] There is no visible fracture of the skull, but there is bleeding from the left ear which is a sign of a fracture of the base of the skull. There are no signs of cerebral mischief as yet. Mulshankar invokes the Mother's presence and help. The ward in which he is, is rather noisy; he hadn't a wink of sleep.

He should be removed to one of the paid rooms as soon as the Surgeon finds it can be safely done. It would be well if we could get frequent reports of his condition three or four times a day.

Is it advisable for people, e.g. P, S, etc. to go and see Mulshankar now and then?

No. Mother had already written to P and B refusing.

Benjamin has phimosis.

What kind of medical animal is this?

You forgot to have a look at Nishikanta's poetry yesterday? It has come back just as I sent it—want of time and absence of mind—I mean overmind?

How is that? But it is not surprising if I overlook something, considering the crush through which I have to go at a gallop.

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

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

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

You mean the morbid thought!

Thoughts of past pleasures and enjoyments are hopping it and out!

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

You compare your nights with mine! God above! Yours, Sir, is a labour of love—

Love under protest then or at least labour under protest!

And mine—labour of Yoga?

A labour of Bhoga?¹⁵⁰

Now apropos of Mulshankar's accident. He says that he fell half on the pavement and half on the road which seems to be right.

At 5 p.m., three men came to him and wrote down his version of the accident, below which he was asked to give his signature. He realised later that he had made a mistake and asked me to write to you. I don't know how these people dared to come and trouble him without the surgeon's permission. Moreover, he is not even in a position to give an exact account of the accident, at present.

But he can't remember how exactly he was knocked down... Bapu says Mulshankar fell in the middle of the road, got up and walked to the pavement, which Mulshankar denies—he didn't walk at all. But Bapu says again that when the car was on the point of knocking him down, Bapu closed his eyes from nervousness, and when he opened them, he found Mulshankar on the pavement. And I hear he is asked to be a witness which he refuses to be. Purani has taken down his version. There is going to be an incongruity between the two statements.

It turns out that it was the juge d'instruction who came to question Mulshankar, so there is nothing to say, though it is strange that they came in that way without informing or consulting the hospital authorities. It does not seem to me that Bapu's version of M's walking can stand. If his eyes were shut before the clash and he opened them only after Mulshankar had reached (in whatever way) the pavement, he cannot have seen Mulshankar walking, not at least with his physical eyes. Moreover it is most improbable. The car caught the cycle in the middle of the street, granted, but in such a way that the cycle went under the car and remained entangled there and Mulshankar must have been precipitated from the cycle, not merely tumbled from it. The car swerved in the collision in the direction of the same pavement and (according to Purani's sketch) was stopped farther on near this pavement, not in the middle of the road. The whole movement was therefore towards the pavement; Mulshankar must have been precipitated head foremost against it and so got his bad hurt on the head. If he had fallen down in the street where the collision took place, he would it seems to me have been run over or been otherwise hurt. In any case Purani should have pointed out to Bapu that his closed eyes and his seeing Mulshankar walk do not go together, he must have taken a mental impression for a fact, since Mulshankar denies the walking. It would be awkward, if the inquiries are pushed farther, that two different and incompatible statements about the incident should proceed from the Asram. If Bapu does not give evidence, it is another matter. Who has asked him to give it? The juge d' instruction or someone else?

February 1936

By the way, you spoke of my friend J.B. as receiving the Mother's Force.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "Mother's Force".]

"In contact with" the Divine Force which is the force of the Mother—that was what I wrote, I believe.

But which Mother? Ours or some universal Mother as people say? Perhaps an ignorant and foolish question, but Can't help it.

How many Mothers are there? Who is this some universal Mother? How many of these some universal Mothers are there?

I ask because I do not understand how without invoking the Mother, he gets her Force.

Have you not put him by the photograph and his letter in connection with us? Has he not turned in this direction? Has he not met Prithwisingh and been impressed by him—a third channel of contact. That is quite sufficient to help him to a contact if he has the faith and the Yogic stress in him.

And I do not understand either, how a married man—married not like Ramakrishna I mean,—gets all these experiences so easily.

Why not? A married man can get experiences, especially if he is not gross or over-sexy by nature. But if he follows this Yoga, he will have to drop copulation or he will get upsettings.

You have heard of Monoranjan Guha Thakurtha and his wife who, leading a married life, having children, were making a lot of progress in sadhana—especially his wife, it seems, had no sex-desire at all. She used to submit to these procreative acts with detachment. Possible?

That is possible but how many can do it?

I thought any sex-act, with or without desire, is a great hindrance to Yoga, and Mother has said, I hear, that every sex-act is a step towards death.

Well, did your Mrs. Guha live?

Well, but in spite of all these, she did progress in sadhana, as far as a layman can judge. Can you enlighten?

To a certain extent yes—but if she had been sexy, it would have been more difficult for her.

Regarding "how many Mothers are there?" K says that all Power, Force, Light in the universe belong to you and emanate from you. In that case, I asked him—"Does Raman Maharshi who is an aspirant of the Impersonal Brahman get a response from Mother and Sri Aurobindo?"

Who is the Mother and who is Sri Aurobindo? And who is this fellow you call the Impersonal Brahman?

K says, "Yes, because they are identified with the Supreme and the Supreme is static and dynamic at the same time." I answered—maybe—especially when Krishna is supposed to have contained the whole universe in his mouth or when he says that whoever takes the name of the Divine, or offers a flower, etc., comes to his feet. Then why is it said again that he is an Overmind god? Doesn't it mean that there is a greater godhead than Krishna?

What was said was that Krishna as a manifestation on earth opened the possibility of the Overmind consciousness here to men and stood for that, as Rama was the incarnation in mental Man. If Krishna was an overmind "God", that means he was not an Incarnation, not the Divine, but somebody else who claimed to be the Divine—i.e. he was a god who somehow thought he was God.

Somehow I can't accept that people following other paths of sadhana are calling Mother and Sri Aurobindo and getting their help and Force. In that case wouldn't all of them, except the worshippers of the Impersonal, be their disciples?

The Divine is neither personal nor impersonal, formless nor formed. He is the Divine. You talk of these distinctions as if they separated the Divine into so many separate Divines which have nothing to do with each other.

I continued, "My friend J.B. was having experiences which, Sri Aurobindo says, were coming from Mother, even before he was put in contact with them."

If so, why were you so much flabbergasted when he wrote about them? What was the date on which they began in this vividness—not as a mental impression but as a concrete contact with the Divine Presence or the Force?

I have no objection to your being the Supreme, only it stupefies one to think of you as such!

But there was no question about my being the Supreme; the question was whether there was one Divine Mother or 20,000 Divine Mothers. At the same time I don't see why it should stupefy one (you?), in spite of your absence of personal objections to think of me as such (the Supreme). Why, you are yourself the Supreme, aren't you? Soaham, tattwam asi Nirada, ঈশ্বর কোন বেটা, আমিই ঈশ্বর (Vivekananda)¹⁵¹ আমি in this formula means not V but anyone, that is to say Nirod. Also vide Krishna Prem. So what's this stupefaction about, I should like to know? When everybody is the Supreme and of everybody it can be said that he is God, why should I alone as such stupefy you?

Leave aside the question of Divine or undivine, no spiritual man who acts dynamically is limited to physical contact—the idea that physical contact through writing, speech, meeting is indispensable to the action of the spiritual force is self-contradictory, for then it would not be a spiritual force. The spirit is not limited by physical things or by the body. If you have the spiritual force, it can act on people thousands of miles away who do not know and never will know that you are acting on them or that they are being acted upon—they only feel that there is a force enabling them to do things and may very well suppose it is their own great energy and genius.

Mulshankar has a headache now and then, which he says is due to exertion in shouting for the servant etc.

So why not give him a small bell from here?

Coconuts are rather hard to get in the hospital. Shall I ask Dyuman to supply two a day?

If he can find—in some seasons it is hardly possible to find them—

I find that workmen—carpenters—go to see him on their way home. Shall I ask Chandulal to forbid them?

Yes, of course. That should be strictly forbidden.

You can send your Force to whomever you like—Lenin, Kemal, Gandhi, but how people calling Shiva or Krishna for their Ishta Devata¹⁵² get responses from you, I don't understand.

Again who is Shiva? and who is Krishna? and what is an Ishta Devata? There is only one Divine, not a thousand Divines.

It would mean that wherever a sincere heart is aspiring for the Divine, his aspiration reaches your ears.

Why my ears? Ears are not necessary for the purpose. You might just as well say, reaches me by the post.

And you send your responses, because you want to manifest the Divine rule on earth.

That has nothing to do with it. Besides it is not the Divine Rule on earth that I am after, but the supramental rule. This however has nothing to do with any supramental or Divine Rule on earth. It is only a general question of the response of the Divine and to the Divine.

Why should you stupefy me? Good Lord! Have you forgotten how Arjuna was stupefied, horrified, flabbergasted by seeing the Vishwarup¹⁵³ of Krishna whom he had thought of as his friend, guru, playmate? Could I, for a moment, play all these pranks on you if I saw your Vishwarup?

But that was because the Vishwarup was enjoying a rather catastrophic dinner, with all the friends and relations of Arjuna stuck between his danshtrani karahni.¹⁵⁴ But my viswarupa has no tusks, Sir, none at all. It is a pacifist vishwarup.

Already people say that I have no respect for you because I write anything and everything! "Sri Aurobindo is the Lord Supreme and with Him he plays all these pranks!"

And I return the compliment—I mean reply without restraint, decorum or the right grave rhythm. That is one reason why I indulge so freely in brackets.¹⁵⁵

No, Sir, I am satisfied with you as Sri Aurobindo pure and simple.

No objection, I only suggested that I don't know who this Sri Aurobindo pure and simple is. If you do, I congratulate you.

I am wrong about J.B., I discover. I forgot that he was put in contact with you by his photograph long ago. Who knew that you have been acting on him since then?

You must not imagine I have been thinking solely about J all the time. When a fellow contacts, a Force goes out to him and acts according to his capacity of response, that's all.

I have sent P's photograph also, but apparently there was no contact.

Plenty of people have sent their photographs—some mad, some sane, some good, some bad, some indifferent. You don't expect all to get the contact, do you? That would be too too even for a viswarupa.

Mulshankar is much better today, Sir, and the doctor has asked him to eat macaroni and potatoes. But the fellow can't bear the name of potato! Very queer, all of us are mad over it in the Asram!

Quite queer—for he has surely eaten plenty of potatoes in the Asram.

... The surgeon says he suspects a contusion in the abdomen—can't localise it... He seems to have said that it is or was a very serious case. But no serious symptoms are visible. What did you find in the occult, Sir? Had to work a lot?

Yes, still have to.

What should be done with the letters written to him from outside?

I suppose the letters can be sent to him or is it medically inadvisable?

A funny dream, Sir: On the Darshan day when I went up, I heard you say to the Mother, "Caress the boy a little". Mother did so and you in turn looked at me with wide open eyes and as you were taking them away, the Mother said, "No, no, look at him a little more". (Please do, Sir, do!) Mother was rather advanced in age and dark, while you were younger—these things make me doubt the dream.

These dreams are in the vital and their appearance is not fixed as it is in the physical body. It can change to express various things, some vital condition, some psychological symbolism, something in the mind of the man who sees, etc., etc., etc. So nothing funny, sir,—all quite normal and natural.

You were not at all like what we see. Then what we see is an illusion?

Obviously—even science knows that. You see only what your eyes show you.

Mulshankar had disturbed sleep because of the pain in the leg... Temperature 36.8˚ —all O.K. except for that blessed pain.

It is a contusion?

Mulshankar's doctor insists on his taking meat and fish and coaxed Rajangam to his view. I don't see any necessity for it provided we can give him sufficient nourishment.

We quite agree with your view. But Rajangam seems to have lectured Mulshankar into consent. Therefore Mother leaves it to the patient and the doctors to settle—

I wrote some time back that behind any difficult endeavour of an individual there is the seeking for Ananda which acts as a motive power. I got a rebuff from you: "Not that I know of!" The curt reply didn't satisfy me, as my little brain couldn't agree with your mighty one.

That is an easily made psychological proposition which can exist only by ignoring facts. If you say that it is the Ananda behind the veil which makes one act, as a moving power, not as a "motive",—that may be so, but this is a metaphysical, not a psychological generalisation. When a Communist faces torture in a Nazi concentration camp, he is not doing it for the sake of Ananda or happiness, but for something else which makes him indifferent to Ananda or happiness or else compels him to face the loss of these things and even their very reverse, however painful it may be.

I have always seriously thought that all men are after happiness which is a deformation of Ananda. Their acts of desires, sin, lust, striving after power,—in one word, all their activities, are guided by that one principle: seeking for Ananda, or happiness, if you like...

[Sri Aurobindo drew an arrow indicating "happiness".]

A mistake; many men are not after happiness and do not believe it is the true aim of life. It is the physical vital that seeks after happiness, the bigger vital is ready to sacrifice it in order to satisfy its passions, search for power, ambition, fame or any other motive. If you say it is because of the happiness power, fame etc. gives, that again is not universally true. Power may give anything else, but it does not usually give happiness; it is something in its very nature arduous and full of difficulty to get, to keep or to use—I speak of course of power in the ordinary sense. A man may know he can never have fame in this life, but yet work in the hope of posthumous fame or on the chance of it. He may know that the satisfaction of his passion will bring him everything rather than happiness—suffering, torture, destruction—yet he will follow his impulse. So also the mind as well as the larger vital is not bound by the pursuit of happiness. It can seek Truth rather or the victory of a cause. To reduce all to a single hedonistic strain seems to me very poor psychology. Neither Nature nor the vast Spirit in things are so limited and one-tracked as that.

I shall quote the following remarks of Raman Maharshi, recorded by Paul Brunton: "All human beings are ever wanting happiness, untainted with sorrow. They want to grasp a happiness which will not come to an end. The instinct is a true one..."¹⁵⁶

All? It is far too sweeping a generalisation. If he had said that it is one very strong strain in human nature—it could be accepted. But mark that it is in human physical consciousness only. The human vital tends rather to reject a happiness untainted by sorrow and to find it a monotonous, boring condition. Even if it accepts it, after a time it kicks over the traces and goes to some new painful or risky adventure.

... Man's real nature is happiness. Happiness is inborn in the true self His search for happiness is an unconscious search for his true self The true self is imperishable; therefore, when a man finds it, he finds a happiness which does not come to an end."¹⁵⁷

The true Self is quite a different proposition. But what it has is not happiness but something more.

... Even they [the wicked and the criminal] sin because they are trying to find the sells happiness in every sin they commit. This striving is instinctive in man, but they do not know that they are really seeking their true selves, and so they try these wicked ways first as a means to happiness..."¹⁵⁸

Who is this "they"? I fear it is a very summary and misleading criminal psychology. To say that a Paris crook or apache steals, swindles, murders for the happiness of stealing, swindling, murdering is a little startling. He does it for quite other reasons. He does it as his metier just as you do your doctor's work. Do you really do your doctor's work because of the happiness you find in it?

People will not seek a sorrowless, untainted, everlasting happiness, even if shown the way—because they will consider it beyond their power to attain, or so it seems to me.

It is also with many because they prefer the joy mixed with sorrow, মানুষের হাসিকান্না,¹⁵⁹ and and consider your everlasting happiness an everlasting bore.

About the criminals, I don't obviously include those types who are born with a criminal instinct: idiots and imbeciles.

Why not? If your generalisation is good for all, it must be good for them also.

Raman Maharshi says that if one meditates for an hour or two every day, then the current of mind induced will continue to flow even in work. Of course he speaks of meditation "in the right manner".

A very important qualification

"It is as though there are two ways of expressing the same idea; the same line which you take in meditation will be expressed in your activities"¹⁶⁰ And its result will be the gradual change of attitude towards people, events and objects. Your actions will tend to follow your meditation of their own accord.

If the meditation brings poise, peace, a concentrated condition or even a pressure or influence, that can go on in the work, provided one does not throw it away by a relaxed or dispersed state of consciousness. That was why the Mother wanted people not only to be concentrated at pranam or meditation but to remain silent and absorb or assimilate afterwards and also insisted on avoiding things that relax or disperse or dissipate too much—precisely for this reason that so the effects of what she put in them might continue and the change of attitude the Maharshi speaks of will take place. But I am afraid most of the sadhaks have never understood or practised anything of the kind—they could not appreciate or understand her directions.

Of course, he adds that setting apart time for meditation is for spiritual novices... You too wrote to me to meditate at least half an hour a day, if only to bring a greater concentration in the work.

It does bring the effects of meditation into work if one gives it a chance.

You know that meditations are not always successful.

You forget that with numbers of people they are successful.

Even if they were, how does this affect the whole day's work?

It doesn't, if one does not take care that it should do so—if one takes care, it can.

Is it something like charging a battery which goes on inducing an automatic current?

It is not exactly automatic. It can be easily spoilt or left to sink into the subconscient or otherwise wasted. But with simple and steady practice and persistence it has the effect the Maharshi speaks of—he assumes, I suppose, such a practice. I am afraid your meditation is hardly simple or steady—too much kasrat[76] and fighting with yourself.

Raman Maharshi seems a real Maharshi

He is more of a Yogi than a Rishi, it seems to me. The happiness theory does not impress me,—it is as old as the mountains but not so solid. But he knows a lot about Yoga.

You have hit me well by asking me whether I do my doctoring for the sake of happiness. But it was forced on me, Sir!

Most people do things because they have to, not out of the happiness they find in the things. It is only its hobbies and penchants that the nature finds some happiness in, not usually in work—unless of course the work itself is one's hobby or penchant and can be indulged in or dropped as one likes.

We are puzzled over this word "Rishi". Dilipda and myself agree that a Rishi is something more than a Yogi.

Why always this less and greater?

Kanai places a Yogi higher than a Rishi. He says, "But then Sri Aurobindo has called Bankim a Rishi"...

A Rishi is one who sees or discovers an inner truth and puts it into self-effective language—the mantra. Either new truth or old truth made new by expression and realisation.

Raman Maharshi has seen the Truth, can he be called a Rishi?

He has experienced certain eternal truths by process of Yoga—I don't think it is by Rishilike intuition or illumination, nor has he the mantra.

From your definition of a Rishi am I to understand that a Rishi may not necessarily be a Yogi because a truth may not always be the Ultimate Truth?

A Rishi may be a Yogi, but also he may not ; a Yogi too may be a Rishi, but also he may not. Just as a philosopher may or may not be a poet and a poet may or may not be a philosopher.

A Rishi will have 2 things: 1) Seeing or discovering a truth—new or old, 2) putting it in mantra. These two things are quite possible in a man not doing Yoga at all, because intuition and sudden illumination can come to poets, literary people, artists, etc... can't they?

Yes, but poetic intuition and illumination is not the same thing as Rishi intuition and illumination.

You have called Bankim a Rishi. Do you think his "Bande Mataram" is a real mantra?

Well, the Bande Mataram acted as a mantra and so I suppose I gave him the credit of Rishihood.

Did he actually see the country as the Mother?...

Can't say whether he saw. Must ask him.

When you wrote that you look upon India not as an inert, dead mass of matter, but as the very Mother, the living Mother in bones and flesh, I believe you saw that Truth—or was it just the expression of a poetic or patriotic sentiment?

My dear sir, I am not a materialist. If I had seen India as only a geographical area with a number of more or less interesting or uninteresting people in it, I would hardly have gone out of my way to do all that for the said area.

Merely a poetic or patriotic sentiment—just as in yourself only your flesh, skin, bones and other things of which the senses give their evidence are real, but what you call your mind and soul do not self-exist being merely psychological impressions created by the food you eat and the activity of the glands. Poetry and patriotism have of course the same origin and the things they speak of are quite unreal. Amen.

Mulshankar had no sleep last night due to pain in the leg. But it stopped in the morning. Temperature normal. Otherwise too all right. Is it necessary to visit him once in the morning at 7?

Why not?

There is a chronic difficulty with Benjamin's phimosis.

My dear sir, if you clap a word like that on an illness, do you think it is easy for the patient to recover?

A complains of nausea. Worms? Liver? Liver pain better.

She says you spoke wrathfully to Becharlal and Becharlal spoke wrathfully to her and accused her of high crimes and misdemeanours (like irregularity in eating) of which she was not guilty. So she is very wounded and won't go to Doctors any more!! Fact? or liver?

Spoke wrathfully? I thought I am a very calm and peaceful man. But I'll tell you what happened. Dr. Becharlal and I were breaking our heads over the budget when A entered. I was a bit troubled about the budget and I asked Dr. B what A's complaint was and he asked her in Gujerati: "Have you done some indiscretion in the diet?" That's all. Now you can judge for yourself.

Well, I don't know why, but you have the reputation of being a fierce and firebrand doctor who consider it a crime for patients to have an illness. You may be right, but—Tradition demands that a doctor should be soft like butter, soothing like treacle, sweet like sugar and jolly like jam. So!

I hear K is crying with pain and for my neglect of her condition. She is afraid of coming to the dispensary lest I should be displeased!

That's the thing. General complaint, sir.

What thinkest thou of this anapaest poem, Sir,
Written by my humble self? Pray, does it stir
Any soft feelings in thy deep within
Or touches not even thy Supramental skin?

So soft, so soft, I almost coughed, then went aloft
To supramental regions, where rainbow-breasted pigeons
Coo in their sacred legions.

N.B. This inspired doggerel is perfectly private. It is an effort in abstract or surrealist poetry, but as I had no models to imitate, I may have blundered.

I had to show that doggerel to Amal as I couldn't decipher. Amal suggests that your "perfectly private" is a joke after all.

No, sir. Quite serious. Can't afford to play jokes like that in public.

Is it "Coo in their sacred legions"?

Yes, the cooing is the supramental zenith of the softness and the surrealistic transformation of the cough.

You have made me very happy by your comment on my poem I had sent you. But I doubt if the same sustained level will be maintained. Amal says that he too is not able to do it.

Very few poets can. The best poetry doesn't come by streams, except in periods of extraordinary inspiration. It usually comes by intermittent drops, though sometimes three or four drops at a time. Of course there are exceptions—Shakespeare etc.—but that kind of spear doesn't shake everywhere.

Bengali people say that they like my English verses better than my Bengali ones, for they find there something new.

Isn't that because "people" are less accustomed to English poetry than to Bengali? You have written two good poems in English, and certainly it is early to have done that. But the circumstances are exceptional.

This brings me to Nishikanta's poem. I wonder how, with such poor knowledge of English, he can write such beautiful poems with striking images and expressions.

A very fine poem.

Images and expressions come to him in English because they are there pressing behind; but his imperfect knowledge prevents their getting the right form and arrangement.

Is it something like a wide opening into these planes?

Yes, of course. It is the same thing. One opens to or into a plane of creative expression. Everything is that; it is only the transcription that has to be réussi.

Comparing Nishikanta with Dilip, I find that though Dilip writes very well, his expressions do not fuse with the thoughts and feelings. They are something like bright gems standing out strikingly from the rest of the flowers in a garland.

Do you mean the expression as a whole is not so beautiful as the thought and feeling? I don't quite catch the metaphor of the gems and the flowers. Please clarify. Is it particular expressions you refer to or the expression as a whole?

It strikes me as if he has not yet found that alchemy by which a miraculous harmony can be created out of whatever one touches, while Nishikanta has and knows.

Well I suppose Housman's theory comes in there. D's poetry is more mental. N's comes straight from the vital vision and knocks you in the pit of the stomach.

He does not repeat his images so much as D—and they are exceedingly striking and forceful. They are of one type, but that I suppose is the case with most poets.

From all this I conclude that a born poet and genius combined, is something quite different from one made by yoga. And there will be always a difference between the two.

Can't say I understand. N himself had done nothing worth doing in poetry when he came here—all the signs were that he would be at the best only a Tagorean poetling like so many others. He got a touch here which brought out in him some powerful force of vital vision and word that certainly had not shown any signs of existing before. It may have been there latent, but so was the poet in D. What then exactly is meant by a combination of born poet and genius? A born poet is usually a genius, poetry with any power or beauty in it implies genius.

You wrote to Harin that richness of image comes from an openness to occult planes, which Hann and Nishikanta have. Dilip does not have it yet, it seems to me.

Richness of image is not the whole of poetry. There are many "born poets" who avoid too much richness of image. There are certain fields of consciousness which express themselves naturally through image most—there are others that do it more through idea and feeling.

What do you think of my criticism—right or wrong?

It will have to be more clear, precise and specific before I can assess its value.

What about Nishikanta's big poem? No remark?

Read it. Very good—no remark needed.

And what about his note-book, then? Have you made it a point of reading one poem every day as a mantra?!

Very little chance of his getting it back before the February non-correspondence vacation.

Another poem by Nishikanta: "The Rat and the Cat".

Very strong and original.

I don't write to my mother at all because it doesn't do any good except opening a channel for more wallowings in depression and for moans.

Evidently. If people accepted the inevitable, it would be easier to do something for them.

If the tradition demands, we shall try to be softer than butter, but we may be too tempting and evoke a response from the patient's palate for making delicious toast. Who will save us then?

Of course, if you are too too sweet. You must draw the line somewhere.

A doctor says that one has to be firm, stern and hard with women. They may not like it superficially, but they enjoy it and stick to the doctor who gives them hard knocks. Caveman spirit?

He must have been a he-man. She-women enjoy it from he-men.

But all women are not she-women and all men are not he-men. Moreover there is an art as well as a nature in that kind of thing which you lack.

Dr. R seems no less a firebrand than myself, but women seem to like him.

He's a he-man. Even so, the women here have ended by saying No more of R!

You said "circumstances are exceptional" as regards my early success in English versification. It must be so, otherwise how could I write these poems so fast and beautifully? But please

Let me know
How 'tis so
A dullard like me
Bursting like a sea
With the heart of the Muse
Makes his rhythm fuse?

You are opening, opening, opening
Into a wider, wider scopening
That fills me with a sudden hopening
That I may carry you in spite of gropening
Your soul into the supramental ropening.

N.B. Surrealist poetry.

K says that last two days she has not taken much and is not hungry either.

[Sri Aurobindo drew an arrow indicating the word "much".]

?!!

Ambu's weakness seems to be nervous. I wanted to prescribe Drakshasava (general tonic + appetiser), but our stock is exhausted. Amal said he has a bottle of it, sent to him by his family, which he could share with Ambu. What do you say?

Yes

Though I don't see why Amal requires any medicine at all.

It is the family which forces medicines on him, I hear.

How is it, Sir, that my letter and the poem came away as they went? Because I was late or some Supramental forgetfulness?

Never had a glimpse of either of them. Must have been hiding scared in your bag.

After the day's hard work, you can understand my disappointment when with all froth and bubble of joy I opened the letter to find that not a line of your hand was there! I had to sigh and say:

(Tagore) "For this have I kept awake all night and done sadhana," or (Nishikanta) "I have endured mosquito-bites all over my body for this and it has come back without receiving your gracious look," or (Nirod) "Now I am bursting into tears of despair. I'll send it again at your door. You will kill me, 0 Guru, if you forget it this time!"¹⁶¹

(শ্রী অরবিন্দ)¹⁶² O must I groan and moan and scarify my poor inspired bones
To get my poem back as if it were a bill from Smith or Jones?

N.B. Abstract poetry, very abstract.

By the way, today is the date of my arrival, if you remember. I had forgotten it myself until Sanjiban reminded me. When you read this the day will be a past date, but the blessings won't!

Blessings and plenty of them

For Is eczema I suppose a stimulating ointment should be given.

Umph! If it is necessary.

[Image 6]

A wide/ inexpres/sible Peace/ seizes/ my soul,
Pervad/ing the spac/es a/profound/ Presence/ I feel
Inscru/table, vas/ter than/the sea,/ sky-still.¹⁶³

That, except in the second line, is the orthodox method of scansion, but even so the two lines are not iambic pentameters. The first is anapaestic-trochaic with an iamb at the beginning and another at the end. In the second line the orthodox scansion would make it a line of six feet.

You scanned: Illumined / by thousand / resplendent / suns.
I did: Illum/ined by / thousand/ resplen/dent suns.

That is a mathematical scansion, not rhythmic. If you scan like that, there is no prose that cannot become verse. I have scanned in that way your prose. "Mother, one more poem" etc.

The stress in "thousand" is on the first syllable, not the second. The natural stresses are "Illú/mined by thoú/sand resplen/dent suns." If you stress the unstressed "by" and the unstressed "sand" and destress the strongly stressed "thou" in "thousand", then no law of accent remains, you land yourself in pure license and there is no reason why you should not scan "Īllu/mīned by/ thoūsănd/ rēsplĕn/dēnt suns"/ and make a trochaic line of it. You cannot ignore stresses in the English language.

I really cannot see how you find iambic rhythm in "Pervading the spaces a profound Presence I feel". If there is any rhythm, it is the rhythm of free verse not of any fixed metre.

You have to train your ear to recognise (1) the difference between the various basic rhythms, iambic, trochaic, anapaestic and the various lengths pentameter etc. (2) the extent to which other feet can be admitted without upsetting the basic rhythm. These two things are indispensable.

Nishikanta thinks that it is easier for you to send Force for English verse than for Bengali. He has felt it, he says. Even D the sceptic, thinks that for English you have an easy work comparatively—words, expressions, even the technique you can direct through your Force.

Why the deuce should I do that? If I had to compose the whole poem myself, why go on and pump it into some other person's mind? Haven't I a fountain-pen and couldn't I write it and isn't there Nolini to type it?

Whereas in Bengali it is more of a general sort. True? Since Bengali code you don't know, or shy to admit, you can't do that?

Weird

"Benighted traveller sore, why do you moan
Because a transient darkness entwines your way?"

What is this "sore"? It sounds like a bear with a sore head. Benighted also sounds like an abuse.

"When the Divine like a loving friend has poured
His luscious grace on thee..."

"luscious" is too palatal or sensual to be an adjective of "grace".

Mulshankar is quite well, no pain. He wants to come out, but it would be better not to do so till the 20th.

Not till the 20th. Till he is able to walk and look after himself. What is the use of his coming on the 20th if he is not able to walk to the Pranam? However, you need not say that to him till the time comes.

Mulshankar is all right. He is trying to walk a little. Found a swelling in his right foot. Shall I ask Prasanna to tidy his bed?

But what is all this? You are all determined to have him here on the 20th whether he is fit or not? What is the idea behind all this haste? Has not the Mother said he should come only if he can walk and do the most necessary things for himself?

Here is my attempt at the use of anapaests in the iambic metre :

"The dismal clouds which haunted my days and night
Dissolve into a transparently wide
Calmness, by the ascent on the black height,
Of thy moon increasing in a swelling tide..."

It is stressed transpárent, not tránsparent. What a howler! It makes me "drop into poetry"—thus

Sir, you seem ápparéntly ignorant
That párent is the trick and not parént.
And yet the stress transpires transpárently
And is appárent to both ear and eye.
So you compáre and do not cómpare things;
Your soul prepáres, not prépares heavenly wings.

[A separate note:]

Please have a look at the poem and give some comments.

Noted with comments (poetic and prosaic) on the poem itself.

About that "tránsparent", well, I thought, Sir, it is transparent, but consulted the Ox. pocket dictionary and found transparent, though I did not understand how two accents can come one after the other.

Two accents can come together if the first syllable takes long to pronounce; but the accent then is minor, the other major—The main stress is on the 2nd syllable.

I am not an Englishman like you, Sir, to contradict or question the authority. I am only a Bengali and almost a hill-tribal at that!

Oxford Dictionary does not put the accents on the 1st and 3rd syllables as you do—so it does not contradict me.

You may say that they have divided the syllables like that, but other words also they accent in that way, e.g. transpiré. There is the rub.

I don't understand. Of course transpire is stressed on the second syllable, that was my whole point that transpire, transparent, compare, prepare, apparent are stressed on the second syllable, not on the first. Transparent also follows the same rule—the stress falls on the second syllable, it cannot fall on the first and third.

If O.D. puts a stress also on the first, that must be a minor stress due to the length of the syllable—but it cannot cancel the massive accent on the second or bestow an accent on the third where it does not exist.

Can you tell me why my poems tend to be so simple and bare? No images at all and whatever there is, is only common and almost hackneyed.

Poetry depends on power of thought, feeling, language—not on abundance of images. Some poets are rich in images, all need not be.

It seems I am not very rich in the faculty of imagination. And without that hardly any creation worth the name is possible.

What is this superstition? At that rate Sophocles, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth are not good poets, because their poetry is not full of images? Is Kalidasa a greater poet than Vyas or Valmiki because he is fuller of images?

After what you have seen of my English poetry, is there any chance for me?

Certainly

I have looked at the Ox. Dictionary here and I find it clearly puts the accent on the 2nd syllable, with none on the first, thus [Image 7], the ˚ marking the accent. In their system they put the sign of the stress after the stressed vowel e.g. rely ˚—but where there is an r after the r, as in [Image 8]. In their signs they make no difference between minor and major stresses. No English Dictionary, however eccentric, would justify your tránsparéntly wide—But perhaps you are writing for the 21st century?

Mulshankar proposes to come at 10 a.m. through Nolini's gate and finish the pranam on his way home. It may be too much as he is still limping.

He should reserve his energy for the darshan—this would be too much for the first day's outing.

What about the Darshan? Any good news for us?

Very queer darshan—too early to say anything.

The Americans, it seems, were much impressed. And the one who took the longest time, had a vision, I hear, of the whole of America bowing at your feet! What a wonderful thing it will be, by Jove!

That was what he was calling for and he believed he got the answer.

So if that vision were to come true, it would be marvellous. Somehow I feel that America would be the first to accept your message and through it your work will be spread all over the West. True?

Possibly. Mother has always expected something special from America.

You will find something in my famous bag, which may startle you! Well, the pen is a present from Arindam Bose. The size and everything will suit you best though the nib may not. And I send it to you that your writing may flow in rivers from the pen, in my book, not in a few stingy lines!

Good Lord! what a Falstaff of a fountain-pen.

But it is not the pen that is responsible for the stinginess; the criminal is Time and with a fat pen he can be as niggardly as with a lean one.

Amal says that to follow strictly the sonnet-principle, the rhyme-scheme in the second quatrain should be the same as in the first, i.e. ab ob.

Yes, certainly ; if you want to follow one of the strict sonnet forms.

The two regular sonnet rhyme-sequences are (1) the Shakespearean ab ab cd cd ef ef gg—that is three quatrains with alternate rhymes with a closing couplet and (2) the Miltonic with an octet abba abba (as in your second and third quatrains) and a sestet of three rhymes arranged according to choice. The Shn. is closer to the natural lyric rhythm, the Miltonic to the ode movement—i.e. something large and grave. The Miltonic is very difficult for it needs either a strong armoured structure of the thought or a carefully developed unity of the building which all poets can't manage. However there have been attempts at an irregular sonnet rhyme-sequence. Keats tried his hand at one a century ago and I vaguely believe (but that may be only an illusion of Maya) that modern poets have played loose fantastic tricks of their own invention; but I don't have much first-hand knowledge of modern (contemporary) poetry. Anyhow I have myself written a series of sonnets with the most heterodox rhyme arrangements, so I couldn't very well go for you when you did the same. One who has committed many murders can't very well rate another for having done a few. All the same, this sequence is rather—a Miltonic octet with a Shakespearean close would be more possible. I think I have done something of the kind with not too bad an effect, but I have no time to consult my poetry file and am not sure. In the sonnet too it might be well for you to do the regular thing first, soberly and well, and afterwards when you are sure of your steps, frisk and dance.

I thought Darshan is over and whatever has to be seen, done, given, has been done! We are expecting a great Victory, and "very queer darshan" you say, Sir?

You arrange things in your own way! Things don't work like that.

You spoke of some unpublished sonnets lying idle in your file? Can you not send a few, at least 2 or 3?

Not for circulation or publication just now.

Since I am writing sonnets, they would certainly help me.

Don't think so—they are too irregular.

As there is no correspondence now, please send one or two poems from your old or new ones, if possible. Will you, Sir? Asking for the file would be too much, I suppose!

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "no correspondence".]

What a rash statement

"Exceptional circumstances"! Whatever they might have been, have disappeared.

Make them reappear.

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

Many Americans at least, which was not expected! It is always the unexpected that happens, you see.

You are fine, you are wonderful, Sir! How the dickens am I to make the exceptional circumstances reappear when I don't knoW what they are? I asked you what the "exceptional circumstances" were, and the only reply I extracted from you was "You are widening, scopening"—a most vague, misty reply too.

Well, but that's just it. Widen, widen, scopen, scopen and the poetry may come in a torrent roaring and cascading through and enlarged fissure in yours and the world's subtle cranium.

Now I don't find poetry anywhere on the horizon.

How do you know? It may be hiding behind a cloud.

Maybe this disappearance of poetry is the unexpected that has happened as a result of Darshan! But the result of Darshan in some other quarters leaves me staggered and staggered! I can't imagine such an incident taking place in the Asram—I mean, of course, N's gripping M's throat. It makes me rather aghast. Coupled with that the incident of R rushing to shoe-beat P. Good Lord! but I suppose they are all in the game!

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

Difficulties of individual nature rushing up?

Individual and general. The subconscient, sir, the subconscient. Brilliant irruptions of the subterranean Brahman into the dullness of ordinary life. অবচেতনায় ব্রহ্মনে নমো নমঃ¹⁶⁴

R writes that there is a spare pestle and mortar in the Dispensary lying in the cupboard and not being used—he needs one for his work. If this is not in use, it can be given to him.

Yes, we have a big mortar, but not exactly lying uselessly; we need it at times. But if he requires it more often we can spare it and get it from him whenever needed. Dr. Satyendra also uses it, though rarely. So as you please or as R pleases!

We will inform R of the situation of the mortar and ascertain his notions.

If by "widening" you mean that I have made a mighty or even a fractional conscious personal effort, well, that's just not it.

No, I did not mean that.

And with all my widening, I can't get even a glimpse of the Presence?

But you don't widen! If you did (I suppose you are too lazy to do so) you would get a glimpse and more.

The laws of its coming and going are as unknown as Einstein's law of Relativity. It comes of its own sweet will, at its own sweet hour. I feel Peace, Bliss and I write—"A Peace has taken my soul", and you say I have widened.

Of course. If you hadn't widened, how could the blessed thing get in? Of course, whether you widened yourself or it widened you and forced its way, is another matter.

It goes as it comes.

It always does, you know. But it comes back too, if you allow it.

The tragedy is that I know nothing of its reason of arrival and departure...

No reason. Only unreason or superreason. Keep your end up and it will arrive again, and some day perhaps after jack-in-the-boxing like that sufficiently, one day it will sit down and say "Here I am for good. Send for the priest and let us be married." With these things that is the law and the rule and the reason and rhyme of it and everything.

At times I think why the devil do I bother my head with poetry? Poetry, poetry, poetry! Have I come here for blessed poetry?

You haven't. But the poetry has come for you. So why shout?

I know that success in English poetry is as far away as the stars in heaven in spite of your remark to the contrary, though I must confess to having some contentment in writing.

Rubbish! the stars in heaven don't stroll in and pay a visit—not do they stroll out again.

Now let me tell you how an Englishman named Thompson visiting our Asram, looks at our versification in his tongue which has thrown cold water on it.

I am not interested in the looks of your Englishman.

Thompson's tongue has thrown cold water on it—or what? This sentence is almost as unintelligible as Thompson's own English.

He had a heated discussion with Dilip and said he could not understand at all why we Easterners should write poetry in English, deserting our own tongue.

Is his understanding of such immense importance? I might just as reasonably ask him why Westerners like him should go to practise an Eastern thing like spirituality or Yoga leaving their own parliaments, factories and what not. But not being Thompson in intelligence, I don't ask such absurd questions.

He seems to know definitely that we shan't be able to handle English as an Englishman would—its tradition, its expressions, etc.

A Thompson, like his father Tom, also his uncles Dick and Harry must of course be omniscient.

He asks: "Suppose an Englishman were to write a poem in Bengali, what would you say?"

It would depend on the Englishman and how he did it.

Dilip argued: "The Gitanjali of Tagore was appreciated and highly praised by many English poets. Conrad's prose ranks as high as any great English writer's. Sarojini Naidu and some others were praised by Gosse, Binyon and De la Mare."

Add Santayana whose prose is better than most Englishmen's

Thompson rejoined: "Well, the merits of the latter people you mention were extra-literary. Show the works of the Indians to people like Eliot and see." God knows what he means.

I don't think God knows.

What the blazes does all this nonsense mean? The latter people like Binyon and De la Mare have no literary merit or literary perception and Eliot has? Eliot is a theorist, a man who builds his poetry according to rule. God save us from such fellows and their opinions.¹⁶⁵

As for Tagore, his work is said to have been appreciated because it was "derivative", (though what exactly he means by "derivative", I don't know. I suppose he means a translation).

What difference does that make? The English Bible is a translation but it ranks among the finest pieces of literature in the world.

As for Conrad, according to Thompson, he is a Westerner, and surely there is a greater difference in tradition, expression, feeling between an Easterner and an Englishman than between an Englishman and another European.

In other words, any Western tradition, expression, feeling—even Polish or Russian—can be legitimately expressed in English, however unEnglish it may be, but an Eastern spirit, tradition or temper cannot? He differs from Gosse who told Sarojini Naidu that she must write Indian poems in English—poems with an Indian tradition, feeling, way of expression, not reproduce the English mind and turn, if she wanted to do something great and original as a poet in the English tongue.

He objects to our making even an experiment in English versification.

How terrible! Then of course everybody must stop at once. I too must not presume to write in English—for I have an Indian mind and spirit and am that dreadful Indian thing, a Yogi!

I can't say that he is absolutely wrong except in disfavouring even an experiment.

Nobody ever is absolutely wrong. There is an infinitesimal atom of truth even in the most imbecile or lunatic proposition ever made.

I think that however much we may try, we shan't be able to enter into the subtleties of a foreign tongue; so we run the risk of writing un-English English.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "we".]

Who is this we?

Many Indians write better English than many educated Englishmen.

I believe he would waive his objection in your case.

How graciously kind of him! After all perhaps I can continue to write in English. Only poor Amal will have to stop. He can't write a line after the cold water of Thompson's tongue.

I don't know that any Englishman could write pucca Bengali. It would sound and "sense" un-Bengali Bengali.

It would if he had not thoroughly mastered the Bengali tongue. It is true that few Englishmen have the Indian's linguistic turn, plasticity and ability.

Of course if you say that our aim is not success or Shelleyan heights, but only to give voice to our spiritual experiences in a tongue so widely spoken, nothing remains to be said.

Shelleyan heights are regarded, I believe, by Eliot as very low things or at least a very bad eminence.

But even for expressing spirituality or whatever may be the object, we must try to make the vehicle as perfect as possible.

Who said not except the unparalleled T?

Now, is there any chance for it? T (an Englishman, mind you) says "None." And you?

How can my opinion have any value against that of an Englishman—especially when that Englishman calls himself T?

As I said at the beginning I have no interest in T's opinions and set no value by them. Even the awful fact of his being an Englishman does not terrify me. Strange, isn't it? I have seen some lucubrations of his meant to be spiritual or Yogic and they are the most horrible pretentious inflated circumlocutionary bombastic wouldbe-abysmally-profound language that I have seen. For a man who talks of English style, tradition, expression, feeling, idiom, it was the worst production and most unEnglish possible. Few Indians could have beaten it. And the meaning nil. Also he is the gentleman who finds that there is "very little spirituality" in India. So hats off to T (even though we have no hats), and for the rest silence.

As for the question itself, I put forward four reasons why the experiment could be made: (1) The expression of spirituality in the English tongue is needed and no one can give the real stuff., like Easterners and especially Indians. (2) We are entering an age when the stiff barriers of insular and national mentality are breaking down (Hitler notwithstanding), the nations are being drawn into a common universality with whatever differences, and in the new age there is no reason why the English should not admit the expression of other minds than the English in their tongue. (3) For ordinary minds it may be difficult to get over the barrier of a foreign tongue, but extraordinary minds (Conrad etc.) can do it. (4) In this case the experiment is to see whether what extraordinary minds can do, cannot be done by Yoga. Sufticit—or as Ramchandra eloquently puts it "'Nuff said!"

I don't know what so do about N's polyuria. There is no apparent reason to account for it. We can make a laboratory examination of his urine, without his knowledge.

How to do that? My objection to his knowing the results, if bad, is that his physical consciousness accepts all suggestions of illness, instead of reacting sinks down under the illness and prolongs it interminably. If the results are good, it is another matter. There is also something in his underconsciousness that likes to be ill so that it may be complaining and supine.

Today I attended a very tedious operation tending to go bad. I wonder if the Mother and you heard my call for help. I heard from R that whenever he called you, you promised him your force and help.

R gets the Force, first, because he has the dynamic faith in it, and, secondly, because he knows (instinctively, I suppose) how to draw it when he needs it. But even without that knack a sufficiently strong call will bring it. It is not even necessary that I should know the case or anything about it. The Force can use your knowledge and apply itself at the necessary point. It is not even necessary that my physical mind should know you have called. The call, if it is of the right kind, is self-effective.

March 1936

I was called by R to the dying case opposite our house. The case seems hopeless... It seems R is willing to take it up if he is guarded by André or Valle. I wonder if it would be wise, as the chances are next to nil...

R saw Mother and told her he thought the case hopeless. She told him to drop it. In fact she had not wanted him to take up the case, but it seems they impressed one "officier de santé" who came to fetch him.

(Since have heard the classic lamentations with a note from R of the departure of the patient to his destination).

Please have a look at the typescript on Thompson. It will be kept to a limited company. I am sure it will do a lot of good to many of us who think like Thompson as regards English poetry, of which I was one, as you know.

Can't sanction communication to others. First of all, I have slated Thompson in a way which cannot be made public—for he has done nothing to deserve a public castigation. I let myself go because I was writing for you alone. Moreover a comparative statement of Thompson's opinions and mine means, if published, a discussion between myself and him, which is not among the possibles. I have kept your typescript to see whether I can note down anything on the points raised which you can show to a few—but even then to a few only.

U has a painless swelling in the nape of the neck. It has increased in size, and will go on increasing... It is called a lipoma, i.e. fatty tumour; harmless and painless but ugly and "worthless".

He wants it to be cut off mercilessly: a very simple operation under local anasthesia; doesn't require lying in bed, except for one or two days.

For the one or two days he would have to remain at the hospital?

If you like I can show it to Philaire, or he can go to our Miracle doctor, and wait for a miracle...

I don't think it will be any use sending him to R—he does not succeed so well with the Asram people because they are too critical and have too much feeling against him. He works not by medicine alone, but by suggestion also with the Force behind him, and a spirit of critical antagonism and that working do not go well together. For the sadhaks better trust to medicine and the knife.

I think U can come away from the hospital. If you permit, I can take him to Philaire tomorrow.

Yes.

Please don't think that because I am silent on your "widening" theory, I have accepted it. All I may say is that you have been making a fool of me. I admit that I deserve no better, but still ... well, still! I am in a damn rotten state... As soon as I enter the Dispensary, it seems some black forces ride on my shoulders. I want to escape and spend a few afternoon hours away in the loneliness of Nature's company till this melancholia lasts. Can a cycle be had for the purpose?...

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

From the tone of my letter you may imagine that I am making you responsible for my pathological condition. Not at all; it is my blessed nature or Man of Sorrows as you title it, though I don't understand why you say that I have borrowed them from Dilipda.

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

Diffidence, self-distrust has always been my element from the very start...

Diffidence and self-distrust are quite another matter.

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

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

You say that Thompson doesn't deserve a public castigation. I wish he did, because he is again bombarding Dara, with his luminous theory on Indian English—apart from other things!

Not only so, but I refuse to figure as discussing with him on an equal platform. You will ask me next to enter into a debate with Chellu¹⁶⁶ on Vedanta. There are limits.

A.K.'s poetry has caused a flutter. Another miracle, they say. How has this feat been possible? A fellow who has never written any bit of poetry produces, just after one or two pieces, a remarkable poem and a long one at that, which will have an abiding place in Bengali literature! How could he have produced it? It has really puzzled me a lot.

What a "hower" you are!

You are puzzled because you are always demanding a rational process familiar to the ordinary physical mind from a suprarational thing like Yoga. Yoga has its processes, but they can only be understood and detected by those who have Yogic experience. But you refuse to accept that experience as valid; you want everything to be explained according to your own field of reason which is that of the ignorant physical mind. If you persist in that you will remain puzzled to the end of the chapter.

Whereas I working for 3 years on Bengali poetry—what have I done? Nothing to speak of, compared with this piece.

That is because you are a "hower" and an "efforter"—So the Divine or the Oversell' or whatever people may like to call it has to pretend with you that it is done in you by your stupendous effort and the how has to be shown—the how being that you work 40 hours and produce 4 lines.

This piece of poetry is as mature a work as any great poet's. His success in painting is understandable, as he had to work and work a lot, before anything came out. Even then, I gather, painting here is only in its infancy.

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

You ask me why I don't keep my inner condition right. As If I knew how to do it! It keeps itself right or goes wrong without the least caring for my effort.

What about the wonderful efforts (unprecedented in human history) by which D and you have made yourselves poets? Why can't you put some of that superhuman effort into this? If you do and succeed, I will rigorously leave all the credit to you and not ask any for a superior Power.

If it is I—the I that I know—that brings in the right condition, I would surely try to keep it... You admitted when you said "... of course whether you widened yourself or it [Force] widened you and forced its way is another matter," that the Force has widened me and I quite believe it because I did nothing extraordinarily unusual to widen myself The Force had seized me then and has left me now that's all.

But what is this talk about force? Nothing is done in this world except by one's own effort. Ask your own reason and D.

You say that because I am an "efforter", I write 4 lines in 40 hours! Is that so? Then I have yet to know how without an effort things pour in at all times.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "at all times".]

What things? Poetry flows into you at all times?

It may happen, I admit, in just a few cases, as it did in mine, but not always. And if one were to wait for the automatic opening of the flood-gates, I think my production would have been by now only 4 or 5 poems! You have yourself said that one has to beat and beat, and what is this beating, pray, if not an effort to bring down the reluctant Unseen into the,field of the seen?

I don't understand. You say it is only by effort that one can write poetry—that is, what is written is something constructed by mental effort. It follows that anybody who makes the necessary effort can become a great poet. Up till now it was thought that there was some mysterious thing called inspiration. There are plenty of people who have made Herculean and untiring efforts night and day but have not succeeded in writing anything that others would call poetry—they may have just produced good or bad verse. That however in the light of your luminous rationality is evidently an agelong error. As D might say "I labour and write poems day and night and people give the credit to some damned thing (not my own great self) they call Inspiration." Evidently. But what is this about a few cases? Are you going to tell me that Inspiration after all exists? Can't be.

From your answers it seems there is a very simple way of doing things and it is only our egoistic foolishness that refuses to take it and goes in for laborious effort. Knowing "how to bow" for some such thing I suppose! or is it some passivity?

Well, that is the idea in Yoga—that by a right passivity one opens oneself to something greater than one's limited self, and effort is only useful for getting that condition. There is also a notion that even in the ordinary life the individual is only an instrument in the hands of a Universal Energy though his ego takes the credit of all he does. But these are exploded ideas which you need not consider.

When did I refuse to accept experience as valid? I may want a rational explanation of a process, if any, but I don't disbelieve an experience.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "if any".]

I said you did not believe in the knowledge given by those who have the experience—you want a how that agrees with your own lack of knowledge and lack of experience.

In my case I have found that mostly I have to make a great effort and then when the thing comes down, people call it the result of the Force; I am quite justified in refusing to allow the Force most credit.

Quite. It was your efforts that turned non-poets into poets! Hail, you wonder-workers!

If you say that the Force has different ways of working—at times making one sweat and struggle for the sake of fun and at other times coming and sweeping one like spring breeze—nothing to argue!

It is the experience of the Yogis—but that is of no value.

If you don't exclaim "Again Dilip!"

I do!

I shall write what he very aptly and eloquently expresses—"I did everything with my effort, and you say that the Force has made me do it! If it's the Force that's doing it then why alas, this bone-breaking labour!"

All I can say is that if it was D's Force (of effort) that turned in a moment a hobbling ass into a winged eagle, for that was what happened to his poetry, it has done something no one ever did before. Namo Namo Dilipaya.¹⁶⁷ It is he who should go forth to change the world... But no doubt you are both of you right. I am rather coming to the conclusion that this world should be left to its own "efforts" to arrive where it can and the Mother and myself should take tickets for some other.

Yesterday I couldn't take U to the hospital because of my depression and today he couldn't come because of his depression due to his inability to pick up English! Like my poetry, what?

And all equally absurd

I have gulped down your satires quite smoothly. I am beaten if you put the same argument for Yoga too. Still it is difficult to see how without any effort, some time or other, one can do anything. As regards poetry, my point is that Force and inspiration are there, but effort also exists...

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "Force", "inspiration" and "effort also exists".

What then?

...and on many occasions I find that the effort predominates overmuch.

Much too much!

Inspiration leaves one sometimes and one goes on beating and beating, hammering and hammering, but it comes not! Inspiration failing to descend, perhaps.

[Sri Aurobindo drew an arrow indicating the last sentence.]

Exactly. When any real effect is produced, it is not because of the beating and the hammering, but because an inspiration slips down between the raising of the hammer and the falling and gets in under cover of the beastly noise. It is when there is no need of effort that the best comes. Effort is all right, but only as an excuse for inducing the Inspiration to come. If it wants to come, it comes—if it doesn't, it doesn't and one is obliged to give up after producing nothing or an inferior mind-made something. I have had that experience often enough myself. I have also seen Amal often producing something good but not perfect, beating the air and hammering it with proposed versions each as bad as the other; for it is only a new inspiration that can really improve a defect in the transcription of the first one. Still one makes efforts, but it is not the effort that produces the result, but the inspiration that comes in answer to it. You knock at the door to make the fellow inside answer. He may or he mayn't—if he lies mum, you have only to walk off swearing. That's effort and inspiration.

One has to work hours and hours on end. What do you call this labour?

Hammering, making a beastly noise so that Inspiration may get excited and exasperated and fling something through the window, muttering "I hope that will keep this insufferable tinsmith quiet."

By the way I discovered today from which corner the depression has come to me. It is our remarkable D again who got it immediately after Darshan. Then from him I got it! It is a pity though that one should get depressions after Darshan! It would suggest almost a post hoc theory. And he thinks it would be good to take a trip to Calcutta, or pass some time with X. Gracious, passing time with Mother and Sri Aurobindo doesn't help and X will?...

That is why I affiliate you to D. It is not the first time I have seen your depressions coincide with his. But as a matter of fact he got depressed before the Darshan and came ready to be dark and unresponsive. The cause as usual was piffling—because Sotuda and P.S. had bothered him about his houses! Formerly it was always because I didn't smile but remained grim, aloof and supra-mental. I secured one happy darshan by smiling at everybody with a Herculean labour of persistence. But that only set his outer mind seeking for some new excuse for being unhappy with the Darshan and he found it that way—and then the usual gloom and horror of darkness and frantic letters of departure—of course going back to the old grievance, no response from the Divine. Well, if anyone treated you as D does the Divine, would you be inclined to give a response? You would be more likely to be off to the Equator. And yet if he only did patiently what I have told him to do, he would get in time what he wants! Well, well!

S asks me to take him to the hospital for his eye-trouble. I asked him if R had given him permission—but R doesn't say anything. Also about the X-ray findings, when I asked R, he replied curtly as usual, "Oh I am not interested!"

R has given up S—only S goes on pushing reports saying "I am in perfect health except for a little cold" under R's door. It does not matter as S is going. He has written for his passage money.

S is in a danger-zone (suffering from chronic stomach ulcer). I don't understand why he stays here without a chance of coming to Pranam or meditation for months. I thought Mother's touch would do him good.

He is too insincere. Mother refuses to have him for Pranam or meditation. She says he is so full of falsehood that she can put no force on him except a Mahakali one and as he would resist that also, it would be more dangerous to him than helpful.

D was saying that his ailments don't ever improve after reporting to you. Please see that this report gives some response, otherwise another factor will be added to his depression!

The attitude of his physical mind prevents any result—fo it is so unwilling to recognize anything as the result of the Force that his subconscient works in the direction of preventing any result coming—and it is the subconscient that is most determinative in matters of illness.

If Mother has no objection and Rajangam is willing to look after the Dispensary, I would like to fly to the Lake or Villinur on a cycle.

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

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

Mother had forgotten all about Villenur and the Rajangam-guard Dispensary. So that had nothing to do with her look at Pranam

It is really a pity that J is going with so many parts, also!

He is going with tears and full of blessings. Perhaps it is the "parts" you speak of that call him—his horoscope was found to be brilliant and almost Leninesque. Perhaps one day you will gaze at the figure of পাগলা যশোবন্ত (I think that is Mridu's description) presiding over the destinies of a Communist India!! Why not? Hitler in his "handsome Adolf" days was not less পাগলা or prettier, so there is a chance.

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

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

You said something about the intermediate zone. I thought it was sex-trouble.

Sex-trouble, ego-trouble, occult-power trouble.

I had an idea that the intermediate zone is something that one is likely to tumble into after making a great progress in sadhana... I find there is some similarity between him, N, etc.

Anybody passing the border of the ordinary consciousness can enter into this zone, if he doesn't take care to enter into the psychic. In itself there is no harm in passing through provided one does not stop there. But ego, sex, ambition etc., if they get exaggerated, can easily lead there to the fate of N and Co.

... He has very big ideas about himself e.g. he once said to me that he was trying to solve the sex-problem of the Asrarm!

So did N—he solved it finally by joining his wife.

(N.B. Sir, it is your pen that is making these blots.)

Really, I don't understand, how with so much love for you, such is the result.

Yes, but the vital got into the love and that always creates trouble unless the vital agrees to be under the control of the psychic.

It is as if the psychic is crying and crying but other parts are dragging him away.

Quite true. But the psychic is weak, the mind erratic, the vital rest less and over-eager. Hence these results.

Is this intermediate zone such a beastly thing that you can't draw anyone out of it in spite of his bearing so much love for you?

The diffculty is that if I draw him out, he runs back into it. These people feel a tremendous attraction to the wrong Influences and call them back. It is because in the absence of the occult experiences they feel ordinary and dull—and they are people who like to be-extraordinary. I did pull out G; but he became as flat as a pancake and would do nothing more in the sadhana, because naturally I refused to put any more power upon him as he might misuse it. Others also when I cured their extravagances, complained that they felt so "ordinary" and shouted for their "Extravagant Influences" back again. There are always plenty of forces ready to answer a call like that. How often did I cudgel B and bring him back to his senses and he became quite clairvoyant and lucid for a time. But always he went back to his central Extravagance—mistaking his Ego for the Divine.

By the way—

My boil has burst and as you see
From the depression I am free.
Thanks, Guru, thanks to Thee!
Wilt Thou now pour some poetry?

Yes, I got irritated last night by your persistent boiling and put a gigantic Force which I am glad to see burst the little boil.

Thank God for that!
Free from boil,
At poems toil.
Laugh and grow fat.

Dihp's temperature was 101.4˚ in the morning,., evening, 100.4˚. Had two half-boiled eggs in the morning as he was hungry because we starved him last night!

A robust patient

He says he has eaten two eggs out of greed, asks to be excused.

Quite safe!

U now vacillates or hesitates, thinking of pain and suffering, etc. and says, "After all how much can it grow in one or two years?" So I leave him with his tumour on the neck.

Mother was looking at his mango. It looked to her as if it was rather deep and would need more than a local anaesthetic. If he is afraid of the operation, no use operating.

I did not quite follow what you meant by "it does not matter" about S. He wants the glasses badly and says his eyes are burning.

Really now, what have I to do with his glasses? He is going—once out of the Asram, all these things will be his own business.

As he is going tonight, if any intelligent fellow with some interest in work can take his place or guard the Dispensary at least, please give us one.

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

How is it you remained unresponsive to my petty offers? (because they were petty?) I deferred the purchase of the pad, because if you have one, another would be of no use. I hope you haven't.

I am afraid I have.

But why should my depression coincide with D's? Too much association? Well, there are A, N, who mix with him more than I and yet they don't bring away the reward—and why do I?

Their separative individuality is more robustly precise. Besides they have not the Man of Sorrows temperament as part of their make-up.

You surely can't hold off Krishna, Shiva or Brahma because X treats the Divine like that. That would be acting not like a Friend, though maybe like the Divine!

What do you mean? I am not holding off Krishna. It is Krishna who is holding off himself, as he generally does, except when he finds a likely person who will tolerate his ways.

As to X's not doing what you ask him to, in a talk I raised the issue casually. He said: "What am I not doing? I tell Guru everything that I am doing." I replied, "But to my mind our failure to get anything in Yoga is due perhaps to our terrible egoistic demands—I have done so much, where's the result? This sort of thing prevents us from any success, as this is a Yoga of surrender and not of effort. Effort is necessary but without any demand..."

The real thing is that he had his own ideas of Yoga and never accepted mine. He raged against the supermind, sneered at the psychic, stared with blank unintelligence at the idea of love and self-giving without demand etc. So how the deuce could he do what I told him? Outwardly he tried in an imperfect way, but it is only recently that he has been doing it in earnest—but inwardly? and inwardly is the most important thing. What I have to do all the time is to try to force the growth of the psychic in him without his knowing it and it is an uphill and precarious business.

Is effort without demand of result possible unless the psychic fellow comes to the front?

Perfectly possible, if you can once distinguish between the will of the Purusha and the demand of the vital. Of course, it is easiest and indeed plain sailing if the psychic comes in front, but even before that it is possible.

X said that Mother asked him to try to be conscious at every step, but it is "a very tiresome business".

Exactly; there it is. He doesn't want to do what he is told because it is tiresome or not according to his ideas.

It seems he hasn't quite caught what you want him to do in spite of so many letters.

That's the difficulty.

Now I come to my state of affairs. I find now, except during depression, that I don't take the trouble of thinking of the Divine... Where is Yoga? Where is the aspiration, urge, etc.? An inner certitude that everything will be done by the Guru, what? Or a tamasic beatitude? I don't see really how the "blue moon" is going to rise.

You rely too much on your own seeing as the standard of all truth—again like D.

You actually propose "Laugh and grow fat" though laughing never makes fat!

You oppose one of the most ancient traditions of humanity by this severe statement. But your statement is mistaken even according to Science. We are now told that it is the activity of certain glands that makes you thin or fat. If glands, then why not gladness?

Really I am now wondering at my own revelry and hilarity. No particular concern about yoga, yet I am happy. What kind of psychic attitude is this, Sir?

It is not a psychic attitude, but it is better than depression

In what biological order will you put an egg—plant or animal?

European vegetarians regard it as a vegetable—others say that unimpregnated eggs can be eaten because there is no life in them—others say that as it is not destruction of conscious life it can be done.

I would like to have Mother's opinion on taking eggs so that I may not commit a sacrilege, if it is one.

Mother allows eggs as a special provision for health in cases like R. Otherwise she does not approve.

D was given Codein Phos syrup, and he says it instantaneously stopped the cough. Very surprising, almost miraculous, more effective and definite than Yoga-Force—his opinion.

The fellow! After my strong intervention, he now says it is not God's Force, but Codein Phos!

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

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

[At the end of the day's medical report:]

About Mulshankar? How is he progrgsing? Have you asked him to take up some work? so we learn from B.S.¹⁶⁸

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

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

He also writes that if M's wife gets angry with him and abuses him অনর্থক [for nothing], এটা-ওটা [this and that] might happen.

He means it will then not be নিরর্থক,¹⁶⁹ but rather সার্থক¹⁷⁰. Obviously If এটা-ওটা are going to happen, a shift might be preferable.

There is something enclosed in the bag. Good enough, Sir?

Very nice. But these things are generally somewhere else when one needs them.

What has happened to my typescript? Hibernating?

My dear sir, if you saw me nowadays with my nose to paper from afternoon to morning, deciphering, deciphering, writing, writing, writing, even the rocky heart of a disciple would be touched and you would not talk about typescripts and hibernation. I have given up (for the present at least) the attempt to minimise the cataract of correspondence; I accept my fate like Raman Maharshi with the plague of Prasads and admirers, but at least don't add anguish to annihilation by talking about typescripts.

I let go the typescript, but the poem? How can I allow you to break a promise, Sir?

Break a promise? Who's going to do that? No time was fixed—so the promise can be fulfilled, say in 1997. If you say you are not likely to be alive then, nor I either well, our heirs can complete the transaction.

What is the use of your complaining? You have committed the grave blunder of coming into this sorrowful world with a mighty magical pen. Sri Krishna, I conjecture, may have complained about his lungs because of his incessant blowing and fluting to melt our hard hearts.

It is an idea! Strange that none of the poets has mentioned it—a modernist poet would catch at it at once, "The Flute and the Lungs," or "Krishna's Bronchitis."

I am knocking about with Kanai and trying some joint meditation in the hope of getting something. Vain illusion?

Don't know—sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't.

D has presented me a copy of his novel দোলা¹⁷¹ and writes: সাদরে অদ্যাপি যে দরদী রইল বিষাদ সাথী¹⁷² Good Lord! can't afford to be his companion in melancholy any more. He has beaten me hollow, what?

Ten times hollow! What the hell has made him so abnormally sensitive? He attributes his last despair deep as black Erebus to a joke of mine which he took as a personal sarcasm against him, though it was only a joke pointing out the logical outcome of his idea that you can't love the Divine until you experience that highly elusive gentleman. I say, you are not going to be his সাথী¹⁷³ in that kind of thing? If so, I shall stop joking betimes and write to you henceforth with the solemnity of an owl.

U's lipoma can be operated upon under a local anaesthetic. Now all this question of operation is useless, because he says he is afraid. After all he has no discomfort and neither is it very big, he says, so let it be. Only I am thinking that if it grows bigger, as undoubtedly it will, unless your Force prevents it, what will be done then?

No use doing it if he is afraid. Let us wait on the Gods and hope they won't increase the lipoma till it deserves a diploma for its size.

An American skyscraper on the neck would be obviously inconvenient.

About Mulshankar's massage—do you think a servant can be trusted to do it properly—or a sadhak, say Virabhadra, should be asked to do it. Mother wants your opinion.

You have read Nishikanta's poem রাজহংস.¹⁷⁴ I would like to know how far the images he has put on the back of the swan, are permissible in poetry. It seems the imagination has run riot. D also voiced the same opinion. Here is a quotation: You have shown new paths to the horse known as Uchchhaishrava... By one single quiver your dance Urvasi was born.

Isn't it rather too much for a swan's miraculous activity?

If you except¹⁷⁵ matter-of-fact verisimilitude from N or a scientific ornithologically accurate swan, you are knocking at the wrong door. But I don't see exactly the point of your objection. The lake is not a lake but a symbol—the swan is not a swan but a symbol. You can't expect the lake merely to ripple and do nothing else or the swan simply to swim and eat and do nothing else. It is as much a symbol as the Bird of Fire or the Bird of the Vedic poet who faced the guardians of the Soma and brought the Sonia to Indra (or was it to a Rishi, I have forgotten) perhaps carrying a pot or several pots in his claws and beak!! for I don't know how else he could have done it. How is he to use his symbol if you do not make allowances for a miraculous Swan? If the swan does nothing but what an ordinary swan does, it ceases to be a symbol and becomes only a metaphor. The animals of these symbols belong not to earth but to Wonderland.

What Sir, in your letter on "Swan and its symbol" expect has become except? Supramental slip!

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

I admit that the swan is a symbol, but don't you think that behind the expressions there should be a meaning?

Yes, of course.

The Vedic bird can be imagined to be bringing pots of Soma, but what would you understand by:

তব নৃত্যের একটি শিহরে জন্ম লভিল উর্ব্বশী ?¹⁷⁶
Take this line বাসনামত্ত মাতঙ্গে তুমি শান্ত করিলে¹⁷⁷—
one can find some meaning, but what about the line above?

As the মত্ত মাতঙ্গে¹⁷⁸ is significant, so Urvasi is significant—so why should there be no meaning? Of course what you signify by Urvasi is another question. For me Urvasi is the divine beauty in the vital, with its intoxication and ecstasy. Why can't that come into being by a quiver, vibration, frisson of the dance of the Soul? Is it so meaningless? I confess that feeling it in that sense the line gave me a poetic thrill.

Isn't it true that you can't really love the Divine until you experience him in some way? Before that it won't be an intense or deep love.

Your supposition conflicts with the experience of many sadhaks. I think Ramkrishna indicated somewhere that the love and joy and ardour of seeking was much more intense than that of fulfilment. I don't agree, but that shows at least that intense love is possible before realisation.

For Mulshankar, I think the servant will do because only a slow up-and-down movement is needed. But when he is dispensed with, no longer needed, we can ask Virabhadra.

This servant is to be dismissed on the 19th, as he is found unsatisfactory in several respects. So perhaps you could press V into service as masseur.

Sahana came with a gritting sensation in the right eye. She rubbed and rubbed it since noon and it has become very red.

You didn't tell her that rubbing and restless touching is the worst thing one can do with the eye?

Yes, intense love is possible before realisation, but some sort of a decisive experience one must have, psychic, mental or vital. before the love can be profound, solid and intense.

What do you mean by experience? Love and Bhakti are themselves an experience.

First time I heard of any such rule.

One should be able to have the vision of the loving and intensely lovable Presence of Krishna or his blue radiance sending thrills of ecstasy.

Hundreds of Bhaktas had to wait for long and many years before anything of the kind came.

Five minutes or twenty-four hours of intense rapture by your touch will do something, but it would be a hardly sufficient solid basis. One may pull on with this petty capital of 5 minutes or more raptures till some decisive experience makes the capital absolutely beyond any chance of failure or insolvency. That's how I look at it.

That may be how you look at Love, but why should everybody else be obliged to do so?

You are again making a general sweeping rule out of your own standpoint.

Love and ardour of seeking with the same or increased intensity without any big experience may be possible in cases like Ramakrishna's who from boyhood used to fall into trance even at the sight of blue clouds, reminding him of Krishna. Even then isn't it said that many times he resolved to drown himself in the Ganges because the Mother wouldn't come?

What has that to do with it? It only shows that his yearning was excessive.

Was he shaken in his faith or love, or was it the impetuosity of love that wouldn't brook delay?

If his love was shaken, i.e. if he had ceased to want her, why the deuce should he care a damn whether she came or not? There is no question of faith, it is about love. Do you think at any time R ceased to believe in the Divine?

Don't you think your realisation of the Self helped you in your crucial moments of struggle, kept up your faith and love?

That has nothing to do with love. Realisation of Self and love of the personal Divine are two different movements.

My struggle has never been about the Self. All that is perfectly irrelevant to the question which concerns the Bhakta's love for the Divine.

But the sweet memory of that experience of the Self must have sustained you.

There was nothing sugary about it at all. And I had no need to have any memory of it, because it was with me for months and years and is there now though in fusion with other realisations.

We poor people in dark times which pay us frequent visits, fall back on our petty capital of Ananda, even on some of your jokes, to fortify ourselves. If such things can bring back a momentary wave of love and devotion, restored faith, how much would decisive experiences not do? ...

My point is that there have been hundreds of Bhaktas who have the love and seeking without any concrete experience, with only a mental conception or emotional belief in the Divine to support them. The whole point is that it is untrue to say that one must have a decisive or concrete experience before one can have love for the Divine. It is contrary to the facts and the quite ordinary facts of the spiritual experience.

It is only the lion-hearts that can go on without any experience.

The ordinary Bhakta is not a lion-heart. The lion-hearts get experiences comparatively soon, but the ordinary Bhakta has often to feed on his own love or yearning for years and years—and he does it.

J has been asked to use mustard oil, cocoanut oil or castor oil for her eczema. Which one should she use?

Pavitra must be asked what oil he is using and that can be used—for he has found it effective. Mother thought it might be cocoanut oil, but she is not sure.

Freed once more from the devil's claws! Just a few words about the process: I took up H's poem, felt like writing one after reading it, failed; then went to Pranam, there found Jatin's letter which I enclose, waiting, read it and as soon as I sat in the Hall, lo, everything fell off my shoulders or soul, as if by the breath of an invisible wave.

Yes, of course, it was the old man of the Sea, I mean of Sorrows, who dropped off because he can't stand anything cheerful and hopeful. The main credit goes to the letter, because it has a push in it of the psychic force which took your vital and the O.M. also by surprise and knocked him off and you up, before the said vital had time to turn round and cry, "Hélas! Hélas! Alas! হায় হায়¹⁷⁹ Ototototoi!"

But I don't know what did the job. Poetry, letter or Mother? The letter itself gave me a sense of something pleasant.

All together—Poetry first attempt, letter brought a good atmosphere (that was the sense of something pleasant), and both were the effect of a long pressure from me which you had resisted sitting firm in a Gandhian passive resistance.

This shows, Sir, you make me suffer unnecessarily; you can, at any moment, draw me out if it pleases you.

Not at all, you can't be drawn out if something in you refuses and sticks like a badger in its hole. When that says "Oh damn it, after all let me get out and breathe some fresh air", then it can be done.

Please read his letter. I am sure your heart will leap at the response to your Force, by at least one soul, what?

Excuse me, he is not the only one.

J's is a most fascinating and convincing example. Alas, when will my hard crust be broken, and feel at least some fragments of what he feels!

The difference is that his mind is ready to accept and makes no resistance. If his vital is as willing,—the sex affair looks like it—then he can go very fast.

I don't understand what my friend means by the disturbance in connection with the affairs of the world.

That is clear enough. His new consciousness makes him feel more strongly the opposite forces that one contacts when one moves in the world and has to do affairs and meet with others and he is afraid of a response in his vital which will upset his sadhana or create difficulties.

Evidently he is a man who is psychically sensitive or has become so to that thing which you blindly refuse to recognize even when you are in the midst of it—the play of forces. You can feel your friend's atmosphere through the letter "so beautiful, so strengthening, so refreshing" and it has an immediate effect on you. But your mind stares like an owl and wonders "What the hell can this be?"—I suppose, because your medical books never told you about it and how can things be true which are not known either to the ordinary mind or science? It is by an incursion of an opposite kind of forces that you fall into the Old Man's clutches, but you can only groan and cry "What's this?" and when they are swept aside in a moment by other forces, blink and mutter "Well, that's funny!" Your friend can feel and know at once when he is being threatened by the opposite forces—and so he can be on his guard and resist Old Nick, because he can detect at once one of his principal means of attack.

Please reply to all the points raised.

Will see, so hold on to the letter.

I went over his letter again—it is so beautiful, so strengthening and refreshing. And how beautifully he writes about the snow-flakelike falling of delight.

That's his psychic atmosphere, sir. That is what the psychic feels like—to anyone who can contact it, "beautiful, strengthening and refreshing."

Give me a beautiful "beating", Sir, will you? Have not had it for a long time!

Have given you one or two smacks. No time to make it long.

Did you say "Old Man of the Sea"?

Yes.

But why sea, Sir? Any allusion?

Well, traditionally, it is, I believe, old man of the mountains, but there were no mountains here, only a sea of sobs and sorrows—so I had to vary the phrase.

I find that you have forgotten to say anything about Jatin't permission for Darshan.

Well, the permission can be given,

And please don't forget the letter you are writing—you can write on a separate sheet as Jatin wants to see the original very much.

What letter? only remarks or lines, if they come. out.

"What letter" indeed! Very well, I won't call it a letter, call it remarks or lines, so long as it is not your marginal! Perhaps you are waiting for a Sunday?

I am waiting for a day when I won't have to race to finish everything before 7 a.m. in the morning.

"Over the lone heights in the still air roamed," but roamed what, Sir?

How the deuce am I to know? I wrote what came as a metrical example and the roamer didn't come in view.

Whatever you touch becomes so beautiful; Sir. The line is roaming and humming in my mind. Oh, if you could complete it! Don't say "some day", Sir, which is equivalent to "never"!

Well, if not some day, some night perhaps.

About B.P.—we can take him to Valle or André who, I presume, know more about his illness.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "Valle or André".]

No. If all fails, we will hand him over to R. But B.P. has no reaction against his illness—that is the trouble.

Well, in my chase for a dispensary guard [7.3.36), I have found Mulshankar who is very willing to do it for an hour or two, though lame.

Yes. Mulshankar has written and we have answered that he can do this work.

For J's eczema, Pavitra put three essential factors:

1) Sunbath after oiling.
2) Cold bath immediately after sunbath.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "oiling" and "immediately".]

Mother thought he did it after sunbath. But if it is the other way round his example must be followed—as it is his cure.

3) Cold bath should begin with the head to obviate any danger of catching cold by sudden exposure.

Yes—that is necessary.

About B.P., we can't get the required medicines from the local pharmacy.

You might speak to G and ask him whether it isn't possible for B.P. to be treated somewhere over there. Here his health continues to be bad and there is not the necessary skilled treatment.

René is sending me charts of the fever temperature of his cousin Badrunnissa (an Asram nomenclature) who has been suffering from typhoid enteric (so the Colonel Doctor of Hyderabad says) with affection of chest which was suspected to be pneumonia. Now in his first chart the figures were 104˚, 103˚, 102˚, 101˚ and an uninstructed layman could understand—but what are these damned medical hieroglyphs 30-112, 26-118 E 24-110, 24-110?

Here's about the "damned hieroglyphs" you don't understand, though I don't understand why you don't. If you only read Sherlock Holmes' science of deduction and analysis which I have done lately, you would have at once realised my remark.

Sherlock Holmes arranges his facts beforehand and then detects them unlike these doctors.

Well, keep the chart vertically then it should at once be clear to you that the red line is the normal temperature line: 98.6, and the fever would be about 101.8. Then the figures below, what could they be? Well, your long association with doctors should have taught you that in a fever chart pulse rate is recorded with the temperature.

Never gave me one, so far as I remember. I mean not of this problematical kind.

If that be so, between those pairs of damned figures, one must be of pulse and which is it? Surely not 30, 26, because with that rate no charts would have been sent to you!

Naturally, I knew it must be the pulse, but what were the unspeakable 30s and 24s attached to them? And I didn't want the pulse, I wanted the temperature. However your red line which I had not noticed sheds a red light on the matter, so that is clear now. I was holding it horizontal because of its inordinate length.

What are these 30, 26, 24 and 24 then? Just a little bit of cool thinking would again point out, Sir, that they are respiration rates—normal being 20, 22, or so. Now is it simple and easy or is it not?

No, Sir, it is not. What's the normal respiration rate anyhow? 32 below zero or 106˚ above? (N.B. zero not Fahrenheit but Breathen-height.)

Can you say the same thing about your yogic hieroglyphs? By Jove, no!

There are no hieroglyphs in Yoga except the dream and vision-symbols and nobody is expected to understand these things.

But what about E? Extravagant? Eccentric? Epatant?

Let the Sherlockian vein be pardoned. One independent criticism: I don't know how they suspect pneumonia with a respiration rate of only 30, 26. It should bound up to at least 40. Instead with a temperature of 102˚, it is only 24!

Well, both the doctors did that and one is a mighty man there, the Doctor of Doctors. But perhaps it's the fashion in Hyderabad to breathe like that when one has pneumonia. Anyhow pn. seems to have dropped out of the picture, and the D of Ds tells only of typhoid and a possible reactivity of inactive germs of tuberculosis.

I have at last written a poem, Sir. I have avoided anapaests as far as possible.

I have brought some in, but without any impure intention—they just came.

You will see that I have tried to immortalise depression, tried to bring in power, passion and spirit of the wilderness. with what success, you may judge. Amal says that it is very good—even "fine".

It is certainly good—in a way fine. The only defect is that it is somehow reminiscent of things that have been written before. It is difficult to be otherwise when one tries to immortalise depression—so many people have done it before you.

Today Mother said to me something during pranam—something more than "said". I searched in my mind, heart and body—what is it I have done!

She didn't she only looked at you a little longer than usual.

I can take any amount of thrashing with grace, even good grace, as you have had enough evidence by now, but to take it without knowing the why or how of it, goes a little too deep, Sir.

No thrashing at all—not even the natural yearning to thrash you.

For an earthly reason, I found that I have accepted an invitation for lunch. Is that then why Mother focussed her fury on my dread soul? Or is the reason unearthly?

Knew nothing about it.

Never dreamed even of the lunch—was thinking of B.P.—not of any delinquency of yours.

You can't say there was nothing...

I can and do.

I was positively conscious that there was something and I want to know it if only to rectify myself.

Only fancy, sir, dear delightless fancy. Nothing more deceiving than these pseudo-intuitions of Mother's displeasure and search for its non-existent reasons. Very often it comes from a guilty conscience or a feeling that one deserves a thrashing, so obviously a thrashing must be intended. Anything like that here?

The word locus" was unintelligible? But you understand all right. I adopt the device and "your attention" to save your time and mine as well as it is obvious.

Good God! Is this Hebrew or Aramaic or Swahili? I can't understand a word. Which device? which attention? Some reference to something I wrote? If so, it has clean gone out of my head. That by the way is a manner of speaking, for I have never anything in my head.

I am sorry for the last elision again—I wanted to write—I adopted the device and dropped your attention to save time—I find that I have dropped the word "dropped" altogether and so it became Hebrew, Aramaic or—?

Swahili. African language, sir, somewhere in West Africa

There you are then, Sir! You admit that Mother did look a little longer than usual—that's a point gained!

Just Jehovah, man! What of that? Can't Mother look longer without being furious?

But quarrel over over that...

[Sri Aurobindo underlined the phrase.]

Another ellipse? or a collapse? It sounds like a line of poetry.

Or is it about that girl I wrote to you of long ago and got a smack?

Consider yourself smacked this time also.

Nothing criminal or incriminating—still enough perhaps to make the heart throb. Even my fancy is only a fancy...

Fancy? fudge! It was only a movement of the hormones

A guilty conscience, a criminal conscience, well, that's about the size of it. Thrashing, fury I accept all if that was what it was for.

It was not. As there was no thrashing and no fury, it could not be for that.

I am obliged to sleep out for a few days because of repairs in our house. The whole building is smelling of lime, lime and lime.

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

I chuckled, Sir, to learn that you held the chart horizontally, because of its length! And E is none of those high sounding "extravagant" words. If you had just looked about you for a moment, lifting your eyes from the correspondence, you would have discovered that E stands for nothing but a simple evening. Clear?

No. What has evening to do with it? Evening star? "Twinkle, twinkle, evening star! How I wonder what your temperatures are?" But I suppose Sir James Jeans knows and doesn't wonder. But anyhow E for Evening sounds both irrelevant and poetic.

No, Sir, it is not at all irrelevant, though poetic. I swear it is evening. You know they take these pulse and respiration rates Morning and Evening of which M and E are short-hands, and one of which I suppose you will make mad and the other one of the three you have divined! But what is this "Jones—knows and doesn't wonder"?

Jeans, Jeans, Jeans—not Jones!

Sir James Jeans, sir, who knows all about the temperatures, weights and other family details of the stars, including E.

Friend C again, with his woeful tale!

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

He has sent a rupee to buy something for you. But your needs are so few and you are so strict about hygiene. At times I wonder why the Divine is so meticulously particular as regards contagion, infection. Is he vulnerable to the viruses, bacilli, microbes, etc.?

And why on earth should you expect the Divine to feed himself on germs and bacilli and poisons of all kinds? Singular theology yours!

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

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

I hear from all quarters that you are buried in letters... I don't know how you are ever going to keep your head above the mud of the letters, for your bhaktas, admirers are increasing by leaps and bounds. In the near future they will be millions, and millions of letters heaped upon your supra-mental segregation, if you don't relinquish it and come out boldly!

Come out and have millions and millions of admirers heaped upon my promiscuity? Thank you for nothing! The letters can be thrown into the W.P.B.¹⁸⁰ more easily than the admirers can be thrown out of the window.

By the way, I think fountain-pen ink would be the thing I can buy for you, with C's one rupee.

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

Your letter to D has done us a lot of good, for you have cited the example of workers there. We people need such illustrations but not of your illustrious person or the Mother's.

You people are funny people!

I have resorted to prayer. Well, if a prayer means a call to the Above, why doesn't the Above have the kindness to respond?

But just answer! If it responded to everybody in all circumstances, there would by this time be 100 million poets writing away for all they were worth, let us say 1000 pages of poetry a day each and publishing them. Wouldn't it be a disaster? Wouldn't such kindness be a cruelty to all the rest of the creation?

Throughout the history of my writing, you know that the Above has been stingily charitable to me so that all my works—very few though—have been corroded with the marks of my labour and hence fallen short of poetic excellence...

Not correct—they look quite innocent as if you had written them off with ease.

My hard labour and effort deprive me of the joy of creation and discourage me with a dread of the work. You say this is because I am an "efforter" and a "bower". All very well, Sir, but have you shown me the Grand Trunk Road of non-effort—not to speak of leading the way?

There are two ways of arriving at the Grand Trunk Road. One is to climb and struggle and effortise, (like the pilgrim who traverses India prostrating and measuring the way with his body,—that's the way of effort). One day you suddenly find yourself on the G.T.R. when you least expect it. The other is to quiet the mind to such a point that a greater Mind of mind can speak through it. (I am not here talking of the supramental). You will do neither. Your mind refuses to be quiet—your vital kicks at the necessity of effort. One too active, the other too lazy. How can I show you the G.T.R. when you refuse either way of reaching it?

Or would you say that a beginner can't, at a leap, settle on the top?

Of course not

But even a beginner should be lured by more glimpses than has been done in my case.

System of lollipops? You won't travel to London unless you are given frequent glimpses of London before even you reach Bombay? Otherwise you will say Oh what a bother and give up?

Look at D—you yourself admitted that he had a very easy flow as soon as he started writing.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined 'You yourself admitted".]

Never in my life I admitted that.

Look at NK. Do you know he writes 200-300 lines a day!

Not at all if you refer to his poetry—As soon as he started writing here, yes. That is because he caught instanter the tail of the Horse—or the Force. You seem to read what I write in a queer way and put on it very strange [constructions].

I wonder if it is possible to make prodigious and unusual poets like NK.

Was NK a prodigious and unusual poet before he came here? You seem to be so obsessed by the present development that you assume it was always there and he did it all of himself from the beginning.

Lastly about your inspiration. Amal and I have been wondering why you should have to write and rewrite your poetry for instance, "Savitri" ten or twelve times. You will say the rewriting is also done by inspiration. True, but why rewrite at all?

That is very simple. I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from that level. Moreover I was particular—if part seemed to me to come from any lower level, I was not satisfied to leave it because it was good poetry. All had to be as far as possible of the same mint. In fact, Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own Yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative. I did not rewrite Rose of God or the sonnets except for two or three verbal alterations made at the moment.

If X could receive his inspiration without any necessity for rewriting, why not you?

So could I if I wrote every day and had nothing else to do and did not care what the level of inspiration was so long as I produced something exciting.

Fault in the instrument, obstruction between the instrument and the plane of inspiration...?

The only obstruction is that I have no time to put myself constantly into the poetic creative posture and if I write at all have to get out something in the intervals of quite another concentration.

With your silence, consciousness, overmental, partly supra-mental, etc., etc., it should be possible to draw from the highest plane, at the slightest pull, and it should tumble down, Sir, but it doesn't. Why not? We wonder and wonder! Could you send Alice to Wonderland and ask her to discover and divulge the secret to us—not in hints, but at length?

The highest planes are not so accommodating as all that. If they were so, why should it be so difficult to bring down and organise the supermind in the physical consciousness? What happy-go-lucky fancy-web-spinning ignoramuses you all are. You speak of silence, consciousness, overmental, supramental, etc. as if they were so many electric buttons you have only to press and there you are. It may be one day but meanwhile I have to discover everything about the working of all possible modes of electricity, all the laws, possibilities, perils, etc., construct roads of connection and communication, make the whole far-wiring system, try to find out how it can be made foolproof and all that in the course of a single lifetime. And I have to do it while my blessed disciples are firing of their gay or gloomy a priori reasonings at me from a position of entire irresponsibility and expecting me to divulge everything to them not in hints but at length. Lord God in omnibus!

I was not at all speaking of the whole world, neither am I concerned with it. I was asking why my prayers were not answered by the Above as in others' cases.

Good Lord! you are not part of the world? Then you must be a Jivanmukta and no need of prayer.

Specially when that Above lives opposite my house¹⁸¹ and encourages my writing.

The Above may encourage your writing, but it does not follow that he will deal with you in the same way as with D. যে যথা মাং প্রপদ্যন্তে¹⁸²

I admit that my vital is lazy, because it is afraid of too much labouring, 4 lines in 40 hours!

Yes, but if the vital were not lazy you would not have to labour like that. It is lazy in labouring but it is also lazy in responding—it is a slow-mover.

Not only that, but also my mind does not know precisely how to silence itself. This second point applies to D too. How then does he manage to receive from Above?

The difference is that as his mind has opened to the Above, the Above can turn its activity into an activity of the Inspiration—its quickness, energy, activity enable it to transcribe quickly, actively, energetically what comes into it from the Above. Of course if one day it becomes silent also, it may probably become the channel of a still higher Inspiration.

Did D's vital become active and magnificent because somehow he could more easily draw in the Inspiration?

No—that is inborn in D. It was the first thing Mother said about D (long before he came here for Yoga) when she saw him through the blinds of the door "What a powerful vital!"

I can tell you that my own vital has done that feat when a flow was felt.

Yes, but D's vital strength is inborn, though it may not have at first been open to the poetic inspiration. When it did it could leap at once with full energy and gave itself entirely to the flow—It was not the flow that made it "magnificent".

I find that D didn't have to struggle as much as I—his magnificent vital magnificently and easily worked away as the Inspiration was not jerky and halting as in my case. My lazy vital is perforce lazy because the stream of Inspiration descends by drops. At the same time I confess that I am by nature rather indolent.

As usual, you are putting the thing upside down—Your last admission does away with the whole two pages of special pleading.

Is silencing the mind to be done only at the time of writing or at other times too, or one can't be done without the other?

Silencing the mind at the time of writing should be sufficient—even not silencing it, but its falling quiet to receive.

Suppose I find two lines:

Forgive me, Master, if I doubt thy Light
Guiding my destiny, through a long trail,
without any pre-formed idea of the poem, I think what can rhyme with light or trail—bright, height, sail, fail, etc., and try to fit in an idea with the rhymes...

Just the thing you should not do. Let the rhyme come, don't begin dragging all sorts of rhymes in to see if they fit.

Do you want to say that if I have discovered some lines I must not think of the next lines, but try instead to keep absolutely silent so that with a leap I find the greater Mind has simply dropped the necessary rhymed lines, like a good fellow, and I finish off excellently without a drop of black sweat on my wide forehead?

That is the ideal way; but usually there is always an activity of the mind jumping up and trying to catch the inspiration. Sometimes the inspiration, the right one, comes in the midst of this futile jumping, sometimes it sweeps it aside and brings in the right thing, sometimes it inserts itself between two blunders, sometimes it waits till the noise quiets down. But even this jumping need not be a mental effort—it is often only a series of suggestions, the mind of itself seizing on one or eliminating another, not by laborious thinking and choice, but by a quiet series of perceptions. This is method no. 2. No. 3 is your Herculean way, quite the slowest and worst.

From the very start NK has been a prodigious writer. He and Jasimuddin—now a renowned poet—used to sit together to write poetry. NK would finish 3 or 4 poems and go to bed, get up in the morning to find his friend still struggling with a few lines.

While one person breaks his head over a few lines, another composes three or four poems.

That is fluency, not necessarily inspiration. Southey used to write like that, I believe, but you don't call Southey an inspired poet, do you?

I cite all this to show that it is not primarily the silencing of the mind or the dynamic vital, but cases born with a wide opening somewhere...

The activity of the vital is there in N as well as in Dilip.

I don't see why you brought in "the organisation of the Supermind in the physical consciousness" into the talk about your poetic inspiration. The first is collective, the second individual.

Excuse me, it was you who brought in overmind etc. in connection with my poetry and asked why having these things I had to rewrite Savitri many times instead of pouring out 24,000 lines a day.

L wants her little growth in the cheek to be excised. She forgets to apply medicine, regularly. A simple operation is the only alternative.

Mother considers it better to go on with the medicine.

April 1936

I have worked today from 1-30 to 6-15 p.m.—5 hours!—and composed only 16 lines!

But that is quite magnificent—16 lines in one day, 3⅕ lines an hour about! Remember that Virgil used only to write 9 lines a day. At this rate you will end by being twice as inspired and fluent as Virgil.

Saurin has hurt his thumb in the train and it seems to be in a bad condition. Go and see and give the necessary treatment.

By the way, I hope you didn't intend to make me an April-fool mentioning Virgil and Nirod in the same pen-stroke!

[In pencil.] What a modest poet! Most think themselves the superior of Homer, Milton and Shakespeare all added together.

Another letter from Jatin. He has asked for the reply to his previous letter. Please do write something tonight, Sir. I request you, I beseech you, I entreat you, I pray to you.

Do find out his letter from your heap—I can see it from here—and just a few marks and remarks will do. That's like the Divine! Give that time you would have spent on the long letter I was going to write, but I suspend it for getting this chance!

Sorry, but your luck is not brilliant. Had a whole night i.e. after 3 no work—was ready to write. Light went off, in my rooms only, mark—tried candle power, no go. The Age of Candles is evidently over. So "requests, beseeches, entreats" were all in vain. Not my fault. Blame Fate! However, I had a delightful time, 3 hours of undisturbed concentration on my real work, a luxury denied to me for ages. Don't tear your hair. Will be done another day with luck.

And what about the rooms in the Asram for him and his wife?

By himself accommodation in Asram easy—with wife difficult, in fact seems impossible. Can't put them together.

[I sent back the letter of April 2, 1936 to Sri Aurobindo.] I could not read what you wrote yesterday, Sir. Absolutely unreadable! Not even by Nolini was it possible!

I repeat then from memory. "What a modest poet! Most think in their heart of hearts that they are superior to Homer, Virgil, Milton and Shakespeare all piled upon and fused into each other."¹⁸³

Tomorrow is 4th April!¹⁸⁴ We are commemorating it thus: 1) Nishikanta sends a big poem—splendid, exquisite. By Jove, what allow and what a poem! Do read it at once, Sir, and let the correspondence go to H—for one day!

Correspondence can't be sent to H, either way, unless the light goes out—and then where will the poems go?

2) A poem by my humble self. I don't like it much, and Amal says that it is rather jerky and rough.¹⁸⁵

Yes, the rhythm is defective in many places.

Apart from it, what about the rhyme scheme and the conclusion?

The rhyme scheme all right. The conclusion is all right too.

Nishikanta suggests that I should add a few more lines. If that would enhance the beauty I shall try.

No, it would spoil the force of the contrast you have made by minimising it.

In the last line, is the idea clear?

No. But it is much better with the meaning I have now put into it.

Yes, I was almost going to tear my hair but your "delightful time" prevented me from doing it! But I hold J's reply till Sunday after which I will tear my hair certainly.

Preserve it—preserve your precious hair. Be calm, be patient!

I don't understand whether it is the yogic or accommodation trouble that stands in the way of putting them together.

Who is "them"—your hairs? What an abrupt Tacitean writer you are.

Well, you can put them separately, I am sure Jatin will agree so long as he and his wife are given rooms in the Asram.

It is because we can't put them together that it is impossible. There is no sufficient separate room for ladies.

I shall tell him the situation, unless you don't want her at all to stay in the Asram, in which case he will be compelled to stay outside.

It is not a question of wanting, but of space.

I don't think he will object to staying out. So?

Then it is all right.

Sorry. Nishikanta was too vast for me. Very fine though. Shall send on next time.

I hear R.K. has walked ofr and one of the reasons is his eyes! Why are they not cured? etc. God knows—we have tried our best and he was practically all right. I don't understand why there was the relapse suddenly, do you?

He was already wanting to go when they were all right and then turned round and said he had conquered the devil and would never leave—So the devil probably got into his eyes and made him blink towards the Panjab. His eyes were not the cause but an excuse. He had not much vocation for Yoga and the Mother had sent him off twice as unfit, but he came back as R.B.'s escort and sat down, and now he has got up and gone. But B.P. has no intention of going.

But you don't say anything about the poem as it is now—bad, good, very good, or what?

As it is now, very good.

You see, all our values depend on how you appraise them. If Mother smiles at somebody, we think him good, if she doesn't, well, must be wrong somewhere, we conclude and be on our guard.

What a blunder! Don't you know that the Divine smiles equally on the wicked and the good together?

About poetry it would be more so, specially in my case.

What a coupling of disparates

You know I'm a self-depreciating fellow, so your silence would worsen matters. But presuming it to be good, where does my credit lie after so much correction? Can I call the original version good poetry?

Your credit lies in a substance which could not realise its possibilities because of your damnable errors in rhythm—It was good poetry in substance but spoiled by errors of form.

Even in the original the lines from, "As one stands rapt—" to "The Infinite" are very good—except when they become rhythmically very bad. What the hell do you mean by trying trochees like

[Image 9]

Do you think you are adult enough yet for such Hitlerian violences to English metre?

Do you find in my piece any influence of your poem "The Rishi" which I read a few days ago? Permissible, such influence?

It may be there but I did not find it. The only result was a greater elevation and strength in the poetic speech. No objection can be made to an influence like that. It is imitation and reproduction that are objectionable.

By the way, Sir, you couldn't write to me [2.4.36] because your lights went off. I thought you have a kerosene lamp with a pumping business and burner—God knows the name.

[Sri Aurobindo put question marks above 'pumping" and "business".]

Who gives these wonderful news?

Of course I have a lamp but it is not available at 2.30. Do you think I am going to wake up the whole house at that hour?

I intended long ago to procure one for your emergency use. Shall I try? That would only crush all your chances of a "delightful time"!

No, sir, no pumping business for me!

But concentration on "real work" [2.4.36]? Good Lord, you do that from 9 or 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. God alone knows what you do then.

What is this transcendental rubbish?

Perhaps you send Force to Germany, Abyssinia, or make a leap to the Supramental?

That is not my real work. Who except the devil is going to give force to Germany? Do you think I am in league with Hitler and his howling tribe of Nazis?

We speculate and speculate. Next, you concentrate from 6 p.m.-11 or 12. Still not enough?

Who gave you this wonderful programme? Invented it all by your ingenious self? From 4 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. afternoon correspondence, meal, newspapers. Evening correspondence from 7 or 7.30 to 9. From 9 to 10 p.m. concentration, 10 to 12 correspondence, 12 to 2.30 bath, meal, rest, 2.30 to 5 or 6 a.m. correspondence unless I am lucky. Where is the sufficient time for concentration?

B.P. complains of aches in the whole body. Since his going is not yet settled, shall we give him pot. iod + mercury?

Use your discretion. I am thinking after a time when R has got through his present long and difficult cases outside, of asking him to take this hopeless fellow up, but it is not yet a firm decision.

Again a boil on my left cheek, good Heavens! No improvement.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "no improvement".]

As Rene's doctor says "Tut tut tut! Tut tut tut!"

Punishment for too much talking or eating or subconscious welling out?

Probably

Boil a little ripe, but still—
Hard and big as hazel-nut,
In spite of your tut, tut, tut!
Give one more dose at the least,
Or I howl on like a beast!

Tut nut tut not nut tut tut! Hope this will have the effect of a Tantric mantra which it resembles. So if you like OM ling bling hring kring! Just try repeating either of these 15000 times concentrating on your boil (bling) at the time.

"Remnants that throbbed once with sweet songs of life
Bespeak now tragic dooms and ghastly tales
Of travellers—still roam their wounded wails
Echoing in the desolate air and cliff."

This is too tragic, ghastly and romantic. It sounds like the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe.

Yes, that wonderful programme was partly my ingenious discovery and partly contribution and speculation by others. Anyway, from what you first wrote and cancelled, I find that from 8.30 a.m. to 2.30 or 3 p.m. you do your real work—for earth-consciousness.

How do you find that? After 8.30 a.m. I have nothing to do with the earth-consciousness.

Hard, throbbing, painful boil. Slight fever, headache in the morning. Hot fomentation etc. Went to the miracle doctor, 4 powders! Added to these the Force! Does it budge? The game must be over tomorrow, Sir. Otherwise I have to lie flat!

All this for a poor little boil? What would it be if you were put to roast?

By the way, what do you mean by deceiving me about E in the Hyderabad fever chart? Rene wrote that E is the entry in the "Motions" column; it evidently means enema. Poetry indeed! sunset colours indeed! Enema, sir! Motions, sir! Compared with that ling Ming is epically poetic.

[A reply to Jatin Bats letter discussed on March 19, 1936.]

I shall only comment briefly—I am obliged to be brief—on your friend Latin's experiences.

He is to be congratulated on the victory in the matter of sex—it is very important to have that when the intense definitive experiences are beginning. For if once the actual penetrative descent is felt, the less the higher consciousness is met by the sex force the better, for then a dangerous mixture may take place or else a struggle which is better avoided.

The description of the Power he feels—which is obviously the true thing—is very accurate—it is so, like rain or a fall of snow, that it often comes at first. I take it from his use of the word "around", that it is an enveloping power that he feels. It does not begin for all in the same way—some only feel it above their heads occasionally descending on them and entering.

About the contact with the world and the hostile forces, that is of course always one of the sadhak's chief difficulties, but to transform the world and the hostile powers is too big a task and the personal transformation cannot wait for it. What has to be done is to come to live in the Power that these things, these disturbing elements cannot penetrate, or, if they penetrate, cannot disturb, and to be so purified and strengthened by it that there is in oneself no response to anything hostile. If there is a protecting envelopment, an inner purifying descent and, as a result, a settling of the higher consciousness in the inner being and finally, its substitution even in the most external outwardly active parts in place of the old ignorant consciousness, then the world and the hostile forces will no longer matter—for one's own soul at least; for there is a larger work not personal in which of course they will have to be dealt with; but that need not be a main preoccupation at the present stage.

I have already answered to you about his coming for darshan in August; so I need not repeat that here.

What would it be if I were put to roast? Anilkumar is rubbing hard his formula every day saying—very difficult! Now your threat comes. If it comes to that I shall exclaim: গুরুপাদপদ্মায় নমো নমঃ¹⁸⁶

Why singular? A respected person is supposed to have more than 2 feet—witness the formula—শ্রীচরণেষু¹⁸⁷

But let me add that my roasting has already begun, not in your spiritual oven, but in the barometric oven. Dilip and myself have decided to cycle of to the Lake in the early hours of the morning. As it is not possible to get a cycle at that hour from outside, what about getting it from here?

Can't ask Benjamin for a cycle at that time. He would eat our heads off and yours too. This cyclo-mania is becoming too epidemic—we won't be able to supply at that rate.

And this time it's not a "melancholiac" that asks but a maniac, you may say!

Melancholomania.

Boil has burst today! Swelling less, pain none but still it is oozing and oozing. By tomorrow it will be over, I hope. R's treatment continues.

R has written to me insisting that you should continue the treatment for a fortnight even after the oozing is past history—so as to erect a barrier against farther boilings.

I beg your pardon, Sir! Enema didn't strike me at all. But I hope it didn't make any difference in the working of your Force unless you enematised the patient too much. It is a pleasure to learn that one can deceive the Divine, however!

If the Divine chooses to be deceived, anyone can deceive him—just as he can run away from the battle; পলায়েনমপি¹⁸⁸ You are evidently not up to the tricks of the Lila.

Have you heard anything about S of Dayalbagh?...

Certainly, I have been hearing about him or his sect for ages. He is, besides the Guru of M's family.

According to Paul Brunton's account, he is doing some genuine work. It seems S's principle is—"... I am attempting to show the world... that a man can be perfectly spiritual without running away to caves, and that he can reach the highest attainments in Yoga while carrying on with worldly avocations."¹⁸⁹ He has founded an elaborate system of factories, textiles, machines, scientific instruments, electric fans, run by his disciples.

How does he show it? The world can see his textiles and machines and electric fans, but how is it to know that his men are perfectly spiritual? "Showing the world" is a dangerous aim to start with—it ends generally in the world as it is and always was + a show.

Isn't it similar to your doctrine or to that of Karmayoga?

More like the latter much modernised. Or rather he is carrying out without knowing it the plan I had laid down for Motilal Roy...

One sees perhaps a glimpse of your future work here.

[Underlining "your future work":] Good Lord, man! don't make such dismal prophecies. As I have said, it is an American magnification of my past work, nothing to do with my future work at all.

And the Yoga they follow is the "Sound-Yoga". What is this new business again? He says, "... a current of sound was the first activity of the Supreme Being at the beginning of creation..."¹⁹⁰

Not new at all—as old as the Himalayas. You seem to be remarkably ignorant of the past history of Yoga in India. It is only a specialised statement of the general Tantric theory of the Seed Sounds. Something like my OM Tut tut tut bring kring, which you refused to try. If you had—

He says that Kabir also taught Sound-Yoga.

The basic idea is at least three thousand years older than Kabir It is simply a big name for the use of the mantra.

Anyway I am not very much interested in all this. There is something else now about which I want your opinion"... that the innermost parts of our brain centres are associated with subtle worlds of being... that the most important centre of all enables us to obtain divine consciousness of the highest order."¹⁹¹

Nothing new in that—except that it ignores the part played by the subtle body and packs all into the gross physical. But that too has been done before.

"The most important of these centres is the pineal gland... It is the seat of the spirit-entity in man."¹⁹²

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "pineal gland."]

Ancient, ancient, very ancient! The Theosophists, I believe, made a big noise about the pineal gland.

It is said that if you shoot a man through this gland, he instantaneously dies.

So he does if you shoot him in other places, the heart for instance So the spirit entity is there too?

"It is the focus of the individual spirit-entity which gives life and vitality to man's mind and body. It is when this spirit-entity recedes from the pineal gland that the conditions of dream, deep sleep or trance supervene, and when it finally leaves the gland the body falls dead."¹⁹³

Christ!! But how can it recede without leaving the gland?

"When it [the spirit-entity] leaves the pineal gland and passes upwards, its passage through the grey matter of the brain brings it into contact with the region of universal mind, and its passage through the white matter exalts its consciousness to lofty spiritual realities..."¹⁹⁴

Sounds rather stuffy, but it may be true for all I know. These theosophic and other modern attempts to square physical Science with Yoga (Yogis formerly did not bother to differentiate the spiritual functions of grey matter and white matter) make me always suspicious. It looks like manufacture of the mind, pseudo-science.

It is true however that a passage in the Upanishads is supposed to give the soul hired lodgings in the pineal gland.

You know that medical men are still hazy about the definite functions of this gland. Some consider it a useless piece of matter like the appendix; others attribute vague functions to it. But according to Yoga, it seems to be a very important organ. What's your idea?

I have no idea. Never bothered about the pineal gland. In fact my spirit entity "receded from" it and even "finally left" it long ago without my dying—at least I seem to myself to be alive still.

You will add sarcastically: "There are many more things in heaven and earth etc. than in your medical Science!" Do tell us about a few of them.

I absolutely refuse.

The Kundalini business also seems a mystery to me. I read somewhere that the soul sojourns in the brain! Heard of it?

Now for the first time. Did hear that it might be somewhere up there in a thing called a chakra or lotus.

Is this spirit-entity the same as the soul, residing in the pineal gland?

Maybe. But the soul is also supposed to be somewhere in or behind the heart, i.e. cardiac centre. But perhaps that is only the soul-entity and not the spirit-entity? God knows—and perhaps S also. I don't.

Allow me to state my difficulty. How the devil can a spirit-entity be enclosed in a material gland? So far as I know the self or spirit is not enclosed in the body, rather the body is in the self. When we have the full experience of the self, we feel it as a wide consciousness in which the body is a very small thing, an adjunct or a thing contained, not a container. What then is this spirit-entity? There can be a small formation which stands for the self or spirit, like the Upanishads' Purusha no bigger than a man's thumb. Is this the spirit-entity? But even then in what sense, in what relativity of space can it be said to be in the very material pineal gland? A spirit confined in a gland and dislodged from it by a pistol shot is a kind of language which I buck at. A spirit touching grey brain matter and so entering into contact with universal mind and touching white matter and so entering into contact with loftier spiritual realities is also too weird a conception for my intelligence. What happens to it when it has no matter to touch? Dissolution? laya?

When we speak of the Purusha in the head, heart etc., we are using a figure. The Muladhara from which the Kundalini rises is not in the physical body, but in the subtle body—(the subtle body is that in which the being goes out in deep trance or more radically, at the time of death); so also are all the centres. But as the subtle body penetrates and is interfused with the gross body, there is a certain correspondence between these chakras and certain centres in the physical proper. So figuratively we speak of the Purusha in this or that centre of the body. Owing to this correspondence, again, when the Ananda or anything else comes down into the being, it is the subtle body that it pervades, but it communicates itself through it to the gross body and its consciousness, so that it is felt as if pervading the body. But all that is very different from saying that the spirit is lodged in a gland. The gross body is an engine, a means of communication and action of the spirit upon the world and it is only a small part of the instrumentation. It is absurd to make so much of it as all that. It is a sort of false materialism intended to placate minds that have a scanty knowledge of science. But what is the use of that? Everybody now knows that science is not a statement of the truth of things, but only a language expressing a certain experience of object§, their structure, their mathematics, a co-ordinated and utilisable impression of their processes—it is nothing more. Matter itself is something (a formation of energy perhaps?) of which we know superficially the structure as it appears to our mind and senses and to certain examining instruments (about which it is now suspected that they largely determine their own results, Nature adapting its replies to the instrument used), but more than that no scientist knows nor can know. If the Radhaswami affirmations are meant to be another kind of language expressing certain psycho-physical experiences, I have no objection. But why all this pineal glandism and talk about entities and bullets?

N.B. If I say the Purusha is in the heart, do I mean it is there in the physical heart, tumbling about in the flow of the blood or stuck in the valves or the muscular portions and when a bullet lodges in the heart it jumps up with an Ooah! and tumbles down dead or goes off skating and swimming into some grey or white matter worlds beyond? Certainly not. I am using a. significant language which expresses certain relations between the psychic consciousness and the physical of which we become aware by Yoga.

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

What? which? where? how? What disease? what medicine wanted?

Amrita says no water should drain into the street except rain water. But we have to wash frequently the Dispensary courtyard as it's too hot. What's the solution of the impasse?

If it is for coolness, sprinkling ought to be sufficient. Why Noah flood in a dispensary courtyard merely for antidoting heat?

By "my big photo" I meant your photo, which would be drawn by Sanjiban.

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

You see the photo is being eaten up by insects, so it has to be tightened and papered, I suppose. I should have written Biren's treatment, but since Sanjiban has drawn it, I thought it was his case. So all interrogations answered, permission granted?

Yes.

Why did you stop your treatment—or rather R's?

Did you really want me to chant the mantra? I took it as a big piece of a hearty joke. Who knew that so much Biblical significance and value were hiding behind this simple mantra?...

You couldn't realise that Tut Tut Tut was a serious mantra with immense possibilities? Why, it is the modern form of तत्¹⁹⁵ and everybody knows that a ऊँ¹⁹⁶ is a mantra of great power. Only you should as a penance for not having accepted at once do it, not 15,000, but 150,000 times a day—at a gallop, e.g. OM Tut a Tut, TUT a TUT, TUT a TUT and so on at an increasing pace and pitch till you reach either Berhampur¹⁹⁷ or Nirvana.

I am not only ignorant about all things spiritual, Atma, Yog-biyog etc., but they are as nauseating to me as quinine which I had to gulp in childhood. And see the trick of Fate, it is such things now that I am called upon to do.

You are justly punished—but what is Yog-biyog? I thought that had to do with mathematics, not spiritual philosophy.

Is it for nothing that I see the Red Light burning in the subtle worlds, as the outcome of my misadventure?

Take courage. Say Tut tut tut to the misadventure and go ahead.

I stopped R's treatment because the boil has boiled down. Now he wants to protect me against "farther boilings" of which I am rather doubtful. Still I will surrender myself to him.

Could try at any rate,—as these things are always coming back.

But then I am afraid because I hear he has been rather too free with his hands and mouth of late!

Are you referring to the baptism of S? What has that to do with treatment?

I have resumed R's treatment. Yes, I meant "S's baptism" by R as well as his hooliganism on the rickshaw-wala. Why, surely you have heard of it? No connection with the treatment? What connection was there between R and the rick shaw-wala? but the incident occurred!

Well, as for S the surprising thing is that nobody baptised him before. R says, I hear, that he jumped on the ricksha-wala in order to save N from battle, murder and sudden death, and N ungratefully misreported the whole affair!! But R has always been a violent man with much of the character of the adventurer as I wrote to you once,—so the things you write don't surprise me. However, he has not (yet, at least) beaten David's¹⁹⁸ mother or baptised the Vice President's wife or even Amaladasan. So I hope that a certain amount of non-connection can be expected when he is treating a case.

Since we are talking about R, let me relate another incident. S had borrowed my copy of Anami and then came and avowed that R had taken it from him and never returned it. When asked, R flatly denied. He also took S's Chambers's dictionary. I myself have seen that it is S's for he had underlined many words in it, as is his practice. I am really amazed!

What is there amazing? My experience is that in India more people than not keep the books of others and feel under no obligation to return them.

But could it be that S himself presented it to R and at the last moment drew back due to some hitch? But S is not the man to present anybody with anything. A riddle, Sir!

Quite possible. S is capable of anything, so is R. The difference in that respect between them is that R has a good side to him and that he is conscious of the large share in himself of what he calls "the pig and tiger instincts".

By the way, what does your newspaper say about Abyssinia? It seems to be sinking into the abyss. Another black country swallowed by the whites? Prayers, entreaties to God, of no avail! The devils are too strong for God? What?

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

You will perhaps say that justice and retribution will come in time.

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

S the head mason is having a headache and vomiting for the last two years. Seems to be due to dietetic indiscretion, but queer that it persists so long...

Probably persistence due to want of dieting. But impossible to diet a Tamilian—too many spices and things.

If you advise any treatment here, we can try to cure his constipation by a mild laxative, and liver by. Lithinée.

Lithinée probably too mild for such a case. Are there no specific medicines from France with Pavitra—you might ask him.

[In the medical note-book:]

Sir, couldn't finish what I began with your other book, so kept it. Will see tonight if Time and the Gods are favourable. Pray to them meanwhile.

What, Sir? Mistake? Where is my medical report book? I suppose and conclude from the unfinished nature of the writing¹⁹⁹ that you wanted to detain this book and send back the other one. Right?

Kept the wrong book. (Reminds me of the Sultan of Johore who when the Englishmen on board his ship were inveighing in fury against the murder of Sir Curzon Wylie by an Indian, wanted to sympathise and moaned out "Very bad! very bad! shot the wrong man!")

The trouble is that I can't tell J all that I think of her poetry, so I keep silent, whereas she goes on with her flourishes.

Well, let her flourish while you maintain a wise silence!

Jatin Bal has sent two photos of his wife. She seems to have a calm, cool and comely face, along with a simplicity in bearing.

It is rather gentle and simple than calm; but not strong. Can't say anything more at present.

Venkatraman's temperature is 102˚. He feels "wretched". I've prescribed some fever mixture.

If the fever continues, I suppose there must be mixture

He's begging for the Mother's Mercy, Compassion, Grace, Force, etc., etc. Is it coming?

Is he receiving it?

A simple pharyngitis running its course of 4-5 days.

Venkatraman's illness is that? However simple not surprising he should be wretched.

Then the Force is playing the same part as the medicines—if at all, Sir, I am thinking.

Think on! think hard! Think, brothers, think!

Mulshankar is having headache, pain as if his left eye were coming out, strong constipation,—when headache, then inability to eat or drink water without vomiting. I have told him to go to you. You know it is extremely important to prevent constipation and a watch must be kept on that head of his. Needn't tell him anything except to come to you at once if there are these things.

Venkatraman had an experience of "something solid being pushed in him, at pranam". Now, that's something. I wonder why the Mother didn't do the same before.

I wonder why he didn't receive it before.

Why, Sir, seems you don't read the reports well? I told you his was a congested throat—that means tonsils, pharynx—everything. And when I said pharyngitis—you asked whether his illness was that.

Then why do you say a simple pharyngitis when it is "everything' under the sun?

Feeling a bit worried, Sir, about H. He is absolutely stationary! Fault of the medicine or the instrument? He also doesn't receive the Force?

Never did except by an occasional accident of which he immediately repents.

Noni came today for ringworm and incidentally showed sores on the soles. He said he was under R's treatment—the sores were getting better when R stopped treatment. When they became worse, Noni approached R who refused further treatment as he had "written to Mother" about his cure.

My information is Noni was cured first time, but there was a relapse which was treated—I don't remember with what result. Have heard nothing about it afterwards.

Noni asked, "Shall I write again?" to which R said, "No, I have no time." So he has come to the non-miracle doctor! But why no time, please?

Can't say—it is true he has been vet), much occupied recently.

By Jove, what a fright you gave me, Sir, about Mulshankar! He told me that this business [headache, constipation, etc.] has been his companion for about 14 years. It's neither worse now nor less severe. All the same his accident makes it more important... I have emphasised on this constipation to be relieved as soon as it pokes its belly up!

All right.

But queer to think that the fellow discussed the matter with V (specialist in constipation), while I was sitting just there. Not a word to me! Funny, strange, curious!

Especially as I have told him that V "talks foolishly" and asked him not to listen to him.

Noni came to enquire if I had told you anything! Can he go to R? Wouldn't it be better since he cured him once?

If R is willing to take him up.

How is it that my patients go on lingering and lingering even with a trifling thing? Some don't receive Force, others repent it, others receiving have no effect, etc., etc., and I have to quarrel with you for a dose? Whereas R has it in a flood simply for the asking or even without. R cures cancer in 10 days, goitre in 2 weeks and diabetes in 7 days.

Hallo! 10 days?

Which was the diabetes case? I have forgotten.

Immense energy, enthusiasm, vital force, 100 miles an hour determination to succeed and a 2000 horse power confidence, "I will do it"—vital absolutely convinced of the Force, mind constantly finding reasons for belief in it (not as you and others do equally or more, admitting reasons against); rapid intuitions getting there in spite of any errors of speculation, decision of mind and will accompanied by a mobile and plastic observing mind suiting itself to the circumstances and then overcoming them—that's the secret of a powerful instrumentalism—at least in a rajasic man. A sattwic fellow would do it also but on other lines. You—ahem!

Doctor in the same boat as the patients? When will you put me on the "Queen Mary"?

When will you walk in? Very dawdling and deliberate gait, sir!

The qualities you enumerate of the rajasic man's instrumentalism are more inborn than acquired, it seems to me.

Obviously.

I doubt whether they can be acquired to the same extent except by Yoga.

If they are acquired to a sufficient extent, that is enough.

Even if acquired by Yoga, won't there be a difference between the instrumentalism of the one born with them and the other who has acquired them?

There may be a difference, but this ip after all not a competitive examination. If one can be a good and strong instrument, that is enough.

These qualities seem very well on a piece of paper, but not so easy to get in practical life.

They are not easy for those who have not got them; quite easy for those who have.

For instance, the intuition you speak of, is a deuced difficult thing to make out, and in the field of application all mobilily, plasticity, observation play false, or make a mess unless one knows the business very well.

Naturally one must know the business. But there is an enormous difference between a man who knows his business and has confidence and intuition and one who knows his business but has not. I have known doctors with an excellent knowledge of medicine who succeeded much less than others who had far less but had dash, decision and drive.

At times I try to analyse myself to find out my defect—lack of adequate knowledge? Lack of experience? Lack of confidence?

Even if you had knowledge and experience, you would still hesitate. There would be always an "after all", "is it this or that?", "I may be off the mark", "Is it this, is it that?" etc.

I blame the first two, but you seem to think they are secondary, and confidence is the essential requisite. Suppose I am given a case whose exact nature I don't know, and without knowing it I can't cure. How will my self-confidence help in such a case?

The self-confident doctor decides as best he can and acts—if he finds he is making fausse route, he retraces his steps and corrects. He develops in himself the coup d'oeil which does not depend only on reasoning and finally manages to be right in the majority of cases. You may say that he may kill his patients when he is wrong. But so does the hesitant doctor by his hesitation—e.g. by not taking a step which is urgently required.

All this is of course, general. I am not asking you to imitate the quick step people—because without their confidence and savoir faire you would only bungle it. স্বধর্ম্মে নিধনং শ্রেয়ঃ (of the patient, of course), পরধর্ম্মো ভয়াবহঃ²⁰⁰

I had hoped that the Force would drop in one day and dynamise the being. That illusion has gone. Now I find that I shall have to work for it slowly, slowly, bit by bit till one day, one year, one decade my labour culminates in what I hope for now. That is how, I suppose, the faith in the Force, higher Shakti, etc. fulfil themselves.

"One century, one millennium"—be complete please in your enumeration.

That is just it. It is the "slowly slowly" mind and "let us consider all the facts and reason the whole thing and its possibilities and impossibilities" mind, that stands in your way.

You have said, "A sattwic fellow would do it also, but on other lines." Will you tell us how?

I would prefer to wait till I have the said sattwic man in my hand. The sattwic man would have less vital rush, more balance, harmony, even working out of the Force—He might do less surprising things or rather give them a less surprising appearance, but possibly he would be more quietly sure.

You have said to J that my natural bent is pessimistic. But why then is there such an ambition, aspiration, desire to be pure and perfect in life as well as in literature? What a paradox!

It is two different portions of your being—One wants to climb mountains, the other which stands at the foot or is climbing or rather being haled up the first steps of ascent, pulls back, groans, grunts, growls, wails and cries "That? all that height? Tchah! pooh! I'll never be able to negotiate one ten thousandth part of that! Let me sit down and lament."

Took H to hospital. Oculist says atropine not necessary.

His eyes seem to be worse rather than better.

What about asking R to take up B.P.'s trachoma case, if he is free now?

I would rather not for the moment. R has Ambu on his hands, two heavy baggages still in the town and other lighter items.

By Jove, that handwriting of yours is a brilliantly unique specimen! So I have to send back the note-book! Well, but what's the cure? That impossible mantra [10.4.36] which you gave me, I am trying by fits and starts!

Good Lord! What mantra? OM Tut a tut to to towhit tuwhoo? Man! But it is to be recited only when you are taking tea in the company of four Brahmins pure of all sex ideas and 5 ft. 7 inches tall, with a stomach in proportion. Otherwise it can't be effective.

Waiting patiently for the blue moon, should I all the while cry out "damn it, damn it!"?

But that's another mantra. One for which the blue moon has a special dislike.

I have checked one wave so far. Any more coming on the top of it?

Wave of what? Wave of genius? wave of poetry? Wave of the blues? For heaven's sake write comprehensibly!

Is it really an illusion I am cherishing that the Force will one day galvanise the consciousness? Is it a vain hope? But that's how I console myself and find relief at present—never mind if I can't do this or that, feel sleepy, vital is too lazy: let me slide on some day, some day... What do you say about this "some day"? But I suppose this attitude takes time to be fulfilled...

Well, it is an admirable exercise in faith! As for results, some day, one day, many days, no day—why bother? মা ফলেষু কদাচন²⁰¹

[In the medical note-book:]

Please ask Mother to give blessings to this hopeless self

Vin. Ashirv. — m. VII.
Recept. Chlor. — gr. XXV
Aqua jollity — ad lib.
Tinc. Faith — m. XV
Syr. Opt. — Zss.

12 doses every hour.

AUROBINDO²⁰²
April 23, 1936

What is the second item in your prescription, Sir? Too Latinic for my poor knowledge.

Chlorate of Receptivity.

And I would put Aqua at the end to make it an absolutely pucca academical prescription.

Yes, but I thought of the two last ingredients afterwards

And 12 doses every hour—these tinctures and vinums?

12 doses—every hour (one each hour). Plagiarised from your language, sir.

And where is the cost to be supplied from?

Gratis—for the poor.

I have composed a sort of a poem:

"Once swayed unmeasured insolent hopes in my breast:
Melting like snows heaped upon Himalaya-crest
Songs of my glory would o'erflow land and sea
In tempestuous floods bursting the limits of Eternity..."

Too grandiloquent?

Yes. But, man alive, what is the metre? It seems to be neither pentametric fish, nor lyrical red herring. I have turned it into Alexandrines.

"Once swayed an insolent hope unmeasured in my breast:
That like bright snows high-heaped upon Himalay's crest
Songs of my glory overflowing land and sea
Would break in deathless floods through long Eternity."

In one of your letters you spoke of fictitious stresses. What is meant by them?

I meant simply stresses which are conventionally supposed to be there for the sake of the metre.

Can you not illustrate them in a poem? I am enclosing a carte blanche for the purpose.

What are you dreaming of, sir? A poem as an illustration of my bit of prosodic grammar? Inspiration would run away to Pelion and never return if I did such a shocking thing.

I am keeping your carte blanche but the odds are that it may be fitted to quite another purpose.

R. Reddy has fever and headache. Advised eau de cologne on the forehead. As soon as he had applied it, his eyelids swelled so much that the eyes closed. The nose began to water and rapid breathing started—almost an asthmatic attack. At 4.30 p.m. it came down.

Will not eau sédative (it has comphor) be suitable and replace these other things for the head? Eau de Cologne can easily upset one who is quite unaccustomed to alcoholic treatment.

What are the odds of the poem?
Stuck up in the clods of correspondence?

What poem?

Again "What poem?" strange, strange, very strange! Didn't you receive a carte blanche from me day before yesterday? Perhaps you will ask "What carte blanche?" and I will utter—"Oh Fate! If guru is so forgetful, the shishya can be worse."

And didn't I tell you that it was an extravagant and unwarrantable idea to demand a poem for such a grammatical purpose and I kept the carte blanche that I might use it for other purposes? What's this shishya who doesn't read his guru's objurgations however illegible?!

Somebody writing the biography of Confucius in Bengali says: "Why do the Dharmagurus marry, we can't understand. Buddha did and his wife's tale is হৃদয় বিদারক...²⁰³

Why? What is there বিদারক in it?

He goes on: "Sri Aurobindo, though not Dharmaguru, has done it too, and can be called ধর্ম্ম পাগল²⁰⁴ Well, Sir?

Well, it is better to be ধর্ম্ম পাগল than to be a sententious ass and pronounce on what one does not understand.

"We feel so sad about his wife, so too about the wife of Confucius."

Poor sorrowful fellows!

"It is the same about কং.²⁰⁵ He had even a son and two daughters.

[Sri Aurobindo put a? above "কং".]

Who is this gentleman? Is it Wrong? Or is it Kong, by any chance?

"So we don't understand why they marry and why this change comes soon after marriage."

Perfectly natural—they marry before the change—then the change comes and the marriage belongs to the past self, not to the new one.

"The wives of Buddha and Ramakrishna felt proud when they were deserted."

Then what's the harm?

"If married life is an obstacle to spirituality, then they might as well not marry."

No doubt. But then when they marry, there is not an omniscient ass like this biographer to tell them that they were going to be ধর্ম্মগুরু or ধর্ম্মপাগল or in any way concerned with any other ধর্ম্ম than the biographer's.

So according to this biographer, all of you, except Christ, showed a lack of wisdom by marrying!

Well, if a biographer of Confucius can be such an unmitigated ass, Confucius may be allowed to be unwise once or twice, I suppose.

I touch upon a delicate subject, but it is a puzzle.

Why delicate? and why a puzzle? Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or myself were born with a prevision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life—when the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it—nothing puzzling in that.

B finds that the power of his glasses has to be increased. Shall I take him to the hospital? He will bear the cost of the glasses. But the power will go on increasing steadily.

Yes; you can get him examined and take the expert's opinion. One can react against the necessity of increase.

What do you think of Bates' system? Shall we try it for B?

No. Bates is successful when done "under" a Bates man or with a conscientious perseverence and intelligence, but it doesn't succeed with many under other circumstances.

Manubhai has slight temperature, headache and pain in limbs. I gave him some purgative and he had 11 watery motions.

Why not enema? Purgative in fever is not always safe.

Should he go on with his work, or should he take rest?

He should rest.

It seems the Mother "rolled her eyes" at Venkataram's sea bath. But you wrote back to him, "It is too small an incident."

That is a polite way of putting it. I intimated to him that he was a silly ass to think Mother would get excited about his sea bath. But this silly assness is incorrigible in V. He is doing it all the time and weeping and raging over his imaginations.

He came and asked me what I had written to Mother about his sea bath, and what were Mother's remarks. I told him I would not say anything.

No Sadhak has a right to cross-examine the doctor about his reports to the Mother. They must be treated as confidential.

I was called in at 1 p.m. by Bala, because of severe pain in the left arm. She was crying, squeezing her arm. It is a case of neuralgia... I thought, "What will the Force do, after all? she will have to suffer..." and just read what happened! I applied Liniment chloroform locally and gave a pill of aspirin. In about 15 minutes she fell asleep—had beautiful sleep till 3 p.m., when someone woke her up; and lo! the pain had gone! What do you think?

Refuse to think—lost the habit.

Do you know what my weight is? Only 51 kg—112 lbs—8 st. I was staggered to find it so low, wondered how I was walking about!

Quite a respectable weight. I used in the nineteenth century to walk about with less than 100—found no difficulty.

Here is a letter from Mulshankar in answer to my question enumerating the troubles of his leg. What do you say to it as a doctor and especially to the behaviour of the two bones? Kindly return the document along with your remarks.

May 1936

I thought as much, Sir, that you would quote your own instance as regards the weight. Exercise, swimming in the sea to no avail!

Good Lord, man! I always thought exercise decreased the fat and gave strength and muscle. And you want to increase your fat by exercise?

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

We weep before and after.

Our sweetest hours are those we fill with saddest thought.

I thought a little good time had come a few days back, but that little streak, if it was not my imagination, has been swallowed up by dark and unending trails of clouds from which I see no escape...

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

An absolute blank, a perpetual vegetative unrest—a Nirvana!

Gracious heavens! you have reached Nirvana so easily! But how can unrest be Nirvana? Some misconception. Perhaps it is Prakritilaya²⁰⁶ you are aiming at! Perhaps you are moving towards a repetition of Jada Bharat²⁰⁷ and when you are sufficiently jada and able to enjoy it, then Nirvana and all the Knowledge will come to you.

Examined Mulshankar. Most of the trouble is in the abduction of the hip joint...

Abduction of a joint, sir? What's this flagrant immorality? What happens to the joint when it is abducted?

Soon he will be able to do the normal movements. There is benumbing of his feet as well as a tingling sensation.

And what about the two colliding bones? Part of the abduction?

However I will take him soon to Philaire.

Right. Abduct him to Philaire.

If I feel ready for the force? It is not a question of feeling now, but of forcing the Force. That apart as you said, "If you wait for things to happen, there is no reason why they should happen at all", has shattered all my imagination, illusion, fancy, speculation about the Force and the Grace.

You deal too much in paradoxes and contradictory statements, for my little brain to understand. You say, "within there is a soul and above there is Grace." Is it not contrary to the foregoing one?

I don't see how it is contrary. Naturally the soul and the Grace are the two ends, but that does not mean that there is to be nothing between. You seem to have interpreted the sentence "There is a dawdling soul within and a sleeping Grace above. When the Grace awakes, the soul will no more dawdle, because it will be abducted." Of course, it can happen like that, but, as I put it, there is no reason why it should. Generally-the soul wakes up, rubs its eyes and says "Hallo, where's that Grace?" and begins fumbling around for it and pulling at things in the hope that Grace is at the other end of the said things. Finally it pulls at something by accident and the Grace comes toppling down full tilt from God knows where. That's the usual style—but there are others.

However, I will try something tonight and listen with rapt attention to the silent steps of your Force coming, but we find you have put "all Force available at Dilipda's disposal"!

Perhaps I meant all force available for Dilip!

I know exercise reduces the fat, but combined with butter and cream, it increases, I think. And that is what I am doing now, at Dilipda's. Any objection to gratis supply of butter and cream?

I suppose not, so long as you do not constitute a Municipal Corporation.

Complaint against the Asram doctor from the D.R. servers. "Often after we have served his dish, he would send a note saying 'My meals, please!' or a verbal message through any sadhak he might come across...²⁰⁸ Carrier bearers²⁰⁹ have to inform Dayabhai that the tiffin-box in question has to be brought back" etc., etc.

It is suggested that the said Doctor can have his food all the three times in the day in a tiffm-box if he so desires.

Doctor! doctor!

If you are so irregular and offhand how can you expect patients in the hospital to submit to have their bad eyes cut out instead of their good kidneys?

I admit that their complaint is partly true! I explained the situation to Jiban this morning. So if you have no objection I can have the meals sent home. Or if you want, I shall.have all the meals strictly in D.R.

It is not possible for them to send in the cart, because there is no room there. You will either have to send the servant or adopt the coming to the D.R.

Very strange, Sir, to connect this affair with my luck in hospital! I don't see the logic at all, unless you are trying to harass me as advocates do in courts!

It is a matter of the forces of Karma. If you are loose and irregular, then things and patients will be the same with you. Don't you know that all "bad luck", as you call it, is due to Karma?

Last night I tried to compose a poem. It was a failure, I fell asleep over its first two lines!

You call it a failure—when you have discovered a new soporific.

Couldn't touch K without making her burst into tears. These ladies think what heartless brutes, animals, these doctors are!

Much safer than if they think "What dears these doctors are, darlings, angels!"

Today D and I had a discussion on women. D said that by nature Indian women are very attached and devoted.

By habit and education, not by nature, except with a minority.

Whereas men, by nature, are quite the opposite.

What rash generalisations!

Look at K. How much the poor lady suffers for her attachment to her husband. But no way out.

For her sex-hysteria, sir! Note that when she is not suffering, as you say, she is offered the chance to go with him and she shouts quite as much as under the doctor's touch "I don't want! What do you mean? I never asked to go."

Why is there this difference between man and woman? Why is man made more polygamous? why do his attachment, love, desire, fleet from one object to another, whereas woman's nature is more one-pointed, devoted to one?

To one at a time perhaps, at least with the majority. There are plenty who are polyandrous by nature.

Why are we made up of so many contradictory elements: one aspect has aspiration towards Him, religion, morality, aesthetic qualities; the other, a tremendous pull towards baser elements, especially sex?

It takes many ingredients to make a nice pudding.

Is it that the path to the Divine can't be made easy on account of the danger of a democratic aspiration which will thunder at God in his own citadel?

Perhaps it is to prevent the world from coming to a sudden end by a universal rush into beatitude.

Or is it for the preservation of the species?

The sex started as a preservation of species. Man has made a hotch potch of what was in its origin simple in motive

The surgeon Philaire advises sea-bath for Mulshankar but no swimming. All violent stretching must be avoided.

He can have sea-bath provided (1) he does not go alone, (2) does not swim, (3) does not go out far.

As for Mulshankar's sea-bath, the first condition is difficult to satisfy.

Dasaratha offers to accompany him. Impress upon D that he must not let M swim or go out too far.

Yesterday you said that Sarala agreed to go to the Hospital, but she resented it very much and wrote to the Mother about it. You had better take her to the Ost. (house).

B.P.'s right eye seems to be on the way to keratitis. I understand that his well water is very dirty. It is not good for his eyes...

[No reply.]

By the way, about his well, Mother had given the order to clean it some weeks ago. Has it not been done?

The condition of his left eye is not worse.

If your oculist could master the left eye, why on earth is he helpless with the right one? Keratitis + conjunctivitis not curable?

I asked Amrita about the well and Chandulal was also present. They say it has not been done as far as they know.

And it was Amrita who was told to do it! Anyhow it has to be done.

In B.P.'s case, keratitis and conjunctivitis are curable, though not all cases of keratitis.

I am thinking of handing the gentleman over to R. I did not want to do it while R was busy with several incurable cases (one including a doomed T.B., another equally hopeless of something else; both declared incurable by doctors of Europe and India after an expenditure of 30,000 Rs). But after a fierce struggle, there has been a sweeping triumph in all cases, the "hat-trick" as R terms it, care being only needed to keep the conquest. So that objection no longer exists. What do you say?

An excellent opportunity seems to have come for an amicable settlement with D over J's novel-tangle. Shall we take advantage of it? But we are dealing with gunpowder, so it is better to consult you.

Well, Abyssinia is blown up. So why not an Asram?

What about Nishikanta's vision-poem? Lost in the subconscient? and his book of poems?

To be fished out.

I think we can sue you in the Supramental Court of Justice for this flagrant neglect!

No jurisdiction.

When will you send the poem with the explanation of the vision?

Shall send back the poem. Vision doubtful (I mean the explanation of it accompanying the poem).

Fact is, I am trying to get some damned thing done—have a chance of success if I keep at it—so can't afford to turn aside to anything else. Just check off in a hurry the daily things, but as for arrears!

What do I say about B.P.? What else can I say but thoroughly agree with you, second you and third you?

Very good. Send him to R. I should like you also to give the history of the case to R. I think B.P. will be more easily interrogated if that is done.

But will he take the whole responsibility or divide it?

No division possible with R. His treatment is an indivisible Brahman, however many the aspects. In his latest cases there was a mass of simultaneous illnesses in each body, but he took them all in his sweep.

R.B.'s pain in the abdomen is less. I hear her eyes are "watering"! Advised to join work instead of lying in bed.

Good. The woman is extremely lazy, and physical immobility will not improve her health.

Another song-poem by J. This again, D finds good, but he says it lacks "distinctiveness". I can't really understand what he means by it. Do you? If you do, will you explain?

Don't know quite. I believe I wrote to him on J's last poem that some of the lines seemed less distinctive than others which seemed to me to be very good. I meant they were ordinary lines without character which anybody could write. Perhaps he means that. In this poem, it seems to me the first stanza is very good, the second is—well "less distinctive". I suppose D's point is that J's expression of her poetic ideas is still somewhat derivative, there is not that personal stamp which goes with a matured and deVeloped poetic individuality or one that is, even if immature, yet itself from the first. But this is for your information, need not discourage J by communicating it.

By the way, what are R's stakes regarding B.P.? I knew he must have gone at us, allopaths. But how does he view it?

His views are rather ominous and menacing.

He has grumbled about the mercury (and bismuth?) and says he has to antidote the former. He wants to diagnose everything as the result of hereditary results of gonorrhea (his pet disease,) not syphilis contracted personally, alleging all sorts of reasons such as B.P.'s confirmed aneurism etc. However it is the cure that is important, not the diagnosis. He is not positive about success as he was in all his other (outside) cases; wants to have B.P. in the next room to him under night and day observation etc.—thinks that if certain things happen he may pop off at any moment, so wants to be prepared for all emergencies.

J has written a poem in laghu guru²¹⁰ about whose rhythm there is some doubt. I place before you the scansion as I understand it, for your opinion. The words and substance seem very beautiful; if the rhythm were so, it would make a lovely and "distinctive poem", I think. So?

I am unable to pronounce on such a matter—I do not really know what is or is not permissible in Bengali laghu guru. To an uninstructed mind your observations seem to be just.

So R throws overboard all medical science by refusing to recognise the validity of blood-tests in syphilis etc.?

He claims to have a homeopathic science of his own!

Heredity main factor? and the history of a contraction, chancre, + + blood reaction, all to waste-paper basket? And yet if he cures him, I am to believe in the paramount efficacy of his homeopathic medicines?

Not asked to believe. Provided they are effective, and in all these other bad cases they have been, it is all right. R affirmed gonorrhoeic origin there also, but he cured the cases all right, which shows that either his diagnoses were right or, in spite of wrong diagnoses, he can cure incurable cases. I don't see how logically one can escape from this horned dilemma! Anyhow his medicines do have a powerful and very often immediate effect, that I have seen hundreds of times. Scientifically they ought not to, but they have. Curiously enough, in Europe, for certain diseases now even many of the allopaths are beginning to prefer homeopathic method and medicine.

However, I won't quarrel. But how do you segregate the fellow in that house? not necessary, it not being syphilis?

I don't know. Mother is not in favour of it, but R insists that his day and night under observation is necessary! However, we shall probably refuse the continuation.

By the way, the dilemma you speak of can be solved in one way: his diagnosis is not always infallible, but he cures cases and his medicines are effective because homeopaths go more by symptoms, diagnosis occupying a minor place.

That only amounts to one horn of the dilemma—viz. that he can cure "incurable" cases even on a wrong diagnosis. We get no farther.

That's why I rely too little on his diagnosis. But as you say, his medicines are very effective. I am watching with great interest and a little anxiety too, how successful he will prove himself in these special cases.

We don't feel that B.P.'s eye disease has nothing or little to do with his syphilis, we think it is a direct result of it and what is behind is much more serious than what appears on the surface. Mother found no improvement by the oculist's treatment. On the contrary she was telling me recently almost every second day that B.P. seemed to be in a horrible condition and getting worse and for some time she had an impression of approaching danger. It was why I handed over the case to R—with some reluctance—although I had promised him a rest after his big cases were over. We said nothing to R except that it was a syphilis case and he could get all the facts from you. But his immediate conclusion was the same, that it was a more horrible condition and was becoming dangerous. He is especially afraid of the danger of inflammation going up into the brain—he said it was travelling in that direction—and in that case he said the man may go off in 5 minutes. I knew that syphilis cases often end suddenly in that way, but did not think it could happen with gonorrhea—as he says he thinks it is in origin gonorrhoeic. He says it doesn't usually, but under certain circumstances it may develop consequences that lead to that. He refused to promise a cure as he did at once in the tuberculosis and other cases even when they were at their worst. Today he has ordered B.P. to bed, made a temporary installation for himself there and wants to fight the case with what he calls vital medicines. I have seen that these sometimes sweep the body free of virulent disease in 24 hours or perhaps 3 days in a breath-taking manner. But here he was not at all sure of the result—there has been an amelioration decided but not decisive. We have to wait.

All this quite confidential. As for eye medicines he has them; his other cases had some of them eye affections as a result of the general illness, but he used, I think, only mild medicines there as they were quite effective.

It seemed to me at Pranam that Mother doesn't like me poking my nose into B.P.'s affair after the case has been handed over to R. If so, after these points you have raised, I will stop.

I did not mention what you wrote on this point to the Mother as there was no time in the morning—everything being in a hurry—so your "seemed to me" was an error. I was only putting R's point of view and stating the Mother's impression about B.P.'s condition—Naturally so long as R is in charge, he must be left to his own methods.

... The day I sent him of to R, he was better, he said—the right eye decidedly so. His condition was bad enough, but I didn't take it as worse than N.P.'s iritis.

To me he was lamenting to the contrary. But it is not on that that Mother based her observation. His letters are in Hindi and I do not translate them to her.

As it was, I didn't really look at it as a "horrible condition and getting worse", because it was keratitis.

It seemed so to the Mother, not eyes only but his whole disintegrated condition.

I don't agree with R that B.P.'s eye-condition was going up to the brain—no such case has been heard of where the condition has travelled from the eye to the brain.

He was not speaking of the eyes' condition going up to the 'brain, but of the inflammation which he said was moving upward.

What can at worst happen is iritis or iridocyclitis, resulting in blindness of one or both the eyes. But I don't know that it results in brain complications and death in 5 minutes! I guess from the nature of the severe pain in the head and over the eyes, that iritis, iridocyclitis or even glaucoma may have set in and R is taking this for the beginning of brain complication. Syphilitic cases do end suddenly, but that is due to systemic involvement, not as a result of eye complication. Gonorrhoea almost never.

R says that they are cases of hereditary gonorrhoeic complaints not manifesting in the ordinary way which can develop under certain conditions of which he spoke as complications leading to death in this way and he says there have been many cases. Gonorrhoea by itself is obnoxious but not dangerous. That is his theory which he asserts to be founded on his experience.

I can send you the whole book on eye diseases. You will nowhere find a single instance where brain complication has set in due to eye trouble. I am absolutely positive about his not dying.

The difference lies in this that R did not take it as a case of ordinary eye trouble, but believed there was an infection of the system which could manifest at different points.

But loss of sight will be a consequence, if he doesn't improve.

There R agrees.

I hear there is slight improvement. So far so good.

All that however is by the way—not much use, either, I suppose.

By the way, when Mother made all these observations about B.P., why didn't you tell us, so that we could be more careful?

When Mother has handed over the case to a doctor (not of the Asram), she never interferes, so long as it is in his charge. It would be ridiculous to do so. She can have no control or influence or weight with him. He is bound by his science and his ideas of treatment, and could not possibly understand much less appreciate her point of view.

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

I have had several letters from him.

He wants to know many things:

1) Descent of the Supra. M. Tail—on the slightest news of which he will give a gorilla jump to Pondy to set his nerves right! Is the Tail in view?

Of course. Coming down as fast as you fellows will allow.

2) He wants your remarks on him which will prove "precious"!

Tell him I have grown chary of remarks. remarks frighten the Sm. T.

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

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

Lastly, will Mother give him a flower tomorrow, through Nolini?

You can make a petition to Nolini to get the flower.

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

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

R.B. is still constipated. Had a whole ounce of castor-oil, with no result... Too much medication? No help, as she is crying and cursing me!

Rather a lot—esp. if purgatives are ineffective. But—

Mahendranath telegraphed about his mother—appendix affected fall—couldn't understand, asked for exact nature of illness, got this telegram in reply. Kindly perorate.

I don't really understand these paternal and filial loves. M-lal—a fellow who has been here for 7 or 8 years and doing Yoga, runs after such a thing as a paternal tail!

He says he has been attached to the paternal tail ever since he came here and he felt quite outraged when Mother hinted rather sharply that it was absurd to run after it.

K-lal, after 3 years stay, goes out for the marriage of a niece. Ridiculous! Absolutely unthinkable! Who are these paters and maters and what's their place in your Yoga of surrender?

Quite agree with you. Hear! hear!

I think we have to look for the seat of the trouble somewhere else. Either your Yoga is extremely difficult or a sort of resistance manifests itself in this ridiculous way. A pressure which they are unable to bear compels them to escape it by running away to stroke somebody's tail. Isn't that so?

If it is so, why should they want to come back to the pressure? They are very careful about that. "Must have an assurance that all my work will be given back to me when I return."— (M-Ial). "Want support while I am here. Will be back in June. (i.e. don't let any idea get into you that you have seen the last of me)." K—So on and so on.

In my idea it is simply the subconscient and sheepishness. Sheep always do what one sheep has started. K-lal started father business (it was not merely marriage) immediately 5 others sent in filial applications one after another. Subconscient in the sense that primal instincts and irrational difficulties or habitual ones are surging up, surging up, surging up.

Since you have to deal with general nature in this collective Yoga, one's difficulty is thrown on the other—one is dragged behind by another.

To some extent, it may be so—but the root difficulty is not there.

I can call these departures failures and nothing else.

Can't pronounce. Failure is only when they go off for good

It is, as I say, an escape from the atmosphere of pressure! Are you beginning to kick? But how long will you go on doing so, Sir?

No need to go on—The sheep movement is stopped so far as fathers are concerned. Two half-kicks and one whole one were sufficient.

I sometimes wonder if anyone here is attaining anything at all ; has anybody realised the Divine? Please don't ask me what I mean by the Divine. It is difficult to explain these things.

Why shouldn't I ask? If you mean the Vedantic realisation, several have had it. Bhakti realisation also. If I were to publish the letters on sadhana experiences that have come to me, people would marvel and think that the Asram was packed full of great Yogis! Those who know something about Yoga would not mind about the dark periods, eclipses, hostile attacks, despairings, falls, for they know that these things happen to Yogis. Even the failures would have become Gurus, if I had allowed it, with circles of Shishyas! B did become one. Z of course. But all that does not count here, because what is a full realisation outside, is here only a faint beginning of siddhi. Here the test is transformation of the nature, psychic, spiritual, finally supramental. That and nothing else is what makes it so difficult.

X was lamenting that he has been 8 years here, yet no peace, at times only joy and that also joy of literary creation. These are his words: "But I haven't come here for that—it was available to me outside, plenty of it. If I complain, Sri Aurobindo says, 'Write, write, write'. But, merciful heavens! What do I profit by writing? Through music, I feel a sense of offering and can think of it as work done as an offering to the Divine."

8 years? Amateur Yogis! Those who know something about Yoga would count 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 years as nothing for the preliminary work of preparation and self-purification. That was X's bane—He expected to conquer Heaven in a gallop, but there was only one way of doing it, complete abdication of self, and that he refused and probably could not do. Then when the gallop could not succeed, he has been wrestling and groaning ever since—meditation, jap, prayer with only one idea "When is it coming? when is it coming? Why is it not coming? why is it not coming? Of course, it won't come. It will never come, never, never." And of course it doesn't—that is not the way.

Yet he had promised me he would drop all that and go on quietly getting rid of ego etc. till he was fit. The subconscient has been too strong with its unvarying orbits of repetition of the same obstinately irrational movement.

But poetry, he says, is অযুক্ত কর্ম্ম.²¹¹ If that could give the Divine realisation, any number of literary people would have it. So what's the use of that? "No experience, no realisation, can't even meditate. How can I surrender when I am so much absorbed in writing?..."

That is like him and most of the sadhaks. All hold grimly to their own ideas—follow their own conceptions about Yoga. Reasonings! logic! As for the ways pointed out by the Guru, all supramental nonsense. The surprising thing is that anyone succeeds here.

You seem to have again changed your front. Once you wrote that the Supramental descent may not depend on the condition of the sadhaks, and now you speak of the Supramental coming as fast as we will allow.

You have mistaken the sense altogether. It simply means if with the bother of your revolts, depressions, illnesses, shouts, quarrels and all the rest of it, I can get time to go on rapidly. Nothing more, sir.

If we fellows have to allow, you had better close down the shop and enjoy your impersonal supramental beatitude!

I am quite ready. I propose that you call a meeting and put it to the vote. "That hereby we resolve to release Sri Aurobindo into beatitude and all go off quietly to Abyssinia."

K has been having pain in the abdomen since she came here. It starts after an hour of sleep. She thinks it has something to do with her non-use of mattress.

Why doesn't she ask for a mattress from Amrita?

But she is very constipated. Bowels moved after 2 or 3 days.

Evidently the constipation must be responsible—if it is habitual.

I tried hard to write a poem. but failed in spite of prayer and call. Then I had to appeal to your Force; lo, the poem was recast and recreated, beginning at 9.45 p.m. and ending at 1 a.m. Now the big question is—why couldn't I do it before? By the appeal and your Force, undoubtedly, which you sent. But it was almost finished before you had time to read my letter and send the Force.

I usually read your soul-stirring communications (medical or other) at 7.30 or 8 or thereabouts. This one I must have got only after 10 p.m. But that makes no difference. The call for the Force is very often sufficient; not absolutely necessary that it should reach my physical mind first. Many get as soon as they write—or (if they are outside), when the letter reaches the atmosphere.

Simply the writing has helped to establish the contact with the Force, whereas my constant concentration, prayer and appeal failed?

Yes, it is the success in establishing the contact that is important. It is a sort of hitching on or getting hold of the invisible button or whatever you like to call it.

Sometimes the Force "that is always operating" is not enough for me. You have to leave all relaxed repose and sit up and regain curvilinear proportions and send a dose! This is what must have happened today.

It is enough if you hitch on to the operating Force which is always rotating or hanging about over your head or over my head or over the general head of the Asram or the (terrestrial) universe. It does not much matter where you hitch on, so long as you somehow do it. But in this case there may have been some connection with my curvilinear recovery which took place somewhere about 9.30. But if so, it can only have been because the Force rotated more forcibly by the impulsion of my recovery, for the conscious sending of Force to you took place only when I was reading the letter.

When you send the Force, is there a time limit for its functioning or does it work itself out in the long run or get washed of after a while, finding the adhar unreceptive?

There is no time limit. I have known cases in which I put a Force for getting a thing done and it seemed to fail damnably at the moment; but after two years everything carried itself out in exact detail and order just as I had arranged it, although I was thinking no more at all of the matter. You ought to know but I suppose you don't that "Psychic" Research in Europe has proved that all so-called "psychic" communications can sink into the consciousness without being noticed and turn up long afterwards. It is like that with the communication of Force also.

I would like to know the Force's general operation in illnesses, yogic purposes, etc., ... It is really very interesting, and nothing written anywhere on it. Can you illumine? No hurry, but if you write "one day", I know that phrase very well.

I have made as usual a few scattered observations—but of course they don't go very far or shed much light. "One day" perhaps I shall write volumes on the matter which I suppose you won't read.

I was almost on the point of losing faith in Yogic Force and asked myself: if I had as earnestly applied myself to poetry, outside, wouldn't I have succeeded?

You would have become a talented literary young man and a good verse-maker.

Lastly, don't fall flat again, Sir. So much depends on your curvilinear position, especially when you are bringing down the Supramental Tail!

Now look here, do you think I fell flat on purpose? No, sir. Sudden rush of correspondence, interruption of campaign—consequent breakdown of road to Addis Ababa; retreat necessary, consolidation of back positions, road-repair—flat, but I suppose necessary.

I thought R.B. was cured, for she hasn't come back for her leg treatment. Shall I call her back and treat her?

Don't know. She says you have tried your level best and failed. Perhaps if her leg hurts enough, she will come back or if she complains too much I shall suggest her the way back.

Your book crowded out by a long night's correspondence. Send again tonight. Also am unable to return to Dilip Nishikanta's long poem for the same reason.

K had pain at noon, then again in the morning—but nothing at night.

Then it is not the absence of a mattress

Getting depressed, discouraged—thinking of giving up the blessed business of writing poetry! Binapani²¹² has no compassion towards me.

Nonsense! She has plenty—at times.

Will try again, if no result, will absolutely fall flat. Can't blame me, I think you have no time to send any Force!

Had no force to send—at least none that I considered worth sending. Fell flat myself for the last two or three days—as flat as I could manage to at this stage. Am recovering curvilinear proportions and shall try to send something along.

No medical cases today.

Hello! Golden Age come or what? No—for R.B.'s pain is kicking cheerfully again. It is telling her, "Your Nirod's potions and things indeed! I just went because I took the fancy. I go when I like, I come when I like. Doctors—pooh!"

I find it rather hard to be a medium between X and J. For instance X wants to use যামিনী²¹³ or anything in place of ঊষশী²¹⁴ but J wants to keep it.

How can "anything" be used in a poem? A slight change makes all the difference between something forceful and a mere literary expression that misses its mark.

I feel this difference hurts X, however much he may try to be calm, and I have to convey these differences.

But why must everyone accept X's suggestions or their preference for their own ideas irritate him?

I would be happy if they could do these things direct between themselves.

Doing direct means a flare up and quarrel. You are suffering for the good of the community.

J has written in a poem

ছন্দি অযুত তারা
ঝালি হীরক ঢালে
নত আপন হারা²¹⁵

X says: "How can stars be bent?" So he changed it to ধ্রুব দীপন ধারা²¹⁶ it whereas J declared that she wrote it because she experienced one night as if the stars were really bending down. I also found the expression very fine.

ধ্রুব দীপন ধারা is no doubt good poetry and very good poetry but it is a purely external image and gives no subjective vibration, while J's line does. The objection that stars do not get নত²¹⁷ stands only if the poem describes objective phenomena or aims at using purely objective images. But if the vision behind the poem is subjective, the objection holds no longer. The mystic subjective vision admits a consciousness in physical things and gives them a subtle physical life which is not that of the material existence. If a consciousness is felt in the stars and if that consciousness expresses itself in subtle physical images to the vision of the poet, there can be no impossibility of a star being নত আপন হারা²¹⁸—such expressions attribute a mystical life to the stars and can appropriately express this in mystic images. I agree with you about the fineness of the line.

X says: "This may not be an experience at all, and who knows if it is not an imagination, and how are we to say which is which?"

But is it necessary to say which is which? It is not possible to deny that it was an experience, even if one cannot affirm it—not being in the consciousness of the writer. But even if it is an imagination, it is a powerful poetic imagination which expresses what would be the exact feeling in the real experience. It seems to me that that is quite enough. There are so many things in Wordsworth and Shelley which people say were only mental feelings and imaginations and yet they express the deeper seeings or feelings of the seer. For poetry it seems to me the point is irrelevant.

X argues, "E said many things that she used to imagine. She herself considered them experiences."

How do you know that E's sayings are only imaginations? If so, they are very remarkable imaginations for a child of that age. They might be the communications of her inner being to her mind which she was to express in. A few children have that in a degree; in some it takes the form of imagination—E had it in a very unusual degree. I hope the elders will not knock this rare gift out of her by their misunderstanding and want of sympathy.

All this highly confidential if you please. I don't want to rub X the wrong way just now as his nerves are in a rather raw state and if he gets upset it means a lot of unnecessary work for me.

I think that anyone who has had some insight into these occult worlds, can no longer stand on absolute rationalism... Qu'en dites-vous? Stars can be humble?

I have answered that.

I hear Mother has vetoed J's poem being dedicated to her. X says it has already been done. "Is Mother's name to be taken out?" he asks.

It was more an objection than a veto—and not to. the dedication but to the emphasising of it by the poems. X says he has given the order to print and it is not worth while upsetting that now. Let it stand.

I am merely repeating the words "impurity, desire, despair", in my poetry.

Well, everybody repeats himself. A time will come when this trinity will disappear, let us hope.

Did you seriously write that I would have been " a talented young man" [21.5.36]? I find no talent anywhere.

Well, you thought outside you would have made the same progress. I simply expressed my doubts whether your utmost efforts would have carried you beyond literary talent.

You have so abruptly stopped writing about the Yogic Force.

I didn't stop because I didn't begin. I wrote some scattered answers only and intimated to you that volumes might come out in future (not in these notes) which you would probably not read.

K doesn't come any more. Is she another kicker like R.B.?

Am without news of her.

It seems the "unnecessary work" has become necessary now—I mean X has given again an ultimatum of a short trip.

It is the second time in a few days.

Just because Dhurjati has highly praised somebody's trash poetry, X got upset, and said—"Oh, I am very hurt, very hurt."

Everything now makes him very hurt. If he goes on like that he will soon be an incarnation of the Man of Sorrows.

I don't understand when he says that he hasn't felt any peace in seven years. "All I had is 24 hours of intense Ananda—no other experience..." he says.

You needn't take X's rhetorical statements "at the foot of the letter", as the French say. He did get peace often, but he said it was nothing concrete or spiritual, only ordinary peace. Also he did not want peace but bhakti. He got some experiences, even sometimes a descent as the result of which his inner being showed itself and wept profusely. But he did not think much of his experiences—not what he wanted. He got bhakti sometimes—but afterwards said he had no bhakti. So on with all the rest. Naturally under such conditions there could be no permanent opening and no steady progress.

But is it really impossible for you to give him some experience of peace, silence or meditation? Then the Divine is not at all omnipotent...

My dear sir, what has the omnipotence of the Divine to do with it? In this world there are conditions for everything—if a man refuses to fulfil the conditions for Yoga, what is the use of appealing to the Divine's omnipotence? He does not believe that the Divine is here. He regards us as Gurus. Yes, but he begins by disputing all my way of Yoga. He does not understand and does not care to understand my processes. He has ideas of his own, does not want peace or equality or surrender or anything else, wants only Krishna and bhakti. He has read things in Ramakrishna and elsewhere as to how to do it, insists on following that. Rejects all suggestions I can make as unpracticable. Erects a sadhana of violent meditation, japa, prayer—for these are the traditional things, has no idea that there are conditions without which they cannot be effective. Meditates, japs, prays himself into fits²¹⁹ of dullness and disappears.²²⁰ Also tries in spite of my objections a wrestling tapasya which puts his vital into revolt. Then by a stroke of good luck I succeed unexpectedly in making a sort of psychic opening. Decides to try surrender, purification of the heart, rejection of ego, true humility etc.—tries a little of it and is really progressing. After two months finds that Krishna is not appearing—gets disgusted and drops the beastly thing. And after all that he is always telling me "What an impotent Guru you are! You are evidently able to do nothing for me." Evidently! That's X.

Please give some Force for a "laghu guru" poem, if possible.

Will try—atmosphere not favourable with all the rows that are going on.

Happily the storm is over—and X says he won't go. But do you think we made matters worse by arguing with him?

He seems to have appreciated your and Saurin's kindness,—so that is all right.

June 1936

I am feeling dry, dry, dry. But a mood of meditation creeps over the dryness.

Well, that's all right isn't it?

I find that my point of concentration usually goes between the eyebrows.

A quite useful place for concentration—O.K. so far.

Nothing happens though at times a feeling of স্তব্ধতা ।⁴

Better and better!

I suppose that is enough for you, but unfortunately I want a little more.

Quite enough for a beginning—only at times, is insufficient; स्तब्धता⁵ is quite the best ground for experiences and everything else.

Can you tell me why no experience is coming to me and why those that I had long, long ago, have stopped?

Too big a riot of mental activity and vital jumping.

If no joy is felt out of a creation after so much labour, what's the use, can you say?

The use of having no joy? It is no use.

I am thinking—after all what am I to do then? But thinking has no end either.

Quite so. Stop thinking and become স্তব্ধ ।⁶

Que faire? I suppose this dryness is due to your unexpected progress. That is the only consolation.

Dryness, no! that is part of your own pilgrimage. The rest may be due to Add. Ab. Quite a number of people are trying to become স্তব্ধ, wide etc. without ever having intended it. I like to think my march may have something to do with it.

Addis Ababa—how far?

Can't say. My rapidity slowed down much after D turned turtle and the correspondence avalanche restarted. However "nous progressâmes."⁷

Will you cast a glance at J's story—Russian Cat, which even Tagore liked?

I shall try my Herculean best—I can't promise more.

Please give me some force for poetry now—without it I don't know how to come out of this condition.

All right—shall try that also.

You mean to say—"I am in Heaven. Everything is all right in the best of all possible worlds—in Sri Aurobindo Asram and with Nirod"!

Quite so. All is well, if it ends well.

But how to make you realise that I welcome the stillness etc.... but it's not always there.

I quite realise. Don't make such Herculean efforts to explain it.

No joy, no energy, no cheerfulness. Don't like to read or write—as if a dead man were walking about. Do you understand the position? Any personal experience?

I quite understand; often had it myself devastatingly. That's why I always advise people who have it to cheer up and buck up.

I asked Kanai for my diagnosis—he says some sort of trouble in the "prān"⁸ positively; desire of ego. Just as a Kaviraj puts his finger on the pulse and diagnoses at once, so with this. What's required is purification.

Diagnosis right—only should add an adjective disappointed pran and ego. No active vital row; vital and ego lying back flat and gloomy.

So, since I have to pass the time, how to do it? To bear the Cross gloomily, hoping for a resurrection?

To cheer up, buck up and the rest if you can, saying "Rome was not built in a day"—if you can't, gloom it through till the sun rises and the little birds chirp and all is well.

Looks however as if you were going through a training in vairagya. Don't much care for vairagya myself, always avoided the beastly thing, but had to go through it partly, till I hit on samata as a better trick. But samata is difficult, vairagya is easy, only damnably gloomy and uncomfortable.

Vairagya! Good Lord! What next? A fellow who has always detested it, loved life and company, now undergoing a training in vairagya!! Such is life, eh? Never dreamt of Yoga, and stumbled into it—vairagya now crowns it! Why D's phantom on me? His drive towards vairagya, I understand, was due to his past life's karma. But what past life's karma in my case, please?

How do you know about your past life's karma? But perhaps it is D's karma which is afflicting you,—your karma being that of getting caught up in the swirl of his tempestuous course.

And when I look at D's suffering due to this blessed vairagya, I shudder. I am only a small pot—then why this heavy burden on me?

Well, why did you get into the track of the big pot?

And what kind of vairagya is this? It is encouraged by almost all yogis. Kanai understands by it a positive detachment from things of this life and a luminous aspiration within towards a higher spiritual achievement.

Vairagya means a positive detachment from things of this life—but it does not immediately carry with it a luminous aspiration except for a few fortunate people. For the positive detachment is often a pulling away by the soul while the vital clings and is gloomy and reluctant.

I suppose you mean a different kind of vairagya in my case, suited to my nature?

Yes, tamasic vairagya.

B.N. reported yesterday: "A snake has come out of my belly!" So he is germinating snakes now! Shall I give him santonin or rely on the Force?

He is eating dirty food outside—so it is not surprising. But give him santonin.

A poem for you. I hope you will make out in it the fall of Adam (soul) from the garden of Eden. But what is it—symbolic, mystic or cystic?

Symbolic mystic without being cryptic-cystic. Anyhow, pure inspiration and very luminous. Something undeniably original, this time, what?

A good piece of news: I find now three mules—mules, mind you, not horses—are trying to draw me on: (1) meditation, (2) silence (not of the mind but of the buccal cavity), (3) poetry.

Well, mules are very useful animals. When Badoglio's motor-lorries broke down, he bought 20,000 mules (I won't swear to the exact number) and they did the trick. You have 3 mules and not 20,000—but perhaps 3 will serve.

The buccal silence I can keep off from clashing with the other two. But the collision between meditation and poetry is inevitable unless I favour one of them.

There are three ways of meeting that situation—(1) say "Yes, yes" to both parties,—but that may create trouble afterwards, (2) Be cryptic-cystic in your answers, so that neither will be sure what you mean, (3) silence with an occasional profound "Ah, hum. Yes, eh!" "Ah hum" always sounds unfathomable depths—and if "Yes" is too positive, "eh" tones it down and corrects it. You have not enough worldly wisdom.

I shall try with all my nerves to concentrate as far as practicable—and I get also some not quite definitely pleasing sensation out of it.

Well, that is good—I hope the indefinite will soon define itself.

As poetry also has come, I wouldn't like to give it up either. But how to harmonise?

No need to harmonise by any set arrangement—only keep up the concentration. One hour of packed concentration or even a few minutes can do as much as three hours less packed. Do you say yours is not packed? Well, striped, streaked, spotted, dotted or whatever it may be.

And do you "like to think" that it is all due to your march forward?

Of course I like and it may even be true.

By the way, my "tamasic vairagya" seems to be an epidemic. J also has the same symptoms.

That kind of vairagya is not new with J, so you need not take the credit of it.

She also added that Death would be a delivery from all these troubles and a renewal of this life.

What an idea! She would have the same things to face with less favourable conditions for overcoming them.

Please ask blessed Time to stand still behind you till your pen has run a 50 mile-gallop on this sheet.

Time can't stand still, but I have tried to make the fellow trot slower instead of cantering—with no great result.

[Dilip sent my Bengali poem: ālor pākhi (The Bird of Light)⁹ to Sri Aurobindo, saying: O Guru, Nirod has written a fine poem—albeit in a rather sad vein. The word-music is beautiful, what? No change I found necessary. Last night's result—the moonlight, voyez-vous?]

Nirod's poem is exceedingly beautiful, full of the moonlight—he can't say any longer after that that he is not a poet.

Herewith a bhatiyāli¹⁰—I hope you know this animal, don't you? I have used some native expressions... Of course, aristocratic expressions also abound, but that doesn't matter, especially when this is a socialistic age.

Nothing original, but hope not absolutely aboriginal? How do you find the animal?

Admirable—No matter whether original, aboriginal or co-original—most good poetry is all three together. The animal is a fine animal and the plebeian spots on the aristocratic skin give it a very subtly attractive appearance.

T's pain in the finger is worse due to constant work.

As she got nervous (pain and difficulty of doing her work) we sent her to R.

Your answer¹¹ gave me a feeling different from other times. It didn't cheer me up; perhaps due to some atmosphere in the letter.

I don't think there was any atmosphere in my answers.

... I have analysed and analysed myself, and have found that I have no real urge for the Divine. It seems more the unfavourable external circumstances that have brought me here. Had I been happy and in plenty there, would I have chosen this path?... Where is the sincerity in me?... So wouldn't it be better for you to let me go instead of wasting so much of your time and labour on me?

Your analysis and reasonings are those of Grand'mère Depression which sees only what she allows to come to the surface for her purposes. There are other things that Madame suppresses because they don't suit her. It does not greatly matter what brought you here—the important thing is to go on till the psychic truth behind all that becomes manifest. The inertia of your physical nature is only a thick crust on the surface which goes away slowly, but under the pressure it will give way. If you had some big object in the ordinary life and nothing to hope for here it might be different, but as things are it would be foolish to walk off under the instigation of this old Mother Gloom-Gloom. Stick on and you will get the soul's reward hereafter.

... You say I could help Y. How can I do so avoiding everything personal? If I can help at all, it is in her literary work—surely not in Sadhana! But there again you doubt. Tell me precisely what I should do—not "if you want to do this, you can do" sort of thing. How is the help to be there?

I put it as something that could be done on certain conditions. These conditions do not exist at present, for neither is free with regard to the other. But the conditions can come into existence.

It is not at all necessary to break off all contact with her, and drastic methods are only necessary in extreme cases. Too much contact has to be avoided at present and it should be kept limited to surface things. The main point is to get yourself inwardly and vitally free—neither vital pull nor impatient repulsion. Understand that they have to be got rid of and quell them down and reject them when they come.

Now I find that I am only a bundle of sex and nothing else! This is yogic transformation!

Nobody can be only a bundle of sex. Even a cat or a Casanova can't be that. It is the aboriginal coming up and figuring as if the whole man. But there are other bundles there even if this one is at the top for the moment.

The Mother kept quiet about B's case and asked not to apply atropine.

Mother did not say not to treat her. She asked if it was not possible to treat her without the atropine.

But how to treat B? Her headache is due to error of refraction...

B told Mother she would never wear glasses. Has she said differently to you?

Do you suggest to try purgatives, aspirin, stopping needlework, etc. before going in for glasses?

All that does not seem very promising.

My friend J's letter—he hears your voice, feels your Power acting, his mind and vital free from sex. Is it possible that one hasn't to struggle much for purification? Force does everything?

It is quite possible if the psychic being takes the lead or is active—not so easy otherwise.

How was this conquest done so easily considering that he is a married man, having a wife not very spiritually inclined?

That is not the only "married man" instance.

While we who are here, in this atmosphere, find it so very difficult, though completely debarred from sex-life.

In his case, as it seems from what he writes, the mind decisively freed itself first. The difficulty with most is that the mind in parts lends itself to the vital under one colour or another.

He actually says that a personal effort is only a small or ineffective help!

Of course—personal effort without the supporting Force can do only a little, slowly, with much labour.

When I suffer, I don't see any Force coming and fighting my battle. I am paralysed for a time with pain etc., then the suffering disappears. I believe your Force works it out, but I want to feel, know and see.

That is the difficulty. A full faith however can command the effects of the Force even without being conscious of the action of the Force.

Lastly, he has raised some points which invite your answers, if not tonight, some night.

I don't know when, for his questions and subjects are of great amplitude.

P has two boils on a buttock which are stationary. She is constipated and feverish. I asked her to take enema as medicine, she will wait for permission, she says.

Mother has not only given permission but order—but she is not going to latrine, not taking enema, because she fears the pain caused by the boil in evacuation!

R wants Amal, Ambu, Romen—all three his patients—to be weighed from time to time. Will you take Ambu to the hospital tomorrow and arrange to have it done and also arrange for general permission so that whenever three or any of them go for the purpose, they may be allowed?

For S's constipation—I shall try tomorrow enema-tur-pentine.

What's this turpentine enema? drastic effect? or what gunas?

A has pain in the left arm. On palpation a nut-sized hard swelling was found. She says it's increased latterly. It was caused by an injection in Africa. I don't think it will be dissolved by medicines. Excision is the only way.

Operation will not leave any undesirable after-effects?

Last night S had the same trouble, dyspepisa, with no relief. Gave one alkaline powder containing Bismuth—no effect!

Bismuth is not constipative? I thought it was given for that effect. But if he is badly constipated already?

He can't tolerate any liquid nourishment. Some solid dry protein food would be good. I thought of egg.

It can be tried—as it is not a liver case.

Pomegranate or orange juice would hardly be enough.

Pomegranate juice not astringent and constipative?

S says as soon as the Mother was informed, he felt better. Why then all this medication? Make him altogether well!

If he allows. L had acutely a similar illness and T in a milder form—they were cured without medicines. But S is such a pessimist and lamenter that I don't know if his body will respond in the same way.

I am rather worried about the fellow. I have asked his mother to come and help him whenever she is free.

S has written (through Biren) asking for that on her behalf. But at the same time he writes that she doesn't sleep, doesn't eat, was weeping all night—If she does like that, how can she help him—she will only depress him farther. Otherwise it would be all right.

A's operation [of the arm] is not likely to leave any after-effects. It has to be done in the hospital...

She jibs violently against operation.

Shall I remind you about the reply to Jatin's letter?

You did, but with no effect.

Bismuth and pomegranate are astringents, no doubt, but the former is also an antacid and as the latter is nourishing too, S seems to tolerate it. Found another possibility of the cause of his disease: worms. He has suffered from it for the last 15 years!

Then of course pomegranate is the thing. But what kind of worms do you suspect? I suppose the ordinary small intestinal worm betrays its presence without microscope. What kind does he have?

By the way, if you think R had better treat him, I have no objection. Whatever is in my power, I am doing. If any danger is ahead, you may transfer him.

I don't know whether it is possible. They are at daggers drawn for a long time past and S has written very bad things against him. Will he now accept him as doctor and obey all his directions? I suppose S will get all right; if once he can be made to take sufficient nourishment, the rest is at most a matter of time.

... One part in me has written about the difficulties and asks for help, another says and laments—You fool, you could have enjoyed yourself a little. Yoga, after all, is there before you—But meanwhile do you know what sandy deserts you have to cross?...

That is of course the whole difficulty—the division in the being. But even so the true being can and surely will prevail.

We're giving S calomel and mag. sulph to stimulate the flow of bile and a purge also.

Purge quite safe for his weakness?

Please concentrate a little on his stomach.

Have been doing so—but the jaundice development (it must have been incubating from the first) is a nuisance.

Oh yes, giving also plenty of vichy water. Any comment?

Nothing much to say at present.

I would like to know if there are going to be any personal relations afterwards among sadhaks. To think that everybody will be equal to our eyes pains most of us.

Yes, it pains the outer vital, because that vital thinks it is a negative state of indifference and non-attachment, things that it hates because liking and disliking are its native atmosphere.

But with having psychic love for all, is there also going to be any pure divine love for a particular one?

But first you must realise what the "pure divine" love is!

Of course new friendships may come up and old ones break, but I am inclined to wonder whether such personal pure ties will be there or not.

But that is not the question your "inclination" asks—it is practically asking whether one can't keep up one's attachments and carry them into the higher atmosphere!

I gather from your reply to J that one will have the same deep psychic feelings for all.

Not the same psychic feelings for all, but different psychic feelings are possible.

We always think that all our relations will be impersonal. That is one of the reasons why we cling to our objects of love and desire.

That is not the reason—the reason lies in the clinging itself.

During meditation I had a vision of J lying dead in a room. Her death was accidental and not natural. Suddenly the door of the room opened and a hideous figure came in. It was so vivid that I still shudder to think of it. I was just sitting on a chair and looking at J's corpse. Is it J's mania of suicide from the subconscient?

It looks on the surface like a nightmare vision of the vital. It might refer to what you say—something shot up from a subconscient impression into form. Or, who knows, it may mean simply the old vital attachment by her lying dead and old vital Nature looking on in a horrified disapproval!

I don't think it is much use writing about personal relations in the true spiritual life (which does not yet exist here). None would understand it except as a form of words. Only three points—

(1) Its very base would have to be spiritual and psychic and not vital. The vital would be there but as an instrument only.

(2) It would be a relation flowing from the higher Truth, not continued from the lower Ignorance.

(3) It would not be impersonal in the sense of being colourless, but whatever colours were there would not be the egoistic and muddy colours of the present relations.

It appears to me that women generally are not so disturbed because they deliberately eliminate from their mind any idea of physical sex contacts.

They don't; but they don't want to face the dangers or the consequences of the vital physical impulse which they have to bear for the most part.

Also their vitals are satisfied more easily by simple vital exchanges, e.g. walking, talking, at most holding hands.

That is true of many women.

I do believe that if one person loves another sincerely it will have an influence on the person some day.

It may have, very likely, but it isn't a necessary consequence.

A tells me that 3 or 4 days ago he saw in a vision that I was jumping into the Mother's lap. How miraculously you have saved me without any trying on my part.

You called sincerely for the help, so the help came.

Jatin sends you another letter and wants a reply. Two letters. Can you reply either or both?

This one is easier to answer. I keep it also.

May I have a cup of soup for S, for a few days, from Rajangam? D.R. soup is very watery.

You mean some of our soup? I don't know how that can be arranged, but you can ask Champaklal if it is possible.

S—the pain and discomfort increased after 2 p.m. There is a tendency of salivation. Gave 2 doses of calomel.

You are giving calomel—but is there no salt in his egg or any other food? Soup has salt in it. I think calomel should be stopped.

If you ask me to cut off all medicines or some of them, and rely on the Force, I am willing to do so.

It seems a lot of medicine—but I doubt if in S's case we can rely on Force alone.

He can't digest milk, so I asked for the soup. It may be inconvenient to supply from your soup, so I can ask Dyuman to buy some soup vegetables and supply them. I think that would be best.

No, it would not be best. We are asking Rajangam to manage somehow to prepare some more soup for the purpose.

S is not tolerating the milk well. Cream or creamed milk would have been better.

Cream for jaundice? In France they actually took all cream out of the milk before allowing it!

Very little salt was given so far. I am adding a little now in the soup.

The Mother's objection was to calomel + salt food. So long as calomel is not given, it is all right.

S tells others that he's better, though to me he hesitates to admit the fact. He asked B to write to you that he wasn't at all improving. When it was contradicted by facts he replied that his forbearance only has increased. I had a hearty laugh!

He or rather B wrote to me a tragic tale. I told him this kind of illness took time to cure and meanwhile he had better practise quietness and cheerfulness—it would help the Force.

N.P. has pain near the spine, at the top of the right sacroiliac joint for the last 2 weeks.

He has sent me a wail too about jerks and sleeplessness.

Please don't forget my book; if no time let it incubate another night, provided it hatches out fully.

Had to. D took all my time with his woes and the opinions of Lawrence. It is the "Bases of Yoga" that has upset him!!! Moreover J's two letters, three urgently needed replies to sadhaks who have been waiting hungrily for weeks or days etc., etc. So—

S—after taking eggs—had the sensation of vomiting and griping pain. Egg is responsible, I suppose.

Yes, better suppress egg for the present.

He looks better but some discomfort will continue so long as the complete flow of bile is not established.

Does it not always take long in these cases?

I propose to give some bitters with nux vomica etc.

You can try.

July 1936

S is much better, feels happy. I forgot to write that jaundice usually takes 2-3 weeks.

So I understood, even a month.

N.P. is dying more of fear, and thinking if he does this or that the pain may come back!

That is why these things continue with him.

What about my private book or J's letters? Can't you send them?

Not as yet. Could not make up arrears.

Today X seemed quite sane. So you see, Sir, after all it is your help that pulled her up.

Of course as soon as you wrote I put the shower-bath on her.

[About J's novel:] If you say that she'd better follow what Y says, she is willing to do so. Her fury has toned down and she feels that after all there was nothing much to get upset about. The book belongs to the Mother.

Well, that is something.

I feel that Y would mind again if J did everything herself—and she won't be able to do it well. After all, Y has spent so much for the book, and he is determined to see that it brings a good sale...

You are quite right. Since Y has done everything about this book till now, it is better to let him finish. In future she can keep clear of any obligation to him, but here it will only create confusion and more trouble.

Another point—Y doesn't want J to send a copy of the book to Niren, for fear of criticism...

That is a point I cannot resolve.

For N—shall we try olive oil?

What for olive oil?

For his stomach-ache and constipation etc., yeast can be tried. It has been found very good in some cases.

Yeast ought to do him good, as he complains of weakness. You can have a try, before we plunge in R who is struggling with a difficult case just now. But I am afraid in N's body there is something that does not want to cure, for it finds itself more miserably interesting with constipation, ache and sciatica than Without it.

I send you Nishikanta's version of my Bengali poem. He has tried to keep as far as possible my words, but even then it can hardly be called mine.

My God! he has pummelled you into pieces and thrown away all but a few shreds. No, you can't call it yours. Perhaps you can label it, "Nirod after being devoured, assimilated and eliminated by Nishikanta."

Nishikanta has written so much that you can't do without tumbling into his influence.

Your own version, if it takes things from NK is still not NK but yourself.

Here is a poem—don't know if it is the outcome of your "shall try" or you didn't try at all?

Just gave a pressure or two, that's all.

Opinion?

Very beautiful.

I hope you won't disappoint me this week-end. I have waited long enough. One of J. B.'s letters must be answered. What?

Can't say—so many people waiting for an answer.

A flower for Chand.

Take from Nolini.

S's jaundice still seems to be the same. I propose to give him about half an ounce of mag. sulph. tomorrow.

Mother suggests that a small lavement (cold) should be given him daily until there is no bile. She doesn't think purgatives are much use for jaundice.

Please try to give one or two more "pressures" for poetry.

Shall try.

One answer to Jatin managed. Rest swimming on the wide wide sea.

I propose to give S, mag. sulph. not as purgation but to stimulate the bile flow from the liver. Any objection? However, I will do as Mother says.

No, you can give the mag. sulph.

Mother was suggesting from her own experience, and the instructions of Doctors in France. But probably it differs with cases and people.

[Morning]

I have no peace, no joy, no push for anything, and am physically an absolute rag. I wonder, after all, whether you have committed a mistake by telling me all that [an unpublished letter]; pardon my audacity. I doubt because I don't find any good result from it. Can you tell me why exactly you told me all that? Surely you must have had an end in view.

You asked for it yourself, nor was there anything much more than I had told you on a former occasion—only one actual case of the general proposition. If the old thing rose up so violently, as a result, it shows that it was there all the time in the subconscient coming secretly in the way of the progress and the continuity or return of such experiences as you had. It seems to me that it was as well that it should come up and you should deal with it consciously and directly. If you want the Divine and the inner life, the old vital moorings must be cut.

In short, I am thinking of going out somewhere for a month. I can only think of A at Bombay who may be willing to keep me.

That is 'D's proposition all over again! I have to spend a large part of the night writing letters to him so that he may not start for Cape Comorin and the Himalayas—now if you pile Bombay and A on these two ends of India, I for my part shall have to head for the Pacific Ocean.

I am feeling that the intimate personal contact you allowed me before—which is one of the big attractions—you are withdrawing. Perhaps I have committed some grave faults, or the necessity doesn't exist!

I don't know where you got that rubbishy idea. I have told you that I am preoccupied with the old mass of correspondence—(now + D) + many important and pressing answers to people which in spite of their pressingness I can't get written. That is why I have not sent you back your personal book, as I need a less occupied mind to discuss such intricate and difficult questions as you have put this time. There is no question of withdrawing anything or grave faults or cessation of any necessity. For heaven's sake, don't begin striking this other Dilipian chord!

[Evening]

... You say I should deal with it consciously and directly. But how?

I meant that you should fight it out.

... You say it is all D. In everything I do, you find D.

Because you say just the same things.

I didn't know at all that he has got it afresh—this idea of going away—perhaps over J's novel affair?

No, the reason he gives is just the same as yours...

But if you head for the Pacific, well, I suppose I have to be swayed and billowed into the Atlantic, at whatever cost! You write, "If you want the Divine..." That is the whole question. Do I really want the Divine? Have I come for Him?

I intended to write "If something in you wants the Divine," but dropped into the shorter form. Something must have wanted it, otherwise the things you write or experienced formerly would be meaningless. Parts of the mind which are uppermost now may not want, but that is so with most people.

It is not so much the retention of my book that gave me that idea. From your short answers and from a wrong intuition perhaps.

Short answers were due to the same cause.

But if you want to keep me here, do save me from this condition—no peace, no strength to fight, etc. Unless you save me unconditionally, I am doomed.

Quite ready.

Shivalingam has again had pain in the right ankle for the last 6 or 7 days. Thinking of trying Sod. Salicyl. injection; if that fails, then protein injection.

[No reply.]

Mahatma Gandhi says in an article: "... I hold that complete realisation is impossible in this embodied life. Nor is it necessary. A living immovable faith is all that is required for reaching the full spiritual height attainable by human beings..." Your opinion on the matter?

I do not know what Mahatma Gandhi means by complete realisation. If he means a realisation with nothing more to realise, no farther development possible, then I agree—I have myself spoken of farther divine progression, an infinite development. But the question is not that; the question is whether the Ignorance can be transcended, whether a complete essential realisation turning the consciousness from darkness to light, from an instrument of the Ignorance seeking for Knowledge into an instrument or rather a manifestation of Knowledge proceeding to greater Knowledge, Light enlarging, heightening into greater Light, is or is not possible. My view is that this conversion is not only possible, but inevitable in the spiritual evolution of the being here. The embodiment of life has nothing to do with it. This embodiment is not of life, but of consciousness and its energy of which life is only one phase or force. As life has developed mind, and the embodiment has modified itself to suit this development (mind is precisely the main instrument of ignorance seeking for knowledge); so mind can develop supermind which is in its nature knowledge not seeking for itself, but manifesting itself by its own automatic power, and the embodiment can again modify itself or be modified from above so as to suit this development. Faith is a necessary means for arriving at realisation because we are ignorant and do not yet know that which we are seeking to realise; faith is indeed knowledge giving the ignorance an intimation of itself previous to its own manifestation, it is the gleam sent before by the yet unrisen Sun. When the Sun shall rise there will be no longer any need of the gleam. The supramental knowledge supports itself, it does not need to be supported by faith; it lives by its own certitude. You may say that farther progression, farther development will need faith. No, for the farther development will proceed on a basis of knowledge, not of Ignorance. We shall walk in the light of knowledge towards its own wider vistas of self-fulfilment.

No opinion about Shivalingam's injections?

You can try. But I thought you wanted to try salicylating first.

I am stuck up at the end of a poem. Your last "pressure" [5.7.36] has failed. Give a little again please, so that I may complete the poem tonight.

When do you work at night?

The trouble is that I have no definite time for working at night, but usually it's at 9 p.m. Suppose when I intend to write poetry, I inform you along with the report and wait for the Force from 9 o'clock, wouldn't that be better?

I don't know that it would. It might work like that if I were always free to concentrate on particular things at a particular time; but that does not happen.

Doesn't your pressure work itself out or does it take a long time? Do you think if you put the Force at an exact time, say 9 p.m., it has a greater chance of immediate success?

One can't make a rule like that. There is nothing more variable than the way the Force acts.

J was rather discouraged by a fall from her previous height and said there is no use then writing or labouring so much.

She can't expect to succeed equally every time. No poet does. I have tried to explain that to her.

She says she also feels an urge for writing novels and does not know how to run two horses together. Is it possible to work part of the day on novel and part on poetry?

It is quite possible to do it if one accustoms oneself to do it. But I suppose she gets absorbed in the novel or concentrated in the effort of poetry and the energy refuses to divert itself or gets disturbed if it is.

"They drink the Light from Heaven's golden cores..."

How many "cores" do you think Heaven has? Singular, sir, singular!

If the Force is so variable, why then did you ask about my working time at night? Surely you had hit upon some idea!

The exact knowledge of circumstances always helps the action, even if it does not follow a rule deduced from the circumstances.

S says Asram bread does not agree with him, responsible for heaviness, want of appetite etc., asks for bazaar bread. What does the doctor say?

I am obliged to keep N¹² for the usual reason. It is already beyond time and my work unfinished.

I don't think Asram bread has anything to do with S's "non-agreement", for he takes only 1 or 2 slices in the morning. The real complaint is that he doesn't like curries.

Is not I.K. cooking for him? He has sent me a letter asking for her to cook this or that dish he wants. This is beyond me. I am not a dietist—or whatever the proper word may be.

No, I.K. does not cook for S. He wants to stop soup, as it makes him heavy!

What an idiot!

He wants to try semolina in milk. So shall I get some from M?

You can ask M—I didn't know he had semolina.

But don't yield too much to S's imaginations, he will become impossible.

Any time for NK's poem?

Forgot it on my table.

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

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

I have begun two poems, one came on top of the other. A rush of ideas invading!

Very good.

Please try if you can, to circulate some Force at night—9 p.m., and afternoon, just when you regain your curvilinear proportions—2.30 p.m.

There is no such regularity about curvilineation. However I will circulate whenever possible.

S has sent me the accompanying letter. I absolutely refuse to ask the Mother or give orders upon his chits for food, so I refer it to you. I can't rely on him—here he asks for oil, but you had written that you had said no to oil. It seems to me if he takes oil and spices and greasy things before the bile is entirely out of his blood, it will be there for good. S has neither self-restraint nor common sense. His খেয়াল¹³ is his guide. But are we to follow it?

... I am in sheer despair. I want to say—damn it all, damn it all. Let me—

Don't damn, but lift up quietly.

Force, Force, please. I have begun four poems and none complete. Every day I get new lines at Pranam, but can't complete a single poem!

Very well, let us try to bring them to completion.

Today S told me that he took a little rice, one potato, one brinjal-roast, one karela.

Karela is good, potato passable—brinjal detestable, but I suppose less so roast than fried.

Today after a "storm" with X, everything is clear. And now I am completely out of the gloom, and am happy. How it came about—tomorrow perhaps.

Very good. However it came about, the result is gratifying.

... But is it really "gratifying"? It may be so as far as my gloominess is concerned. But the ultimate result?

The ultimate result is for the Ultimate to see—I was speaking in and of the immediate.

I am now determined to turn myself towards you as far as possible.

Very good.

Have X and I formed our old attachments in this garb?...

All that depends on the Ulterior (not the Ultimate). It is an advantage to have got to a friendly relation rather than a hard scraggy one which gave neither release nor quietude. The evolution from that basis depends on the future.

... A strong aspiration for more and more purity, sincerity, etc., is coming down. Contact with her gives me real joy. I see the vital receding... But are all these illusions? Will you explain?

No use explaining. If you keep to the understanding and to your aspiration, psychology will take care of itself.

Give both of us your blessings and help to keep our relation pure, harmonious and happy. Will you?

Yes.

Jatin says he can wait even for a year, for your reply. I hope it won't be as bad as that. I'll write that he need have no fear in these difficulties as your Force and protection are with him. Shall I?

Yes.

S says he feels hungry now, will be absolutely all right in 4 or 5 days. Three cheers!!

What about bile?

Madan Gopal suddenly got high fever... Seems to be malaria which he had before... I might give him an injection tomorrow for quick action. Sanction?

If it is the antimalarial injection given to Jyotin, yes.

I asked N.P. to keep a watch over him; so N.P. should not go for work in the afternoon. He wants your permission.

Yes.

I hope I don't trouble you unnecessarily with detailed questions on poetry?

No.

D.L. has pain in the abdomen, fever, weakness, etc. She says whenever there is fever, there is this pain; I am inclined to think it is the other way round.

I should suppose so.

I'm afraid, her work, which is rather heavy, should be cut down.

The heavy part of the work is being done now by hired people. She is supposed only to supervise.

It seems to be ulcer. Some cases have been cured by just olive oil taken orally. I'll try it with simple diet...

All right. It can be tried.

S is hardly better. We have to buy a few more pills. Sanction?

Yes.

The fellow is thinking only of eating and renewing his ordinary life—he can't be allowed to chronicise his beastly jaundice.

V has had diarrhoea last 2 days. I wonder if it is due to cold in the stomach or the mangoes he had taken.

Probably latter. It was at least Mother's first idea, though she knew nothing about the mangoes.

P's boil squeezed out...

Mother gave a chit for one month yeast treatment; did you get it (from Tajdar)? With these boils always coming some blood purification is surely necessary.

D says: "If you want to publish your literary work, you must see that people understand it—not the public at large, but, as Virginia Woolf says, a select public. Otherwise don't publish at all. The very idea of publication means an appreciation, and how can one appreciate an unintelligible thing?"

What is not understood or appreciated by one select circle may be understood or appreciated by another select circle or in the future like Blake's poetry. Nobody appreciated Blake in his own time—now he ranks as a great poet—more poetic than Shakespeare, says Housman. Tagore wrote he could not appreciate D's poetry because it is too "Yogic" for him. Is Tagore then unselect, one of the public at large?

D says that your case is different, because you don't care for publication!

It is not for that reason.

Any light on the issue of the publication, and the public being the judge?

I don't agree at all with not publishing because you won't be understood. At that rate many great poets would have remained unpublished. What about the unintelligible Mallarmé who had such a great influence on later French poetry?

S still feels weak. His bile colour is improving. Shall I give him some iron and nux vomica?

Not iron as yet—let the bile go out first—Nux vomica yes.

One more poem completed.

Very beautiful.

I don't know its exact meaning and I am feeling rather shy to send it lest you also should find no meaning at all.

Plenty of meaning, but not "exact". Exact meaning is not the forte of this kind of poetry.

One suggestion please: can I use স্বপনিকা¹⁴ for a she-dreamer? I find in the Bengali dictionary the word স্বপ্নক¹⁵ meaning a sleepy person. If স্বপ্নক why not স্বপ্নিকা¹⁶ or স্বপনিকা?

I have not met any স্বপ্নক in Sanskrit, but if there is one, his wife might very correctly be স্বপ্নিকা.

A question about Jatin's room business. I have found a single small room—rent Rs. 7 per month, no furniture, no light.

Does not sound promising.

Another house for Rs. 20, but people below go on playing music almost all the time.

Don't know Jatin's financial capacities or his attitude towards badly played music.

There is another house in front of your room. Rs. 15 per month...

? Whose house?

You said nothing about J.

What to say? Cure the fellow anyhow. The old Dr. used to regard his sufferings as things of the nerves more than anything else.

D.L. still feels weak, shall I try arsenic and nux vomica?

No objection to Nux Vomica. Arsenic? Well, if you think it might be cautiously tried, but she is fatty already and may not be a fit arsenical subject.

S has been having fever for the last 15 days, especially in the afternoons. I asked her to come in the afternoon to show the fever. She came in my absence and said to Mulshankar that as she was feeling all right no medicine was necessary!

That was why we sent her to you that she might suddenly feel all right. She used to go to Dr. Banerji with "high fever" which proved to be not fever at all when he put the thermom.

I send you my poem with some changes made in the chhanda by Dilip and Nishikanta. I can't quite see their point; but as they are masters in metre I have to consider. What does your ear say?

My opinion on metrical points is not of much value. I dare say you are right, but the alterations made sound better.

Nishikanta says "red tears" is not very appropriate, for tears are associated with transparency. Can one use "red tears of pain" in English?

Yes, in English one can, as poetical equivalent to the common phrase "tears of blood".

The third house I spoke to you about, for Jatin, belongs to the fisherman who, I understand, wanted to catch you in his net!

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "catch you".]

? Probably you are mistaking the identity. It was another member of the family.

Another poem by J! She seems to be flowering very rapidly.

Yes.

But I can't pronounce upon the chhanda as I'm not a metrist. So I approach you.

Neither am I.

J says that when she was writing it, she thought she knew what it meant, but after it was finished, it seemed strange to herself!

It is strange, but admirable. More and more Blakish. One feels what it means, but mentally it is inexplicable. (I mean of course in the details; the general idea is clear.)

Today another poem by J. I'm staggered by her speed in writing. She says lines, chhanda, simply drop down, and she jots them down. She feels as if somebody is writing through her.

But that is how inspiration always comes when the way is clear and the mind sufficiently passive. Something drops or pours down; somebody writes through you.

I don't know that by one's mind one can write such things. What do you say?

Not possible. There would be something artificial or made up in them if it were the mind that did it.

How has she opened to the mystic plane? Something akin to her nature or one just opens?

It may be either.

Even when a thing drops down, isn't it rather risky to accept it as it comes, specially the chhanda part of it?

If anything is defective, it can be only by a mistake in the transcription.

Does the chhanda also come down with inspiration or has one to change it afterwards?

Yes, it comes and is usually faultless—if the mind is passive and the source a high, deep or true one. Of course metre as the Supraphysicals understand it!

I shall illustrate my point. J says she sometimes rejects lines because she doesn't understand their meaning. But since they repeatedly throw themselves on her, she accepts them. When the poem is completed the meaning becomes clear.

The mind ought to be quiet till all is written. Afterwards one can look and see if there is anything to be altered.

All this is really funny. How has she got this Blakish opening without even reading him? Was she Blake or Mrs. Blake by any chance?

Not necessarily. She was certainly not Blake. What I meant was not that they were just like Blake's or a reproduction of his, but simply that they have a kindred mystical stamp and come from a similar source of inspiration. The figures, the form, the general vision are quite different from Blake's.

Lines come down in her meditation or she actually hears them!

Why not? It is quite common with many here.

How do you find the metre of this poem? It seems a bit jerky to me. And how do you like the word উল্লাসে?¹⁷

I don't know really the law of Bengali metre in this respect. In an English stanza it would be quite natural to have these variations, especially if they go by pairs as here. But you should know better what is or is not admissible in Bengali. Of course Bengalically the last line may be dropped—but উল্লাসে spoils the symmetry of the sense a little, as it is intended to refrain the idea of the opening lines. However if necessary as metre, উল্লাসে will do very well.

You didn't write anything about Jatin's room business?

Forgot, by Jove!

You say you don't know enough Bengali nor the metre, but all these discussions have revealed that your "don't know" is much more than "we know". Whether you know or don't know, we will write and please just opine on it.

Very well, I will go on hazarding my perceptions of Form in the Formless. Metre and law can always take care of themselves.

My poetic fervour has volatilised away!

Well, it was a good spirit anyway.

J says that even a few beautiful lines in a poem give her a thrill.

Well, that is the natural effect on a poet.

You know I have always complained of the lack of any such happiness. I write because I have nothing else to do. I say to myself, "It is not this, not this, neti neti, that I want. I want something deep, great and wide filling my whole being with ananda, peace."

And yet you say there is no strand of Yogic seeking in you anywhere?

Neti neti with this longing for something deep and great in the nature of Ananda filling the being and the vairagya for anything less (নাল্পে সুখমস্তি ভূমা সুখমস্তি) [nālpe sukhamasti, bhūmā sukhamasti] is the very nature of the Yogic push and impulse, at least according to the Vedantic line.¹⁸

I seek for Ananda, it eludes me—Love, Peace are nowhere. If poetry doesn't give them, what's the use?

Poetry does not give love and peace, it gives Ananda, intense but not wide or lasting.

You will say that it is my mind that obstructs by its struggle.

Your mind has obstructed the free flow of the poetry—but what it has obstructed more is the real peace and Ananda that is "deep, great and wide". A quiet mind turned towards the ভূমা¹⁹ is what you need.

I have written poems without much obstruction, but they didn't give me any joy except the last one: The Bird of Light,²⁰ which gave me just a thrill.

Perhaps the beginning of Ananda of poetry, because it came from a deeper than mental source.

Isn't it a fact that the best poetry, almost always, comes down without any resistance at all?

Usually the best poetry a poet writes, the things that make him immortal, come like that.

Yes, there is a longing no doubt, for something deep, and নেতি নেতি²¹ also is there; but I don't find vairagya for anything less as yet—

নেতি নেতি is itself vairagya—the true vairagya.

For I am thinking of past vital pleasures, sweet memories of happy peaceful moments in a happy sunny or moony atmosphere, and am thinking—ah, if I could get back those rare moments!

That is in another part of your vital—the lower.

So how shall I trust this নেতি as real or this "yogic strand"? All the time this blessed vital thought goes on! Yogic strand!

Your argument is that because the Yogic strand is not the whole of the nature, it cannot be real. This is rather illogical. The Yogic strand is always in the beginning a strand, a movement or impulsion from one part of the nature, however veiled or small. It grows afterwards, slowly or quickly, according to people and circumstances, on the rest.

In spite of everything, a deep urge is there but a dissatisfaction too because I can't get it. Can this be a psychic sadness?

It is the feeling of the higher vital which has been affected by the psychic.

I doubt.

! That's the mind at it.

Anyway I have realised that without "something" deeply and lastingly settled in me, I can't do anything. I don't know what is that something or how to get it, so I lament.

It is the wideness of the higher or spiritual consciousness with its vast peace, light, knowledge, force, Ananda.

You say my mind obstructs, whereas I thought it is the vital hankering that hinders.

Your mind obstructs with its perpetual "I doubt" (see above). The vital of course by its hankerings.

Of course the mind is always thinking, worrying, but isn't it because the vital is restless?

Partly or mostly, but also because it is the nature of the mind to doubt, worry, eternally parliamentarise about things instead of getting them done.

J sends a poem. She doesn't think much of it, as it was done so quickly. She says she heard the first few lines in sleep. After reading the whole poem, I have found it is impossible to write it simply from facility. It is an inspiration-poem.

Of course it is impossible. There must be inspiration. The value of the poem does not rise from the labour or difficulty felt in writing it. Shakespeare, it is said, wrote at full speed and never erased a line.

I don't know about the fineness of the poem, but the chhanda and her originality in thought and expressions move me so much.

The poem is fine.

She says that while she was writing it, she felt some heavy pressure in the nape of the neck, then it came down and she was compelled to shut her eyes after which she felt all right and the poem came down quickly.

The pressure is the sign of a Yoga-force at work.

You said that Blake put down with fidelity whatever came down.

I didn't mean that he never altered—I don't know about that. I meant he did not let his mind disfigure what came by trying to make it intellectual. He transcribed what he saw and heard.

Will you circulate some Force towards me?

Yes.

Yesterday I had a very strange dream—not exactly a dream. 3 or 4 of us were listening to D singing with his teacher Majumdar (now dead) who was playing the harmonium. Majumdar joined D in the song. Then the harmonium stopped; Majumdar, carried away by the bhāva, made very fine rhythmic movements, uttering some lines now and then. Oh, the whole thing was exquisite. Then the funniest thing happened; Majumdar was turned into D, and I found it was D who was uttering the lines and making the movements with a bare upper body. Then the bust became luminous and he went on singing, dancing and gradually his luminous bust rose in the air and vanished away! Someone cried out—he is an avatar, avatar... The whole thing so influenced me that even after my sleep broke, I remained quiet, thinking of that very pleasant vision. It was 3.15 a.m. What's this now?

A very queer dream in the vital plane—rather mixed with contributions from the subconscient. Possibly it was the element of Majumdar that D had absorbed which you saw in that figure, then it disappeared into D himself, the inner progress he had made through his music being figured in the bust being luminous. But the vanishing away and the avatar beat me.

I enclose a poem of J with the corrected version which is decidedly better than the original. She says formerly she used to aspire for things beautiful etc. instead of letting herself go. Now she remains passive—and this poem is the result. Any answer?

There is no incompatibility between aspiring and letting the thing come through. The aspiration gives the necessary intensity so that what comes has a better chance of being a true transcription. In this case probably the pain she felt in the neck etc. was a proof of some fatigue in the physical parts which spoiled the transmission...

I am afraid there is plenty of work for you tonight. You can keep my poem.

I am obliged to do so. I am issuing a notice for "Stop correspondence" but that need not deter you from sending your or J's poems with comments.

Well, Sir, what about my epic?

Splendid. This is a full-blown poem.

I notice some queer things happening in the realm of poetry between Nishikanta and myself. I wrote a line: চলছে ভেসে চাঁদের তরী ওই সুনীলের সাগরে,²² and did not follow it up. Two days later I find Nishikanta writing a poem wherein occurs the line কে ভাসালে চাঁদের তরী?²³ Some time back a similar thing happened. These are about expressions; similar things are happening about chhanda also. Strange, isn't it?

Nothing queer about that. You dropped the inspiration and did not work it out; so it went off and prodded N who let it through. That often happens.

NK's new poems strike me as if a new channel has opened up in him. The poems seem to become more simple and deep—psychic?

Yes—he has made a big jump forward. Formerly it was all vital; afterwards vital-mental (I am speaking of the transmitting agency, not the source of inspiration or its substance), now a new element has come in. Psychic? I don't know—perhaps psycho-mental-vital. At any rate something wanting has been filled up—a missing chord has come in.

He himself admitted that J's poems have helped him in this direction. I think this simple mystic-symbolic touch he got from J.

It is probable.

It seems I don't get joy in writing because I haven't yet got my own source and am writing only by the mind. If true, don't mental works give joy?

The mental by itself gives a kind of aesthetic রস,²⁴ but not ভোগ²⁵—ভোগ comes from the excited participation of the vital, আনন্দ²⁶ from above.

But there is such a thing as an aesthetic thrill. Why don't I get it?

Probably the higher vital does not sufficiently participate.

D.L. has rashes. They are probably due to enema or salicylic acid.

It must be the salicylic.

August 1936

Please tell me if metre is, after all, not a question of the ear.

Mainly of the ear, but "number" also has something to do with it.

Wasn't the ear the first guide and then metre developed?

Yes, but in developing, metre modified the ear and created in it demands of a more complex kind.

What about Blake? Are his or other great poets' metres, absolutely orthodox?

English is different; it has a freer movement, I suppose, than Bengali. English metre is sometimes strict, sometimes breaks into irregularities.

J says she still feels that terrible pressure when she sits down to write. Is it due to resistance?

I suppose—if it is on the neck—that is the place of the expressing physical or externalising mind. As yet probably there is a strong resistance there—perhaps the result of something there that still expects or desires to write mentally, not mystically.

She was lying in bed trying to concentrate when she saw something like a thin wire coming towards her, with a rapid serpentine movement. The wire seemed to change into a snake. She had a joy out of it. She fears it may presage a bad event.

No need to fear. The wire implies a connection with some source—the snake the energy of that which was coming from the source. A snake is a bad symbol only when it comes from the vital or other lower plane.

D.L. complains of constant stinging pain in the abdomen. It is either ulcer or worms. I am thinking of treating her with a milk diet in alkalies. If ulcer, then it is bound to produce results. On Monday I shall take her for X-ray.

Is it not better to ascertain first by X-ray or otherwise before trying this treatment, as milk diet only may make her weak with a depressed resistance?

I asked S to take Asram food; he agreed but came back saying—"Let me go on one week more with the special diet." What's to be done?

Go on for a week more, since the fellow insists. He may think him self into pains again otherwise.

I send you this magnificent poem of Dilip's along with his after-corrections. My impression is that most of the changes have spoiled the beauty of the poem. Do you agree with me?

I have the same impression as you. It is always a little perilous to meddle afterwards with something that has come out in a full inspiration—"improvements" in such cases generally spoil the first spontaneous perfection.

I am again prosaic and gloomy. Everybody is changing here; no change for me.

Everybody is who? Give me the good news.

Must I go on crying and crying?

I hope not. Crying won't hasten the change.

Please put, at least, the shower of poetry on as you did a few days ago. Or is it gone?

It can always come back.

What about my other book lying with you? Can you release it now?

I don't know. Not immediately at least.

You said that if the wrong medicine is given, the Force has to counteract that also...

I only meant that it was so much obstacle to the Force which it has to overcome.

If the medical channel had opened in you like the painting vision, what a great help it would have been for you, and a boon for me!

My dear sir, in that case I should have to do all the doctoring. So I take care not to let the Medico open. Simple measure of prudence.

J says no trouble at all now... He is not willing to take any medicine. Cast him off?

Bile gone? If so can finish.

J had never any bile! He complained of pain and weakness.

Ah yes. I was under the impression it was S. I am always mixing them together.

You did not answer my question about the Force. What I asked you was that by the very fact of much obstacle, the Force or the giver of the Force knows that some mistake is being committed. Suppose you give a certain Force, but it fails to produce the desired result, then you say, "Oh that fellow has given wrong medicines—Swine!"

Not at all. The Force (I am out of the picture here) feels a greater obstacle, but need not know that it is due to a wrong medicine. Force and Knowledge are two different things and in the consciousness below supermind may go together or may not.

Swine is inappropriate—it should be some other animal.

X, in his latest poem, has used one of my expressions. Suppose his were to be published and then mine—I would be misjudged as borrowing from him. Now far is it justifiable for a poet to take the bhava and expression from others and use them?

Great poets have borrowed from small ones and small poets from great ones, and it is difficult to lay down any law in the matter. But to lift things bodily like that from unpublished poems shown in confidence, is not delicate—nor, I think permissible.

Shall we be petty and mean if we don't show our poems from such fear?

From the normal point of view it would be perfectly justified not to show your things—except of course for the fact that X and N have given you considerable help in forming yourselves as poets; but that is no reason why they should take things from your poems.

Please give the answer from the ordinary as well as the Yogic point of view.

From the Yogic point of view one ought to be indifferent and without sense of ownership or desire of fame or praise. But for that one must have arrived at the Yogic poise—such a detachment is not possible without it. I do not mind R's lifting whole sentences and paragraphs from my writings at the World Conference as his own and getting credit for a new and quite original point of view.

But if I were eager to figure before the world as a philosopher, I would resent it. But even if one does not mind, one can see the impropriety of the action or take measures against its repetition, if one thinks it worth while.

You will see that it is really a problem that concerns all writers, for I am also tempted to take and use others' expressions and bhava but I don't know if I should.

You should not—if for nothing else for the sake of the poetry and right development of your own inspiration.

A's umbilical pain is gone, slight liver pain... She says she wrote to Mother at 3.30 p.m. and since then her pain has stopped. She has these attacks, so I would like to know whether the medicine has done her any good or the Force alone.

I suppose the medicine has done its part.

A worker in the hot water dept. had dysentery 3 weeks ago and was treated at home. Suddenly day before yesterday he had copious vomiting of dark blood. Came to us with chest pain...

Dark blood can't be from the lungs? Not something wrong lower down?

What about my poem? I hope it is mentally quite clear!

Very fine indeed, very. You have suddenly reached a remarkable maturity of the poetic power. Which seems to suggest that the periods of sterility were not so sterile after all or were rather an incubation period, a work of opening going on in the inner being behind the veil before it manifested in the outer. Let us hope the same is going on in the direct sadhana.

Today at Pranam I felt a somewhat "blocky" feeling, if you know what I mean?

Yes, thought at first I was afraid you meant you felt blockheaded or felt foolish! but remembered in time the "block" of descent.

Is it the descent of Force?

Usually the feeling comes from a mass of the higher consciousness coming down either as peace or as force.

Dr. Becharlal and I are again strongly suspecting D.L. of a double infection: hookworm with Trichomonas... We'll make another stool examination...

By the way, I understand how hookworms get in, but how do these tropical Technomaniacs or whatever you call them, make their entry on the stage? Food? water? what?

S complains of hunger all the time. Five slices of bread are given in the morning, he wants one more! In spite of it, feels weak etc.

He must have bad assimilation due to liver, so always hungry and no profit from food.

If you have thought it is the apparent period of sterility etc. that has produced this "maturity", I am afraid it is not quite so.

I still think so and think that it is quite so.

For, this poem upon which you have based your opinion, was actually started, and one and a half stanzas were completed, on the 25th of July or so, i.e. before "the period of sterility". The rest only was done in these 2 or 3 days.

It is not confined to you or this case but a general psychological principle—the action behind the veil, even the psychologists who do not believe in Yoga have begun to recognise the large part this plays in Nature.

So I'm a little puzzled about the "going in".

I do not remember having said anything about "going in". I believe I spoke of something "going on" behind the veil during the time of apparent sterility in the outer being.

When you said "suddenly" did you mean that the maturity of power has come in fully in this poem?

When I said suddenly I meant as I said, that it appears in these two bigger poems and was not there before. A progress was there, but not this.

I thought that development in poetry has a connection with the development in Yoga as well. But you mention the two separately.

If poetic progress meant a progress in the whole range of Yoga, NK would be a great Yogi by this time. The opening in poetry or any other part helps to prepare the general opening when it is done under the pressure of Yoga, but it is at first something special, like the opening of the subtle vision or subtle senses. It is the opening of a special capacity in the inner being.

Though maturity has come in, the substance and depth are remarkably lacking—I think they've come in J's poems.

There is a much greater ripeness in the thought-substance as well as the rest.

What is more visible and very vivid, it seems to me, is the word-beauty of the poem. It doesn't make one think or stir deeply with the discovery of some hidden treasure.

I don't know exactly what you mean by that—in yourself or in the reader? You say you have not the enthusiasm of creation, so your own feeling in the matter is not conclusive.

All this maturity etc. is all right, only it doesn't thrill me or give me satisfaction... No interest in life or its creative activities, especially when I see that I am the same Man of Sorrows... Please don't taunt me saying that it is all D!

No. D this time is making a valiant attempt to suppress the Man of Sorrows in him and seems so far to have succeeded. I hope you too will soon screw up your energy to the pitch of throwing off this encumbrance.

... I'm now trying to keep myself as busy as possible; it won't allow the mind to feed on those poisons.

Well, that is right—at least it helps.

I don't know whether the Goddess of Poetry will withdraw her boon because I don't care much for it.

She doesn't seem to be doing so.

Anyway, do you understand my psychology and, if you do, will you give some answers, not mystic but mental?

It is quite easy to understand if one realises that the natural being is not of one piece, but made up of parts or quantums or whatever one likes to call it. One part of your mind and vital has the need though not yet the push for the Divine and that need is becoming very prominent—... Another doesn't believe in, or hope for anything. One part of the mind resorts to poetry but cannot wake the vital enthusiasm, because the vital is besieged by the Man of Sorrows. Then there is the man of sorrows himself mixing in everything. Different parts of the mind take different sides and suggest opposite things according as they are pushed by one force or another. As yet no resolution of the central being to put all that into harmony, expel what is to be expelled, change what is to change. I don't know whether you call that mystic or mental answers, but I can't give you any other that would be true.

... Today D.L.'s stools were examined, again there were swarms.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined the word "swarms".]

What's this word? It looks like "swarms"! Swarms of what?

I am satisfied with the answers exposing brilliantly the symptoms and providing the diagnosis. Now the prognosis and the treatment.

That is more difficult. Panacea there is, but only one, which you have indicated in your today's poem.²⁷

How should I develop the push, the harmony and resolution of the central being, and how should I wake up the vital enthusiasm for poetry? If there is one workable formula that will be a panacea, so much the better.

For the rest there are several formulas which are not panaceas. The first is to get into touch with your central being and get it into action. That central may be the psychic, it may be the Self above with the mental Purusha as its delegate. Either of these once in action does the harmonising etc.

The second way is to act with your mental will on these things, not allowing yourself to drift and not getting upset by difficulties and checks, calling on the Mother's Force to assist and finally use your will. There are others, but I stop here.

I want urgently that part of the Divine which will help me keep my poise, calm, peace against any assault from the vital quarter...

It is what is trying to come down in the block condition.

D.L. has less pain. Starts normal meals. She asked if she could take oranges and grapes. I said—yes.

Grapes are safe? If she does not wash them in boiling water or a solution of permanganate?

By "swarms" I meant swarms of Trichomonas

The medicine had no effect? But if the Trichomonas are there in quantity, why is it necessary to search for Hookworms?

In your yesterday's answer you wrote that I have indicated the panacea in my poem. I thought I spoke of faith and surrender! Is that it?

You described very admirably the attitude of perfect nirbhar²⁸ which is the great secret of the most perfect kind of sadhana.

You have not said how to get into touch with the central being, and get it into action.

There is no how. One decides to do it and one does it.

My mental will itself is weak.

It can be made strong.

I can try to call down the Mother's force, but faith and surrender would require a wonderful Yogic poise and power possible only in born Yogis, I think.

Not at all. A wonderful Yogic poise and power would usually bring self-reliance rather than faith and surrender. It is the simple people who do the latter most easily.

When you spoke of 'poetic power" in my poetry, what did you mean? I asked D. He says "poetic power" means a dynamism, a vigorous living force which we find in Madhusudan... But we find in Shakespeare both power and beauty, while Swinburne has hardly power predominant.

No power in Swinburne?

Did you mean by "poetic power" a power or capacity of expression?

Of course that was what I meant. The other kind of power would not be prefaced by the epithet poetic. One would simply say "there is great power in his style" etc.

Dr. Manila! examined D.L... She's extremely weak, he advises complete rest.

I suppose there is no call for her to work.

... Is it possible for R to take her up?

I am asking R. You will have to tell him all about the case.

Chand has sent money to buy garlands for you. You can bless him without garlands, can't you?

Yes, of course—quite able.

Jatin has brought me a pair of dhotis. I shall feel highly gratified if you will kindly use one.

I have two drawers packed with dhotis already! Why not use both—your supplies being undoubtedly less?

Do you know what all these people say? That they feel peace, peace everywhere, which one never finds at any other place!

Of course!

Jatin has been saying that Peace is coming as if in waves! Satuda the same, and Dr. Becharlal runs close, if not more! You must be very glad indeed to hear this news.

It is not news! Numbers of people have said the same thing—even carry it to Europe and keep it there in the midst of the crush and confusion.

I wish I could get a little of this long-cherished and much-coveted basis of your Yoga.

It is because you people here, having no infernal shindy outside themselves, create one inside it. The vital can't get on without a shindy—finds life dull otherwise.

NK sends you a poem on his Darshan impression.

Kept him.

J wants to know why or how the mind-fag has come in and by what attitude or process it can quickly pass off ...

There is nothing serious in it. Very often when the mind has been doing something for a long time (I mean of course the physical mind), something which demands intensity of work or action, not what can be done as a routine, it finds itself unable to do it well any longer. That means that it is strained, needs rest so that the force may gather again. Rest or a variation. A little rest given to it or a variation of work should set it right again.

I thought that one or two hours' work without undue effort might perhaps keep the channel open and at the same time produce no fatigue.

It is not a question of ordinary fatigue by overwork—but of a temporary inability to go on doing the same thing over and over any longer. That is what I mean by mind-fag. It is not the mere writing of poetry of any kind but the intensity necessary to bring down that kind of poetry that is in question. The channel in fact is not working because of the fag—it can work again only after rest. by not forcing oneself.

Dr. Manilal recommends arnica for Mulshankar's pain, and massage.

Massage best. No homeopathy without R's intervention is allowable.

S complains again of vague pains. Dr. Manila! says he must do only light work.

We gave him no work. It is his own spree.

A poem begun on the 6th and completed by Darshan... Well, any remark?

Sorry. Your poem got mixed up with Nolini's papers and I saw it only now. Glanced through but will have to study more carefully. Will return with N's.

Tomorrow, by the way, I am going to burst a little—Attention!

Eh what! Burst? Which way? If you explode, fizz only—don't blow up the Asram.

The Asram is quite safe! My explosion will burst me alone, but I will see if the Divine can as well be exploded. I expected very much that your touch would relieve my burden, a little even, or would do something somewhere by which something at least would be tangible outwardly. Well, illusion it has been all...

Man alive (or of Sorrows or whatever may be the fact), how is it you fell on such a fell day for your burst? There has been an explosion, as D merrily calls it, beginning on the 14th but reaching now its epistolary climax and I have been writing sober letters to excited people for the last few hours. Solicit therefore your indulgence for a guru besieged by other people's disturbances (and letters) until tonight. Send back the blessed burst and I will try to deal with it.

My problem is: I have been trying to call down Peace but none comes. I admit that at times a stabdhatā comes down in meditation, but afterwards no peace, not to speak of Ananda etc.

The stabdhata is still the condition which announces the attempt of peace to descend. It is a beginning.

This miserable condition is continuing so long! It drives me to make big efforts in concentration, to push and push, but it seems the vital refuses to cooperate in the sadhana and hence there is no joy.

It is of course that; the mind is pressing the vital by concentration and otherwise, but the vital is not yet prepared to accept peace or renounce agitation and desire.

Is it because the food has been taken away from the vital that it non-cooperates?

Partly that.

Or is it your Man of Sorrows who has besieged it?

The Man of Sorrows only takes advantage of the vital resistance and restlessness to bring in despondency etc. and make things worse.

Who is this Man of Sorrows, really? Is it a force or a being that has possessed me? I feel as if something is keeping me down forcibly.

Yes, it is so. But who it is, is a long story—He has not possessed, but is in control of part of your vital.

Whoever the devil he is, it seems to be impossible for me to dislodge him.

Difficult at present but not impossible.

If it is because of D's company, I'll cut it off from tomorrow.

No. D is less often upset and takes things in a more humorous way.

Or is it due to J's company? But that can't be cut off as the literary connection is there.

Well, I can't say that has nothing to do with it—but cutting off may not make things better.

... I can't even walk, where I want to run. Really I am losing all hope again...

That is the contribution of the Man of Sorrows.

You said "nirbhar is the great secret", [10.8.36] but when one is besieged by so many things: mind restless, vital dead, what shall I do?

"Nirbhar" means reliance on the Divine whatever the condition or the difficulties. "Nirbhar" when all is going well, does not mean much. It is a poise one has to take and you can grow into it as D is growing into it.

Lastly, please ask Mother if I've been doing any wrong movement these 2 or 3 days. I feel some indication of that sort at the Pranam.

Not to her knowledge.

Is the poem done?

Yes. Very good, especially first half. But this flower and bee image has been buzzing about since ages before Kalidas; needs a little more polish to look entirely new.

I'm again passing through a period of মন খারাপ²⁹ due to the same old vital trouble.

Ah that মন খারাপ! If you could only get rid of it—face the thing calmly and steadily as something to be eliminated which necessarily takes time but must and will be done!

... Now tell me how I should keep this nirbhar when the vital rises. Rejection? Detachment?

D first—R with D.

How shall I detach myself when a subtle strain of dissatisfaction runs within?

Detach from the dissatisfaction.

Shall I cry out—"Damn it all; don't worry even if the lower vital bursts up. Everything will be all right"?

That is not nirbhar.

I fear all my answers³⁰ are scrappy as well as illegible, but this has been also a fell day (one letter 36 pages vernacular, 2 others each 8 pages of foolscap, others less in size (4, 2, 1 etc.) but ample in number—and this is no-correspondence period!) I have had to race against the old man Time.

You simply say "the difficulty is there"! I wonder if anyone else here had to work under such a condition... To "detach"—isn't it something Herculean for me?

Well, but it is not individual to you. Everyone has to do that with his difficulties. Detach means that the Witness in oneself has to stand back and refuse to look on the movement as his own (the soul's own) and look on it as a habit of past nature or an invasion of general Nature. Then to deal with it as such. It may seem difficult, but it comes perfectly well by trying persistently.

If the mind goes on pressing and pressing, will the vital be prepared?

It does in the end.

Otherwise to take up the vital violently like D, doesn't seem possible.

Violently? I don't see how he did that.

To think that I will have to suffer like him for so many years before anything happens, freezes me!

That is not necessary.

If time permits, a comprehensive answer, please.

When time permits.

Mother would like you to go to the Hospital and ask the Doctor there what is really the matter with Swasti and how long they think he will have to stay there. Between doctor and doctor.

All your answers for the cure of my troubles have been too strong for me, for you have thrown everything on my great self: "If you could do this, if you could do that, etc!"

No, I have only made suggestions of what the great self could do to help the Force and make an orientation for the Force to work upon and carry out.

When I ask you how to do it, you reply—Oh one simply does it! If one could simply do it, why should I bother you?

One simply does it, means that one tries a certain psychological movement which is known by long experience to be effective and the Force enters into it and one day one finds it done.

Tell me, if I pray for Peace, Calm, Force, Strength, etc., will it be enough or not? After that, to be able to reject, detach, must be done by your Force. That's all I can do, please understand that.

At any rate there must be the acceptance of the rejection or detachment for the Force to use—a kind of will to it. If you simply pray and then say "All right, now, damn it, I have done all that is necessary; I can now lament or indulge"—that makes things a trifle difficult.

On the whole, I feel better today. I could recall after some concentration the nebulous outlines of your face. Something is going to happen?

Yes, of course.

Is it true that a greater and a vaster Force descended this Darshan?

It is not a question of descent. We are nurturing the Force and it grows necessarily stronger and has more effect.

What about Jatin and his wife?

Both of them very well and growing weller since they were here.

I want to ask you a host of questions on the psychology of the affair of D and Y...

By the way, as you got better, D flopped down. Lost his incipient nirbhar and wants to walk off again.

Any time to circulate some Force for poetry?

Yes.

N.B. I send you the lucubrations of the S fellow for your information. I absolutely object to his living in and on the Mother's force—he would be there like his own ball,³¹ neither melted, nor plastic nor disappeared. Any remarks? Please return the gem as I may have to answer it.

I have been longing to ask you the mystery behind J's poetic flowering; but of late you have become awfully cryptic.

That is perhaps because I am becoming more and more supra-mental.

You know her previous works were sporadic and simple with long gaps in between.

That was because she was trying to write literature. That is often the first stage.

When she was asked to compose songs the other day, we found a sudden transformation. Even the first few songs were not very striking, but they seemed to have opened a door and she has entered into your mystic kingdom...

Opened the lyrical gift in her probably—began knocking for the spontaneous song in place of the mind-made article.

What she is writing seems to me exceedingly striking. We don't meet any such original ideas and expressions in Bengali literature.

Of course not—she was not inspired this time by Bengali literature, but by the Faery International.

It is a great mystery to me. Comparing her original turn, expressions, speed, with her past work—what a miraculously rapid development!

But, my dear sir, it often happens like that. I believe you were not here when D's poetry blossomed; but it was quite as sudden. Remember Tagore's description of him as the cripple who suddenly threw away his crutches and began to run and his astonishment at the miracle. Nishikanta came out in much the same way, a sudden Brahmaputra of inspiration. The only peculiarity in J's case is the source she struck—the pure mystic source.

I refuse to believe that it is she who has done it.

Of course she didn't, nor D nor Nishikanta either. It is a way of speaking.

Has the inner mind opened up or what?

A passage opened through it.

Please shed some light on it. If you want it to be kept a secret, I shall keep it—but a few lines on it.

Well, if you think I knew how it's done! I hammer about till I hit the right spot. It hits quick sometimes, that's all.

Note however that there was always in J something that wanted or claimed to belong to another world. Perhaps by the pressure she got into contact with it.

How do you find the poem I am sending you? Does it deserve incineration?

Well, as poetry it is some good—but I can't say it is distinguished or beautiful like the poems you have written since.

You needn't incinerate, but bury it in a drawer somewhere for the moment. Read it again after ten years (Horace's advice).

What about the refrain?

Refrain? Man alive, if all were like the refrain, I should say "Bury, bury—burn, burn."

I have persistently forgotten to send you this letter. Can you give me any light on the subject? Do you know anything about these injections?

[Evening]

[Regarding the letter.] My knowledge of leprosy is practically nil, so I approached Dr. Manilal. He says that since the servant has come in close contact with the family, all the members must take the injections as proposed. Though the treatment is palliative it may produce a greater prophylactic effect, at least the psychological effect.

Good Lord—only that! Psychological effect needs injection?

Dr. Manilal says that servants working for 30 years in leper hospitals did not develop any leprosy. No intimacy in the contact?...

Perhaps unconcern also!

We have shed some light. Enough to illumine the supra mental table?

Umph!

Jatin's wife writes to her sister that she is extremely happy here... I can understand Jatin saying something like that, but she knowing nothing about spirituality likes the place so much—miraculous, what?

Why? Plenty of people have felt that. E.g. the Yuvarani comes here full of a secret sorrow for her lost son and goes back very happy.

Jatin had a dream of you as in the photograph, giving him instructions in his structural engineering work!!... It was Sri Aurobindo in his previous form, he says, why?

I suppose, the present Sri Aurobindo having left all engineering instructions to the Mother, the previous Sri Aurobindo had to come and do it in this case.

We see then that Sri Aurobindo has come out, the least hope of which we don't entertain. For another thing, he has come out as an Engineer! Any possibility of the fruition of the dream?

Anyhow what has it to do with coming out? Any number of people meet me in dreams and get instructions or intimations about this or that. It is an activity of the vital plane where I am not in strict retirement—it has nothing to do with any future physical happening.

What's this threat, Sir? You are cryptic because you are becoming more and more supramental! [21.8.36]. For the Supramental's sake, don't be that yet. I have many things to know...

Well, but haven't I told you that the supermental can't be under-stood by the intellect? So necessarily or at least logically, if I become supramental and speak supramentally, I must sound unintelligible to everybody. Q.E.D. It is not a threat, only the statement of a natural evolution.

A carpenter beaten by a rat...

Say, say! I never heard of a rat beating a man before! He ought to go to the criminal court instead of the hospital.

At last you have given me an occasion for a question; let it be an occasion for a big reply, what?

My dear sir, what is this extravagant ambition for bigness?

With fifty letters a day raining on me in a "non-correspondence" period, a supramental brevity is all of which I am capable.

You very often say "it is a meeting in the vital plane". Yesterday you said "an activity of the vital plane"—what does it mean? Are all happenings there as true as on the physical plane?

Yes, except that sometimes the record is imperfect—but the happening is true.

Are they intimations of what would happen on the physical plane?

No—the vital plane has an independent life of its own; the physical also.

My being meets you or the Mother in dreams, and receives your blessings. Has it any concrete value—as concrete as the Pranam touch?

What do you mean by concrete? It is concrete there just as the Abyssinian or Spanish wars are concrete here.

Do you mean to say that people getting instructions from you in dreams is as real, effective and correct as if you had written them on paper?

Yes, if the record is correct.

If that be so, does Jatin's meeting mean that his future work here will be engineering?

No, not necessarily.

Or does it mean that even there outside, he will be guided by the Mother?

He may be, if he develops the supraphysical contact.

I am apt to think somewhat slightingly of these vital plane meetings...

You are too physically matter of fact. Besides you are quite ignorant of occult things. The vital is part of what European psychologists sometimes call the subliminal, and the subliminal, as everybody ought to know, can do things the physical cannot do—e.g. solve a problem in a few minutes over which the physical has spent days in vain etc., etc.

When I dream that you are writing big answers or the Mother blessing me profusely, I see exactly the contrary in my book and at the Pranam. Any explanation?

What is the use of the same things happening on both planes? it would be superfluous and otiose. The vital plane is a field where things can be done which for some reason or other can't be done now on the physical.

Please don't write supramentally. If being supramental, you can't write intelligibly, is there any earthly use of that?

Certainly. Your inner self will understand and rejoice while the outer stares and wobbles.

N.B. There are of course hundreds of varieties of things in the vital as it is a much richer and more plastic field of consciousness than the physical, and all are not of equal validity and value—I was speaking above of the things that are valid. By the way, without this vital plane there would be no art, poetry or literature—these things come through the vital before they can manifest here.

I had asked R long ago to get "Sudarshan" specially for A. He didn't listen; at the last moment he said he would write to Madras, but wrote to Gujerat, hence the delay.

Very unbusinesslike and slipshod. Writing to Madras means that Mother will have to pay far inferior stuff while she can get free the best quality from Punamchand's father whose speciality it is.

X has inflammation inside the ear, I wanted to apply medicine, but he requires permission.

You can. It was Mother who sent him to you for treatment.

S still complains of slight pain and discomfort. Thinking of trying enema on alternate days.

Yes. Mother thinks it very necessary.

Yes, X told me that Mother had sent him, but when I went to apply medicine, he said—ask Mother!

Nonsense! It is implied. Mother doesn't send him to the Dispensary for a promenade or to dance.

It seems J's irregularity of periods has been caused by excessive mental and physical strain due to poetry.

Good Lord! If poetry is to be the parent of irregular menses!

September 1936

I am sending you a few snaps—some samples of your supramental yogis. Isn't Dilipda splendid in a standing posture?

Superb!

What about his deep intellectual look in the sitting one?

Admirable!

And my noble self seems to be coming out of the grave or going there probably?

Asking where will be the end of this প্রনান্ত লীলা ।³²

My supramental forehead is merging with the Infinite, what?

Yes, dominating scornfully from there the pigmy universe.

Lastly, the Asram photos are very fine.

Very well done.

I give you a rare occasion for laughter. Please do laugh loud and share it with us!

No time to laugh! Can only smile.

As the cause of J's irregular menses it is not poetry I said, but the physical and mental strain. Coming here running with the poem, going back to meditation, then copying hurriedly the poem, then meal, etc. Going on thus day after day. Not enough to cause strain? No, not parent, it has become the issue!

You relieve me! I was thinking if poetry could be the parent of i.m., what it would do to you and Dilip and Nishikanta.

A is "slightly better". No fever, slight tenderness in the liver region.

Mother found him rather yellow at Pranam.? but if he has no fever, I suppose it is all right.

Again I have a blessed boil inside the left nostril—painful. I feel feverish. A dose of Force, please!

As the modernist poet says

O blessed blessed boil within the nostril,
How with pure pleasure dost thou make thy boss thrill!
He sings of thee with sobbing trill and cross trill,
O blessed, blessed boil within the nostril.

I hope this stotra³³ will propitiate the boil and make it disappear, satisfied.

Is that why you tend towards home-eating?

I asked R to return to us the duplicate key of the Dispensary. He has now practically no connection with the Dispensary. He has agreed, but puts a nonsensical suggestion that whenever I go out I should leave the key with the gatekeeper. He also says that if required, another key can be prepared by Manibhai!!

You ought to have shouted before. Now he has given order to Manibhai for another key.

G has signs of inflammation in the left lung. Better to take an X-ray tomorrow; sputum examination if necessary after that.

Better not X-ray etc. unless it is absolutely necessary. Feed him, tonic him, coddle with cod-liver oil and see how it works out before plunging into these soul-shaking measures.

Should be made a little civilised! He has hardly any bedding; no blanket, no mosquito net. He says there are not many mosquitoes.

A blanket, banyan, mattress have been given. Mother did not know about mosquito net—but if he is not accustomed to it, he may find it rather suffocating. But you can ask Amrita for one if you think it indispensable. Civilisation is good, but not at all points for everyone.

I can't decide if he should be given any work, but if he sits all the time at home, that may act adversely.

It will certainly act adversely.

At any rate, his wandering work has to be stopped.

On the contrary, to move in the open is surely one of the best things for him—provided it is not under the rain. He has most probably not been eating enough and ought to be fed. Also cod-liver oil and tonic may be good for him. He must have got cold and neglected it.

What a powerfully effective "stotra"! the boil couldn't but burst... I couldn't make out one word. Is it "make thy bows thrill"?

I thought you'd boggle over it. "Boss" man "boss" = yourself as owner, proprietor, patron, capitalist of the boil.

[Because of some inconvenience I wanted meals at home.] But if you want, the "home-eating" tendency can be stopped.

D.R. says more and more people demanding home consumption—carrying capacity exhausted. Will have to double Dayabhai's work if this goes on—he will spend the whole day tiffin-carrying—and finally what will be the damned use of the Dining Hall? Your name among the home-consumers—so gave you a jog. If we omit the visitors, 50 per cent of the Asram are taking home-meals and most of these all meals at home. All do not take by cart, but even so the cart has to carry more than its proper capacity.

G did not have good sleep at night...

Said bad sleep was due to the beastly blanket and mattress. Prefers a bedsheet to wrap himself according to former custom.

He has to be given a tonic injection "une toes les deux jours"—on alternate days?

Yes, if that is the direction.

His fever has to be brought down. Dr. Becharlal advises his native drug galoye...

If it does not clash with the injections.

We must also give cod-liver oil, but I fear to begin at once as he has fever and may not be able to digest. Still I will try from tomorrow one teaspoon a day.

You can wait till whenever it is suitable to give it. Perhaps the injections should be finished first.

"To move in the open" is surely the very thing, but don't you think with running fever of 101.4°, weakness, etc. it would be a little too much?

That of course—The objection is to making him a permanently sedentary invalid—that is what so many are becoming.

Till his fever comes down and weakness disappears, I think you will agree that his daily work has to be cut short.

Mother has stopped his work.

Why not take A out of the doctors' hands now by pumping a big dose?

Very refractory to big doses.

Dr. Becharlal prescribes butter for my amaigrissement and cod-liver oil by myself.

?? [Sri Aurobindo put 2 interrogation marks.]

If any oranges can be spared for G, don't you think it will do him good?

[Mother:] You can go to Champaklal, he will give two oranges daily.

Why two interrogations, Sir, against my using butter?

Butter and cod-liver oil—which is two.

Since the Force does not help, I have to seek fatness from butter and oil. Of course, Dr. Becharlal also added cheerfulness to the prescription.

Mother pours scorn on your idea that you are a jutting skeleton. She says that you are less shockingly plump than when you came, but that is all. But if you take butter and oil together, to say nothing of cheerfulness, what will you become? Remember Falstaff.³⁴

We understand that Mother asked Shanta not to take cod-liver oil with milk or water as it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Mother told her it might spoil her taste for milk—but did not forbid anything. Now Shanta says she can't take it even in milk, so renounces its use.

So we advised her to take it as it is though it is slightly bitter. But still she wants us to ask Mother how to take it!

So what? Any substitute which she will not object to? She says she has pain in eyes and temples. Replaced fever?

This trouble of S's has become really a nuissance! Nothing seems to hit him at the right place.

He has written me a furious letter denouncing you and all doctors and their wicked futile ways.

He is so much bent on having his diet increased in spite of our giving him quite a sufficient amount. His excessive hunger points towards some worm infection. Let us try Santonin, if you allow.

But how try without being sure? Liver also gives alternations of not-eating and bouts of excessive hunger.

About me, did you say "less shockingly plump"! Good gracious, was I ever plump? Mother has only to see my bare upper body and exclaim—Oh doctor like that!

It's your clothes that made you plump?

Please circulate Force from 2 or 2.30 p.m., will you?

Lord! my least forceful time or rather the fag-end of the same. Never mind.

What's the matter with my poetry? I tried yesterday's poem again for a long time, nothing doing! The channel has choked up or what?... Remedy—try and try? or rest and rest?

Both methods are possible and each has its advantages—or they might be combined "Rest and rest and try and try."

I have been unusually happy after months!... Man of Sorrows was non-existent—kicked out? But unfortunately he is trying to poke his face again!

Twist his nose.

We hear your Supermind is very near—not 50 years, I hope! Time to push us up a little, Sir, so that we may give you a proper reception, what?

That's what the Force seems to be trying to do.

Don't forget to make us, at least, feel the Descent. 30 years' sadhana, by Jove!...

30 years too little or too many? What would have satisfied your rational mind—3 years? 3 months? 3 weeks? Considering that by ordinary evolution it could not have been done even at Nature's express speed in less than 3000 years, and would ordinarily have taken anything from 30,000 to 300,000, the transit of 30 years is perhaps not too slow.

In trying to solve the riddle of the Sphinx, Paul Brunton in his book, "A Search in Secret Egypt", says, "That the Sphinx represents something divine or someone divine is suggested by the hieroglyph inscriptions on the walls of the Upper Egyptian temples, as at Edfu, where a god is pictured as changing himself into a lion with a human head in order to vanquish Set, the Egyptian Satan... If the force of a lion and the intelligence of man mingled their symbolisms in this crouching body, there was yet something neither bestial nor human in it, something beyond and above these, something divine!"³⁵ He says there was some supernatural element in this stone being.

Did the Egyptians or Atlanteans have the same conception or believe in the same evolutionary Avatarhood and hence the statue?

Maybe. But the Sphinx is rather the symbol of the whole evolution from subconscient to the superconscient Light.

He further asks whether the Pyramids are "vast and vain monuments" or are they reared merely to hold one Pharaoh's mummified flesh?

It is usually supposed by occultists to be a symbolic-scientific monument in which were performed some secret Egyptian Mysteries.

Two doses of Santonin will have no harmful effect on S. But, I suppose, the necessity no longer exists as he is furious with us and may even quit us.

If he doesn't quit and submits to Santonin we have no objection.

A says he feels heavy and sleepy and not refreshed. Is it the Force that does it?

Good Lord, no! It is forcelessness that does it.

D's letter gives me an occasion to ask you about the suicide of X's wife. You said something about Fate which is always a mysterious word.

Well, the determination of human life and events is a mysterious thing. Can't help that, you know Fate is composed of many things—Cosmic Will + individual self-determination + play of forces + Karma + x + y + z + a + b + c ad infinitum.

Suicides and accidents are supposed to be due to hostile Forces.

Not Forces hostile to our work, but hostile to the suicide and to the accidented fellow.

She died because "she was hostile to the Divine". So it can't be the action of hostile Forces, for it would be in their interest to keep her alive, so that X may be hampered in his aspiration.

Was she hostile to the Divine? All I heard was that she was somewhat in the way of X's sadhana—but so many wives and husbands are like that and they don't get drowned.

And since X's turn to the Divine was much quicker than he thought, can one conclude from this accident that the Divine perhaps wanted to remove the obstacle? Of course it is a very drastic method.

All that is simplificative reasoning—the truth is much more complex than that.

I was tempted to conclude so, because I heard you had said that X being a rare sattwic type, you wanted him sooner, or something like it.

No. We were not particular about the time.

Some say the Divine's way would have been to try to turn the wife also this way or to help X to go through the ordeal—not this drastic step! A word or two please!

God only knows what God does and why he is doing it. And God is not in the habit of letting other people know—except when it suits him.

A has malaise; not refreshed after sleep...

I have been without light, so blank, blank, blank. Keeping everything in hope of better luck today. (This has nothing to do with A's malaise, by the way. Only take advantage of bottom of page.)

Shall we put A on Sudarshan powder?

All right.

Try some Force please, A is getting disgusted, it seems!

Only getting? He is chronically disgusted, to my experience.

The hostile forces have made my life unbearable, sucking away every drop of blood gained after much pain and expense. Can't sit outside, even for a minute, under the breezy, starry sky. Their breeding place is in the thick canna bushes Manubhai has planted. Can't you direct him to strike them off and save my precious life? What will happen if the Asram doctor is to die of malaria?

My dear sir, Manubhai will have a fit and you will have to treat him and probably he will kill you into the bargain. You prefer a violent death to malaria? While there is life, there is hope, even if there are also mosquitos. Why not negotiate with Manubhai himself? If you plead with him in a sweet low pathetic voice, he may have mercy.

By the way, Shanta has consented to take the cod-liver oil after all,—so I have agreed to ask you for a whole bottle for her personal absorption. So send her a bottle of this divine but fishy nectar.

G says he feels "tous les bien"!

Good Lord! what's that? French?

At times I think I am really useless as a doctor; I haven't the gift for it—wrong choice of profession altogether, like that of your Yoga, Sir! Both of them forced down my throat! I often feel like asking Mother to take off this responsibility from me and give it to some fitter person.

To whom?

Those 5 years in Edinburgh weren't just play. I have done some studies surely, which are not worth a candle, for people with much less knowledge, quacks even, seem to be more successful.

Book knowledge is necessary, but not much use by itself.

What are the elements then wanting in me? Lack of faith in the drugs given, lack of Faith in the Force?

Lack of experience, lack of decision, vacillating intuition, want of vision.

It is true that I haven't much faith in our drugs, but with these very drugs doctors are becoming enormously successful.

They go ahead, don't mind how many people they kill, but they go—human Motorcars.

It seems I don't know yet the right way to call down the Force, or is it because the "canalisation" hasn't been done yet?

Right—that's it.

I am getting more and more disappointed in my doctorship, as in Yoga, since I hear that you are now trying more for transformation of nature than for experience.

Because without transformation of nature, the blessed experience is something like a gold crown on a pig's head—won't do. Picturesque perhaps, but—

... Please give me precise practical suggestions on the art of healing.

My God, man! I am not a doctor.

What to do? How to bring down the Force?

How? is there a how? You call, you open, it comes (after a time). Or, You don't call, you open, it comes. Or, You call, you don't open, it doesn't come. Three possibilities. But how—? Well, God he knows, or perhaps he doesn't.

Seeing the miraculous effects of Homeopathy, Dr. Manila! asked me to study it with R. I don't know if it's any use—as study alone won't do. One must have the gift. Have I?

Can't say! Had you the poetic gift some years ago?

As I thought—no help but to wait for canalisation and in the meantime carry on. I suppose all "lacks" will be removed by the descent of Force?

Obviously, obviously!

You promised to write to me about Intuition, but like all your promises—!

I promised to do so in some future age when I had time. That promise stands—if a promise stands. What more can you ask of it?

God knows what you are busy with now, with the correspondence also reduced?

Who says it is reduced? For a few days, it was—now it has increased to half again its former size and every morning I have to race to get it done in time—and don't get it done in time. Thousand things are accumulating; inner work delayed.

I didn't mean by "practical suggestions", any medical ones, Sir! I meant about the Force. R, I saw once, put his hand on a patient's abdomen, and concentrated, God knows on what...

On the Mother and her Force for which he was calling.

I hear he actually feels the Force descending and the patients also get relief for the time being.

Yes, that has frequently happened.

Suppose I do the same, I know I won't feel any Force descending, but without feeling it, it may descend and act?

Doubtful.

Regarding A, you said he was refractory to big doses. In that case, how will my calling help the canalisation of the hard granite?

Even to small doses. Sometimes I get in a little surreptitiously and, as it were, against his will. He is much more granite than you.

You can be less mysterious in these explanations, si vous voulez.

Not mysterious at all. Succinct and epigrammatic.

"Obviously, obviously"! What obviously, Sir? When will the blessed Force descend?

That is irrelevant. The time of its descent has nothing to do with its obviousness.

Have been working these 2 or 3 days on this small poem, can't do it. Remarkable maturity of expression etc. etc. have all melted away!

Not at all. They are there, only feeling shy and sitting modestly behind the pardah.

A, though "much more granite" than I, seems to receive very well in poetry.

Ah, you think so! My dear sir, I have to do boring operations like digging an artesian well before I can get a few poems out of him—And afterwards it is one long wail "All gone! all gone! I am damned, doomed, dead, deteriorated, degenerated" for a whole day period. Sir, A is twice the Man of Sorrows you are.

If everything goes on so tremendously slow, isn't it enough to make one despair and sit and lament? Because one doesn't know how the devil one should proceed!

If you appeal to the devil, you can't proceed.

Well, after the failure in poetry, I am thinking now of reading and writing any blessed thing that comes. But there's no joy in it. Everything seems a waste of time. Meditation is hard, doesn't bring any result, poetry won't come—this is the state of affairs.

Present Discontents, what!

Fed up, fed up, damnably fed up! Work of the Spirit as complex as human nature!

Of course it must be, because it is in human nature that it works.

You call, you open, you don't call, you open, you call, you don't open—no profounder mystery can there be than these phrases of yours!

Not at all, plain as your nose. Excuses to the nose! I gave you three different cases,—do mix them up together.

I have called for poetry, I have actually sat up for 2 hours, has it come?

You called but did not open, so it did not come.

I am praying for A's cure, is there a response?

You called, but A did not open, so it did not cure.

Both instances establish my case. Q.E.D.

You said once that it is the spiritual consciousness that my being wants and that this need was becoming very prominent, but not the push yet. It seems now the need also has pushed back?

For the moment.

But if it is really the spiritual consciousness, how the dickens shall I get it by reading, say, Dickens, Lawrence or Nehru?

Probably not! Especially Dickens.

Is that why I think it a waste of time?

Possibly yes.

And yet I would like to read all the books. Have the attitude of nirbhar and do all these things?

Why not?

Really, really, your Yoga is a puzzle and I haven't been able to catch the head or tail of it, shall never perhaps!

You needn't catch either its head or its tail. It will be sufficient if you allow it to catch your head or your tail or both!

Cheerio! Tails forward!

G is now well. Shall we begin cod-liver oil now or after the last 2 injections? Ah, if all patients were like him!

Better finish injections first, then oil him.

Sri Aurobindo,

There you are, Sir, with your paradoxical, mysterious brevities! Dickens etc. won't give the spiritual consciousness and it is a waste of time; again, they can be done with nirbhar! Then why should I do anything wasteful with nirbhar?

If you want to understand my supramental brevities, you must read carefully. You have absolutely ignored my pregnant "Possibly". I never said that it must be a waste of time—but "possibly" yes or "possibly" not. Reading Dickens merely cannot give you the spiritual consciousness—that is obvious. It would be a miracle if it did. Reading the Oxford Dictionary might be more helpful in that direction. Unless of course a miracle took place; then even Dickens—But otherwise it may evidently be a waste of time. D got helped by Lawrence's letters—even J gave him dream-meetings with J and his daughter. But most people would get little that is either occult or spiritual from either. But things done with nirbhar can help—not because of themselves, but because of the nirbhar.

To try to be a literary man and yet not to know what big literary people have contributed would be inexcusable...

Why is it inexcusable? I don't know what the Japanese or the Soviet Russian writers have contributed, but I feel quite happy and moral in my ignorance. As for reading Dickens in order to be a literary man, that's a strange idea. He was the most unliterary bloke that ever succeeded in literature and his style is a howling desert.

One may become, after hard studies of authors, a literary man, but the supramental will keep its tail high up. What has been the result? This is one great disharmonious problem I haven't solved, neither have you helped me except by your supramentally brief jokes.

To be a literary man is not a spiritual aim; but to use literature as a means of spiritual expression is another matter. Even to make expression a vehicle of a superior power helps to open the consciousness. The harmonising rests on that principle.

Considering the capacity, worth and qualities I have been born with, my aspirations or ambitions are too great. In J's words—"So much to be seen, so much to be done, so many fresh avenues to explore," in spiritual as well as non-spiritual domains. I haven't got a clear vision of what to do, how to proceed, how to establish a harmony between the Spirit and the mundane and then to be fired with dynamism.

Ambitions of that kind are too vague to succeed. You have to limit your fields and concentrate in order to succeed in them. I don't make any attempt to be a scientist or painter or general. I have seen certain things to do and have done them, so long as the Divine wanted; others have opened in me from above or within by Yoga; I have done as much of them as the Divine wanted. D has had dynamisms and followed them so long as they were there or as often as they were there. You mentalise, mentalise, discuss, discuss, hesitate, hesitate.

If by any chance I could throw away all troubles about progress in Yoga and push on with literature, that would be some solution.

There is no incompatibility between spirituality and creative activity—they can be united.

... At moments I have aspirations for being many-sided, then comes a voice—"Leave all those things, seek for something more precious, happy." The eternal contradiction!

Fluctuating of course comes in the way of action and therefore of success. One can do one or other or one can do both, but not fluctuate eternally.

Can you now tell me something satisfactory, encouraging, hopeful, at the same time some practical suggestions—can't plead now that you aren't a doctor!

Give up the mentalising, hesitating, fluctuating habit. That is the one practical thing to do.

You say—I called, I didn't open. Isn't it mysterious when I called and sat up with paper and pencil for two hours and nothing came? Then all I can say is that opening is a mysterious business!

Who says it is not? Some people have the trick of always opening to a Force (e.g. Dilip, Nishikanta for creative literary activity), some have it sometimes, don't have it sometimes (you, Arjava, myself). Why make it a case of kicks and despair?

I had been to the pier with J. We were quietly resting on a bench with our feet up, when a Tamilian came with a stick in hand and ordered us to put our feet down. I was rather bewildered and put my feet down; so did J; but she asked "Why?" I said, maybe he is the guard of the pier, and it may be against rules... Behind us Purani and others were sitting with their feet up also, but he didn't tell them anything. This made J very excited and she said that he had insulted us. He was only a drunkard or a rogue. Then she accused me of cowardice for my abject submission; that it was not physical cowardice, but of the inner spirit. Because I didn't want to face him, I obeyed. The first thing a woman respects and admires in a man is courage! etc., etc...

Obviously what you ought to have done was to go baldheaded for the Tamilian, bang up his eyes, smash his nose, extract some of his teeth, break his jaw and fling him into the sea. Afterwards if the police came to arrest you, disable half the Force and slaughter the Inspector. Then J would have come to you in jail and wept admiringly over the mighty hero—That's what a "woman" expects of a "man" since the cave-days. It is also what a she-cat expects of a tomcat.

Kindly tell me frankly and openly what was my movement—was it cowardice? But this man was not at all strong, I could have fought him, besides Purani and they were there. Still why did I listen so meekly? Yet if he had come to attack J, I don't think I would have drawn back. One of the things I hate is cowardice.

In this particular case if you thought it was against rules and the man was a guard (as a matter of fact benches are usually supposed to be sat upon with the feet down), there was no cowardice in complying. Rules ought to be respected—the haughty self-assertive disregard of civic rules is worthy only of savages.

Apart from that there is a passive quiet courage which becomes aggressive only at need and is not partial to shindies, and there is the aggressive courage. To show the latter on every occasion is Irish, but not indispensable. Cowardice comes in only when you do or abstain from doing out of a sense of fear. Were you afraid? If not, it is not cowardice.

I have seen many people physically weak, yet brave like lions, while there are strong fellows who are cowards.

Yes, of course.

Is it something connected with the inner vital? Please explain the situation and give a satisfactory reply on courage vs. cowardice and the remedy.

Fear is of course a vital and physical thing. Many people who have shown great courage, were not physically or even vitally brave; yet by force of need they pushed themselves into all sorts of battle and danger. Henry IV of France, a great fighter and victor, was an example. Just because his body consciousness was in a panic, he forced it to go where the danger was thickest.

On Saturday I had a dream that my complexion had become absolutely golden. Y cried, "Oh, how beautiful you have become!" Is it some inner beauty reflecting itself on the outer being?

If Y and her compliment had not been in the dream, we might say so. But—If we give it a symbolic sense, (leaving Y out of account as a contribution from the vital) then it is a beautiful vision not of the body but of the future change of the being. For gold is the colour of the Divine Truth. People who come down from the highest planes (when not white or blue) are usually golden in dreams and visions. Take your choice of explanations.

G's temperature normal today. 6 injections finished. Start the oil? [18.9.36]

Yes.

Raghavan has eczema on right leg—not much benefit by mercury. Giving simple Zinc Oxide. Eczemas are beastly things. Wonder if we should give it up.

Give up having eczemas? Certainly. Boils too.

I have one more blessed boil! Dr. Becharlal says it is a good sign, for it means purification!! If so I shall bear thousands!!!

All that's a discovery. The boil is then truly a blessed one?

... If you approve of my all-round literary aim, then isn't it necessary that one should be acquainted with the best literatures of the world?

Not indispensable,—even by being steeped in one literature, one can arrive. But useful of course.

What do you say about my plans to read Meredith, Hardy, Shelley, Keats and the French and Russian writers?

Lord, Sir, I wish I had time to follow out a programme as massive as yours. I have none even to dilate upon yours.

You know I have hardly any experience of life and the world which helps in creation. That defect can, to a certain extent, be removed by the study of these works.

Is it so? There would be a danger of its being only derivative and bookish work. The great novelists like the great dramatists have been usually men who lived widely or intensely and brought a world out of the combination of their inner and their outer observation, vision, experience. Of course if you have a world in yourself, that is another matter.

... If I want to write poetry, I should read them side by side.

? [Sri Aurobindo underlined "them".]

Now I am in a mood to read prose.

No objection.

... I shall also read your books for 2 hours which will help my sadhana, opening of consciousness.

Good.

My sex-trouble is also much less at present—my most heartfelt gratitude to Mother.

Delighted to hear. Great pother and nuisance—the sex.

About that cowardice, I have thought and thought... Why should I have been afraid? I could have fought him any moment!

Don't suppose it was cowardice.

I don't understand the first part of the explanation of my vision. Why Y and her compliment stand in the way of taking it as an inner purity? Because I want to look beautiful in her eyes?

Yes—it creates a suspicion that it was golden vanity that created the golden vision—at least a desire to be gold in Y's eyes.

Rest of the explanation is also hazy but no matter.

Not hazy, only phosphorescent.

Who is this of France?

Henri Quatre, Henry IV of France—one of the most famous names in French history—what the deuce, Sir! never heard of him? Anyhow, he was a typical example of a great hero, victor in many battles who was yet physically a coward, but his mind and will prevailed over the fear in the body.

S has come back again! But I can't get the head or tail of his symptoms. Now he says one thing, now another.

Mother stopped his hot water and tiffin-carrier. He lamented about fever, liver pains and what not (that's his plea) for continuing them. I told him if he had such bad health, he must be under medical treatment, not rushing about everywhere and eating whatever he likes. He said doctor's treatment no good. But I suppose he has gone back either in the hope of your restoring his hot water and carrier or just to prove that cold water and Aroumé³⁶ don't agree with him.

Tomorrow, I think, we shall start Santonin, and watch.

Mother says why give santonine to a healthy fellow and spoil his health? She has a strong suspicion that S's illness may now have become diplomatic ache and strategic fever.

I have started writing, Sir. Not exactly a story, for I have just let myself go... Should one have a rough outline of the plot or just begin somewhere and somehow?

It is done either way according to the author's prakriti.³⁷

And about style—should one try to improve it consciously or let oneself flow on?

Same thing.

Good Lord, your writing is exceeding all limits, Sir!

Transformation of handwriting. The self exceeds all limits, the handwriting should do so also.

"Lord, Sir, ..."—I don't know what to make of it. [Letter of 22.9.36.]

You seem to have made it out all right.

By having a world in oneself you mean what the Yogis say, having brahmānḍa³⁸ within by the power of Yoga?

Or by the power of Nature.

Had a vision of a small pretty steam launch sailing at moderate speed in the sea. Meaning? Slow spiritual progress?

Yes.

About D's gramophone record affair, rumours were that you refused him permission, but D insisted and brought the gramophone company people by special request. Well, D told us that they have come of their own accord with your permission.

All that not true. They offered themselves to come and D took our permission. I have seen the correspondence. Who is spreading all these inventions?

S is running temperature 99°, morning and afternoon—"strategic"?

Perhaps it is the grief of his lost tiffin carrier that gives him that.

A says he can't work more than he would like to—i.e. till 12.

What's that? Why should he want to work more than he would like to? Do you mean "as much as" by any chance?

My boil has burst!!

Hurrah!

G's afternoon temperature 99°.

Tell him not to work too much. He is rushing about too much. For some months he must do it only in small quantities. If the temperature comes back, you will have to give the remaining four injections—to be bought in town.

Shivalingam—Pain, swelling [leg] much less. Slight pain while walking. Shall I try protein injections? In such cases it gives good results at times, but might give febrile reaction.

You can try. He is solid and stolid.

Or shall I let him go on with slight pain and swelling till the Supramental descends?

No sir. Supramental does not want to have to deal with swelled things, either heads, legs or stomachs.

A is better today. I suppose he got a dose of Force at night!

Well, Thursday is the day he comes to Mother.

S was given Sudarshan yesterday—hasn't turned up at all today. Bitter has produced bitterness?

By George! but that's a drastic remedy if he is malingering. He will say again "Trust not in doctors."

Nishikanta's leg is much better now.

What is actually the matter with N's leg? what's the cause of the thing? He proposes to give it rest for one year! So as to cure it entirely. But that seems to me the other extreme to straining it unnecessarily by overstrenuous walking. After the year of rest, it might want to rest all the life. What's your idea?

In my poem, Amal says "dim" and "dream" are too common. He can't get any alternative. I am sure you have one up your sleeve, what?

My sleeve is empty.

Please enjoy our poet H's sarcasm against "Aurobindo and his best disciples" in "Agragati" [a Bengali journal].

It is rather in H's silliest style.

And what about our Indian Hitler's [S.T.] great mission to save young brains of India by sending all Asrams to perdition?

If he would save his own young brain first from the evident disposition towards softening his ambition betrays, it would be more useful. It is S.T. himself or a fellow sheep of the modernist flock?

[A note from the Mother:]

Nirod,

Devraj will wait for you to-morrow at 9 A.M. at the Canal side entrance of the Hospital.

It would be good if you could obtain that some care should be given to the case—

Good Lord! R said Devraj has no organic trouble!! X-ray shows definite and progressive T.B.—worse in the left lung.

Tomorrow I shall see Valle or André (supposed to be a specialist in T.B.) But how R could have missed the diagnosis gets past me—with all his big cures!

I think he did not take much interest in Devraj's case and was inattentive. But he has been at far from his best recently. He used in outside cases to send me detailed reports of some examinations that were very helpful for action—but in D.L.'s case I knew nothing except that it was only her and it was critical until I got your letter.

"The sparkling surges of the sea
Roar and break..."—was the first version.

Can't see how you got it in metrically. Besides the sea in poetry is always roaring and breaking. So why put it to that hard Sandow exercise once again?

[Image 1]

It is not flighty metre, but a flighty use of language.

"Green trees"—no special significance?

If they were yellow or red trees, then there would be a significance. "Green" is objectionable, because trees manage to be green always without any special significance.

Suppose it was "... like those green trees At evenfall"?

That would successfully get rid of any significance.

There you are or there am I... Please divinise the animal by your Supramental Inspiration.

Divinised! with quite fine results, though I say it.

Turns out to be a fine beast after all.

[The first two medical reports were written by Dr. Becharlal.]

Yesterday noon S got temperature—101.8°...

What is the nature or cause of this fever?

... She wants to take curd thrice a day. I have asked her to take milk as long as the fever lasts—she says she doesn't like milk and it gives a pain in the stomach. Hence without Mother's approval, curd is not desirable in her present state.

I believe milk does not agree with her, she finds it difficult to digest. What then is she to eat? You must settle this and give word to D.R.

... By the way, please make a rule henceforth not to accept sadhaks before they pass a medical exam. Don't you realise, Sir, what potential troubles are ahead with so many invalids?

You are quite right with a million times a million rightness.

No time for comments on rest. Too many urgent calls from R.

October 1936

I don't know if you want a separate report from me of D.L., apart from what I sent you through Pavitra. R surely writes everything and Pavitra tells you all. I have said that R doesn't agree with Valle's diagnosis and writes in today's report that it is "dyspeptic congestion of the colon"!! About Chlorodyne, Dr. Becharlal and I have given our opinion.

The report you speak of has not reached me, so I don't know anything about the chlorodyne. There is a letter from R, but it gives only the general condition during the day (hyper-pyrexin and a crisis due to tympanitis), says that in spite of that there is some amelioration, I understand from Pavitra that Valle found some amelioration in the condition of the heart in the evening.

As to the diagnosis. Valle, you say assigns a gynaecological cause for the illness, so far that agrees with what was R's insistence all along in his letters to me that there must be such a cause—he named some such specific causes also—but he could not be sure because no such cause was admitted at the time by the patient. That was when there were the epigastric pains and before there was the generalisation. It is now over the present development that there is dispute. But I gather from your report that, it being an advanced stage of peritonitis, there is no hope. In a day or some days—or according to R in some weeks, if it is peritonitis—she must go. But then it does not seem to matter what treatment is given,—the best can only give her some more days of suffering. Is this right? All are agreed at least on that matter?

The only hope then is that it might not be peritonitis or that it being peritonitis, R's optimism aided by any force I can give, which cannot be much under the circumstances, will pull her through as it did the others in R's cases whose lives were given up by the doctors. But for this last miracle the conditions are not very favourable. Perhaps if she lives through tonight and the next few days with an amelioration there may be a chance. I put this all down in order to have the situation clear in my mind. One thing only is a good sip that the Mother's force + R's medicines blessed by her pulled her out of the certain death which had come on her the other night; but on the other hand it did not prove as it would have been in another case, decisive.

[The first report was written by Dr. Becharlal, regarding S's illness, treatment, diet and work, and all the arrangements to meet her complaints.]

Mother approves all your arrangements. If you think, she can do light work for an hour. Is it advisable for her to leave her room or go about? She has fancies about her room, disliking it, and thinks it is her room that makes her ill.

K vomited a small particle of bright red blood... Examined the lungs and found that the lesion has extended more than last time. Can you not consent again to an X-ray? [26.12.35]

Yes.

If the diagnosis is correct, the treatment has to be pursued actively and regularly. The best thing would be to send her away...

That's all very well—but she was ill before she came and the family, X says, will do nothing for her treatment if she is sent back. What to do then?

She has gone down in health, feels easily tired. Her food is very, very scanty...

If so, how can she recover? In T.B. surely suralimentation is necessary.

It seems Mother strongly disapproved of D.L.'s taking up that rice-pounding work, but she insisted and Mother had to give way. The origin of her trouble or its recrudescence is traced to that heavy muscular work.

All that is rubbish. The trouble was due to something else not physical without which she could have gone on pounding another fifty years without injury to her body.

... I must say that R's theories about diseases are absurd, however successful he may be as a homeopath-physician.

You may say what you like about the homeopathic theories, but I have seen R work them out detail by detail in cases where he had free and unhampered action and the confidence of the patients and their strict obedience and have seen the results correspond to his statements and his predictions based on them fulfilled not only to the very letter but according to the exact times fixed, not according to R's reports but according to the daily long detailed and precise reports of the allopathic doctor in attendance. After that I refuse to believe, even if all the allopaths in the world shout it in unison, that homeopathic theory or R's interpretation and application of it are mere rubbish and nonsense. As to mistakes, all doctors make mistakes and very bad ones and kill as well as cure—my grandfather and one of my cousins were patently killed by one of the biggest doctors in Bengal. One theory is as good as another and as bad according to the application made of it in any particular case. But it is something else behind that decides the issue.

Just hear what grave errors he has committed. He said to me that he brought about the profuse menstruation in D.L.'s case by his drug, in order to get rid of some mischief there which the patient would not admit. He asked me if this excessive flow should be stopped... He had no justification at all to cause that profuse bleeding, when every drop of blood was precious.

To bring out the latent illness and counteract it, is a recognised principle in homeopathy and is a principle in Nature itself. He misapplied it here because he was in ignorance of the full facts about the menstrual trouble.

As I understand from you, it was only from me that you came to know about her critical condition.

No. I said he had told me her condition was very critical; but he had given no details. I learned the details from you.

Even after her fainting, he took her walking to the pier. Good Lord, an extremely debilitated, anaemic patient to be moved about like that!

Never heard of the anaemia before or then. It was all a talk about stomach, worms or this or that stomachic ailment.

Chlorodyne contains morphia which, you know, is a sedative to the heart and respiration etc. Dr. Becharlal told R about its dangers, but R said, "I have given it already and the drugs to counteract its effects." Counteracting would be tantamount to making it useless and ineffective.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "tantamount to making it useless and ineffective".]

Not according to homeopathic theory.

Valle said, after D.L.'s death, that he was positive about the cause of death. All symptoms and signs were of peritonitis.

May be or may not be. Neither Valle nor R are infallible. So often I have seen a diagnosis made on all the symptoms which turned out to be the wrong one. It is like a condemnation on circumstantial evidence.

I believe Mother's Force had an effect on these medicines, but when R went out of those to this Chlorodyne, and didn't let you know, the danger was signalled. Of course, in any case, the condition was hopeless, but who knows?

How can you believe that when everything is explained according to medical science? There is no place left there for Mother's Force or any force except Valle-Force.

Valle said D.L. would have passed away two or three days ago, but glucose, oxygen and injections kept her up. Beating our drum?

Quite so.

Whatever was given to her: glucose etc., met with opposition from R.

Quite natural for a homeopath, just as your sneering at homeopathic theories and treatment is natural in an allopath.

It seems you were not very hopeful from the time I reported about her case.

No. As I say, he told me it was critical.

If he had informed you before, wouldn't it have been better?

No, it would not have been better.

Why do you say that the conditions were not favourable?

They were unfavourable for working through R as we had worked in outside cases or as I have worked by myself in certain cases outside or inside.

Why didn't your Force prove decisive in this case? About the Supermind and its failure over hostile forces, I give you a chance to bombard me or else I shall!

What has the Supermind to do here? Who told you that I was using the supramental Force? I have said all along that it was not the supramental Force that was acting. If you want the supramental Force, you had better go to Jogesh Mama of Chittagong. I hear from Chittagong that the supramental Force is descending in him.

I have put down a few comments to throw cold water on all this blazing hot allopathism. But all these furious disputes seem to me now of little use. I have seen the working of both systems and of others and I cannot believe in the sole truth of any. The ones damnable in the orthodox view, entirely contradicting it, have their own truth and succeed—also both the orthodox and heterodox fail. A theory is only a constructed idea-script which represents an imperfect human observation of a line of processes that Nature follows or can follow; another theory is a different idea-script of other processes that also she follows or can follow. Allopathy, homeopathy, naturopathy, osteopathy, kaviraji, hakimi have all caught hold of Nature and subjected her to certain processes; each has its successes and failures. Let each do its own work in its own way. I do not see any need for fights and recriminations. For me all are only outward means and what really works are unseen forces behind; as they act, the outer means succeed or fail—if one can make the process a right channel for the right force, then the process gets its full utility—that's all.

K's X-ray was taken. The previous lesion of the lung is healed. But a new one has appeared. For treatment, three things are necessary:

1) She mustn't be always gloomy and depressed as she now seems to be.

What remedy for that? It's her attachament to X that is the root—so long as she clings to that! But it's quite true. Nothing more favour able to T.B. than this kind of depression.

2) She must take plenty of food. 3) Plenty of fresh air also.

Quite agree all points.

And cod-liver oil?

If she can stand it, yes.

Don't know really what to do with S. Mother finds him quite healthy while he has 99° fever, pain in the abdomen, 4 or 5 motions a day!

Not nowadays!

I see no go except Santonin.

Heavens! Another?

Shivalingam has pain again! Given up the idea of injections hearing that "he is solid".

Solidity was not stated as an objection.

M still passes 2 or 3 drops of blood in the urine. Feels a stone blocking the passage somewhere. I'm not quite sure whether it is a stone or a stricture from previous infections.

Well! Preliminary medical examination very necessary for admission.³⁹

M's urine was examined—contains pus; detailed report tomorrow. Now giving urotropine etc.

Those are the hieroglyphics on the Valle paper? They are not Greek to me, but Amharic.

He had also syphilis! I consulted Valle, he advised serum injection...

Christ! And yet you attribute the sufferings of these people to the Supramental Force!

By the way, what is happening, pray? Supramental descending? P is going fut. Some passing blood, some vomiting blood, another died devoid of blood!

It appears that P has recognised that his Purushottamhood was indeed all fut! He says he felt some evil forces making him do and say these things, but he was so helpless that he was forced to obey them! That is a fall from Purushottama heights, but a return to sanity, if only temporary—(but let's hope it will increase). For that is evidently what happened.

All thought that he was doing serious sadhana.

Serious? You mean not to sleep and all that sort of thing? Well, it is just that kind of seriousness which brings these attacks—Earnestness of this sort does call down that kind of Purushottama or rather call him in—for it is a horizontal not a vertical descent.

Purushottama descended in consequence of the earnest sadhana and hence he was calling Sri Aurobindo to come and bow to him! What next?

Next? Perhaps he will want you also to come and bow to him and pummel you if you don't.

Makes me shake to the bones!

Only the bones?

Already I am feeling awfully pulled down, on top of that M⁴⁰ sits; and the Purushottama crowns them all. I ask myself—whither, whither are you going, my friend, and what awaits you?

Perhaps the Paratpara Purusha beyond even the Purushottama.

But why this pulled downness? You are not pulling down Purushottama or any other gentleman from the upper storey, are you? It is strain and want of rest, I suppose. Sleep, sleep! read Mark Twain or write humorous stories. Then you will be quite chirpy and even M won't feel heavy to you.

After M recovers, don't you think he had better go to Madras for a thorough check-up?

Yes.

... We must know whether it is stone or tumour in the kidney or bladder—a thorough investigation is necessary. If you think that your Force will cure or R's treatment, then it is all right.

Can't say without being sure what it is.

Regarding D.L.—R says he hadn't had her confidence from the beginning. Is that why you said that conditions were not favourable for working through R?

He had the contrary—a strong anger, distrust and antipathy. But that was only one part of it.

I am also rather eager to know what else was the trouble due to, if not physical, unless of course it is private.

It is private, at present at least. Mother says it is an affair between her and D.L.

You write—"... for me all are only outward means, and what really works are unseen forces..." [3.10.36]. Could you amplify it a little further? And also explain how one can make oneself a right channel for the right Force, Faith, Intuition?

Sir, do you think I have time for your interesting questions? I have had three nights' work to do in a single night—and in that my table lamp gone. In other perhaps fre-a-er off times.

J's poem held back.

Wretched, absolutely done for.
Feel like jumping into the sea,
Or hanging myself from a tree!

Why? Disburden yourself!

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

Both!

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

Not as much as is necessary.

The atmosphere seems to be thick with doubt etc. A lull over the Asram.

Panic seems to be the order of the day as well as doubt.

Storm brewing?

The storm seems to have brewed. I am fighting it at present, having been obliged to give up my Abyssinian campaign and stop the march to Gore. However!

I have seen your letters to P.S. and Y. Comparing the latter's with mine—the one you wrote after S's death [25.3.35], I find that there is a lot of difference between them. Your views have changed immensely. In the letter to me, there was a very high optimistic, almost a certain tone about the conquest of death. Now it appears that you no longer hold that view, and say that death is possible because of the lack of solid mass of faith. It has to be conquered by Sadhana!

In what does this change of views consist? Did I say that nobody could die in the Asram? If so, I must have been intoxicated or passing through a temporary aberration.

As for the conquest of death, it is only one of the sequelae of supramentalisation—and I am not aware that I have forsworn my views about the supramental descent. But I never said or thought that the supramental descent would automatically make everybody immortal. The supramental descent can only make the best conditions for anybody who can open to it then or thereafter attaining to the supramental consciousness and its consequences. But it would not dispense with the necessity of sadhana. If it did, the logical consequence would be that the whole earth, men, dogs, and worms, would suddenly wake up to find themselves supramental. There would be no need of an Asram or of Yoga.

But my letters to Y and P had nothing to do with the conquest of death—they had to do with the conditions of the sadhana in the Asram. Surely I never wrote that death and illness could not happen in the Asram which was the point Y was refuting and on which I confirmed him.

A solid mass of faith? Surely that is a very heavy Himalayan condition you impose. For instance, do you expect old tottering N to have that solid mass in his liquid body?

N was not old and tottering when he came and if he had kept the living faith he would not have been tottering now.

Or do you either hope that by his sadhana he will have the conquest?

That depends on whether he is still alive and not quite liquified and able to open physically when the conditions change.

By that letter you have struck terror into many hearts, I am afraid, and henceforth we shall look upon death as quite a possibility, though not as common as it is outside.

The terror was there before. It came with the death of D.L. and the madness of P and not as the result of my letter. It was rushing at the Mother from most of the sadhaks at Pranam every day.

The physical condition of many sadhaks and sadhikas, is not cheering in the least—

Far from it.

You know best about the condition of their sadhana.

Very shaky, many of them.

However, it is my impression that you have changed your front.

It is not mine.

Formerly I thought you said—faith or no faith, sadhana or no sadhana, you were conquering death, disease, i.e. everything depended on your success; now it seems a lot depends on us poor folks, in this vital matter.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "this vital matter".]

Why vital? What is vital is the supramental change of consciousness—conquest of death, is something minor and, as I have always said, the last physical result of it, not the first result of all or the most important—a thing to be added to complete the whole, not the one thing needed and essential. To put it first is to reverse all spiritual values—it would mean that the seeker was actuated, not by any high spiritual aim but by a vital clinging to life or a selfish and timid seeking for the security of the body—such a spirit could not bring the supramental change.

Certainly, everything depends on my success. The only thing that could prevent it, so far as I can see, would be my own death or the Mother's—But did you imagine that that success would mean the cessation of death on the planet, and that sadhana would cease to be necessary for anybody?

If increase of numbers stands in the way, if doctors and medicines shake the faith, well, it is very easy to solve the problem, isn't it?

Increase of numbers brought in all sorts of influences that were not there in the smaller circle before. Doctors did not matter so long as faith was the main thing and a little treatment the help—But when faith went, illness increased and the doctor became not merely useful but indispensable. There was also the third cause, the descent of the sadhana into the physical consciousness with all its doubt, obscurity and resistance. To eliminate all that is no longer possible.

We have also an impression, considering the sudden wave of diseases, that it is due to some Force descending, so that wherever there is resistance there will be a rushing up.

What Force?

Since the action is to go on in the subconscient physical at present with the Supramental descending (hail Supra-mental!!), all sorts of physical troubles will be rampant now.

Rubbish! You repeat always this imbecile absurdity that the Supramental is descending into the sadhaks—as P thought it had descended into him! The sadhaks are miles away from the supra-mental. What I spoke of was not the descent of the Supramental into the sadhaks but into the earth-consciousness. If the Supra-mental had descended into the sadhaks, there would not be all sorts of troubles, but all sorts of helps and progress.

But you seem to sneer at the supposition and say things will happen that way if sadhaks believe like that.

Yes, certainly.

I find that everything seems to happen here ensemble: a general wave of doubt, depression, going away, etc.

Yes, general in the sense of many undergoing it—not all. There has been no time when everybody was depressed, everybody doubting, everybody taking the train homewards.

The rosy side also may be true—as you said a general stillness was felt.

In the atmosphere, it may be so. But what has that to do with the Supramental descent?

I asked M to start tomorrow for Madras. He says he has to go to Calcutta—written there and is waiting for a reply...

He is talking of starting on Sunday.

About S, the "coldish" feeling was absent. A lot of sweating at night, fever in the afternoon-99.8°.

He has been sleeping with J who has developed occult terrors since P's outbreak and contracting the terror himself and had [...]⁴¹ etc. of a bloodcurdling character. We must allow for S's vivid literary style. But I send you the document as you are in medical charge.

[A note from the Mother in the morning:]

9-10-36

Nirod

T is anxious about her health and wishes to be radiographed. Will you take her to the hospital for the purpose?

[Evening]

Got your note [regarding T], just a little too late! Now I am afraid we have to wait till Monday. But X-ray of what? Lungs? What symptoms? They will ask me. A recent victim of doubt?

Not lungs—she has never had any difficulty there. Stomach,—she will indicate the place. She has had violent pains there off and on for periods ever since the Flood. She had them I believe in Hyderabad. There is a history of medical means to stimulate the action of some gland to produce thinness and by God, it seems to have been successful—for thin she has been ever since. I don't know if this had anything to do with it. Confidential informations, sir.

Doubt can't be said to be recent—she has had it in big black doses every time she had a vital fit which was almost always, but there was always a sort of faith behind. Latterly the psychic part has been growing and the fits less bad and rarer and shorter; but the general disturbance in the Asram due to D.L.-P upset her and her stomach and produced a passionate thirst for keen radiographic knowledge. This is confidential also.

Mother tells me she is vacillating in her preference between ulcer, worms and cancer! But hush! don't let her know I told you.

[The following 3 reports were written by Dr. Becharlal.] For getting sleep, X should be quite free from mental worries—complete mental rest is necessary.

That she simply can't do—unless when she is in a good inner condition. Of course it is the right thing if she can do it.

A cup of hot milk at bed-time. Hot bath or hot foot-bath with mustard oil massage; evening walk etc...

All these are very good; you must choose one that she will accept.

If my Mother approves to give her any other medical treatment, I propose to give her Hingwastak Churna, acid hydrochloride dil., etc...

Mother quite approves of all that. I have said that you will give her treatment and asked her to take it. So you can see to it.

L got hurt in the finger—a barrel fell on it day before yesterday!... Don't you encourage immediate treatment for these things?

These things ought to be treated at once—but these women always hold back and don't want to go.

[The following 3 reports were written by Dr. Becharlal.] T passed blood in the urine... I pray my Mother, to grant Nirod and myself general sanction to treat T with every change of drug etc. and see the case.

You can certainly have full sanction to treat according to discretion and do all that is needful.

T says he needs 2 attendants: one in the daytime, and one at night. He proposes A and M.

I don't think either A or M can keep up at night. I suppose in daytime M can come. For the night you might enquire if anyone can come—it must be someone who will have time to rest in the day.

As for the medical treatment, T leaves it for Mother to decide whether he should take medicines from the dispensary.

To what is the blood due? As for the treatment you will advise what is to be done.

From your answer I couldn't very well make out whether I should go and see T, but I went once in the morning.

Yes, that was included in "all that was needful".

What strikes me is that T is so terribly afraid, goodness knows why. I am dumbfounded to see him so! I had always a great admiration for the fellow's bravery. D.L. has unmanned his manliness?

He was a very courageous man. Of course, even courageous men are not always courageous at every point and perhaps he was always robust and healthy so never tested at this point. But what I see is that it is part of the terror that has fallen on many others and has manifested in him in spite of his natural temperament because he absorbed something from D.L. during her illness—something that was the cause both of his malady and of his fear. Mysterious? Well, these occult things always are.

I feel somehow that you don't want me to attend to the case. Anyway Dr. Becharlal comes and tells me and we consult things.

Whatever is "needful".

5 p.m. Dr. B reports that T is better. By the way, the fear in T has to be executed mercilessly by your letters and advice.

Umph! He wanted his brother to come and receive his last will and testament. I told him I saw no pressing need for troubling the brother.

Since no poetry is on the horizon, what about my trying to write some prose, say, stories? Give me some Force please, in that direction, if you see any possibility.

As an experiment? All right.

I hope my defective style won't come in as a hostile force, against future poetic development.

I suppose it won't.

Nirod

I forward you two pages of a letter from M. Will you and Becharlal at once find somebody to replace M in the attendance on T? M is evidently not meant to be there. I don't want him to see the ghost and the condition of his head is a thing I don't like. Mother was thinking you might consult the Surgeon again to know if any precautionary measures were necessary. Anyhow please keep an eye on his head—for these accidents often produce their subtler results long after.

Sri Aurobindo

You wrote to A.K. that "there is an increasing pressure now for sadhaks who really intend to do sadhana, to stop feeling, living, acting according to the ordinary nature." I don't know if your "pressure" includes in its action my precious self. If it does, I would be glad; if it doesn't, I would pray to be included. Even if I don't feel the pressure, it matters little; let it act surreptitiously and my nature break, what?

The pressure is general, but necessarily it is felt or received without feeling it in accordance with the readiness of the sadhak. It includes everybody who can be included and aims at drawing in those who can't.

Is it possible to sanction some tea? I am rather ashamed as almost immediately after intending to do sadhana, I want to live according to "ordinary nature".

You can ask Champaklal, Mother is giving a chit.

As you know the stomach remains at the level of the umbilicus, but, in T's case, it has descended into the pelvis and is sitting snugly there. It is called ptosis or atony of the stomach. As for the cause and treatment, we have to get the proper history...

Can it have anything to do with the fact that she was fat in Hyderabad, took a medicine for becoming thin and did become suddenly from fat very thin?

S says—"I have no hunger", but when pressed he says, "Yes, I like food better now." There is S!

He says the Mother has entered his stomach and is occupying it!! I say, confidential you know! Such secrets are precious.

M's vomiting etc. is not a new thing, it was his companion long before the accident. I shall study his case, then take him to the Surgeon. So why are you worried, Sir?

Because it is accompanied by the ghost.

One thing—P says A is getting back his old ill health and "fears" a relapse—but A is not likely to acknowledge. Attributes it to T-strain and T-strain to D.L. gap. Rather clever? If you get a chance to send A without letting him know the indiscretion—P recommends rest—he is probably right.

Goodness knows what inspired you to pick up such a blessed place for your Asram! A most hopeless hospital with hardly any facilities! A heaven indeed for a Supramental colony! About M, we are wavering between cystitis and nephritis—which could have been settled in a second, in a well-equipped hospital.

Had no medical standards in view when I came to Pondicherry—nor any views about establishing an Asram. A supramental colony obviously ought to have a first-class hospital, but no such colony was then intended.

My eyes, was T ever fat? And from fatness she has come to this!

It was one of those newfangled glandular explosives. Based on the idea that some gland (Thyroid, no?) growing hyperactive makes thin (and apparently keeps you so in spite of eating well—T's case). There is another which keeps you fat even if you eat only once a day (Suvrata's case).

I couldn't make out one word in your long letter [9.10.36] about T. Is it "Menses"?

Nonsense, sir! The same thing—thinness.

Have you said anything to T? She was alarmed by the silence of the doctors, so the Mother told her, indicating that it was not dangerous, only certain precautions against trouble etc. If you speak, don't be vivid and alarm her.

You have not said anything about remedies. French Medical Dictionary says "lie down one hour after meals" (Mother had recommended that long ago)—Some contrivance for support of the viscera (rather bandaging in this climate)—abdominal exercise for strengthening walls (parois) so as to support viscera, But if person thin, then "cure de lit" and fattening before any remedial course. T would kick at "cure de lit" I am afraid.

X says her right arm fails her often and becomes dead and useless for work. Would not massaging (perhaps with some effective ointment) be necessary?

I didn't imagine death would cease on the planet by your Supramental descent, or that sadhana would be unnecessary. When did I say that the Supermind is descending into the sadhaks?[9.10.36]

It is implied if they are to get the conquest of death by the mere descent.

What I said or meant was that you have conquered death or gained a great mastery over it...

In what sense?

You had said that it is the Overmental Force that has been acting and has been effective enough to ward of death, except in two cases—and they were not sadhaks. Well, it doesn't mean that it has the infallible victory, but it amounts to that, doesn't it?

How is that? Holding off an enemy and infallible victory are not the same thing.

Once the Supermind descends into you or into the earth-consciousness, the question of faith or sadhana becomes irrelevant as regards death, for death is a Force and, when you have a control or conquest over it, it means that its supremacy is lost in this part of the world, whether I have faith or not, do sadhana or not.

Good Lord, man. What is this reasoning? Everything is a force—why should the supramental descent into me or earth assure complete and universal immediate conquest of this Force only or specially among so many?

... Even if one does sadhana, illness may come and snatch one away: then one's chance of doing sadhana for the change of consciousness, and, if possible, supramentalisation is lost. I consider it a vital matter—not immortality—to be able to do that.

Well but that is simply warding off death. Perhaps the supramental will do that—(it can, if it wants)—but not for ever. I mean if a man wants 200 years to supramentalise himself, it can't be promised that he will be kept alive till then.

If you say that so long as one is not supramentalised, death is a possibility, then I have no grounds left except to do sadhana in a spirit of surrender... I don't see then how faith can help one to avert death.

Faith does help and has helped. It is a fact.

You have also said that to prevent death sadhana is necessary.

To make the control of death absolute, not provisional and relative.

What I plainly ask is whether by your supramentalisation death would be impossible in the Asram, independent of our sadhana.

Not in the sense that anybody can seek refuge in the supramentalised Asram against death and sit comfortably there without any intention of doing sadhana.

... The Supramental Force can create the best conditions which the Divine Force can't?

Yes.

... But surely the action of the Supramental Force would be different from that of the Divine Force.

Yes.

... or would they be fundamentally the same, only different at points?

No.

No time to expatiate or divagate.

What's this typescript? Extremely private matter, sir, for nobody perusal except the body addressed. I keep it for want of time.

If two oranges per day are not possible, can pamplemousse juice be given to T, as long as he is on liquid diet?

[Mother:] Champaklal will give you two oranges daily for T.

S's stomach is no more "gloomy"—bright and cheerful today. I am tempted to dance in glee. Is it the Force or Pancrinol, or both?

You forget that the Mother occupied it. What's this Pancrinol? All-hair?⁴² All-what? or has it to do with the Pancreas?

What the French Dictionary says is exactly the right treatment for T. Abdominal support would be very uncomfortable, as you say. If we can persuade her to "cure de lit" in the beginning, we can see later on.

I doubt her attitude to the cure de lit, but it is not likely to be enthusiastic. For the support she is willing. Mother wants you to make a sketch showing the places, measurements to be entered and the whole sent to the Bombay firm (address will be given) asking them if they can provide. What do you say?

In your letter of yesterday, on the "glandular explosives", what's this, Sir—"Based on the idea that some gland (They—?)"? What a pity really, if one has to sacrifice even a single word!

It is (Thyroid—no?) to be taken as a parenthetical question after "gland".

A is bleeding from piles. It has to be stopped. V seems to be very enthusiastic over him!

What's that? Enthusiastic over his bleeding? V's enthusings are generally catastrophic to the enthused over.

You have kept that type-script? I am finished then! I know it will have the same fate as the previous one [on Avatar-hood, 6.3.35]! However, I send the book in the off-chance of an expatiation or a divagation.

[Sri Aurobindo filled the gap I had left, with "expatiation".]

None, none, none! I prefer to excavate instead.

By the way, after a long time I enjoyed two or three days' true Nirodian, i.e. unyogic, jollity; but the yogic Nirodian gloom has restarted! Goodness knows why these glooms and blooms come and go!

Goodness doesn't know why, nor does anybody else.

You have finished the prospective action of the Supramental Force by two "yes"s and one "no" [14.10.36]. Evidently you are shy about it, or time is shy?

Time and I both are shy, good reason why.

(Nishikanta says rhyme is quite common in Bengali prose, so why not in English also?)

I am afraid I don't know about the practical aspect of the abdominal support for T. I have to consult books if they've given anything. Meanwhile she can surely lie on her right side for some time, if not "cure de lit".

That of course. you told her about the "right side". Mother gave only a general prescription for lying down for an hour or more if necessary after meals.

T is better; not yet started milk. There is still considerable albumin in the urine (albuminorrhea).

When there is albuminorrhea then is it considered safe to give salted food? On the other hand he seems to be asking for more food than the Doctors are prepared to give him.

T's case—Salt is usually withheld when there is oedema or puffiness anywhere. Since there is neither, and the kidney is functioning well, we thought we could give it in a small quantity... Any food given him should have carbohydrates—fluids—till the albumin is reduced to a minimum... We can safely allow him to consume his surplus fat a couple of days more. No other go—unless you find something.

No. I find nothing—go ahead and minimise the albumin.

For U's lipoma, Vijayanand suggested to try a mild mercury ointment. He claims to have cured a goitre by it. Glandular swellings do, at times, respond to mercury, especially if syphilitic. On lipoma, I don't know. But it may irritate. Opinion?

It is for doctors to decide. The only question is whether any harm is possible by its use. As it is, the lipoma is, I believe, harmless though not ornamental. Mercury being irritant is it likely to make it less benign if there is failure? If not—well.

7.30 p.m.

M came in just now and said about her boil-medicine, "Mixture very bitter, may I take pān after it?" I said, "You may." Now I hear she is telling people that I've advised her to take pān. Ladies in the Asram are really wonderful!!

My dear sir, such ladies are quite wonderful outside the Asram also. M didn't need to come here to be marvellous in that way.

Reading about T, S, etc., confirms my disgust. You have made fine specimens of them.

Were they all reasonable and consistent in their former life?

You have made them believe that medicines and doctors are no good, but at the same time could not infuse into them sufficient faith in you. Result—they have fallen between two stools!

Well, T and S used both to get cured without need of medicines once on a time. The later development has evidently come for your advantage, so that you may have elementary exercises in samata.⁴³ I have had a lot of schooling in that way and graduated M.A. Your turn now.

They come to the doctors only to be disgusted with the treatment; obviously they come without any faith...

If you had treated them in the pre-Asram period, do you think their comments if not at once cured would have been more filled with a holy awe and submission to the doctors?

Really, they are so touchy, so funny! The more one sees, the more one wants to see! Perhaps you will say—"Judge not lest ye be judged!"

Exactly—for these are poor little uneducated people. But are the big brains at bottom less unreasonable and inconsistent? All alike, sir, in one way or another. Man who is a reasoning animal no doubt, but not a reasonable one.

I am sending you an excerpt from a medical book regarding the abdominal support for T. An abdominal support should fit closely to the symphisis pubis and Poupart's ligaments below; above, it should not extend higher than the umbilicus...

In the French dictionary they speak of a special thing for this ptosis of the stomach, in French of course. These things seem rather unconvincing. And if it is to fit closely to certain Latin things as well as to Poupart's affairs, how can it be done without measuring?

T's temperature shot up suddenly to 103.4°, and has remained so. Don't know why. Maybe constipation.

? Merely with constipation this persistence of high fever?

His urinary symptoms are better.

How far? and in what way? No pain? no albumen or very little?

Y says he felt a descent of Power producing an indescribable sensation in the head, and followed by numbness of the extremities, feeling like nausea, throbbing in the head, giddiness, etc. All these symptoms point towards a high blood-pressure which, he says, is normal... Can descent produce such a havoc?

A descent cannot possibly produce nausea and vomiting etc. There can, if one pulls down too much force, be produced a headache or giddiness; both of these go if one keeps quiet a little, ceases pulling and assimilates. A descent cannot produce blood pressure, madness or apoplexy or heart failure or any other illness.

What I gather from Y's letter and D's is that he felt great intensity of descent (much greater than he had before) and got into a panic (because of the indescribable sensation) and thought he might be going mad like P (P's madness was not the result of a descent), so nervous that he upset his stomach and possibly his circulation also. That is the only possible explanation if it is not an attack of illness on which it is for the doctors to pronounce, not me.

[The first report was written by Dr. Becharlal.] L came to the Dispensary and said she had fever, cough, cold for the last three days. She refused to take anything internally, without Mother's permission.

She has full permission to take any medicine or treatment you think necessary.

About U's lipoma—we don't see the rationale of the treatment by mercury, so don't know its effectiveness. We can try it in small quantities.

If it grows it will have to be cut. As to this treatment, well, I don' know—

For T's support—I don't know whether the equipment will fit her thin structure. Even then the adjustable ones may do.

Can't she measure herself, if she is shown the designs?

S is better now. All Pancrinol exhausted. Shall we buy more or wait and see?

"Wait and see" is always a very good formula.

Y's trouble is much less, still a sort of nondescript sensation is there.

What the deuce is this nondescript? How is it he can't describe it? There are sensations that are due to descent and not troublesome or dangerous at all, there are others that are physical. But the description is necessary in order to distinguish.

He says he can't read or write. Lies down quietly for a time, but all on a sudden the thing descends and produces the sensation. Fears if something may happen at night.

The difficulty is that he has got the fear and the association in his mind of the descent with the disturbance.

You wrote to him at the end: "... before there can be a resumption of the sadhana." Does it mean he should not go to pranam or meditation?

I meant by sadhana the positive side (descent etc.). What I indicated was that there was a part of the being which was afraid of the descent, didn't want it and by its fear got this trouble. This must be found out and put right before calling any descent again.

I wasn't thinking of pranam and meditation—he can go there; if he finds it all right to go, he can continue.

He had no vomiting, only nausea.
[Sri Aurobindo underlined "nausea".]

Well, that's a physical ailment, not a Yogic phenomenon. Can't it be got rid of? Whatever the cause, there is evidently disturbance of the stomach.

From your replies I presume that it may have been the descent, but since he got into a panic, he got these nervous troubles. Or was it the result of pulling?

That seems most probable unless there was an illness already breeding there (digestion, circulation?). But you say you found none.

Y showed me a letter of yours where you have said that it is not due to pulling; it is the right tapasya. And he has been following the same practice since then and has now a control. It can't be the effect of a dark Force.

Not through the descent, but through the fear a dark Force might strike in. That is what it is trying with many people.

If illness rises up by the descent of Force or a hereditary taint of madness manifested later on, it would be a very bad affair.

Illness does not rise up by the decent of the Force; nor hereditary taint nor madness. They come up of themselves, as in D.S.'s case who never had even the smallest grain of a descent or a Force anywhere. It is only after he went off his centre that we are putting Force (not as a descent, but as an agent) to keep him as straight and as sound as possible.

In this case, though the descent wouldn't be the cause of these troubles, would it not indirectly flare up a latent focus?

No. I never found it doing that.

And in such an experience as Y's, some amount of fear is inevitable, isn't it?

What experience? Descent? Sensation in the head? Plenty of people have had that here and elsewhere but no one got into a panic or nervous upset.

N told me that Mother didn't approve of Y's staying at D's place...

Up to that, it is correct.

...because adverse forces may act on D also and harm him.

This must be N's own interpretation. The Mother said nothing to that effect. D had already got into a depression by J's visit, next Y's upset, finally something else and was preparing to head for Cape Comorin—so naturally Mother didn't want visible food for that to be supplied him. She said nothing of all that to N.

Do you go by the description of one's experience to decide whether it was an experience or the action of a dark force or the recrudescence of an illness?

Yes, certainly—just as you go by the symptoms of a case as seen by you and as related by the patient.

I thought that it is not possible for us to have spiritual experiences, especially major ones, without your previously knowing that so and so will have such and such experiences.

Previously? My God, we would have to spend all our time prevising the sadhaks' experiences. Do you think Mother has nothing else to do? As for myself, I never previse anything, I only vise and revise. All that Mother prevised was that there was something not right in Y, some part of him at odds with his aspiration. That might lead to trouble. That is why, entre nous, I want him to find out what part of him didn't want the descent.

S is much better in the morning nowadays, but troublesome in the afternoon. Getting cured by halves?

Let us hope so. Half by half is better than nothing.

T has given measurements, but wouldn't it be better to enquire first from the Company if they have any supports for this trouble? If not, whether they can prepare according to measurements given. All this will take some time, but it is not very urgent, is it?

No. You are right, of course.

Dr. Sircar has a touch of cold! Please save me; no more patients, especially big and bulky ones!

Well, well, prevent the cold from becoming bulky.

7.30 p.m.

Y is all right except for a tense feeling on the left side of the neck.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "tense feeling on the left side of the neck".]

Not physical? Circulation?

M has been troubled by D.L.'s "ghost". He told me he had a dream and heard a voice calling him and clasping him—voice unerringly of D.L.

Sorry, have to postpone M's ghostly troubles till tonight. Terrible night the last! (No, no—wasn't attacked by a pseudo-D.L., only by the demon of correspondence.) Have written, trying to cheer him up in the meanwhile.

Today his trouble began again. Any link?

Well, you said, did you not, that this headache was of long standing? If so, the link with D.L. must be later—or only a mental association.

Why should he have these dreams connected with D.L.?

Many people have been seeing or dreaming of the ghost of D.L.

I asked M to get rid of his fear. He has no hereditary taint of insanity. But seeing D.S.'s off-centre, is it possible?

Don't know if there was any insanity in the family. D.S. is only insane at one point which can be touched at any time. But apart from that he is though narrow and extreme in all things, yet intellectually brilliant, an admirable linguist, reasoning and seeing with extraordinary acuteness and clearness when he chooses. He is more "intimate" with French than any Indian here—understands the spirit of the language, reproduces it in his writing. A clear and accurate observer too.

Why has D.L. such a special fascination for him, in coming to call him? Is it really possible that some part of D.L. is, after all, hovering over the Asram and trying to create some mental, vital or nervous havoc? Or some other force taking D.L.'s shape or voice trying to push in?

D.L. does not call him; it is not she at all. When she got ill something possessed her body and physical consciousness and turned everything against her recovery. When she died the Mother separated this from her—but still there was a strong earthly attachment left in her vital form—attachment to husband, food, comfort, relatives etc., etc. This part threatened to become a "ghost", and Mother had to work hard to get rid of it. But it went and there is no ghost, that is no vital stuff walking about as a separate entity with the soul gone out of it. But the suggestion was left in the Asram atmosphere and some Force has got hold of it making all sorts of dreams and fears in the minds of those who admit them. But I think that too is fading out gradually. Sorry to inflict all this occultism on you...

I somewhat understand M's involvement. You know he had an experience: hurried loud breathing, semi-conscious condition, etc., with one hand on D.L.'s abdomen, as if some Force had descended and possessed him. We looked admiringly at him and thought the Mother was working through him; unfortunately the fellow took it all wrong, as your letter showed.

M's disturbance was due to his wrong movement at the time of D's [D.L.'s] death. He had a propensity to become a big Yogi and a mighty instrument. At the time I was putting and so was the Mother a stupendous force to give D a last chance. M was trying to pull. Perhaps he felt and was shaken by the Force which was not intended for him at all—because he pulled it. He pretended to himself that he was doing it in an egoless fashion. Rubbish! Self-deception! He was delighted at being so great an instrument and at the admiration of others. I had to interfere because like that he might pull some wrong force on himself. It may be even that he did get something, not much I think, of the other dark Force that was there. This prepared the field for undesirable suggestions. My letter also bowled him over—but that was unavoidable. I suppose it will be all right, but for a moment he was shaky.

Jatin has sent snaps for your signature. Will you give it?

Yes.

Yesterday's feeling I can't locate—probably in the abdominal cavity. Today again something happened—but not any fear. It was an ingoing, perhaps, for I came out just as a fish comes out of water, with a sigh (?) or for taking air?

Don't quite understand. Yesterday you wrote that there was no fear, but a feeling that something unpleasant might happen and you must get over it again. But if it was like a fish in water, that could not be unpleasant.

Your present description would be a going inside of the vital (abdominal cavity) into its deeper self, perhaps in search of the psychic which lies behind. If so, very useful movement.

There was no drowsiness—understandable?

[Sri Aurobindo underlined the word "drowsiness", which was written rather badly.]

Your writing is sometimes no more understandable than mine. It took me some time to understand whether this word was Bengali, Sanskrit or English with a mixture. But I suppose it is drowsiness?

Y has gone, but I understand, he wants to come back—to be fitted into his old place?

God knows. You must know that when he came back last time, he was only tolerated on trial owing to his own urgent insistence. Next time—well! He will have to be considerably changed before we say Yes.

He asked our opinion about his going to Calcutta for treatment. I said, "Why not ask Mother?" He replied, "I haven't that much confidence in Sri Aurobindo and Mother, to tell you frankly." That shows where the root of the trouble was. Was it deeper still?

According to what Mother was seeing all along, it was deeper still. A certain falsehood in his being which he refused to recognise, but kept cherished under a veil of justifying reasons, not intending to change. He never really recognised that he had been wrong at any time. Yet it was treachery to the Mother—with what she calls a strain of hypocrisy in it.

But then he was crying also because he had to go. Queer, isn't it?

No, not queer. Very usual. A divided being. One black, one wanting to be white.

I saw your letter to him... You were almost suspecting there was some twist in his nature.

More than suspicion—a knowledge.

What could have been the cause of such a havoc? Vital desires? Attachments?

He had these; but that was not the chief difficulty.

Or was it lack of confidence and faith in the Mother?

There was that, of course—but lack of faith was not enough to produce such an upsetting. It was something in opposition and hiding itself, that got terrified when it saw its companion pulling down the Force. For after all he did pull. Mother felt him doing it even last time he came to Pranam.

I am afraid all of us have these things, to some degree. I am a little shaken because of your hint at the resistance or the lower nature's unwillingness to change, for who hasn't that?

That was a euphemism, as I wanted him to look at and acknowledge to himself (acknowledging to us would not be enough, as he might do it "with the end of his lips" only) and get rid of it.

Mere unwillingness to change is not enough. Everybody has that in part of his being—if it were enough to produce disaster, nobody could do Yoga.

Some light on M's report of yesterday, please.

Obliged to postpone it again.

I had a dream last night: the Mother had become a little girl and was talking to a boy of her age, before a vast gathering. There was something very unusual about her. We were wondering whether it was really the Mother. How had she turned so young? and to this little girl we made pranam! What significance?

It was in the vital world, I suppose; there anything may happen. Can't say that I catch any symbolic significance in it. Perhaps your vital was trying to find a ground for বাৎসল্য ভাব.⁴⁴

Had a dream of a death also in the Asram...

Well, if you go on dreaming like that!

What B.P. is doing is, you know, something criminal... Why not buy him a ticket?

Evidently! We have already tried to chuck him once, but failed,—because he had nowhere to go. I will have a try again, even if we have to buy him a ticket for Nowhere.

I don't know why the boy D and his mother are here. Do you really think that they will be doing Yoga any day? If not, why this encumbrance?

Quite right, sir,—perspicaciously right. The original idea was that they would live separately—M.G. only being a sadhika, but as usual once people are anywhere near they push in.

Your Force is acting, Sir, and many pots will break. Am I one, I wonder!

Need not be. Hope you have no inclinations that way.

Can you not give one or two concrete instances of falsehood and treachery of Y, that called in this catastrophe, simultaneously with the descent?

Concrete instances came before. It was he who indoctrinated M to leave the Asram and go back to her husband and gave her the suggestions of how to justify herself etc. The story is too long. But it was what I referred to as the reason why Mother did not permit him to come,—finally he came without permission. I hear he once encouraged D in his depression to go away from here. All that had not changed—he pretended under the pressure of D, S to repent, but in reality he always considered that he had done no wrong. This part of him was so false that it erected its falsehood into right. The Mother spoke always of his hypocrisy. See, he told D "There is no love lost between myself and Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, but I am sincere in my Yoga." That means he was seeking after something not connected with us. Yet he wrote that when the Force came down which was at will, he felt the Mother's presence in him and was happy. All that is what the Mother speaks of as hypocrisy. Then when the Force threatened to come in earnest, this part of him got terrified and shaken—for it had rejected the Mother's protection and did not want her Force at all, but something that it could appropriate. It felt that it was "something not himself", and got into a panic. There does not seem to have been any illness, for you would have found some sign. Coming Madness? I doubt. He was in clear possession of his wits. Then fear only. As soon as he knew he was going away, the fear went, this part became exultant and all went away. It seems to me on the data that this interpretation is the only possible one.

Please see if you can be "obliged" to reflect on M's condition. Then I shall write my St. Augustine's confessions!

Have written.

What? You are "sorry to inflict all this occultism" on me? [20.10.36] Please, try to percolate a little more of it through the thick sieve of your correspondence. I lost all hope, you know, and was depressed, dejected and downcast. It is so very interesting—this occultism!

All right. I can flood you when I have time and occasion.

I am preparing my confession! Perhaps tomorrow!

Very good. Shall await the revelation.

L seems to be damnably constipated

Has been for years except for a brief period when R treated her, but before he had finished his treatment she got proud and said only the Force was good enough for her and stopped with a kick for him. After some time of halcyon openness of the bowels the whole thing came back. She complains of sleeplessness last three nights.

S all right or jogging along?

I should like to know about K. I have been given secret information (how far reliable, I don't know) that she is vomiting blood but concealing it from the Doctors to avoid being sent away, also that she has dhatukshay which the Guj. dictionary translates as continuous gleet. What according to your knowledge is the state of things about her?

...S's pain must be stopped. Fever is there but not so bad.

What, a painful fellow!

Very well.

K denies all symptoms: no cough, no bleeding, no fever. P says she is better; there is no more bleeding, cough is also intermittent. Has anybody seen the bleeding? But gleet one can't see!

Confidentially I may say it was P who wrote—she says K herself told her and of the rest she has seen evidence and was troubled about possible contamination. Of course P like others and like K herself, is a liar, but—

You wrote to me that we should drop the mixing together and cooking. How to drop the mixing, Sir?

I did not write "mixing"—I wrote "messing"—food, sir, food; eating in common, sort of psycho-gastric communion forming a spiritual culinary joy. If you want occultism, you shall have it with a vengeance.

If one has a double attachment, would it not be an insincerity?

It depends on the ideal. If it were a matter of the union of two lives, it would be an insincerity, a faithlessness. But for the vital? Its character is to change, sometimes to multiply, to run here and there. Unless of course it is caught, glued to a single attraction or passion for a long period or for a lifetime. But in such gluings it is generally one of the two that is entangled, the other skirmishes around dragging his living appendage or else leaving it half-glued, half-dropped.

All my problems would have been solved if you hadn't been sitting so tight on my notebook, Sir. All this psychology would have helped me in my story writing.

Sir, it is a melancholy subject I don't like to go into just now. I would rather tell you when you can look back with a retrospective interest, than inflict it on you now.

By the way, what do you say to my asking Dr. Sircar to teach me "The Life Divine"?

Fire away.

A complains of slight bleeding per rectum. Beginning of piles?

Irritation somewhere in the intestine? No signs of dysenteric tendency. Or a passing accident. He only mentioned having it twice.

We have advised some fresh air after work and is it possible to alternate his sedentary work with some activity?

That is what we have advised him—although diminishing his sedentary work may make other sedentary people more sedentary Don't know exactly how it is to be done, but it must be.

What about giving him some mixtures containing Soda sulph., Ammon. chlor., etc.?

You can give if A is willing to take.

Here is M's autobiography of headache and vomiting...

Queer history!

These days he is keeping well, it appears. Perhaps the "ghost" has been dissolved!

I hope so. I have done my best to that end.

What, Sir? No comment, not a line or a word or even a scratch!⁴⁵ Felt heavy the whole day thinking of this mystery! Will you cast a look back?

No mystery. Simply a case of adhyaropa of Shankaric illusion. Made mental answers and thought they were there physically inscribed on your blank page.

You surprise me by the revelations of D.S. What a pity that all his brilliances should have met with such a destiny!

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

His touchiness seems to have come from an inferiority complex, the cause of all his trouble.

Don't believe much in complexes.

I am not very cheerful about his prognosis. The isolation, complete suspension of speech are abnormal states.

Why complete? He was talking to Amal at least.

Some believe that he is not only all right but much better. Their judgment is based on the Mother's gracious smiles to him.

What queer logicians!

I doubt if he will ever take charge of the Dispensary.

Not likely.

Is his off-centre due to a possession?

A very partial one perhaps.

You have written about D.L. that something possessed her body. How? And did that something take her away against Mother's and your Force? How could you allow it to possess her before your very eyes, especially in her weak moment?

What's the row? If the mind and vital can be possessed, as happened to B and N and others, why can't the body? As for allowing it, sir, if people have an inner revolt, they take the risk and, if they refuse to give up the possession, or call it back when it goes, they have none but themselves to blame.

If you knew that that there was very little chance of saving her, what could be the meaning of sending a stupendous Force to her as a last resort?

Why not?

Did you even then hope that perhaps the scales might turn?

Of course, they might. It was a question of a battle of Forces.

Was that stupendous Force spoiled by the intervention of M?

Can't say.

I understand that she was very sincere in her work, faithful to the Mother.

At the end, she got disgusted with it, critical of the Mother, attached to husband, relatives, food, all earth-desires. It was that that made the difficulty of her soul's passage and the danger of the ghost. For it is these violent earth-attachments that keep the vital hovering about the place after death.

Another problem which puzzles me is that when you accepted her, did you think that she was likely to be cut off from the path?

Destiny is not an absolute, it is a relative. One can alter it for the better or the worse.

You say, "the suggestion was left in the Asram atmosphere." [20.10.36] Suggestion by whom? Sadhaks or that vital form?

The suggestion that came from what possessed her "I will remain as a ghost". The sadhaks simply received the ghost of the suggestion, and saw the ghost of a ghost.

Even a suggestion could be caught hold of by a Force? Where are we, eh?

What's the idea? Forces are always making suggestions—why can't they catch hold of one that is in the air and ease their labour?

Do you mean to say that the Force that Y was drawing at first, was not the Mother's Force, but something different which he could control?

Who said that? It was a higher Force at least, even if not taken from the Mother, but drawn down by himself. But it was coming in small doses and he played happily with it. When it threatened to come in earnest and a great mass, he got frightened.

And when the Mother's Force descended he got frightened feeling it "not itself" by these reactions? [22.10.36.]

"not himself", separate from himself.

L has general weakness... How to treat her inordinate constipation?

Don't know. R got it cured for a spell,—but she stopped his treatment. Surely there must be an allopathic way of curing her obstinacy?

I am sure if J's poems were published, it would be like Blake's state—a century later people would appreciate her...

What you predict is extremely probable—unless she writes here after something they can understand. Then they will say these were her mystic amusements by the way. A great poetess, but with a queer side to her.

Here is the photo of the two sisters J speaks of Aruna, one of them, seems to have written to you. Both of them are keen on Yoga.

From Aruna's letter I couldn't say that they know very much about what Yoga is!

They seem to be quite healthy soldieresses... We want healthy people, Sir, not marasmics or plethorics!

Health is needed but health is "not enough". Besides, trust not in appearances. Soldiers and soldieresses sometimes become pathological—nerves, shell-shock etc.

I woke up at 3 a.m. and tried to meditate. No sooner had I sat down than I felt a স্তব্ধতা⁴⁶, and the atmosphere around was so quiet that I felt or imagined some presences there. I thought—if at this hour some of these presences catch me, what shall I do? I got very frightened. Were there any presences?

What the deuce did you get afraid for? Supposing any were there, you could have waited at least to see whether they were good presences or bad. If good, no harm; if bad, you have only to tell them to skedaddle. But I expect it was only a feeling of yours. Generally the স্তব্ধতা is either empty of presences and formations or only one Presence is there, that of one's self or that of the Divine.

Now I am wondering why really I was afraid—thereby losing a beautiful opportunity for gaining something.

Quite so. If one gets afraid, the experience can't go on.

[After a long report of K's medical case:]

Have women a substance equivalent to men's seminal fluid which is said to be the basis of physical energy? Our medical science is silent about it.

You really don't want me to deliver to a doctor a lecture on physiology or genetics? Nonsense!

Guru, now I remember it was not exactly স্তব্ধতা. It is so difficult to express it—as though something was going to happen to me with which I was totally unfamiliar. I was going away somewhere, getting as quiet and still as the atmosphere around. Going to lose the consciousness of the surrounding things?

Well, that is the beginning of some kind of samadhi.

And if some forces were to invade at that moment—this was my fear.

Why the hell should they? But if there is any chance of that, call the Mother's protection around you.

But do you say that স্তব্ধতা is empty of other presences?

Certainly.

Isn't it a fact that some adverse force may come and try to attack us in meditation?

In meditation it may, but not in স্তব্ধতা. All meditation is not স্তব্ধতা.

S told me that once while he was meditating at the dead of night, a force came and gripped his neck (?).

Well, that's quite possible. If it does, one has only to kick it away and say, "Get off, you fool." Or if you are not vigorous enough to do that, call the Mother's force.

Anyway this fear must go.

Exactly.

People come in contact with so many planes, beings and forces in meditation, and if one gets afraid, there is a chance of madness.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "a chance of madness".]

Not necessarily madness. Plenty of people get afraid without getting mad. Madness is exceptional. What fear does is to stop the experience or else it exposes you to blows from the vital beings. If you don't fear, they can't hurt you.

J's uncle was one.

[Sri Aurobindo drew a line indicating "one".]

One what? Got mad with fear?

So fear must go.

Fear must not enter in Yoga. As Vivekananda said, the Yogi must be অভী.⁴⁷

The other day Dr. Sircar asked me what is the yogic process you adopt in curing people. I told him what you have said about the medical aspect—when the diagnosis is definitely clear you concentrate on that so that when the root is handled, symptoms disappear gradually...

Not always. Most often I deal with the symptoms also.

"It is a Science which he alone knows, to others it is a sealed book or a forbidden tree..."

Why he alone? What about the Mother? Plenty of people besides, have felt forces.

"We have tried to pluck the fruit, but he is very strict and does not allow."

How's that??

Any comments or light on this occult business? How far am I right in enunciating or enumerating your method?

All right, subject to the comments above.

By the way, if it is a question of forces, how or where the deuce do these millions of blessed bacilli and viruses come in? Has each Force a definite bacillus as its agent?

What is the difficulty? You are like the scientists who say or used to say there is no such thing as mind or thought independent of the physical brain. Mind and thought are only names for brain quiverings. Or that there is no such thing as vital Force because all the movements of life depend upon chemicals, glands and what not. These things and the germs also are only a minor physical instrumentation for something supraphysical.

Or do the Forces diminish the general resistance of the body in an occult way and germs according to their individual characteristics try to capture the body?

They first weaken or break through the nervous envelope, the aura. If that is strong and whole, a thousand million germs will not be able to do anything to you. The envelope pierced, they attack the subconscient mind in the body; sometimes also the vital mind or mind proper—prepare the illness by fear or thought of illness. The doctors themselves said that in influenza or cholera in the Far East 90 percent got ill through fear. Nothing to take away the resistance like fear. But still the subconscient is the main thing.

But diseases like cholera, plague etc. are supposed to outbreak by contamination.

If the contrary Force is strong in the body, one can move in the midst of plague and cholera and never get contaminated. Plague too, rats dying all around, people passing into Hades. I have seen that myself in Baroda.

You will say then that flies, bugs etc. that contaminate food, are sent to people by these forces and they were meant to be infected?

They were open to the Forces in some way.

Buddha, they say, died of dysentery due to pork-eating.

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

Dysentery, as you know, is caused by a germ

It isn't. It is instrumentated by a germ.

And germs got into the pork by flies and flies were there at the instance of forces?

What about the vegetable root? Flies also. But why should not flies be instruments for illness just as you are an instrument for curing?

What about Ramakrishna's cancer? You will perhaps chide me for bringing in these instances, but logically they have to be there. And if Buddha's illness may not be believed, can Ramakrishna's? "How does it invalidate the theory of forces, you fool?" you will thunder.

What did he himself say about it—that it was the sins of his disciples which constituted the cancer. There is a physical aspect to things and there is an occult supraphysical aspect—one need not get in the way of the other. All physical things are the expression of the supraphysical. The existence of a body with physical instruments and processes does not, as the 19th century vainly imagined, disprove the existence of a soul which uses the body even if it is also conditioned by it. Laws of Nature do not disprove the existence of God. The fact of a material world to which our instruments are accorded does not disprove the existence of less material worlds which certain subtler instruments can show to us.

But Ramakrishna was an Avatar, Sir! An Avatar to be attacked and given insufferable pains!

Why should he not? Why on earth limit the possibilities of an Avatar?

Last night L called Dr. Becharlal for tympanites. He saw there was no tympanites at all... She had also a good motion today.

That's it! Constipation she has got but she bloodcurdles herself into any number of other things.

S asked for meals at home. Because of the rainy weather he says he feels unwell. How can I refuse when a healthy fellow like myself—?!

What delicate people all are becoming! A feather will hunch them down. Can't bear this, can't stand that. Evidently they are approaching the heights of supramental Yoga!

[In the medical report, I wrote the name of the patient as Ambala instead of Ambalal.]

I say! this is the name of a town, not of a person.

November 1936

[The following medical report was by Dr. Becharlal about Shanta who had pain in the back and chest. She had weak eyes and lungs, and did a lot of knitting, embroidery, etc.] She should not work for more than an hour in bent position. She should try to sit straight.

That is all right. Mother had suggested that already in cases of fatigue of back from similar cause.

She should go for a walk in the open air every morning and evening.

She starts, then loses interest or feels tired or something and drops it.

She should take cod-liver oil for a longer period.

You must persuade her to do that.

She may be given such work as may not fatigue the eyes, press upon the chest—picking dry leaves, flowers, watering plants, etc.

She used to do some gardening before but dropped it.

J asks Mother whether bath salts get spoiled if a dozen bottles are bought at a time.

No. they don't get spoiled.

Herewith Powell's letter regarding T's abdominal support It looks like an adjustable type.

[20.10.36]

It is a steel affair? I doubt whether T could stand that.

I hope she will be able to manage the measurements wanted.

Lying down? it may be difficult for her.

Guru, this is the month when your thrice-blessed disciple came into the physical world. Please see that the supra-physical projects some more of its invisible rays. But thinking again—what will the poor Guru do if the big disciple doesn't fulfil the conditions? Is that so?

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

What do I think of that "device"? What can I think, Sir? That is the only straw I am obliged to clutch at, but it may prove too weak for my burden. I am doubtful of the device because you must have tried it also in many other cases that have failed.

The cases that have failed are those that have gone the wrong way—which is another kind of difficulty altogether.

Yes, T's support is a steel affair. Otherwise it won't be tight enough. But why can't she stand it?

Because it is very painful when one is thin with no fat to protect one. So instead of relieving her pains, it would [cause] others.

Sir, how to solve her lying down problem, I don't know.

Rack your brains and solve it.

Should I resume my hospital visits now? But cycles aren't allowed to be taken out in rainy weather, so?

It is because the rider gets wet and the bicycle rusted. But if you can arrive at an understanding with Benjamin⁴⁸—

There is an application for permanent residentship—X, son of B, husband of A. He had made himself something like a physical wreck in Africa, says he is all right now. Mother wants you to be very strict in your examination; also I have told him to give past history. First result of your suggestion for a preliminary examination of candidates!

By the way, R was also suggesting about the medical board, after D.L.'s death. Can't he be included?

There would be much confusion. He would say something quite different from the rest of you.

We have brought one dozen packets of bath salts for Mother. Wouldn't it be better to send them now?

Very well.

I have found a line which seems quite good, but no more!

Go ahead. Open the tap.

Guruji, I send you this incomplete masterpiece of mine. Such a one that I feel tempted to throw it head down, into—. Still, to be fair, the first 8 lines, I suppose, can stand on their feet. But the rest?

Yes. These are all right. Afterwards you seem to have haled down by the hair of the head some lines which don't quite know where they are or what you are driving at. They have therefore not much life in them. Is there not a stop in the middle of the ninth line? If possible, after repairing the inspiration a little, you might start off from there again and produce a less abruptly evolved conclusion.

D.H. Lawrence says that one can only write creative stuff when it comes, otherwise it is not much good. In his own experience some sort of an urge—his daemon—has seized him, and he has created. Writing is a kind of passion to him—like kissing!

All statements are subject to qualification. What Lawrence states is true in principle but in practice most poets have to sustain the inspiration by industry. Milton in his later days used to write every day fifty lines; Virgil nine which he corrected and recorrected till it was within halfway of what he wanted. In other words he used to write under any other conditions and pull at his inspiration till it came.

Perhaps the best creations are those which come by sudden inspiration, either in poetry or in prose.

Yes. Usually the best lines, passages etc. come like that.

How to make writing a passion? Is one born with it?

Usually. But sometimes it comes gradually.

With me it is neither a passion nor an urge! You've seen in my latest poems how my power of expression has deteriorated and resistance increased.

I think you have been rather influenced by so much study of J's poems and are trying to follow a similar inspiration and it is not quite assimilated.

If I can make you believe that I am able to write stories after all, I shall ask you for some Force.

I don't see why you should not be able to write.

I have been furiously thinking what is the use of blessed literature after all, if the nature remains just the same?

Good heavens! where did you get this idea that literature can transform people? Literary people are often the most impossible on the face of the earth.

Is literature ever going to transform the nature?

I don't suppose so. Never did it yet.

I have neither the strong will nor the sustained effort to transform my nature. The best way is to surrender—I am forced to do it—and keep quiet, quiet for years and years, which I am trying to do. But, Sir—!

According to the affirmation of people acquainted with the subject, the preliminary purification before getting any Yogic experiences worth the name may extend to 12 years. After that one may legitimately expect something. You are far from the limit yet—so no reason to despair.

What do you think of the beginning of this poem, and the possibility, if any?

An energetic beginning—many possibilities.

Yes, I think I have been influenced by "so much study" of J's poems. But is it wrong to be thus influenced? Is it going to be an imitation?

No, but it is a transition from one inspiration to another—and a transition is often difficult.

A similar inspiration can have a different manifestation, can't it?

Yes, of course.

Should I stick to my own domain? but what then is my own domain?

Can't say very well; but it was distinctive enough.

I didn't mean that literature can transform people. We may have progressed in literature, but the outer human nature remains almost the same.

Outer human nature can only change either by an intense psychic development or a strong And all-pervading influence from above. It is the inner being that has to change first—a change which is not always visible outside. That has nothing to do with the development of the faculties which is another side of the personality.

Wouldn't it be wiser to use my effort and labour in the direction of sadhana?

That is another question altogether. But such sadhana means a slow laborious work of self-change in most cases (twelve years you know!), so why not sing on the way?

Literary people are hyper-sensitive, it seems. But why they alone? All artists, I am afraid, are like that.

Of course.

The bigger one is, the greater the ego and the greater the sensibility or sensitiveness. I believe that if the artists were not so sensitive, they wouldn't be able to create!

Not quite that. Sensibility, yes—one must be able to feel things. Exaggerated sensitiveness not necessary. Men of genius have generally a big ego—can't be helped, that.

Lawrence is terrible that way. He says he doesn't write for "apes, dogs and asses", and yet when these asses criticise him, he goes mad!

Of course—T weeps oceans if criticised, Lawrence goes red etc. It's the mark of the tribe.

What about yourself in your pre-yogic days? I hear that James Cousins said about your poem "The Rishi" that it was not poetry at all, only spiritual philosophy. I wonder what your poetic reaction was!

James Cousins does not date from my pre-yogic days.

I never heard that. If I had, I would have noted that Cousins had no capacity for appreciating intellectual poetry. But that I knew already, just as he had no liking for epic poetry either, only for poetic "jewellery". His criticism was of "In the Moonlight" which he condemned as brain-stuff only except the early stanzas for which he had high praise. That criticism was of great use to me—though I did not agree with it. But the positive part of it helped me to develop towards a supra-intellectual style. As "Love and Death" was poetry of the vital, so "Ahana"⁴⁹ is mostly work of the poetic intelligence. Cousins' criticism helped me to go a stage farther.

D said to us once that he spoke to Mother about his hypersensitiveness, and she replied that an artist has to be that—he must have finer, acuter feelings to be able to create his best.

He has to be "sensible" in the French sense of the word.

Only in Yoga one has to turn it towards the Divine. What do you say?

I prefer he should drop the hyper-sensitiveness and be hyper-"sensible" (French sense, not English) only.

You have again hit me with the number of years in Yoga plus Virgil, Keats and Milton in poetry. I am preparing a hit-back!

There was no hit in that—I was only answering your question about writing only when the inspiration comes. I pointed out that these poets (Virgil, Milton) did not do that. They obliged the inspiration to come. Many not so great do the same. How does Keats come in? I don't think I mentioned him.

J asks if A's letter can be sent now.

Well, she can send. I will see at leisure.

Guru, what else could it be if not a "hit" or at least shutting my mouth? Every time I complain of a great difficulty, no inspiration, you quote the names of Virgil, Milton, etc. Same in Yoga—you say 10 years, 12 years, pooh!

I thought you were honestly asking for the truth about inspiration according to Lawrence and effort; and I answered to that. I didn't know that it was connected purely with your personal reactions. You did not put it like that. You asked whether Lawrence's ideas were correct and I was obliged to point out that they were subject to qualification since both great and second class and all kinds of poets have not waited for a fitful inspiration but tried to regularise it.

When hour after hour passes in barren silence bringing unspeakable misery, these examples of great poets—Miltons, Virgils—who cannot be compared with small ones are no consolation at all. (Keats you mentioned on another occasion.)

All that about great poets is absolute imbecile nonsense. There is no question of great or small. It is a question of fluency or absence of fluency. Great, small and mediocre are alike in that matter—some can write fast and easily, others can't.

When you bring in the examples of Milton and Virgil in poetry and the number of years in Yoga, you forget that they had no Supramental Avatar as Guru to push them on, Sir!

Considering that the Supramental Avatar himself is quite incapable of doing what Nishikanta or Jyoti do, i.e. producing a poem or several poems a day, why do you bring him in? In England indeed I could write a lot every day but most of that has gone into the Waste Paper Basket.

If you mean seriously that I have to wait 12 years, you will drive me to commit suicide, I tell you. Things are bad enough, Sir, and "sing on the way" indeed!

The rule of 12 years is one enounced not by me, but many Sanyasis and people who know about Yoga. Of course they are "professionals", so to speak, while this is an Asram of amateur Yogis who expect quick results and no labour—and if they don't get it, talk about despair and suicide.

God knows when I shall be above all this vital desire, sex, etc. When I think of the first 2 years, I heave a sigh thinking of such a retrogression, a fall. You have said that falls and failures bring something better and richer; what have they brought for me?

There is nothing peculiar about retrogression. I was also noted in my earlier time before Yoga for the rareness of anger. At a certain period of the Yoga it rose in me like a volcano and I had to take a long time eliminating it. As for sex—well. You are always thinking that the things that are happening to you are unique and nobody else ever had such trials or downfalls or misery before.

I have no other way but to surrender to the divine, leaving Him to lead me through fires or flowers as He decides best. Can I "sing", honestly?

I don't see why not? Dilip used to sing whenever he felt suicidal.

Amal says Cousins ignored your poem "The Rishi" while speaking of the others. Isn't that far worse?

Neither worse nor better. What does Cousins' bad opinion about the "Rishi" matter to me? I know the limitations of my poetry and also its qualities. I know also the qualities of Cousins as a critic and also his limitations. If Milton had written during the life of Cousins instead of having an established reputation for centuries, Cousins would have said of Paradise Lost and still more of Paradise Regained "This is not poetry, this is theology". Note that I don't mean to say that "Rishi" is anywhere near "Paradise Lost", but it is poetry as well as spiritual philosophy.

You surprise me very much, Guru, by this "volcanic anger" of yours. People say that they never heard a single harsh, rude, angry word from your mouth here in Pondicherry. But how is it that this "volcano" flared up in Yoga when you were noted for its rareness in pre-Yoga? Subconscient surge?

I was speaking of a past phase. I don't know about subconscient must have come from universal Nature.

What do you mean by "feminine women"? as opposed to "masculine women"?

Feminine is not used in opposition to masculine here, but means only a wholly unrelievedly feminine woman—a capricious, fantastic, unreasonable, affectionate-quarrelsome-sensual-emotional, idealistic-vitalistic, incalculable, attractive-intolerable, neverknows-what-she-is-or-what-she-isn't and everything else kind of creature. It is not really feminine, but is the woman as man has made her. By the way, if you like to add some hundred other epithets and double-epithets after searching the Oxford dictionary you can freely do so. They can all be fitted in somehow.

I am tempted to ask you a delicate personal question about X. She seems to be in a good state of sadhana though I find that she spends much of her time in a very ordinary manner... Still she seems very happy and her sadhana must be very good, as she has no depression...

You forget that for a long time she was often keeping much more to herself, to Y's great anger. During that time she built up an inner life and made some attempt to change certain things in her outer—not in the outward appearance but in the movements governing it. There is still an enormous amount to be done before the outward change can be outwardly visible, but still she is not insincere in her resolution. As for her not having any depression [it is] because she has established a fundamental calm which is only upset by clashes with Y; all the rest passes on the surface ruffling it perhaps, but not breaking the calm. She has also a day or two ago had the experience of the ascent above and of the wideness of peace and joy of the Infinite (free from the bodily sense and limitation) as also the descent down to the Muladhar. She does not know the names or technicalities of these things, but her description which was minute and full of details was unmistakable. There are three or four others who have had this experience recently so that we may suppose the working of the Force is not altogether in vain, as this experience is a very big affair and is supposed to be, if stabilised, the summit of the old Yogas—For us it is only a beginning of spiritual transformation. I have said this though it is personal so that you may understand that outside defects and obstacles in the nature .or the appearance of unYogicness does not necessarily mean that a person can do or is doing no sadhana.

I want to know the secret of it. Is she all the time thinking of the Mother within? I think she has a great love for the Mother. Is that the secret?

Partly. She got hold of the sadhana by the right end in her mind and applied it—just the thing Y failed to do because of his doubts, pride of intellect and denial etc.—so in spite of serious defects of nature she has got on.

Is it enough for progress, if most of the time is passed in the way she does?

She passes her time so because she can now do it and yet keep within her inner condition and her sadhana. So she says at least. Possibly if she did it less she would go on faster.

Guru, day after tomorrow is my blessed birthday. The year has gone round and the prophecy that at the age of 32, my troubles will be over, has well—! [3.11.35]

Thirty-second year over? Perhaps in the "will be over" over has a different significance!

G says he doesn't want to take any more cod-liver oil, as he is quite all right and doesn't want to get fatter.

Perhaps he could be given a rest from the oil for a time. But if he thinks himself fat, that is an illusion.

M.G. says the doctor (M.B. only) at Calcutta didn't advise quinine without blood exam.

[Sri Aurobindo put a question mark above "M.B. only".]

What's this algebra?

His case looks like malaria. Is it necessary to examine blood?

Examine blood for what? To see if it is malaria?

G has been taking half a cup of extra milk. He wants to give it up now. Should he cease?

No. He must continue—unless he prefers cod-liver oil.

I send you one of Z's missives. The last para is private and nonmedical but apart from that you may perhaps convey to Becharlal the substance of this despatch—the horrible tale of the alarming Lila that is going on in her stomach.

Please return the epistle.

Guru, any impression of Mother's on my birthday? I am afraid I wasn't calm but the whole day I felt peaceful.

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

Quinine was given to M.G. But I suppose it is not any more necessary, as is evident. I know your views against quinine but what can we give instead?

Don't know. If it is a necessary evil, it must be administered, I suppose.

I return Z's "epistle", with thanks. Dr. Becharlal will look after the "Lila", but are these people living in an illusory world of their own or are we in a sceptical world of ours? She says every atom is merging peacefully and beautifully into the wideness of the Mother, and yet this alarming "Lila" of the stomach and the whole body! Is the Spirit separating itself from Matter and enjoying all this, while giving an impersonal account of material suffering?

Z is a humbug and I don't believe in her atoms. She has had experiences but on the mental and vital plane. It is only a real descent of the higher consciousness from above that can give a peaceful and beautiful merging of the atoms (?) into the wideness of the Divine—that is to say one feels the very cells sharing in that peace and wideness. This is possible even if the material body is ill. In most cases it is the subtle body that feels like that, but as the subtle penetrates everywhere the gross physical, the physical body also feels like that. But then it does not feel disturbed by the pains or motions of the illness—they do not affect its peace or Ananda.

May I ask Ardhendu to play a little sitar here in the dispensary, at night? I shall invite just a few friends.

I suppose it can be done.

Chand has asked your advice and protection for going to Chittagong in January.

Protection is possible, advice not.

Guru, Mother said I was receptive? But how? I don't know really.

How the devil can you know, when you are not conscious?

That is the whole trouble in your Yoga, Sir, that everything goes on in an unconscious stream.

It always does in the earlier stages.

All I know is that I tried to be calm and silent, forgetting by mind-effort that an outer world exists. That is receptivity?

Nonsense! It is only the proper condition for receptivity. Naturally, it is the proper thing to do if you want to be receptive or become conscious of inner things. So long as the mind is jumping about or rushing out to outside things, it is not possible to be inward, collected, conscious within.

The Mother said to me in the interview that my inner mind asked for vital stability and faith, which can be established by bringing the psychic to the front. How to do that?

I consulted your books and found that by silence, self-offering and aspiration, it has to be done.

Yes, that is the proper way.

But aspiration for what?

Aspiration for the Divine or aspiration for faith and consciousness and the perfection of self-giving—aspiration for divine love, bhakti, anything that connects the soul with the Divine.

Does the psychic come to the front even if the vital is impure?

Well, it may; anything is possible; but if it does, it will certainly say "Fie, fie, what! all this dirt in the temple. Sweep me the temple clean."

Or the emergence of the psychic purges the vital of its impurities?

Yes, provided you give your assent.

I find that so long as sex is strong, no ascent or descent is possible.

That is not true. It is possible but damnably unsafe.

But in spite of these things which you say are not mine alone, if I could get rid of these two devils—doubt and despondency!

They are not uniquely yours either.

J does not claim to know any sadhana but still to have an inner peace and joy. It must be true, for I find J very happy and cheerful.

Well, yes, many people are like that, Calm or peace or happiness or cheerfulness, so long as there is no cause for disturbance; but immediately there is, then boil, seethe, simmer, growl, howl, yowl.

The calm which causes of disturbance cannot disturb is the thing.

You say the working of the Force is not altogether in vain in spite of serious defects in people's nature. But surely they must have satisfied some essential conditions for gaining the experiences.

Yes, of course. But it varies with different people. It may be faith, it may be earnestness and persistence. It may be love for the Divine. There are many other things it may be. Like the Mahomedan with his tuft, you must give a handle somewhere for the Angel of the Lord to catch hold of you and lift you up.

Otherwise I could have those experiences as well, but I can't, why?

Mind bubbling, vital disturbed and despondent, physical inert.

Or would you say that it has taken those people 7 or 8 years?

Yes, it has—what you would call damned slow progress—but, slow or not, they arrive.

It seems to me there must have been some difference between X and me, for instance, for which she had the experiences and I didn't. She took sadhana by the "right end" you said, which means surely that she had no doubt or despondency?

No, sir, she had these in fits and very bad fits too like everybody else almost. But she preferred to believe, to be devoted, to fight against herself and conquer. She did not like Y take a pride in doubting and using the intellect for the purpose, was sensible enough to see that that wasn't what she came here for. She didn't want to question everything and be satisfied in her limited intellect before she took the way of spiritual self-giving and inner experience.

How did this 'fundamental calm" get established in her?

It came of itself through the sincerity of her will to open and to live for the Divine—there was insincerity and ego on the surface but the psychic could make itself heard owing to this—so the inner being slowly grew.

I have a bad frontal headache, feeling feverish, hope no complication of left frontal sinus suppuration! Help, Guru! [Sri Aurobindo drew an arrow from the word "suppuration".]

What's all this? Is this a time to start suppurating sinuses? Drop it, please.

Guru, O Guru,
My head, my head
And the damned fever!
I am half-dead!
With pain and pressure
But blessed liver
Functions quite well,
Please send the others
To hell, oh to hell!

Cheer up! Things might have been so much worse. Just think if you had been a Spaniard in Madrid or a German Communist in a concentration camp! Imagine that and then you will be quite cheerful with only a cold and headache. So

Throw off the cold,
Damn the fever.
Be sprightly and bold
And live for ever.

What's to be done? How to drop it? Is it the blessed cold only or any Force to boot that is causing havoc in the head?

I don't know of any force. do you think it is some pressure making the difficulty in the head ooze out of it? If so—

For it started, you know, on the very night I came from the Mother...

Receptivity?

Very funny that every time I make a resolution regarding poetry or sadhana, something happens and ties me down. Why?

Probably the adverse forces get frightened and put in an undercut or overcut to knock you out of tune.

I was proud that I was immune to illness! But a mere cold pulls me down, and that too at Darshan time! Again Fate, Sir! There is a proverb in Bengali which says that one who is unlucky, is unlucky everywhere; even in a নেমন্তন্ন⁵⁰ he doesn't get anything. I hope you remember the familiar word নেমন্তন্ন!

I do, though it belongs to the far-off past for me.

I am better today, Sir. But feverishness is there, which I hope will pass off tomorrow. But what about the lack of interest in everything?

Don't understand. You want to get rid of the interest in everything or to get rid of the lack of interest?

Imagination of Madrid or the Concentration Camp will have a reverse effect!

What reverse effect? Increase of cold and headache?

By the Guru! Please don't forget to give a supramental kick to my main impediments at Darshan; only no aftereffects, please, what?

"By the Guru"! What kind of oath is this? But the object of the imagination was not to liberate your nose or forehead, but to liberate your soul.

Kicking is easy. As to the effects or after-effects, that has to be seen.

Guru, I feel I must seriously write now—take the Muse by the forelock. Otherwise she is too high and proud; but your help is needed. You said afternoon is your fag-end, so every time I feel unsupported then. I will shift it to the lonely quiet night, to get your bright and energetic beginning. What? Approve?

Not objected to at least provided you don't stay wrestling with the Muse till the small hours of the morning.

[The following report was written by Dr. Becharlal:] S said last evening that she was much better. But today she has not come for the medicines.

She has written that she got worse with the medicine, so she stopped it. I have told her that she ought to report to you instead of doing that.

A perfect sonnet! (I) What do you think of the first line, Sir: "My clouded soul, do you know where you are?" Flat? and the clouded soul?

(1) Flat? by God, sir, abysmal! The soul can get as clouded as it likes but do you know where you are? In Pondicherry, sir, in Pondicherry—the most clouded soul can know that. You might just as well write "My friend, do you know that you are an ass?" and call it metre and poetry.

What about the thought, sequence, etc.? Please show the defects with your opinion and criticism. Is it a metaphysical or philosophic poem?

God knows! But the matter is that the metre of some of your lines is enough to make the hair of a prosodist stand on end in horror! I have marked all the quadrupeds you have created in situ—also put in the margin my five-footed emendations of them...

After reading your remarks on yesterday's poem, oh what a joy I felt! In spite of your calling me an "ass", Sir!

I only made you call somebody else one.

Let me whisper to you that after this Darshan something somehow has happened somewhere to make me cheerful and jolly, though you didn't seem to have given me a very warm reception—because of my damn cold?

There was no absence of warmth—it may be your cold that made it seem so to you.

And though Mother now and then rolls her eyes, which makes me roll in misery for one or two hours...

Rubbish!

D also says he is very happy. So we both combine to give you this good news. You may congratulate yourself on some tremendous success you have achieved! What's the secret, Sir? Supramental in view?

Supramental "in view" long ago. To reach is the thing.

Danger zone crossed?

Can't say that, yet.

Ah, if this joy remains so! will it?

Let us hope so.

I forgot to narrate to you a funny experience I had on Darshan day. Just after darshan, I sat in the Asram for a while, then went home and lay down. From 10 to midday I slept heavily. But throughout those 2 hours, I had the feeling that I'd lose all that I had received at darshan. Suddenly I felt myself sleeping in Ardhendu's room, listening to kirtan.⁵¹ But the funny part is that my body seemed to be lying on the bed and another part of me was up and listening to the kirtan. Was it the subtle body? What significance?

Why funny? Quite natural.

Why the deuce do all you people ask always what significance? If you walked out of your house in boots, leaving your slippers or sandals behind, that would be a fact, but with no significance except that you had boots. You went out in your subtle body and listened to the kirtan of the vital plane in Ardhendu's room, leaving your body to snore (or not) in yours. Quite a common affair, only shows that you have become aware of the boots, i.e. of your subtle body and its exits.

Boil again inside the right nostril! But perhaps you will ask me to imagine being a Spaniard, German, Jew, the Japanese-German pact and the Russian inflammation against it etc., etc. All right, Sir, I will imagine all these if you will imagine giving me a dose of Force, what?

It is for you to do that. I can only send Force.

U has pain in the left elbow. Siju or Oriental Balm recommended by the Divine seems to have failed! We might try some other liniment.

Try.

R has a glandular swelling on the, right side of the neck now.

What about other matters? Eruption on arm? Lice in hair?

Boil paining, what to do? Suffer with a smile?

Smile awhile.

Some years ago G hurt his scrotum; there was a swelling as a result, since then any time he has fever or pain in his knee, the swelling of the testis appears. Right testis somewhat enlarged due to the fluid—sign of orchitis.

? Not very coherent statement. Any connection between knee, fever any time and orchitis?

December 1936

Mulshankar still complains of pain in the hip joint. There is a loud cracking sound in some positions. Dr. Becharlal says the dislocation hasn't been set right, perhaps.

It may be only rheumatism settled there. Sometimes a fracture even if set right perfectly leads to that. But you can see again if you think there is any chance of its not having been put right.

Sonnet emended by Amal. He has changed the metrical errors, as well as lines which seemed to him un-English.

And what errors, my God! For heaven's sake don't try the irregular dodge yet. It doesn't succeed with you.

In J's poem, she says that by Nature's or the Bride's rhythm, roses live in hope? How? Why?

What do you know about roses and their response to rhythm?

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

What I know, is ineffable.

You seemed to have been in the worst of moods, due to heavy correspondence?

No, the best.

I hope you have had your fill of supramental glee by the merciless whipping on the inframental!

It was all done for your good with the most philanthropic motive.

But I don't understand your point in spite of such whipping. Is poetry to be felt only, only to have an inner thrill, tremor and quiver?

What's the use of saying poetry, with a universal sweep like that? It is a question of mystic poetry, not of all poetry.

Perhaps one must not use the intellect to understand what exactly or apparently is meant?

Mystic poetry does not mean anything exactly or apparently; it means things suggestively and reconditely,—things that are not known and classified by the intellect.

Or should one be satisfied only with the fineries, embroidery, ornamental decorations outside, and not see what it is that they are covering?

What you are asking is to reduce what is behind to intellectual terms, which is to make it something quite different from itself.

Must not one see if the body that these ornaments decorate is as beautiful and precious or more than these fineries?

It is not a question of the (intellectual) body, but of the mystic soul of the thing.

You want it intellectually beautiful and precious or mystically beautiful and precious?

The symbolic and spiritual images in your Bird of Fire, for instance, are so rich, high, poignant and poetic, but if one could follow the bhava behind or through them, I believe the appreciation would become complete.

What do you mean by following the bhava behind? Putting a label on the bird and keeping it dried up in your intellectual museum, for Professors to describe to their pupils—"this is the species and that's how it is constituted, these are the bones, feathers etc., etc. and now you know all about the bird. Or would you like me to dissect it farther?"

Suppose one said: "Why the devil do you want to know the meaning and not rest satisfied with the beauty of the expression?"

Why the deuce are you dwelling on the poetry of the expression as if that were all one feels in a mystic poem and unless one dissects and analyses it one can't feel anything but words?

The little explanations you gave here and there of J's mystic poems enhanced the rasa.

It didn't to me—it simply intellectualised all the rasa out of it.

If the explanations are not necessary then Blake's poems lose half the charm. People have perhaps appreciated the poetic qualities of his works, but now that they understand the significance also they consider him very great. Isn't that so?

They understand the significance? in what way? By allegorising them?

Read the remarks of Housman on the magnificent poem of Blake he quotes in full and the attempts of people to explain it.⁵² I quite agree with him there though not in his too sweeping theory of poetry. To explain that poem is to murder it and dissect the corpse. One can't explain it, one can only feel and live the truth behind it.

What I mean to say is that intellectual understanding is necessary to fully appreciate the beauty and worth of a poem, otherwise one feels only a subtle tremor or quiver of joy.

Rubbish!

Who is this "one"?

In symbolic or mystic poems one wants to know also the truths behind the symbols for proper appreciation.

Intellectual truths? Do you think that the intellectual truth of the Divine is its real truth? In that case there is no need of Yoga. Philosophy is enough.

For instance J has written "Crimson Rose", and by crimson has suggested the painful feeling. Now if one could catch that instead of simply visualising a red rose, the rasa becomes more thick.

It would become much more thick if you felt the mystic red rose and all that it is in the subtle planes instead of merely visualising a red rose and thinking about pain.

I may farther say about J's poem that I don't care a damn who the woman is that is sitting there and I would rather not have a label put on her. It leaves me free to feel all the inner possible meaning of her waiting and what she is waiting for.

It is the same with the symbols in Yoga. One puts an intellectual label on the "White Light" and the mind is satisfied and says, "Now I know all about it; it is the pure divine Consciousness light," and really it knows nothing. But if one allows the Divine White Light to manifest and pour through the being, then one comes to know it and get all its results. Even if there is no labeled knowledge, there is the luminous experience of all its significance—

All that whipping for my good? "With the most philanthropic motive"? Gracious! The only good was to stop me from asking questions about J's poem. But really what's the motive? You want the mind to be completely silent?

At least decently silent—not always asking for an intellectual definition of everything mystic.

I have brought Housman and shall read him. I would like to get this point cleared if it can be cleared. Your Future Poetry may also give some idea if I can pick out the right chapter.

Don't know that there is one (right chapter).

I don't get sufficient time at night, so I have been writing in the afternoon also.

That's all right.

If that is your "fag-end" really, then can't Mother give me some Force?

Very inappropriate time for her also. Besides, it is I who am directly running the Poetry Department. However I am now more sprightly from 2.30 to 4.30. After that, correspondence—no chance for poetry.

If you object to my intellectual dissection, please mark the striking lines as you did yesterday in my Bengali poem, because at times I can see their beauty only after you've marked them—as it happened yesterday.

Strange! for they are full of poetic power and feeling and what Matthew Arnold would call "in the grand style".

Nishikanta says that taking my poetry as a whole, some command over expression and harmony is there, but the বক্তব্য⁵³ is not clearly expressed, either because I don't know what I want to say or because the power of expression hasn't yet developed.

I don't know about that. The বক্তব্য is there, it seems to me, and expressed, but it does not come to so much as one would expect from the richness of the expression. I suppose he means that you have caught only a little of something that might be expressed—only a hair of the tail instead of the complete animal.

Perhaps it is true about the, but the বক্তব্য, but the difficulty is that very often I don't know what will follow. I get a line to begin with and let myself go.

That is not the case.

Very fine things can come in that way.

Can you give me your opinion? Is there no way to hasten the process?

No, it will come all right as you grow. You are only an infant, just now.

I wrote to you about my happiness, but the very next morning a nebulous cloak of depression fell on me and I am still under it! Well!

Tut, tut, tut! You really must get rid of this kind of thing, hang it all. Out of this kind of nebula no constellation can be made.

The funny thing is that S complains so much and says hunger also is less, but he looks none the worse.

Are you sure he is not a "malade imaginaire"?—at least to a large extent?

Guru, yes, unfortunately I am "an infant". Out is infancy the reason, really? I thought it is a question of opening of some inner channel that is the secret. If that opens or is opened up, then the infant can grow old in a day.

Here you are illegitimately changing the metaphor. What has a channel to do with infancy and old age? You are doing in prose what you don't want J to do in poetry.

J, you know, was no better than an infant and she ran equal with me in poetry, didn't she? All of a sudden see where she is!

Because there are infants and infants. Some grow quick, others slowly.

She has not only caught the animal whole and alive, but most marvellously and rapidly, while I have not been able to catch even a hair of the tail!

My dear sir, she let the inspiration through and didn't mind whether she understood it or not—or at least if she did mind, it didn't stop her from following it.

She has written 4 sonnets today, and each one better than my single production of 2 or 3 days' labour! Why haven't I been able to do it?

Because of your mind which is active.

Next, what about D who could't write a single line and flourished in so short a time?

That was his vital vigour and confidence. As for you, you refuse to enthuse.

Sir, the mystery is a little deeper, methinks. If you so wanted this instant, you could have made me an "old man" or at least more than an infant!

Have to work under the conditions you offer me.

I began this poem night before last, wrote 3 stanzas quickly, but had to stop, as it was rather late. Perhaps I should have finished it then somehow, as the flow was coming?

Yes, not good to stop the flow, unless you have got to the stage when you are sure of picking it up again.

By the way, I am thinking of reading some more English poems to be able to write better.

It should certainly be a helpful thing.

So shall I devote the afternoon to reading instead of writing?

Unless you feel a sudden inspiration. Then throw the book aside and write.

It is really difficult for me to understand how the mind comes in the way, for I seem to think that whatever comes I jot down.

Well, but why doesn't it come down like a cataract as in J's case or as a flood in D's?

Of course, I want to see also if any better things are possible.

See how? If better things come, it is all right; but if you try to find out better things, then that is mental activity.

But if you say whatever comes should be transcribed, I don't know, for I have to wait and wait for an expression.

Waiting is all right.

Should one then keep absolutely silent and go on waiting and waiting for the things to drop?

What else then is to be done? To hunt about for them? If so, you are likely to put in any damned thing, imagining it is better.

If you say the mind is active, I should think D's mind is no less.

He often says "This has flowed through me." How could it if the mind were active? I suppose you mean by mind the transcribing agency? I don't mean the receiving mind. The receiving mind must be passive.

Can you not elaborate that sentence: "You refuse to enthuse"?

Yes, you say you take no pleasure or joy in your poetry.

Lack of enthusiasm? All right, I shall work and work in whichever way you advise, sitting on depressions and despondency.

That is not what I mean by enthusing. I mean by it the joy of the inspiration both as it is coming and afterwards.

If you think afternoon will be better for giving Force, I shall write then...

No importance. Force can come at any time.

I shall put plenty of vigour; about confidence I can't promise yet for it is my conviction that I haven't as much stuff as they have.

It is a psychological condition, attitude or whatever you like to call it that you must get into it,—still, compact, receptive, vibrant to the touch when it comes.

By the way, I had a talk with D regarding mystic poetry. He doesn't seem to feel much in Blake's poetry.

It simply means that he has not the mystic mind. It does not make any difference to the value or beauty of Blake's poetry.

And mystic poetry as a whole appeals to him less than poems with concrete meaning.

Mystic poetry has a perfectly concrete meaning, much more than intellectual poetry which is much more abstract. The nature of the intellect is abstraction; spirituality and mysticism deal with the concrete by their very nature.

He says Tagore's poem: "All the pooja [worship] accomplished in life..."⁵⁴ is vastly more appealing to him than "O Beauty, how far wilt Thou lead me?..."⁵⁵

How is this less concrete than the other?

Or "I have harvested lots of paddy
And while I was harvesting came down the rains."⁵⁶

Again how is it less concrete?

Mystic poetry will ever remain for him misty and mysterious and occupy a second place.

That is another matter. It is a question of personal idiosyncrasy. There are people who thrill to Pope and find Keats and Shelley empty and misty. The clear precise intellectual meanings of Pope are to them the height of poetry—the emotional and romantic suggestions of the Skylark or the Ode to a Nightingale unsatisfactory. How the devil, they ask, can a skylark be a spirit, not a bird? What the hell has 'a glow-worm golden in a dell of dew' to do with the song of the skylark? They are unable to feel these things and say Pope would never have written in that incoherent inconsequential way. Of course he wouldn't. But that simply means they like things that are intellectually clear and can't appreciate the imaginative connections which reveal what is deeper than the surface. You can I suppose catch something of these, but when you are asked to go still deeper into the concrete of concretes, you lose your breath and say "Lord! what an unintelligible mess. Give me an allegorical clue for God's sake, something superficial which I can mentally formulate." Same attitude as the Popists'—in essence.

I can't deny that I got more joy from your explanation of J's poem. Though I felt the rasa before, when it came to "illuminations of Truth", it gave me more rasa. The feeling became concretised, so to say.

You mean, it became more intellectually abstract. A glorious concrete, an illumination of Truth is an abstraction, unless it is seen and felt.

There lies the whole difference. You read a poem—mystic or otherwise and feel all the beauty without understanding it, but when the significance also is flashed, the feeling is more.

Not only all the beauty, but all the life and truth of it. What significance? allegorical significance?

How far can you say that your appreciation is a thing divorced from the flash of understanding that is revealed to you or your living behind the words?

The trouble with you is that you can understand nothing unless an intellectual label is put on it ... You are like a person who could not love and enjoy the presence of a beautiful thing or person until you know the scientific category, class or botanical or other description in Latin.

A has written twice about some eruption she is having—she said you would write to us about it, but there is no eruption in this book. Please let me know what it is. An "eruption" may mean anything from prickly heat to—

S.B. had no sleep at all last night. No trouble and yet no sleep. Mystery! Any yogic reason?

It is the new fashion with the Asram Yogis—not to sleep.

I send you a letter from S which will speak eloquently for itself. Please return after communicating the contents to Dr. B. I see she has horse-disease অশ্বরোগ⁵⁷—I presume she means piles (?). Is the blood in her stools due to piles or something else?

Here is Jatin's letter. Why is he seeing visions of engineering, with the Super-engineer at his side? What significance, if any, of the dream? To be fulfilled here or there? He wants to be a yogi; don't you see?

He was moving in the vital plane which is not bound by the mental will or by the physical realities. There a certain capacity in him was being turned to the Divine Work and the building was symbolic of that, also the power of undertaking my suggestions without speech.

Why then all these un-yogic engineering dreams and visions, when he is concentrating all his efforts with the view to become a super-yogi?

You must dismiss these mental limitations if you want to understand the occult worlds. The vital world has its own law of working, system of events and symbols—it is not bound by the waking mind.

Please give him a satisfactory reply, and what about his letter remaining with you for eternity!

Which letter? there is more than one, I believe.

Mark that he gets tremendous peace by thinking of you.

Naturally, as he meets in me the source of Peace.

Nishikanta [conjunctivitis of both the eyes] is better than he was yesterday.

Mother is not satisfied with the condition of his eyes. Why the increase? Too strong medicines?

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

Mother knows nothing about it.

I went over the whole incident [personal] and didn't find anywhere that I have misrepresented facts.

No.

Or is it because I was bothering myself and you over a trifle?

No.

It was not an illusion. Some meaning was there.

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

Today Nishikanta is better.

Slightly.

And mercury? Its strength is only 1% and used like anything in the hospitals and recommended in books.

Maybe, but many people suffer much from it. Probably the method is to irritate Nature until she reacts? If so,—well!

The D.R. servant seems to have sciatica. Can he be treated with Salicylates?

Try whatever you think best.

Or should he go to the hospital?

I think not.

J's poems are getting beyond me. Give me either the feeling and consciousness or the mental notes.

She seems to be passing from Blake towards Mallarmé, though she has not quite got there yet. Sorry for you. The poem is fine but enigmatic.

Do you mean to say that because I have no joy in writing poetry, it is taking so long for the channel to open? But I don't see why joy should be a necessary condition for writing poetry.

Art is a thing of beauty and beauty and Ananda are closely connected—they go together. If the Ananda is there, then the beauty comes out more easily—if not, it has to struggle out painfully and slowly. That is quite natural.

I will put in any amount of labour and that should be enough for things to pour down.

Labour is not enough for the things to pour down. What is done With labour only, is done with difficulty, not with a downpour. The joy in the labour must be there for a free outflow. You have very queer psychological ideas, I must say.

How can I have any joy when what I write seems such poor stuff and delivered with much perspiration?

That is your confounded nature. How can the man of sorrows feel joy in anything or any self-confidence? His strain is "O how miserable am I! O how dark am I! Oh how worthless is all that I do," etc., etc.

But apart from the M of S, you seem to suffer from a mania of self-depreciatory criticism. Many artists and poets have that; as soon as they look at their work they find it awfully poor and bad. (I had that myself often varied with the opposite feeling, Arjava also has it); but to have it while writing is its most excruciating degree of intensity. Better get rid of it if you want to write freely.

But I get a lot of joy reading J's poetry—I can't describe it...

I suppose it is because it is what Housman calls pure poetry—stirs with joy the solar plexus.

Where you marked so many fine lines in my last poem I had hardly felt the thrill while writing them.

That's the pity of it.

Please give some Force to complete the incomplete poem I have been at. I fear to touch it lest the coming lines should fail in their quality.

Well, it's that kind of thing that stands in the way.

The first portion I wrote quickly and almost dosing. God knows why dosing?

[Sri Aurobindo wrote z above the s of "dosing".]

This is a medical spelling.

Probably in order that your waking mind might not interfere. Dozing is often a form of semi-samadhi in which the waking mind retires and the subliminal self comes bobbing up.

Have you finished with Jatin's long letter regarding dreams, sleep-walking etc.? The reply is overdue, Sir!

I have often tried to begin that, but it is a long affair and before putting pen to paper my courage wilted away.

Guru, sorry? Really? I am very glad, you can be sorry, for then you will do something for me... Why do you say "She seems to be passing etc., etc."? That simply infuriated J, "... I am writing all this hard stuff which nobody understands, not even Sri Aurobindo! ... I shall stop writing then. And now I am passing from one funny poet to another (Mallarmé)."

Well, if she thinks it derogatory to be compared to such great poets as Blake and Mallarmé! Blake is Europe's greatest mystic poet and Mallarmé turned the whole current of French poetry (one might almost say, of all modernist poetry) into a channel of which his poems were the opening.

"Mallarmé's works are, in one word, 'unintelligible'. Why on earth should I write such things?"

Then why did they have so much influence on the finest French writers and why is modernist poetry trying to burrow into the subliminal in order to catch something even one quarter as fine as his language, images and mystic suggestions?

We told her that she is only an instrument of the Force, and she must surrender to it. "But how can I be sure that it is the Force and not my own making? If Sri Aurobindo assures me of it, I shall be satisfied."

If it were her own making, she would have written something different. Its very character shows that her mind has not made it.

Is it really true that Mallarmé used to write with a set determination to make his works unintelligible? Can one really do it in that way?

Certainly not. The French language was too clear and limited to express mystic truth, so he had to wrestle with it and turn it this way and that to arrive at a mystic speech. Also he refused to be satisfied with anything that was a merely intellectual or even at all intellectual rendering of his vision. That is why the surface understanding finds it difficult to follow him. But he is so great that it has laboured to follow him all the same.

... J doubts that her poems have enough poetry.

The doubt is absurd—they are poetry sheer and pure.

Our saying and feeling don't matter much, you see. Sri Aurobindo, Tagore, etc., etc. must acclaim.

I can't answer for Tagore—...

Please acclaim, acclaim!

clamo, clamavi, clamabo.⁵⁸

[This medical report was written by Dr. Becharlal.] P complains of indigestion.

In her letter to me today she complains of headache, giddiness—also of vomiting every third day. She says when she takes medicines it stops, afterwards she is as before.

Guru, please read pages 19-21 of this book.⁵⁹ There Kastner seems to say about Mallarmé just what I have said, though he speaks of him as being an acknowledged master, and of his great influence on contemporary poetry.

He can't deny such an obvious fact, I suppose—but he would like to.

He says, "A purely intellectual artist, convinced that sentiment was an inferior element of art, Mallarmé never evokes emotion, but only thought about thought; and the thoughts called forth in his mind by the symbol are generally so subtle and elliptical that they find no echo in the mind of the ordinary mortal."⁶⁰ Do you agree with all that he says about Mallarmé?

Certainly not—this man is a mere pedant; his remarks are unintelligent, commonplace, often perfectly imbecile.

He continues: "Obscurity was part of his doctrine and he wrote for the select few only and exclusively..."⁶¹

Rubbish! His doctrine is perfectly tenable and intelligible. It is true that the finest things in art and poetry are appreciated only by the few and he chose therefore not to sacrifice the truth of his mystic (impressionist, symbolist) expression in order to be easily understood by the multitude, including this professor.

"Another cause of his obscurity is that he chose his words and phrases for their evocative value alone, and here again the verbal sonorities suggested by the tortuous trend of his mind make no appeal except to the initiated."⁶² (I suppose here he means what you meant about the limitedness of the French language?)

Not only that—his will to arrive at a true and deep, instead of a superficial and intellectual language. I gave two reasons for Mallarmé's unusual style and not this one of the limitedness of the French language only.

"His life-long endeavour to achieve an impossible ideal accounts for his sterility (he has left some sixty poems only, most of them quite short) and the darkness of his later work, though he did write, before he had fallen a victim to his own theories, a few poems of great beauty and perfectly intelligible."⁶³

60 poems, if they have beauty, are as good as 600. It is not the mass of the poet's work that determines his greatness. Gray and Catullus wrote little; we have only 7 plays of Sophocles and seven of Aeschylus (though they wrote more), but these seven put them still in the front rank of poets.

He says that "Mallarmé's verse is acquired and intricate" i.e. a thing not of spontaneity, but of intellectualisation. Saying that Verlaine is an inspired poet, he seems to mean the contrary about Mallarmé.

If these two magnificent sonnets (the last two)⁶⁴ are not inspired, then there is no such thing as inspiration. It is rubbish to say of a man who refused to limit himself by intellectual expression, that he was an intellectual artist. Symbolism, impressionism go beyond intellect to pure sight—and Mallarmé was the creator of symbolism.

I don't say that this author is an authority, but I found this reference interesting and send it to you for your opinion...

I don't find it interesting—it is abysmally stupid.

... X also seems to have the same view as the writer's.

I hope not.

In fact it was X who said about Mallarmé's set determination to make his works unintelligible [14.12.36]. He writes in an article: Hopkins, in seeking for the secret of sound which is the soul of poetry, has done such rigorous Hathayogic sadhana with rhythm that it strikes us as an astonishing feat. (For instance he has turned the expression "through the other" into "throughter" ["throughther"?].)

That is a question of language—how far one can do violence to the form of a language. It is a different question altogether.

He says that Mallarmé adopted the path of arduous tapasyā, with language because the French language is too simple, clear and transparent etc., etc. And then he remarks that just as in spirituality simple (sahaj) sadhana leads to truth, so also in poetry simplicity leads to beauty.

Would it mean then, that due to Mallarmé's acrobatics with words, his poems are not beautiful and won't lead you to beauty—if written in that way?

Only X can say what he meant, but to refuse beauty to Mallarmés poetry would be itself an acrobacy of the intellect. For what then is beauty? Simplicity and beauty are not convertible terms. There can be a difficult beauty. What about Aeschylus then? or Blake?

I tried to break that nut of his (no. 199)⁶⁵—an exposition of it is also attached. But, pardi! It was a hard nut, Guru. Really what a tortuous trend and how he has turned the images!

["... Va-t-il nous déchirer avec un coup d'aile ivre Ce lac dur oublié que haute sous le givre Le transparent glacier des vols qui n'ont pas fui!"]

"The transparent glacier of flights haunting the hard lake under the frost"! The frost or snow has become the glacier (icefield) and the icefield composes the lake—that's what I imaged.

How does hoar-frost or rime become the glacier? "Givre" is not the same as "glace"—it is not ice, but a covering of hoar-frost such as you see on the trees etc., the congealed moisture of the air—that is the "blanche agonie" which has come down from the insulted Space on the swan and on the lake. He can shake off that but the glacier holds him; he can no more rise to the skies, caught in the frozen cold mass of the failures of the soul that refused to fly upward and escape.

I tried hard to understand the construction, can't say I have it!

You haven't.

What do you think of this sonnet [Le cygne]?

One of the finest sonnets I have ever read.

Magnificent line, by the way, "le transparent glacier des viols qui n'ont pas fui!" This idea of the denied flights (imprisoned powers) of the soul that have frozen into a glacier seems to me as powerful as it is violent. Of course in French such expressions were quite new—in some other languages they were already possible. You will find lots of kindred things in the most modern poetry which specialises in violent revelatory (or at least would-be revelatory) images. You disapprove? Well, one may do so,—classical taste does; but I find myself obliged here to admire.

What's this "evocative value" of words and phrases? Suggestiveness? Taking away imagination beyond the expressions or words? "According to Mallarmé's own definition, the poet's mission is either 'to evoke gradually an object in order to suggest a mood, or, inversely, to choose an object as a symbol and disengage from it a mood by a series of decipherments'."⁶⁶

It is a very good description of the impressionist method in literature. Verlaine and others do the same, even if they do not hold the theory.

I don't understand what he means, but it seems to be something different from what Housemann means.

[Sri Aurobindo put a question mark above "Housemann".]

What's this spelling? He is not a German.

Housman is not a symbolist or impressionist in theory—V⁶⁷

He [Housman] says a poet's mission is to "transfuse emotion" which Mallarmé had not!

Indeed? because the professor says so? How easily you are impressed by anybody's opinion and take it as final!

Some reply please—I have left a whole page blank.

I do not know what you mean by emotion. If you mean the surface vital joy and grief of outer life, these poems of Mallarmé do not contain it. But if emotion can include also the deeper spiritual or inner feeling which does not weep or shout, then they are here in these two sonnets.⁶⁸ The Swan is to my understanding not merely the poet who has not sung in the higher spaces of the consciousness, which is already a fine idea, but the soul that has not risen there and found its higher expression, the said poet being, if Mallarmé thought of that specially, only a signal instance of this spiritual frustration. There can be no more powerful, moving and formidable expression of this spiritual frustration, this chilled and sterile greatness than the image of the frozen lake and the imprisoned Swan as developed by Mallarmé.

I do not say that the spiritual or occult cannot be given an easier expression or that if one can arrive at that without minimising the inner significance, it is not perhaps the greatest achievement. (That is, I suppose, X's contention.) But there is room for more than one kind of spiritual or mystic poetry. One has to avoid mere mistiness or vagueness, one has to be true, vivid, profound in one's images; but, that given, I am free to write either as in Nirvana or Transformation, giving a clear mental indication along with the image or I can suppress the mental indication and give the image only with the content suggested in the language—but not expressed so that even those can superficially understand who are unable to read behind the mental idea—that is what I have done in the "Bird of Fire". It seems to me that both methods are legitimate.

[This medical report was written by Dr. Becharlal.] S has been asking for white bread instead of our Asram bread. We are not in favour of it.

It would not be good for him.

J asked me to concentrate on the Mother, before writing poetry. Concentrate on the Mother: her eyes, feet, hands etc., etc., then keep quiet for a moment, and jot down whatever comes. As I tried the method, I went somewhere very deep within and heard some lines (which however I couldn't catch), on waking I wrote down thoSe very lines!

I suppose, having concentrated on the Mother, you were taken by her to the world of art and poetry and heard something there.

Mother thinks that the health of S needs special care. She is not eating well and is becoming thin and anaemic. At this period of her growth that would be disastrous and might affect her whole physical future. Mother thinks she should have some dépuratif for the blood and at the same time something strengthening and tonic—it has to be seen what will suit her. Mother would like you to look into the matter and speak also to P.S. about it.

What about I.K.? She has written to me today that she is not well, nausea, inability to eat etc.

[In the reply of the 18th there was a word I had underlined in red, for Sri Aurobindo to decipher.]⁶⁹

Man, you can't expect me to read my own writing after so long a time!

It looks like sideless, but can't be.

Enquired about S. She does not seem to take enough food and says she doesn't feel hungry. I think she should take lots of vitamins—do you believe in them?

Certainly.

She should take oranges, apples, butter, raw tomato if available...

Tomato not available just now.

I consulted P.S. He says he is not in favour of medicines. In Calcutta too, doctors were rarely called. I told him that home-conditions were lacking here, regarding food. Then he said, "Whatever Mother says must be done."

It is not medicines that Mother wanted to give; but on the one side fortifying foodstuff (like cod-liver oil, but all cannot stand cod-liver oil) and on the other something for purifying the blood (e.g. in France they give chicory tisane for that). All that will not be necessary if she takes sufficient food. If you can see to that, these other things will not be necessary. What Mother wants is that she should not be allowed to be weak and underfed at this age which is important for the growth.

I have to admit now that poetry can be taken as sadhana—for whatever makes you think of the Mother, is sadhana, isn't it?

Yes.

And I have some hope in poetry, after all, what?

A great deal of hope.

P.S. consents to give her a new preparation with ergosterd, a vitamin. It is a concentrated product, only 4 to 6 drops to be taken a day.

Mother doubts. Better have vitamins in the ordinary way.

I don't know if chicory is available here.

No; besides, she would not take it. It is too bitter.

You kept silent about butter.

Quite agree to butter.

What about prunes, dates, raisins?

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "prunes, dates, raisins".]

Also.

Nolini has given me an article (sent by the Mother) on The Effects of Pān-Supāri.⁷⁰ As far as I know, in India people believe that pān helps the digestion, and choon (calcium?) is good for health.

Even if it stimulated momentarily, that would not prevent from wearing it out in the end. But the idea is probably a superstition.

... Some believe that chewing supāri is a good exercise for the teeth, especially here where we don't take any meat!

Lord! I have known people who lost all their teeth at an early age by the habit.

Meat is good for the teeth? Always heard the contrary—Besides millions who don't take meat have as good teeth as anybody in the world and don't need pan supari either.

A European eye specialist of Calcutta said that many eye diseases are due to pān-supāri, and he was a dead enemy of them.

Very probably—Teeth and eyes are closely connected.

But what should I do with this typed copy given by Nolini? To enforce on patients? Or others also? A was repeatedly told but—!

That's like one of my uncles who preferred taking his pan betel to keeping his teeth.

But, Guru, you must admit that pān has a sweet taste, or perhaps you are an utter stranger to it?

Have taken it—can’t say I found it very attractive or enticing. ভিন্ন রুচির্হি লোকঃ ।⁷¹

J's finger was incised on suspicion of pus, but there was hardly any. He says now there's much burning and throbbing path.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "incised"]

Premature incision not safe, I believe, in this kind of thing.

Your belief is right, Guru! I didn't feel happy yesterday. However, nothing untoward has happened; almost no pain, but the swelling persists, asked to foment.

Mother suggests hot water 1 part peroxide, 3 parts water and dipping the finger for 15 minutes. Some of these things are cured by that—it ought really to be done immediately, but even now it may be effective.

You wrote about "two sonnets" [16.12.36] of Mallarmé (last two). The other on Edgar Poe? I thought you meant "Les Fleurs", but it is not a sonnet.

Sonnets was a mistake—I meant the last two poems including the Swan sonnet.

Why, that is almost exactly what we have advised J to do from the very start, only peroxide was not given.

You are taking daily almost exactly the same thing as AngloIndians take in their clubs i.e. a peg. Only brandy and soda are not there—but the water is.

Amidst the wonderful silence of the trees, the blue vast sea and sky, what a queer poem I wrote. Gracious Lord! I went there to enjoy myself and this discordant poem was the result; making me sad throughout the day. I was so sad, till suddenly I thought, the poem may be the causes

Maybe. You may have made an unconscious excursion to some where undesirable.

Have you ever heard such a story of any poet?

Why not? Poets are always queer cattle.

Did I make an excursion to an occult plane, or did the occult precipitate itself into the poem?

May be either.

Very funny, really, if this is the reason of the sadness; even if not, why such a bizarre poem should come out in a beautiful place?

Quite usual. The better things are, the more melancholy one can become. Luxury of contradiction proper to the vital nature. Funny for the intelligence, quite natural according to vital logic.

... Guru, I am not at all satisfied with my poems. I'll have to stop writing.

Are you ever satisfied? That's not a reason for stopping.

Shall I give up sonnet writing?

No.

Good God, I didn't ask you about that word [18.12.36] at all, for I read it the very next day. But that is no reason why you shouldn't recognise your own writing, Sir!

A marker was on that page, so I thought you were returning⁷² my writing by imposing on me the impossible task of reading it after many days!

I am floored today by my own poem; mystic, I think. Written yesterday. Opinion?

Why floored? It is as easy as a nursery rhyme.

Dr. Manilal says there is nothing wrong with S... [Sri Aurobindo underlined "nothing wrong".]

It looks like it. Malade very imaginaire.

B says she feels giddy at times with so much quinine and in spite of it her 99° is still going on—so she wishes to drop quinine for a time and be given "some other medicine as may be proper." Well?

For A, Dr. Manilal advises only one emetine injection and try its effect since she had so many attacks of dysentery. Well?

She writes that Manilal has told her to live on milk and take no other food (except lemon water when she is thirsty). I am searching in your reports but find nothing. What's the row? Is it a fact? Most of these women, I believe, are cooking and eating food of their own fancy and going wrong in the stomach.

I'm trying hard to get rid of J's influence in poetry, but I can't succeed. I don't know how to do it.

Persevere and call for something new, then it will come.

Can you not send me one or two of your mystic sonnets?

Which sonnets? I have written the two sonnets of spiritual realisation⁷³ which were circulated. I don't remember any others; except poems of a more philosophical cast—these I did not circulate.

I heard that X has a deep, very deep respect for you, if nothing else. He has followed closely your development, always... Hasn't he said after the interview with you—"You have the Word and we are waiting to accept it from you..."?

That was a long time ago. He is disappointed that I have not come out and started giving lectures in America and saving humanity. Sorry, but I have no intention of doing these things.

Though he seems to have criticised some principles enunciated by you, I think he has a genuine belief in your mission, and a faith that a new creation will start from you as the fountain-head. Am I wrong, Guru, though you make us wait and wait for years and years?

You want me to start going about and giving lectures? Sorry again, but quite out of the question.

His prose-poems are not good, if you have seen any. Is it because his grey matter has become greyer by age?

It is quite natural—he is fagged out. It is true Sophocles wrote one of his grandest dramas when he was—well was it 70 or 80 years old?

Or is it because you don't support him any, longer with your force?

?[Sri Aurobindo put a question mark.]

But look at his prose. It seems to be becoming more and more brilliant. Why this difference?

Prose is a different matter. One can always write prose.

You kept silent about the sonnet. If your pen can't gallop, you can ask it to trot?

Very little chance of it. The only time I tried, a surrealist poem came out⁷⁴—so I have dropped the attempt.

My poetic judgment seems to be very poor, Guru, or is it because my own poem is now in question?

Nobody can really form a proper judgment of his own poetry—or at least only one poet here and there can perform that miracle.

Really, I don't know what to do now—how to strike a new path? Already the difficulty in writing is great and then to avoid J's influence! I don't know if I shall be able to write at all. My head is threatening to break!

As usual, anticipating trouble and misery! Your position is always "That's got to be done. Oh what a bother. I shall never do it"—while it should be "Ah, that's to be done? All right then, it's going to be done."

I have lost all my distinctiveness—can't find a new one. And yet you say "Are you ever satisfied?" Sadhana sluggish, poetry bosh, joy and peace vaporised!

Poetry is not bosh—and joy, peace need not vaporize unless you pump them out of yourself instead of into yourself.

Why, Sir, dissatisfaction itself is a sign of a greater seeking, isn't it?

It is generally a twisting round and round in the same place round the centre of one's own dissatisfaction.

I don't know that you are satisfied with my condition either.

I am not depressed by it at any rate.

You promised to send me a sonnet to show how a "direct prayer" can be made strong in the couplet—don't you remember?

That was not a sonnet.

But now I ask you for either that or to compose a mystic poem with the lines I have suggested. It won't take you more than 5 minutes.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "5" and put a question mark against it.]

Nonsense, I am not such a galloper.

By the way, please have a glance at page 12 of The Hindu, regarding K's opinion of Guruship. We thought him a sensible fellow, especially after his big sacrifice—giving up all the huge estates that were given to him.

He seems to be a well-intentioned fellow but rather a bit of an empty sort of goose. The twaddle he talks is simply awful.

J is puzzled by her poems... If she is puzzled, hardly necessary to speak about myself.

Will see whether I can wrestle with it tomorrow.

I understand that the curry given on Thursday evening is the residue of the soup, with some potatoes added. It has not much nutritional value since boiling for a long time takes all the stuff out, except a dead residue of cellulose. I propose humbly to the Mother to change this meal.

We don't know anything of the kind. According to chemical analysis in France, half of the nutritive elements goes into the soup, half remains in the vegetables and these are eaten in France so as to have the full value of the food used.

I am afraid it is not good for the stomach either.

Why are you afraid? This soup affair on Thursday is done on the principle of the French national dish called pot-au-feu (as much the national dish as beefsteak is for England) in which the food is boiled in the soup and then the soup and the vegetables etc. cooked in it are taken. If it is so bad for the health, how is it that the French are not a nation of dyspeptics with bad stomachs and livers?

I have answered from the scientific and health point of view above. But since there is this prejudice and auto-suggestion as well probably as a strong dislike for it, Mother has stopped the whole soup affair. It is a very costly business and there is no use in spending so much if there is a dislike for the arrangement.

1937

January 1937

Hirendranath Dutt, theosophist and philosopher, in one of his articles on Rāslīlā, asks why mystics and yogis use so much the imagery of passion, wine etc. in their description of experiences of Divine Love. Then he quotes Underhill to say "... it [human love] most certainly does offer upon lower levels a strangely exact parallel to the sequence of states in which man's spiritual consciousness unfolds itself and which form the consummation of mystic life."

I don't agree—unless it is a sadhana of the vital plane which then naturally expresses the vital being = love-excitement, love-quarrels, viraha,⁷⁵ revolt, despair, rupture etc., etc., frequent surrenders, unions, partings.

Dutt has said that according to the Ancients, pleasure of the sex-act is something akin to the Ananda of Brahman. Why? In answer to this, Ouspenski, a famous Russian philosopher, has said: "Of all we know in life, only in love is there a taste of the mystical, a taste of ecstasy..."

Leave out the "only"—and to a certain extent one can agree—but "love"—not "sex".

The interpreter continues: "Nothing else brings us so near to the limit of human possibilities beyond which begins the unknown. And in this lies, without doubt, the chief cause of the terrible power of sex over human life... Love, 'sex', these are but a foretaste of mystical sensations."

Love and sex are the same, then? There can be no love without sex? This is piffle.

He says further: "Mystical sensations are sensations of the same category as sensations of 'Love', only infinitely higher and more complex."

There is much else besides in mystical experience—there are not only sensations.

He asks: "If that is so, why then is man averse to this intensely pleasurable mystical activity? Because principally he gets the taste of that mystical pleasure in the sex-act, and he is satisfied with it."

What rubbish! Brahmananda is a substitute?

The sexual creative act is admittedly the supreme and most desired gratification of the senses.

Not to everybody.

The sexual creative act is an exact counterpart of the mental and creative processes of which, the East maintains, it is merely the reflexion.

Don't catch on. How is sex-gratification a reflex of mental processes—e.g. of the solution of a mathematical or scientific problem or even of the creation of a poem or picture? Because there is a kind of joy in all these things? but it is not the same kind of joy.

The transient character of sex-gratification is regarded in the East as an ordinance of Nature so that man may be led to seek the more sustained delight of mental and spiritual creative effort.

In the East? by whom?

I don't believe it for a moment. To suppose that if sex-gratification were a more prolonged business, Shelley and Shakespeare would not have cared to write poetry—is blank brutal nonsense—They had something else in them besides the mere animal.

Do you agree with all this, Guru, especially with Ouspenski's opinion?

What a question to ask me! As if it were at all possible that I would agree to bring down all values to the level of the animal pleasure.

Love may perhaps be a foretaste of mystical sensations, but sex-love also? But people say that sex-pleasure and Brahmananda [Bliss of Brahman] are brothers.

The only truth in that is that all intense pleasure goes back at its root to Ananda—the pleasure of poetry, music, production of all kinds, battle, victory, adventure too—in that sense only all are brothers of Brahmananda. But the phrase is absolutely inaccurate. We can say that there is a physical Ananda born of Brahmananda which is far higher, finer and more intense than the sexual, but of which the sexual is a coarse and excited degradation—that is all.

If the transient nature of the sex-act is an ordinance of Nature to lead man to a more sustained delight of higher things, I fail to see why there is so much pleasure attached to it that they compare it to a foretaste of Brahmananda. You say that it is meant for procreation, but the act of procreation could have been managed without this pleasure.

Certainly, Nature gave it to encourage her aim of procreation. The proof is that the animal does it only by season and as soon as the procreation is over, drops it. Man having a mind has discovered that he can do it even when there is not the need of Nature—but that is only a proof that Mind perverts the original intention of Nature. It doesn't prove that Nature created it only to give man a brief and destructive sensual pleasure.

I won't lengthen my perorations and human reasonings. Will you give a satisfactory reply to all these questions tonight or tomorrow?

Well, it can't be tonight, as there are three tons of correspondence.

(It may be less of course in actual weight, I am giving the psychological estimate.)

[In the medical notebook:]

I have added against your notes of the 30th certain remarks which I had no time to write then. You may perhaps pass a glance over them.

N.P. complains of much pain in the eyes—frontal headache after half an hour's reading, eyes watering etc. Manilal advises him to use glasses. He says glasses will cure it.

Glasses cure it, means what? The weakness will disappear and he will be able to read without glasses after a while?

... About the pot-au-feu, apart from all these, may I point out a little flaw in your argument? French people are used to taking a mixed meal, so the quantity of the vegetable would be very small in proportion.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "very small".]

Don't understand. It is a question of the healthiness for the stomach. There is quite enough vegetable in a pot-au-feu to test the stomach and it is not taken once a week only, but often.

Moreover, what French people can take and digest, I am sure Indians can't. Physically Indians are a far inferior race to the Europeans—an admitted and deplorable fact.

It is the other way round. Indians can digest foods (chillied, curried, strongly spiced) which would send a European to his grave in a short time. Indians have a shorter life but dietetically a much more spicy and hot life.

I was very surprised to read a statement of G—he says that a few months ago he felt in sleep as if he wanted to see a woman. He was shocked to find such an impulse in him after over 40 years of struggle to conquer the sex-instinct. He says also that it was one of the blackest moments in his life and if he had succumbed to it he would have been ruined...

Imagine a man over 60 and practising absolute sex-control for over 40 years, as well as control in speech, thought, food, so sincerely, having such a bout.

There is nothing astonishing in that. First of all, even if it had been in waking, it is to be expected. G's method is ethical, a stern mental control, নিগ্রহ.⁷⁶ That keeps down the sex fellow, but does not eliminate him He can start up at any moment. Secondly, it was in sleep when the mind is not in control, unless you have specially practised control of sleep. I don't quite understand the black moment and the potential succumbing. Succumb to what? Does he mean that the effect of the desire continued after waking from sleep or he was shocked in the sleep itself, resisted in the sleep?

L, I hear, had a fall from spiritual height, and he is enjoying the life of "Krishna". What then will be our lot? Alas, alas, where shall we be?

But why did he fall? Because he justified the fall as a great spiritual progress? Of course if you and others do the same, you can't expect to fare better than he did. But then there is no ground for crying "Alas, alas, where shall we be?"

Isn't it the same sex-impulse as G's flaming up in another garb in L's case? And the sex-impulse who is said to have known heights in Yoga?

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "the sex-impulse who is".]

Meaning? It was precisely because L considered the sex-impulse to be a height in Yoga that he went for it.

I have been infligé with doubts, and these things are wearing and tearing the soul. Felt almost like rushing away somewhere.

Don't you think it is rather silly to allow examples like G's who is not even a sadhak or L's who did the sadhana of sex-yielding to depress you, as if they had any relation or bearing on the Yoga here.

Any answer or "tons of correspondence" still?

Plenty of tons. But the answer will be given when I have the questions and some leisure together.

About N. P., Manilal says glasses can't cure the disease and once he takes to glasses, he may have to change them every two years or so.

That of course, but it can't be called cure.

But that can't be helped unless his eyes are suspended from reading etc., for if he goes on with his occupations with the defect, it may increase. Of course rest to the eyes wouldn't do it, nor would he feel any pain. So?

Well, is he prepared to wear specs and accept the sure deterioration of his eyes under their protection?

I am trying to have a dash at Herbert's French class which begins at 8.15 p.m. So have to change Dispensary time at night—after meditation to 8 p.m. Mother's approval and a notice can be put up?

Yes.

Jatin asks me to send you these questions saying "The answer is immanent but it wants clarification and there is Sri Aurobindo who will do it in a minute." So will you do it in a minute?

No. You must not ask impossible miracles from me.

He says all sorts of questions arise and temporarily block the way, and he is rather "agitated".

What is agitating him, the mental question or the problem in a practical form? Anyhow I have tried to answer.

7-1-37

Nirod

P has been recommended by Dr. Manilal to put two medicines for her eyes. Mother told her to go to the Dispensary, but she wants a letter of authority so that she may be attended to a little. So here's the letter. You will arrange.

SRI AUROBINDO

One misgiving is pressing heavily on my soul. I sense and feel and see that the tone of your letters has suddenly become very grave, rough, stiff and gruff—the owl-like severity with which you had once threatened me. I don't know what I have done to deserve such a punishment. Or is it because you are getting supramentalised day by day that you are withdrawing yourself so? There must be a reason if my "sense feel" is correct. Well, if you want to press me between two planks and pulverise me... Well, I don't want it, you know!

I think your sense feel has been indulging in vain imaginations, perhaps with the idea of increasing your concrete imaginative faculty and fitting you for understanding the unintelligible. As you have now much to do with mystic poetry, it may be necessary. But why object to being pulverised? Once reduced to powder, think how useful you may be as a medicine, Pulv. Nirod. gr II. Anyhow disburden your soul of the weight. I am not owled yet, and my supramentalisation is going on too slowly to justify such apprehensions. Neither am I withdrawing, rather fitting myself for a new rush in the near or far future. So cheer up and send the Man of Sorrows with his planks to the devil.

I don't understand why P wanted a letter of authority. Has she been made to wait or neglected?... I find that patients here, especially ladies, want to be served quickly—5 minutes at the most! They can't wait, they must go, they have work, etc., etc.

Important people, you see—necessary for the world action, লোকসংগ্রহায় চ,⁷⁷ can't be kept waiting.

A seems much reduced and has become a pucca hypochondriac. We have decided to keep him mainly on milk diet. Vegetables and dal don't agree with him.

It seems to me that this ought to reduce him more and more. To my experience, not taking food simply eternises the dyspepsia. It is all right for a few days, but to make it a rule kills the stomach. Here I agree with R's principle of reeducating the stomach and intestines. But all that is only a standpoint. If the medical Science does not admit it, I don't insist.

And we shall give some assimilable form of cod-liver oil.

No objection to that—

Lastly, he must be given some sedentary work.

But he has his classes?

Oh, Guru, you missed my poem altogether? What a disappointment for me!

Didn't see your book was there, I believe—otherwise would have commented.

By the way, is it again the correspondence that burdens your soul?

Very badly.

My soul is disburdened though, and I am happy and bright.

Good!

A has no classes. They have been stopped long ago.

If he has nothing to do, it is natural he should be engrossed with his stomach.

Guru, what do you say to this poem of J's? I am damned if I understand anything of it. Blakish, Mallarmic? Methinks it exceeds both.

There is no necessity of going beyond Blake and Mallarmé. Their things are often more difficult than this.

Have you any more of these mystic members to compare her with?

[Sri Aurobindo put a question mark above "members" which was not very clearly written.]

What's this mystic word?

At the rate she is going, I don't know, Guru, where she will end. Do you see the end?

Why should there be an end?

I don't know if anyone will make out anything of her poetry, except your Supramental Self. The explanations of the last two poems, by Jove, are explanations indeed!

You mean they are more unintelligible than the thing explained? That about Dawn and Evening was difficult to swallow, but the end of the 51⁷⁸ seems to me to offer no difficulty at all. It is a magnificent rendering of the large movement of the soul towards the Silence—but of course it may be meaningless to a posterity that will, we may assume, know nothing about either Soul or Silence.

I sometimes try to project my third eye into posterity and see the reactions in its mind regarding J's poetry. I at once cover up the sight.

Is it your posterity that your third eye sees or posterity in general? Posterity has not had the reaction you speak of with B & M—their reputation grows with the lapse of time.

They-will say—Sri Aurobindo gave expositions of this poetry—ha, ha! and he praised it and gave Force for it! The poetess was undoubtedly "queer", but the Guru?

But do you then find that it is bad poetry? for at fine poetry posterity will not say ha! ha! but at most "Oof! how difficult!" It is only contemporary opinion that is foolishly contemptuous of grand poetry.

Now then, have you any time to help us?

I am afraid I have not sufficient time. Won't you try again and wrestle with the গভীর⁷⁹ instead of having visions of posterity?...

I am slightly depressed about my poetry, Guru. It seems all mind-made.

It is an extremely beautiful poem. What a grumbler you have got inside you! After writing a thing like that, you ought to be licking your lips in satisfaction.

Apart from this depression, these last two days I have been feeling unaccountably rotten, sad, irritated, why? Force, please, O please, please, for heaven's sake!

No reason. If the Man of Sorrows gets grounds to wallow in agony, he wallows on the ground—if he doesn't he wallows in the waters—if waters are denied to him, he will wallow in the air. If no he will wallow in the void. But wallow he must. Even if you had written a poem as deep as the sea and as splendid as the sunrise, he would still wallow, if that was his fancy—"wallow and luxuriously wail to the world and its Witness."

About "licking lips", I shall perorate tomorrow.

It is the licked or the unlicked lips that are going to be vocal?

I have used the word প্রমীলা⁸⁰ in a new sense, meaning fatigue, drowse, slumber. D objected to কৃষ্ণিমা⁸¹ saying it wouldn't do... Funny thing—this word coinage! Sometimes people accept it, sometimes they reject.

After all when one coins a new word, one has to take the chance. If the word is properly formed and not ugly or unintelligible, it seems to me all right to venture.

If it is not accepted it will remain a blot in the poem. Tagore coined the word তৃণাঞ্চিত⁸² but he laments that people have not accepted it.

Why a blot? There are many words in Greek poetry which occur onlyonce in the whole literature, but that is not considered a defect in the poem. It is called a "hapax legomenon", "a once-spoken word" and that's all. তৃণাঞ্চিত for instance is a fine word and can adorn, not blot Tagore's poetry even if no one else uses it. I think Shakespeare has many words coined by him or at least some that do not occur elsewhere.

Any opinion, Guru, and does your intuition say anything on প্রমীলা?

I really can't say what প্রমীলা it is. I think, a rare Sanskrit word.

Most people wouldn't understand it, perhaps.

In your letter of day before yesterday I could not make out a word. Is it: "he wallows in the grave—"? Gracious!

Ground, sir, not grave. A ground need not be a grave.

J is still upset. Please, open your tap a little.

She is terribly unreasonable, and she feels herself too easily "tapped" on the head or otherwise.

If God wills, please will or shall something in this fully blank page.

Nothing to write. You have got the essentials, and I have a damned lot of letters to write.

Behold! From where comes this unknown Creeper
Along the woodland path anointed by the rising Moon?
All pain she has tinged with the blue of Heart-stream,
She has made Heaven unveil and break out into murmuring billows.

The magic of her compassion flowers in her hand,
And the thunder-roar that booms the world's end is hushed suddenly;
In the morn that is the death of the naked skeleton
She stalks over the world, a gathered Fire, voicing her approach.

The Dark One has put on a golden garland,
And on her delicate forehead burns the flame of red sandal—
She, the Eternal Memory, from within the forgetfulness of earth's depths
Kindles the first spark of the Word born of the churning.

The eye of the waxing Moon at night-end
Pours out of its blue the golden gleam of a dark collyrium.
[Translated by Nolini Kanta Gupta from the Bengali.]⁸³
I don't know what this is driving at.

I am afraid I don't know either. You have suddenly shot beyond Mallarmé, J and everybody else and landed yourself into the Surrealism of the most advanced kind. Such a line as বিবসনা কঙ্কালের মরণপ্রভাতে⁸⁴ would make any surrealist poet's heart wild with joy. I think however you should put up a petition to your Inspiration to rein in this gallop towards and beyond the latest Modernism and give us something less progressive and startling.

The only lines I can make something out of are the first two—the creeper (of the unknown new life) in the woodland path of the moonrise, (spiritual opening)—অভিষিক্ত⁸⁵ with the moonbeams, I suppose and the third quatrain which is rather remarkable. The Energy (secret in the physical centres) accepted (?) the golden Garland (the garland of the Truth) and She (this Kundalini Shakti) who carries in her the eternal Memory of all things secreted in the apparent Inconscience kindles from the oblivious depths of Earth (the material Nature) the first lightning of the Word of the churning of the Depths i.e. the first bringing up of all that is concealed and undelivered in the consciousness of Matter.

It is a very cryptic but also very significant poetic description of the working of the closed-up Energy in the physical centre when it wakes. The couplet might mean that the white-blue moonlight (spiritual light) pours the golden script of the Truth from its eyes (power of vision). The rest may mean a preliminary consequence of the opening in which the wave of Manifestation of Paradise comes and brightens up the anguish of the Man of Sorrows in you with a stream of soul-blue, with the result that the tempest is stopped, there is the day of death for the confounded Naked Skeleton (of the dead old Adam in you) and a concentrated Fire pervades everything. After which, as I have said, the Yoga Shakti uncoils in your physical centre and starts serious business. Great Scott! I think I have unexpectedly solved the riddle. But বজ্রের রাগিনী⁸⁶ still baffles me.

It has some meaning, I suppose, but all mixed up. Do you find any meaning in it?

Well, if my prophetic soul has rightly interpreted it, it is not mixed up but it is recklessly audacious in its whirlingness of cryptic images. Spiritual surrealism with a vengeance.

Unfortunately I had no time—A mass of work standing over from the week and no time to finish even that. I will look more carefully into the poem tomorrow.

Chand's letter, if you can make out anything.

Have made something out of it by my immense power of divination.

So, you have found a splendid meaning in yesterday's poem, Sir!

Quite involuntarily—it dawned on me as I wrote.

You have asked me to send a petition to my Inspiration, but when the Inspiration is your Supramental Self?

Excuse me, no. This is not supramental poetry—so the inspirer can't be my supramental Self.

Excuse you? What do you mean, Sir? You give inspiration only for supramental poetry? Startling news, Sir!

Where have I said that I give inspiration for supramental poetry either only or at all? You said that your inspirer for this or for any other poem of yours was my supramental self. I simply said that it can't be, because a supramental self would produce or inspire supramental poetry—and yours is not that, nor, I may add, is J's or D's or my own or anybody's.

We fondly believe that you give inspiration, set apart a time for it, and now you say that you are not the Inspirer?

I say that my supramental Self is not the inspirer—which is a very different matter.

Pray tell me the mystery. Why shirk the responsibility now, because a surrealist poem has come out? You are responsible for it, I think.

Excuse me, no. As the Gita says, the Lord takes not on himself the good or the evil deeds (or writings) of any. I may send a force of inspiration, but I am not responsible for the results.

But did you seriously mean that I should send a "petition".

Not very seriously. I was only afraid that you might land us in the poetry of the 22nd century—and that might be a long time to wait for somebody to understand us.

All that I do is to remember you and call for your help, and whatever comes I jot down. If I hadn't done this I would have missed these poems. Tell me then what to do.

No need to do anything, but continue.

If spiritual surrealism is what is in that poem [on Kundalini], then it's not at all bad. But Nolini thinks that there is not much of spiritual surrealism there.

Well, if spiritual is objected to, let us say mystic surrealism. The European kind is vital swapnic.

Why not send me that surrealist sonnet of yours?

No such thing exists, for it was not a sonnet.

By your statement' we fear that a mixture is coming up in our poetry, and you will exclaim one day: "What? Am I the inspirer of these?!"

Not at all. In fact I made no statement.

Was there anything objectionable in yesterday's poem? Really, Guru, this disclaimer of yours is terribly mysterious the more I think of it the more I am puzzled.

But there was no disclaimer. I simply got my supramental self out of the way and left the brunt to be borne by my non-supramental self.

All this time we have known, believed and prayed that you give us the inspiration, and suddenly this?

Suddenly what? My statement that your poetry is not supramental? Surely you did not think it was!

Please give a satisfactory reply; otherwise this dread will haunt me whenever I take up pen and paper.

Rubbish! There is nothing to dread.

Nolini has been suddenly inspired to translate that surrealist poem [17.1.37]. Will you have a glance at it at your leisure?

Very good translation.

You have relieved us by your answer. But I thought you have only one Self—the Overmental or the Supramental.

Why do you suppose me to be so poor in selves? When everybody has several, I must content myself with one?

Who is this "I" who sends the Force—which aspect, I mean?

"I" is a pronoun only = the Multifarious One.

It would be a pity to stop writing poetry till the 22nd century and have to wait for people to understand it. That would be unyogic, and being untrue to the poet also.

From one standpoint; from the other the prudence of postponing for the fitting century might be classed under যোগঃ কর্ম্মসু কৌশলম্ ।⁸⁷ It would certainly be unpoetic.

What's your opinion about that bizarre poem—"Good" or "Grand"? what is the word? I can't flatter myself by taking it to be "grand", nor can my poetic being take it for "good" without pain.

It was good. I forgot that you did not like "good" poetry, only "fine" and even "very fine". Let us then promote it to "fine", but stop short of "grand".

I can just make out the curve of the r. Please solve the mystery and soothe me a little.

You are wrong; the "r" curve was conspicuous by its absence. Perhaps I was trying to write in a certain kind of modern English style "grood" = "really good".

I wrote a beautiful poem in the early morning, but I can't show it to you for it was done in sleep and I have lost it. Pity, isn't it?

Great pity.

How can one like "good"? To you good, fine, very fine, extremely fine, may be all equal! Of course, to the Divine, yes.

Generally one likes good things and dislikes bad things. But you seem to dislike both, which is more Yogic in samata (of a negative kind) than my attitude.

If only I had been your critic in your pre-Divine days and pronounced "good" about your poetry, I would have liked to see your reaction!

My reaction would depend on whether it agreed with my estimate or not. If all my poetry were pronounced good by an undeniable authority, I should be very pleased and perhaps even might lapse from Yogic heights into egoism.

Like "good", I like "fine" less than "very fine" and "exceedingly fine", obviously.

In that case, you must dislike very fine poetry also—and plump for the exceedingly fine only. But can any poet always and in every line and poem be exceeding?

I don't see how you can place fine, very fine, exceedingly fine, on the same level, or how you expect us to like them equally.

They may not be on the same level, but they are all admirable—and good in its own way is admirable too.

Of course, if while saying only fine, you keep within yourself "exceedingly", it will be all equal to you. I can't see your within, Sir! "It is good", "not bad, etc." shows on the very face of it what it is.

Well, but I can't be always turning my inside outside with a mathematical precision—especially at a first reading in a gallop. I put an impression or rather dash it down as it comes—and it seems to drop a "very" in the process or a good drops in = fine. In any case "good" does not mean "bad" or "poor".

I want to know from what angle you see and judge—subject-matter, poetry, plane, consciousness or what?

I don't see and judge like that—I feel. I have said it is an impression—not an analysis. For an analysis I would have to consider, look from all points of view, analyse, synthetise—no time for all that.

Can one write poems from the same source and yet express different ideas in different ways? Or should one strike a different source?

If you want to go to the same field quite allowable—but a different source in the same field gives a greater 'originality' e.g. in the poem of tonight you did that.

J asks: if you have not much time, should she stop sending poems every day?... But, Guru, I hear you can read with electric rapidity, only writing has to be done at a paralysed speed, though I doubt it from the nature of your Supra-mental script. And much writing is only occasional...

? Many mickles make a muckle—which translated into English means—a lot of small notes takes a big amount of time.

I don't dislike "very fine" poetry. Anything short of that is not pleasant. And certainly I plump for exceedingly fine, not at once, but gradually. You can't object to that surely?

Rather exacting to demand that everything written shall be very fine.

In A's case, I'm suspecting T.B. of the intestine. But you know very little can be done, if it is that. After D.L.'s death, he has become such a hypochondriac. I don't know if we should take an X-ray of his intestine for any T.B. focus.

An examination and suggestion of T.B. would probably finish what little morale he has. To discover it is also not very useful since you say that little = nothing can be done.

Then we have to try what we can for A?

Yes.

I am a little discouraged by your answer regarding him.

Why? because I did not favour T.B. research?

Can we not pull him up in spite of everything? What should we do for that?

If you can get the preoccupation of death and grave illness out of his head, that might help. It is his sense of being desperately ill that prevents the force working.

J asks whether she should send her poems every day or twice or thrice a week.

She can send every day. It is only that I have not time always to make any long comments.

J can send her poems on alternate days. You have written that long notes are not possible, then we'll ask only in case of absolute difficulty, when we can't help asking you.⁸⁸

Naturally—but if it [involves] careful reading and [...] writing, I can't undertake [to] do it that very day; [besides] that I have masses of [work] to do now—not only letters, [but] I have to prepare something [for] A.P.H.⁸⁹ otherwise the house will collapse, as they have been [waiting] long without a fresh book. There [are] also translations into French [for journals] which Pavitra is [wanting] me to see, etc. etc. [There] are letters from outside some [of] them very important which are waiting months without [an] answer. If I have to [write] an explanation of 2 poems (her poems are sometimes long) every day it would take too much time. That amounts [to] more than I can do.

She says, "If Sri Aurobindo won't see my poems whom should I write for? I don't show my poems to anyone else."

Where did I say I wouldn't see them? Too much femininity here!

I was discouraged by your answer regarding A's case, because the tone of your letter did not give much hope for his recovery.

How can one be hopeful when he is morally down like that?

X-ray would help in a negative way. Clinical diagnosis is not always correct. Very often all the available methods of investigation are insisted upon in these difficult cases. If there were no positive X-ray findings, one could change one's diagnosis and treat accordingly...

All that is merely the standpoint of medical convenience. You ignore my standpoint. If T.B. is declared, rightly or wrongly his consciousness receives a fatal blow and the spiritual action is as good as enrayé. Yet if it is T.B. of intestines, what is there but spiritual action that can do anything? Medical [Science] can only act in such a case if it changes its philosophy. On that I shall send you an article from the Presse Médicale which may throw some light. In France fortunately medical Science is beginning to open its eyes.

Is today's poem surrealist? If I am going too fast I may put a check. But these blessed images come in so alluring a way that I dance with joy.

Surrealism means a dream-sequence poetry—and modem dreams are extravagant. The images may be all right but they get entangled and intertwisted or else on the contrary one jumps from one to another that seems unconnected.

Please ask Pavitra to send me the French medical journal.

It is with me.

May I ask what is the nature of Mother's ailment?

Occult, with a physical effect in the eye.

[About my poem:]

... Sir, this sounds terribly surrealistic—If it means anything it is splendid—all of it—but what does it mean?

I am ashamed and at the same time devilishly glad that Guru has been floored! But isn't it really a huge joke? ... How is it you didn't catch any meaning in my poem of yesterday? Nolini sees no difficulty at all. It does mean something positively!

If it means something palpable to you, why don't you let me into the secret?

You couldn't make out the meaning of the word বনিতা?⁹⁰

In Sanskrit বনিতা usually means a wife—I was wondering whose wife she was and suspecting adultery.

But why do you want the meaning of words? Poetry has to be felt, Sir!

Provided there is something to feel. But if feeling is enough, why ask me or yourself for a meaning?

I have used the word ডালা⁹¹ in today's poem. It means, as you must know, a sort of a dish in which puja offerings are carried to the temple, so this ডালা, can't it paint?

Not known in the Royal Academy or any other—this painter.

What sort of poetry am I writing? Who is this Muse creating this havoc as to founder even the Guru?

Surrealist—I suppose. My province doesn't go so far.

I knew that it meant something, but not palpably enough to let you in. It was palpable to Nolini who said moreover that it reminded him of Baudelaire.

A very big compliment, but I don't know that the parallel can be enforced very far.

I have always said that feeling is not enough, but every time you stopped me, saying that mystic poems have to be felt, lived etc., and not understood. Well?

As I say, feeling or living is quite enough, if there is something to feel or live. But in surrealism the thing to be felt is itself deliberately incoherent.

You have said that your province doesn't go so far. How then does the surrealist intervene between your Force and my transcription unless you want him to do so?

The Surrealist can intervene anywhere, provided the logical mind consents to be a little drowsy.

This sort of thing has opened suddenly in me, as you know. I think after your surrealistic poem you have passed it on to me.

It may be, but my surrealistic poem was clarity itself compared with this technique.

You must be having additional work now. So shall we stop sending poems?

Well, I don't know. If they are not too many conundrums—

When there is an operation in the hospital, my services are required and it goes on sometimes till 11 a.m. In that case I may miss meditation. What should I do?

I suppose it happens only once in a way? or is it frequent or the rule?

I hear Mother's ailment is "red eye". It may be then conjunctivitis or even iritis.

It is neither.

Medical help no good for the Divine?

Medicines no use for this even if Mother would take them—only rest as complete as possible, especially from reading and writing or any strain of the eye.

The first line of my poem of today runs thus:
ওই তব পূর্ন কুন্তে কি রেখেছ সখি?⁹²
[Another line:]
নিয়ে যাও, নিয়ে যাও সে বিষ-কলসী!⁹³
J says it is vulgar.

I don't understand the use of the word vulgar here. I don't see anything vulgar in পূর্ণ কুন্ত⁹⁴ or বিষ-কলসী.⁹⁵

পূর্ণ কুন্ত may mean breasts, but it takes another meaning in the poem: the inflamed desire of the flesh. Even so, is it vulgar?

পূর্ণ কুন্ত, if it means the breasts, would be described in English as sensuous but not as vulgar. The word vulgar is only used for coarse and crude expressions of the sensual, trivial or ugly. But it does not seem to me that it should naturally be taken = breast, but indicate the whole vital and physical being regarded as a vessel or jar which can be filled with honey or water or poison. Nothing vulgar in that.

Why not send that surrealist poem? I would very much like to see what is spiritual surrealism.

It isn't spiritual, it is comic—and I am not going to send it. It is Nonsense Surrealistic not Unfathomable-Sense S.⁹⁶

Tomorrow, if you like, I won't send any poem, thus sparing you some time to send me your poem.

No use not sending, as I am not going to send. My reference to it was only a joke.

I hope Mother is better now.

Somewhat.

Herbert said yesterday that though Baudelaire is a great poet, he is considered an immoral one.

That is not anything against his greatness—only against his morality. Plenty of great people have been "immoral".

I had just a glance at Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil and I found this:

"The Moon more indolently dreams tonight
Than a fair woman on her couch at rest,
Caressing, with a hand distraught and light,
Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast."

What a queer imagination, but vulgar or immoral?

What is there vulgar in it or immoral? It is as an indolent distraught gesture that he puts it. How does it offend against morality?

It is strange that I get a thrill from these bizarre images. Your inspiration will, I hope or fear, give me a Baudelairean fame—an immoral, vulgar poet!

It is a terrible prospect.

February 1937

A terrible prospect? Do you dread that I will find an "easy path into the world of macabre visions by hashish or opium"?

That's why I call it terrible! However let us hope that one day you will stop on the immoral path to Inferno.

Now a serious misgiving throttles me. It seems you don't like the poems I am writing at present. Why, Sir?

Why does it seem?

Are they worse than "slow scolopendras" which you like immensely?

Yes, but I don't like it seriously, only as fun. However, your poems are not scolopendras—so that is not relevant.

If you don't like, what's the use of writing such things which are neither fine as poetry nor perhaps helpful to sadhana!

But who says they are not fine as poetry?

In yesterday's sonnet the sestet seemed to have a Baudelairean turn. Was it due to faulty transcription?

No, it was a good transcription of Baudelaire.

Or perhaps a fine mystic thing was coming, but the surrealist intervened and spoiled it?

There is certainly a change in the inspiration at that point. Probably Nolini's suggestion has raised up or called down the spirit of Baudelaire and he is trying his best to write spiritual poems through you.

All these questions are in vain, I suppose, and over them you will give a cryptic smile!

Exactly.

Really, Guru, you float easily through the complicated constructions of Dilip, NK and others, while I am your stumbling block. What?

Well, sometimes your constructions are like a lot of finely dressed people (words) crowded together in a dancing-hall, but I don't know who is the wife of who, and who the bien-aimée, and who the paternal uncle and who the maternal grand-niece. So I have to ask and fix their genealogy and general relations.

There is a conspiracy among the gods to take away Mother into retirement: no Pranam henceforth. Sir, they have taken you away already and if Mother withdraws, well, we can do the same one by one.

Well, if people withdraw into themselves, they might find the Mother there!

We are already finding great difficulty in writing without the Touch. "Hé, writing!" you will shout. But writing is sadhana, Sir.

Which sadhana? Ah yes, I see—অতিবাস্তব পন্থা.⁹⁷

R came and said in a pitiable voice that Mother has ptosis of the eye-lids, which may persist, if neglected.

What is ptosis?

Why do people make such prognostications? Suggestions of the kind ought never to be made, mentally even—they might act like suggestions and do more harm than any good medicines could do.

He doesn't understand nor do I, why Mother doesn't take kindly to medicines and doctors when the trouble could be cured in a short time. Frankly, I don't know how much our medicines, not homeopathy, can help.

Then why don't you understand? If medicines can't help, what's the use of putting foreign matter in the eye, merely because it is a medicine? Medicines have a quite different action on the Mother's body than they would have on yours or R's or anybody else's and the reaction is not usually favourable. Her physical consciousness is not the same as that of ordinary people—though even in ordinary people it is not so identical in all cases as "science" would have us believe—

Did your remark "people withdraw into themselves" carry a suggestion that "personal touch" is not necessary or essential?...

It is not essential—the inner touch is the essential thing. But it can be of immense help if properly received. For certain things it is essential but these certain things nobody yet is ready for.

Some people believe that whatever is necessary can be had through meditation or otherwise.

Whatever is necessary for the inner being, yes.

As a matter of fact, plenty of people are glad as they can now do whatever they please.

But there was never any necessity for such people coming to the Pranam! It is not obligatory.

I know from my own experience that we have abused the Pranam... Even then I believe very strongly that there is something very great in the physical touch of the Mother, and one can't afford to lose it under any circumstance; of course one must have the right attitude.

That is it. The Pranam (like the soup in the evening before) has been very badly missused. What is the Pranam for? That people might receive in the most direct and integral way—a way that includes the physical consciousness and makes it a channel—what the Mother could give them and they were ready for. Instead people sit as if at a court reception noting what the Mother does (and generally misobserving), making inferences, gossiping afterwards as to her attitude to this or that person, who is the more favoured, who is less favoured—as if the Mother were doling out her favour or disfavour or appreciations or disapprovals there, just as courtiers in a court might do. What an utterly unspiritual attitude. How can the Mother's work be truly done in such an atmosphere? How can there be the right reception? Naturally it reacts on the sadhak, creates any amount of misconception, wrong feelings etc.—creates an open door for the suggestions of the Adversary who delights in falsehood and administers plenty of it to the minds of the sadhaks. This apart from the fact that many throw all sorts of undesirable things on the Mother through the Pranam. The whole thing tends to become a routine, even where there are not these reactions. Some of course profit, those who can keep something of the right attitude. If there were the right attitude in all, well by this time things would have gone very far towards the spiritual goal.

Some people, especially ladies, missed the Mother when she withdrew from the Pranam. I didn't miss her much, why? Is it because my psychic is not very awake?

Or perhaps because the physical consciousness is obscure and the psychic not prominent enough.

There are others quite sincere who like the meditation instead of the Pranam.

Yes, there are some who say they profit much by it.

Are they withdrawing into themselves and getting the Mother there?

They are getting something at any rate.

What's the right attitude? To be psychically depressed, because Mother is not coming or to try to get her within?

Psychic depression (a queer phrase—you mean vital, I suppose) can help no one. To try to receive within is always the true thing, whether through meditation or pranam.

Can one pray for the Divine? Praying for the Divine to the Divine, not a contradiction?

The Divine Himself can pray to the Divine. There is no contradiction.

I am surprised to hear that even "prognostications" are very harmful. I thought these beliefs were just superstitions.

Prognostications of that kind should not be lightly thought or spoken—especially in the case of the Mother—in other cases, even if there is a possibility or probability, they should be kept confidential from the person affected, unless it is necessary to inform. This is because of the large part played by state of consciousness and suggestion in illness. I shall I suppose one day send you the Presse Médicale with my note (the journal is with me and I shall send it to you, it is no longer with Pavitra) and that will perhaps show the basis.

Ptosis means drooping of the upper eyelid by a paralysis temporary or otherwise.

But, confound it, there is nothing of the kind. The drooping of the eyelid was quite voluntary.

[In J's poem.] What is the blue bird? Aspiration for the Divine?

The Blue Bird is always a symbol of aspiration towards something Beyond.

I don't quite understand about "the physical consciousness" being obscure.

The physical consciousness is that part which directly responds to physical things and physical Nature, sees the outer only as real, is occupied with it—not like the thinking mind with thought and knowledge, or like the vital with emotion, passion, subtler satisfaction of desire. If this part is obscure, then it is difficult to bring into it the consciousness of deeper or spiritual things, feelings etc. even when the mind or the vital are after these deeper things.

There is a flower called "Aspiration in the Physical", what does it mean?

Aspiration means aspiration for the Divine, for higher consciousness etc.

About Mulshankar's vomiting, Manilal says that it is there from his birth, it has nothing to do with the accident. I wonder if it is the result of too much meditation and concentration which he used to do.

But surely he did not do a lot of concentration before birth?

I hear X has a deep affection, respect and admiration for Y and yet I know that she has suffered a lot at his hands. [Sri Aurobindo underlined "deep affection".]

Of course. A womanly woman always appreciates a man who can make her suffer, provided he has a dominating personality. Cave-woman instinct.

X was given some home-truths today. She didn't like it very much...

Of course not—nobody likes home-truths when they show one's own inconsistent egoism. If they did not go home, they would be more pleasant.

B has long-standing piles—painful and burning.

He wrote about something like a boil near about + protruding piles and was afraid of being immobilised if it went on. Nothing of the kind?

By the way, is there still trouble in Mother's eyes?

Somewhat.

I send for information another tragic letter from S—which please return. It appears, it is only a resurrected S that is walking about the Asram since yesterday afternoon!

I say—Dr. Hutchinson, President of the Royal Society of Medicine, in London, says (vide Sunday Times, page 4) that if all the doctors struck work for a year, it would make no difference in the death-rate. The doctors' only use is to give comfort, confidence and consolation. Now what do you say to this opinion of your President? Rather hot, isn't it?

Friends have I none, Guru; to none can I open myself except to you. Don't forsake me, please.

Certainly not.

I send you a book of poetry⁹⁸ to have your opinion on the Bengali poems there. They strike me as very powerful and original in the Tagorean age. I think they abound in surrealistic images and have some sort of similarity with my recent poems.

Have read two pages—very fine poetry. Shall read at leisure. But up to now nothing surrealistic. So far don't find any identity with yours except a certain fullness and boldness of language.

Please don't keep the book for long. Otherwise Premanand⁹⁹ will lose all his prem and anand!¹⁰⁰

He is always doing that and losing his hair too into the bargain. If he objects to my keeping the book, I will give him a clout on the head which will help to keep his hair on.

Did you write: "... I will give him a club on the head..."? He will die, Sir, but if he doesn't, a doctor will be needed!

Clout, clout. A clout is a harmless thing—at most you will have to put a bandage.

I read the script in Sunday Times, by Dr. Hutchinson. It is not only hot, but a little top-heavy it seems. If the doctors function is only to give consolation, I fear many patients visiting us will leave, cursing us. Take B's case of piles. Will simple consolation suffice?

It depends on the effectivity of your consoling words and confidence in giving drugs. Your words and cheery care may so raise B's morale that it will affect his piles and, if it can't do altogether that, your medicine may give so much confidence to the piles that they will walk in and give up the ghost. But it's all a confidence trick in reality. If the piles are crass and refuse confidence, well—

I asked V if he agreed to this "consolation" treatment. He said, "Certainly!" Then I asked him, "How is it then that your old malady has come back which was supposed to have been cured by R?"

Well, that's the point. How did R or how does anybody cure? By his medicines or by his "confidence" imparted to the subconscient of the patient?

He answered, "But one doctor may fail and, besides, there is the Force!" Well?

The Force is another matter. Your President Hutchinson or Henderson (or what the deuce was his name?) wasn't thinking in terms of Force.

But doesn't R cut short the course of a disease, doesn't his medicine help to alleviate the patients' sufferings?

Sometimes. But how?

Anyway, what is your opinion?

My opinion is that Allah is great and great is the mystery of the universe and things are not what they seem, etc.!

I have no energy to write or fight. Down in the pool!

Wade out and up.

I have glanced through your translation of J's poem. But can't you make some time and put it into metrical form, since you have done so much? The translation, though beautiful, loses much of the magnificence of the original.

This costs no trouble—done in ten minutes—to metrify is the very deuce.

I forgot to report about S. You know he has a cut just above the patella. Due to constant walking its a gaping wound Today while we were dressing it, he fainted! He said I frightened him by saying that it was serious. I said nothing of the kind—except that it may require stitches, which he took to be serious. Just a stitch will do. But he is so nervy! We may wait till tomorrow and see?

Mother has told him to take rest—perhaps with rest he may not need stitching. I don't think he is very courageous about these things.

About my new poetry which you call "surrealist", many expressions creep in, having hardly any meaning. Sometimes a poem becomes a "great success", at other times it is a misfire.

When one develops a new kind of poetry or a new technique, one must not mind having to find one's way.

... At times I have to make a foolish face before people when I can't understand my own expression, and they'll think I'm writing rubbish...

Why foolish? Make a mystic face and say "It means too much for owls." The difficulty is that you all want exact intellectual meanings for these things. A meaning there is, but it can't always be fitted with a tight and neat intellectual cap.

Your cryptic smiles and magnificent silence, don't lend themselves to any interpretation. You have a very easy way of escape, by saying "Surrealist".

My "surrealist" is a joke but not a depreciatory one.

D also said "If this is surrealistic, I have nothing to say"—which, at times, is tantamount to saying that under that heading one can write anything blessed or non-blessed.

If you are going to listen to D's criticisms or be influenced by them, you can't go on writing these things. His standpoint is an entirely different one. What his mind can't understand; is for him nonsense. He is for the orthodox style of poetry with as much colour as possible, but not transgressing by its images the boundary of the orthodox. This poetry is a modem "heresy" and heretics must have the courage of their non-conformity.

Now, what the deuce is this Surrealism? I gather that Baudelaire is its father, and Mallarmé its son.

Surrealism is a new phrase invented only the other day and I am not really sure what it conveys. According to some it is a dream poetry reaching a deeper truth, a deeper reality than the surface reality. I don't know if this is the whole theory or only one side or phase of the practice. Baudelaire as a surrealist is a novel idea, nobody ever called him that before. Mallarmé, Verlaine and others used to be classed as impressionist poets, sometimes as symbolists. But now the surrealists seem to claim descent from these poets.

Does surrealism indicate that the meaning should be always unintelligible, if any? That there may be many expressions which have hardly any significance, coherence, etc.? If it has, so much the better; if none, well, it doesn't, in any way, affect the beauty of the poem?

This is the gibe of the orthodox school of critics or readers—certainly the surrealists would not agree with it—they would claim they have got at a deeper line of truth and meaning than the intellectual.

Yesterday, you used the term "surrealistic transitions' What did you mean?

Transitions that are not there of a mental logic.

Transitions that are hardly palpable on the surface?

Not palpable on the surface, but palpable to a deeper vision.

Or do they have no link or reason at all, and come in just as vital dreams come in?

How do you say that vital dreams have no link or reason? They have their own coherence, only the physical mind cannot always get at the clue by following which the coherence would unroll itself. For that matter the sequences of physical existence are coherent to us only because we are accustomed to it and our reason has made up a meaning out of it. But subject it to the view of a different consciousness and it becomes an incoherent phantasmagoria. That's how the Mayavadins or Schopenhauer would speak of it; the former say deliberately that dream-sequences and life-sequences stand on the same footing, only they have another structure. Each is real and consequent to itself—though neither, they would say, is real or consequent in very truth.

I request you to give a brief discourse on Surrealism. D says, "I feel there is something in your poem, but I can't catch it."

D has asked practically for the same, but I would have to study the subject before I could do so.

[A letter written to DUO Kumar Roy.]

I really can't tell you what surrealism is, because it is something—at least the word is—quite new and I have neither read the reliable theorists of the school nor much of their poetry. What I picked up on the way was through reviews and quotations, the upshot being that it is a poetry based on the dream-consciousness, but I don't know if this is correct or merely an English critic's idea of it. The inclusion of Baudelaire and Valery seems to indicate something wider than that. But the word is of quite recent origin and nobody spoke formerly of Baudelaire as a surrealist or even of Mallanne. Mallarmé was supposed to be the founder of a new trend of poetry, impressionist and symbolist, followed in varying degrees and not by any means in the same way by Verlaine and Rimbaud, both of them poets of great fame. Verlaine is certainly a great poet and people now say Rimbaud also, but I have never come across his poetry except in extracts. This strain has developed in Valery and other noted writers of today. It seems that all these are now claimed as part of or the origin of the surrealist movement. But I cannot say what are the exact boundaries or who comes in where. I suppose if Baron communicates to you books on the subject or more precise information, we shall know more clearly now. In any case, surrealism is part of an increasing attempt of the European mind to escape from the surface consciousness (in poetry as well as in painting and in thought) and grope after a deeper truth of things which is not on the surface. The Dream-Consciousness as it is called—meaning not merely what we see in dreams, but the inner consciousness in which we get into contact with deeper worlds which underlie, influence and to some extent explain much in our lives, what the psychologists call the subliminal or the subconscient (the latter a very ambiguous phrase)—offers the first road of escape and the surrealists seem to be trying to force it. My impression is that there is much fumbling and that more often it is certain obscure and not always very safe layers that are tapped. That accounts for the note of diabolism that comes in in Baudelaire, in Rimbaud also, I believe, and in certain ugly elements in English surrealist poetry and painting. But this is only an impression.

Nirod's poetry (what he writes now) is from the Dream-Consciousness, no doubt about that. It has suddenly opened in him and he finds now a great joy of creation and abundance of inspiration which were and are quite absent when he tries to write laboriously in the mental way. This seems to me to indicate either that the poet in him has his real power there or that he has opened to the same force that worked in poets like MaHarm& My labelling him as a surrealist is partly—though not altogether—a joke. How far it applies depends on what the real aim and theory of the surrealist school may be. Obscurity and unintelligibility are not the essence of any poetry—and except for unconscious or semi-conscious humorists like the Dadaists—cannot be its aim or principle. True Dream-poetry (let us call it so for the nonce) has and must always have a meaning and a coherence. But it may very well be obscure or seem meaningless to those who take their stand on the surface or "waking" mind and accept only its links and its logic. Dream-poetry is usually full of images, visions, symbols, phrases that seek to strike at things too deep for the ordinary means of expression. Nirod does not deliberately make his poems obscure; he writes what comes through from the source he has tapped and does not interfere with its flow by his own mental volition. In many modernist poets there may be labour and a deliberate posturing, but it is not so in his case. I interpret his poems because he wants me to do it, but I have always told him that an intellectual rendering narrows the meaning—it has to be seen and felt, not thought out. Thinking it out may give a satisfaction and an appearance of mental logicality, but the deeper sense and sequence can only be apprehended by an inner sense. I myself do not try to find out the meaning of his poems, I try to feel what they mean in vision and experience and then render into mental terms. This is a special kind of poetry and has to be dealt with according to its kind and nature. There is a sequence, a logic, a design in them, but not one that can satisfy the more rigid law of the logical intelligence.

About Housman's theory: it is not merely an appeal to emotion that he posits as the test of pure poetry; he deliberately says that pure poetry does not bother about intellectual meaning at all, it is to the intellect nonsense. He says that the interpretations of Blake's famous poems rather spoil them—they appeal better without being dissected in that way. His theory is questionable, but that is what it comes to; he is wrong in using the word "nonsense" and perhaps in speaking of pure and impure poetry. All the same, to Blake and to writers of the dream-consciousness, his rejection of the intellectual standard is quite applicable.

SRI AUROBINDO¹⁰¹

[A letter written to Dilip Kumar Roy.]

About your points regarding surrealism:

1) I have answered this in my former letter. If the surrealist dream-experiences are flat, pointless or ugly, it must be because they penetrate only as far as the "subconscious" physical and "subconscious" vital dream layers which are the strata nearest to the surface. Dream-consciousness is a vast world in which there are a multitude of provinces and kingdoms, but ordinary dreamers for the most part penetrate consciously only to these first layers which belong to what may properly be called the subconscious belt. When they pass into deeper sleep regions, their recording surface dream-mind becomes unconscious and no longer gives any transcript of what is seen and experienced there; or else in coming back these experiences of the deeper strata fade away and are quite forgotten before one reaches the waking state. But when there is a stronger dream-capacity, or the dream-state becomes more conscious, then one is aware of these deeper experiences and can bring back a transcript which is sometimes a clear record, sometimes a hieroglyph, but in either case possessed of a considerable interest and significance.

2) It is only the subconscious belt that is chaotic in its dream sequences; for its transcriptions are fantastic and often mixed, combining a jumble of different elements: some play with impressions from the past, some translate outward touches pressing on the sleep-mind; most are fragments from successive dream experiences that are not really part of one connected experience—as if a gramophone record were to be made up of snatches of different songs all jumbled together. The vital dreams even in the subconscious range are often coherent in themselves and only seem incoherent to the waking intelligence because the logic and law of their sequences is different from the logic and law which the physical reason imposes on the incoherences of physical life. But if one gets the guiding clue and if one has some dream-experience and dream-insight, then it is possible to seize the links of the sequences and make out the significance, often very profound or very striking, both of the detail and of the whole. Deeper in, we come to perfectly coherent dreams recording the experience of the inner vital and inner mental planes; there are also true psychic dreams—the latter usually are of a great beauty. Some of these mental or vital plane dream-experiences, however, are symbolic, very many in fact, and can only be understood if one is familiar with or gets the clue to the symbols.

3) It depends on the nature of the dream. If they are of the right kind, they need no aid of imagination to be converted into poetry. If they are significant, imagination in the sense of a free use of mental invention might injure their truth and meaning—unless of course the imagination is of the nature of an inspired vision coming from the same plane and filling out or reconstructing the recorded experience so as to bring out the Truth held in it more fully than the dream tranScript could do; for a dream record is usually compressed and often hastily selective.

4) The word "psyche" is used by most people to mean anything belonging to the inner mind, vital or physical, though the true psyche is different from these things. Poetry does come from these sources or even from the superconscient sometimes; but it does not come usually through the form of dreams; it comes either through word-vision or through conscious vision and imagery whether in a fully waking or an inward-drawn state: the latter may go so far as to be a state of Samadhi—svapna samādhi. In all these cases it is vision rather than dream that is the imaging power. Dreams also can be made a material for poetry; but everyone who dreams or has visions or has a flow of images cannot by that fact be a poet. To say that a predisposition and discipline are needed to bring them to light in the form of written words is merely a way of saying that it is not enough to be a dreamer, one must have the poetic faculty and some training—unless the surrealists mean by this statement something else than what the words naturally signify. What is possible, however, is that by going into the inner (what is usually called the subliminal) consciousness—this is not really subconscious but a veiled or occult consciousness—or getting somehow into contact with it, one not originally a poet can awake to poetic inspiration and power. No poetry can be written without access to some source of inspiration. Mere recording of dreams or images or even visions could never be sufficient, unless it is a poetic inspiration that records them with the right use of words and rhythm bringing out their poetic substance. On the other hand, I am bound to admit that among the records of dream-experiences even from people unpractised in writing, I have met with a good many that read like a brilliant and colourful poetry which does hit—satisfying Housman's test—the solar plexus. So much I can concede to the surrealist theory; but if they say on that basis that all can with a little training turn themselves into poets—well, one needs a little more proof before one can accept so wide a statement.¹⁰²

[I had asked Sri Aurobindo on 12.2.37, if I could put a stitch to S's small cut (9.2.37). There was no answer that day.]

By the way did you do your tailoring work with S? I forgot to write that you could stitch away at him as much as necessary.

Today I have written three sonnets, Sir, in one and a half hours! What do you say to that?

Remarkable!

I have a fear that the fountain might dry up or that I might go on repeating the old thing.

Why fear? If it happens, you will start something new. Perhaps super-realism.

What a disappointment! I thought yesterday's poem was very fine. It seems it is pretty hard to write exceedingly fine stuff in this kind of poetry.

Well, well, I must reserve the adverbs, or I shall have nothing to put in case you "exceed" yourself.

P said about my new poems that they seemed to be more intellectual, but there is not much power; for power comes only from the Psychic. I was rather surprised to hear that from him as I thought Power, Peace, vastness, etc., come from the spiritual consciousness from above...

Power can be everywhere, on any plane. What descends from above is power of the higher Consciousness—but there is a Power of the vital, mental, physical planes also. Power is not a special characteristic of the psychic or of the spiritual plane.

So you also fail to tell the precise meaning of the poem!

Who the devil can give the precise meaning of inner things?

Then it will never be understood. People will sarcastically say, "Surrealist! W.P.B!"¹⁰³

"Write plenty of books"?

The other day Dilip said to M. Baron, "But one can't understand this surrealist poetry." He replied, "Why should you understand?"

Exactly—why should you understand? When you can instand, overstand, roundstand, interstand—what's the need of understanding?

If you don't understand, how do you pronounce fine, very fine, etc.? By simply feeling?

Queer fellow! As if feeling could not go deeper than intellectual understanding!

Anyhow, it seems the poet has nothing to do but to submit himself to the Force. For, when he doesn't know what he is talking about, how is he going to improve?

He need not understand, but he can know.

It is like casting a net and depending on luck to catch small or big fish as may be the case. Is there any other way?

Of course there is. Find it out.

See for instance today's fish. Do you find any head or tail?...

Very nicely coloured gleaming fish.

But seriously, how to write better this kind of stuff? What is the trick?

The trick is to put your demand on the source for what you want. If you want to fathom (not understand) what you are writing ask for the vision of the thing to come along with the word, a vision bringing an inner comprehension. If you want something mystic but convincing to the non-mystic reader, ask for that till you get it.

What do you say to today's poem?

Very fine, this time.

Well, let us put it in English—without trying to be too literal, turning the phrases to suit the Eng. language. If there are any mistakes of rendering they can be adjusted.

At the day-end behold the Golden Daughter of Imaginations—
She sits alone under the Tree of Life—
A form of the Truth of Being has risen before her rocking there like a lake
And on it is her unwinking gaze. But from the unfathomed Abyss where it was buried, upsurges
A tale of lamentation, a torrent-lightning passion,
A melancholy held fixed in the flowing blood of the veins,—
A curse thrown from a throat of light.
The rivers of a wind that has lost its perfumes are bearing away
On their waves the Mantra-rays that were her ornaments
Into the blue self-born sea of a silent Dawn;
The ceaseless vibration-scroll of a hidden Sun
Creates within her, where all is a magic incantation,
A picture of the transcendent Mystery—that luminous laughter
(Or, A mystery-picture of the Transcendent?)
Is like the voice of a gold-fretted flute flowing from the inmost heart of the Creator.

Now, I don't know whether that was what you meant, but it is the meaning I find there. Very likely it has no head or tail, but it has a body and a very beautiful body—and I ask with Baron, why do you want to understand? why do you want to cut it up into the dry mathematical figures of the Intellect? Hang it all, sir! In spite of myself you are making me a convert to the Housman theory and Surrealism. No, Sir—feel, instand, overstand, interstand, but don't try to "understand" the creations of a supra-intellectual Beauty.

It is enough to feel and grasp without trying to "understand" the creations of a supra-intellectual Beauty.

Will a simple "demand" give the thing?

A demand is an aspiration for something—it will bring its answer, not always immediately, but in time.

But which source?

Whatever the source.

Where is the time to ask for all that when one is busy writing?

Have it at any time as the thing you want—whenever you think of your poetry.

I thought of giving you a simple beauty today, but give this instead for you to see if what I demanded from the source has been granted.

If it's something which means a big advance, you can't expect it all at once.

Well, Sir, has the source responded?

Responded to what? What were you asking for?

Where does the poem strike you—at the solar or lunar plexus?

It must be the Baron plexus. It is surely your contact with him that has started you on this line.

You are a most wonderful God, Sir! More queer than my poems, if you don't mind my saying so. You have been hammering this surrealism into my soul for such a long time and now you say that I got it from Baron?

You don't seem to have read carefully my letter to Dilip. I said your poems belong to the Dream-Consciousness, but I had used the word Surrealism lightly—i.e. your poems are not on a line with the actual surrealism of the day, the thing to which the name is given.

But this last poem is Baronic, (I don't know what Baron's poems are like, but I mean they have the modern incoherence).

If Baron has anything to do with it, it was only the other day that I first met him.

As this came soon after meeting Baron, I said as a joke that it must have been a real modern surrealistic influence from him.

Well, regarding yesterday's poem, you seem to have understood the surrealist lines, not the others.

Good Lord! the only lines I understood were those I marked as not entirely surrealistic.

I thought the reverse.

So did I.

Now I find that in spite of your long letters, I have not really grasped what this blessed surrealism is.

I wrote very clearly in my letter to Dilip that I did not know myself what Surrealism is since I have not studied either surrealistic theory or surrealistic literature. I gathered from what I have read—reviews, citations—that it was dream-consciousness of a lower type (therefore incoherent and often ugly). I also explained at great length in another letter that there was a Dream-Consciousness of a higher type. Are these distinctions really so difficult to understand?

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

Both perhaps.

One thing is clear that he requires your protection. Well?

Difficult to protect such an erratic genius. However.

The difficulty I am faced with in my poetry is that some poems suddenly turn out to be very good, others fall below the mark.

But that is quite usual in the work of all poets.

Everything depends on the Inspiration. But then I can't change any line or word since I don't understand what I am writing.

From your explanations you seem to understand all right. The question is about the inspiration itself. It is sometimes more successful, sometimes less—for various reasons. What one has to see is whether what has come through is quite satisfactory in language, image, harmonious building, poetic force. If not, one can call a farther inspiration to emend what is deficient. At first one allows the inspiration to come through without interference, to establish the habit of free flow. But that does not mean one must not afterwards alter or improve—only it should be done not by the mind but by a fresh and better inspiration. If in the course of writing itself, a correcting inspiration comes, that can be accepted—otherwise one does the perfecting afterwards.

You advised me to demand from the source what I want. But I don't know what precisely I want. All I can say is that the writing should have greater beauty, depth, etc.

That is rather too vague.

... I fondly cherish a hope that one day we shall be able to write like Harin.

Better, I hope.

Perhaps we may not have his fluency.

So much fluency is not necessary. He had perhaps too much.

Nowdays I am having more difficulty in writing. The "abundance" of inspiration seems to have vanished. In one hour I write just one sonnet... I find that plenty of old images and expressions try to come in, which I have to reject mercilessly.

It is probably because of your seeking for something better which makes the mind hesitate—as also the bar put upon the constant repetition of old images. But that is only a transitional difficulty. Still perhaps you are thinking too much while writing?

I concentrate or meditate for a while before writing; at times I go within and then write. But the difficulty is no less. I have to pause after every expression.

Pause to do what? Think' You have to cultivate the power of feeling instinctively the value of what you write—either while writing or immediately you go over it when it is completed.

How is my aspiration for greater beauty, depth etc. "vague"? How to be more precise when one doesn't know the meaning of what one is writing?

Whatever the reason it is not precise, it is only a general formula which in practice might mean a hundred different things.

The result of the Darshan was very queer: a heavy inert sleep during the day and night. The waking hours passed in vacancy. I felt like a corpse without a soul; even the thought of death passed across my mind.

It looks like a plunge into physical or sub-physical inertia.

Perhaps it was due to fatigue: keeping awake on the Darshan night, for decoration?

Might be. Fatigue sometimes brings that.

... Or have you done something in the sub-conscient physical?

Done what? Raised up the subconscient in the form of a blank? Had no such intention.

Some people had peace, joy, etc. I am not discouraged, but would like to know what happened, and pray to get me into a better state.

Of course this kind of emptiness often happens when the physical is being directly dealt with—the important thing is not to remain X in it, but to make it a passage to a new force and better consciousness.

By the way, do you think I should seriously take up French?

I don't know that it is necessary just now.

Naik proposes that I join the French class they are organising...

Naik's class as proposed means an active part for everybody. It depends on whether you feel like taking such a part.

You spoke about a "formula" yesterday. If you could give it, we could aspire for it and get quick results.

There is no formula—these things are not done by formulas. It is the thing that you want for your poetry that you have to make precise in your perception—and get it.

Or do you mean that one should first aspire for harmony when that is established then depth, images, etc.?

Harmony certainly, and as much depth as possible and the right images and language giving the thing to be expressed as powerfully built and living a form as possible. But I am not aware that there is any fixed order like that in their coming.

You say sometimes images are forced—How to understand that? Inner feeling?

One can surely feel that if one tries.

My inner vision didn't tell me that "the book of the Ocean" was a forced image, nor did it tell me that the poem was not cogent enough...

Well then, the inner vision or the subtle sense of these things has to be developed till it is capable of feeling and seeing these differences.

I realise however that all this will take time to develop. Meanwhile one has to stumble, make mistakes and sometimes have good luck.

If one can't yet see one's way, one has to feel, if not by experiment.

So Dr. Becharlal has gone! Now perhaps the avalanche of the Dispensary work will roll down on me. Will you save and help me?

Help, I can. But save? Well, an avalanche is an avalanche.

March 1937

You find "funny" things in my poems? Then, Sir, you have only to ask me to stop writing.

But why do you object to fun? Modem opinion is that a poet ought to be funny (humorous) and that the objection to funniness in poetry is a romantic superstition.

How is it then that you give remarks "very fine" etc.?

Well, it can be funnily fine or finely funny—can't it?

If they are really funny, why should I spoil my valuable time writing them when I could sleep comfortably for two hours?

For the joy of the world, of course.

Funny however is used in the sense of "extraordinary". You can't deny that these things are extraordinary?

Is that the reason why you don't give any explanations either? Very well, Sir!

Why should I explain when you can understand and explain yourself? As Christ came to save sinners, not the righteous, so am I here to explain the inexplicable to the non-understanding, not to the understanding.

[There were a few friends who, inspired by my surrealistic poetry, were writing poems in the same vein, and I was sending them to Sri Aurobindo asking him to explain some of the difficult ones. After explaining once or twice he said that if it continued he would go on "strike".]

But I don't see the logic of your threat of "strike". If people begin writing these surrealistic poems by your inspiration, am I to blame and suffer?

The strike is supposed to be against the 4, 5, 6 ad infinitum, not against the two.

My inspiration? When they catch it from you!

By the way, for whom have you to write explanations from set to dawn? One is my precious self?

Yes.

And the other is J?

Yes. I have to explain for her also.

But she is not a surrealist!

Surrealist or symbolist, it comes to the same so far as need for explanation goes.

.. In spite of your decrying my poems, Sir, there are plenty of beautiful conceptions, you must admit!

Who decries it? Some are funny—I beg pardon, extraordinary—but the beauty is all there.

I suppose you have seen that letter of S's. I left it to the wisdom of the Mother to do what my wisdom failed to decide... What a letter, my God!

Why get upset over such an entirely unimportant thing? S's letters are like that and nobody attaches the least value to them. I have thrown his letter into the W.P.B. which is the only place that suits it.

A has pain in the liver region and near the umbilicus. She was given acid Hydrachlor mix with Nux vomica fora long time. Now we have changed it to mix. Sod. and other salts.

A writes that B told her to take curds when she had diarrhoea (?), and she has been doing so with the results that she is being washed out completely by thick leucorrhea, sometimes also intense shooting pains in stomach lower and upper—spine and loins paining day and night. Asks if She is to continue curds. Asks me to tell you.

By the way what was your objection to Kola for Arjava? I have forgotten. He complains of being very rundown in energy—Mother thought that ten days of Kola repeated whenever necessary (not continued for longer periods) might help to keep it up—and as we have fresh supply of Kola—well!

My objection was that Kola contains caffein which is a stimulant, so it can't be continuded for a log period. But surely it can be taken for 2 or 3 weeks—it will be a good tonic after this weakness.

In that case you can give? If it is not with you, take from Pavitra.

[P suffering from a carbuncle.] He said that if it was going to be serious, he would as well start for home!

If he wants to go, don't stop him—let him do so. He was allowed to come here for a month's experiment to see whether the place suited him and he suited the place. The carbuncle seems to be a negative answer.

What's your opinion, Sir, on today's poem?

Quite successful.

"Quite successful" only? When will this be followed by a little more warmth and exhilaration, can you predict?

Well, I can write, if you want: "Superlative! Extraordinary! Unimaginable! Surprising! Inexpressible! Ineffable!" That ought to be warm and exhilarating—

I told you that I have written two poems in an hour. Should I have written one instead and revised it to make it a better egg if possible?

No such rule necessary.

But when this stuff itself is not very remarkable, can further labour improve it much?

Only detail corrections needed.

Wouldn't it be a waste of time?

Yes.

I could write instead another poem if it pours in?

Yes.

Of course one can go on altering and altering till an altogether new poem is created. That is what you do, I understand.

That is for "big" poetry. Short poems I usually revise only once and alterations are not many.

10. p.m.

I heard just now that X is again troubled because of some "peacelessness", and intends to go to Calcutta. May I go to see him? I hope there is no harm in doing so? I know I won't be able to help him... He cheered me up in my last depression.

I suppose it is useless to discuss, or to persuade either. What will be the best thing to do? I pray that he may give up this mad project... You must keep him, Sir!

There is no harm in your going to see him, but it should be to cheer him and be helpful, not to dispute or lecture. To make him change his mind or cancel his going is difficult now because he has telegraphed to everybody—would be of little use. For something in him is strongly seized with this idea of Calcutta and Almora which has been long ripening and repeating itself, and it has been coming back and back every ten days or so. It would come back again and with greater vehemence. It is better to let him have his relief. He wrote a quite reasonable letter except for his usual silly nonsense about the "grimness" of the morning Meditation—and in answer I subscribed to his going for a few months, and staying at Calcutta and Almora. He was making his preparations quite cheerfully when suddenly he got the idea of taking Y with him (so it is reported) and went to her. She gave him a scolding and lecture. Result—he came gloomy to the Mother, found her "stern" (which she was not) and broke into a tragic despair, praying for death and saying that he would never come back or write again etc. If he is to go, it is surely better that he should go gladly and cheerfully and not in this spirit.

As to the madness of the project it is certainly not the best thing he could have done. But he has got into such a formation of ideas and feelings against the Yoga as it is practised here (he had that always almost) and is so unable to get rid of it that he is unable to have any outward progress until it is broken and no progress (a quiet inward psychic growth he does not want) throws him into fits of despair after every calm period of a few days. He wants to escape or get relief from it by going out. Well, let him try it, by a miracle it might succeed. In any case to hold back always when he says he is in turmoil here is not possible.

L has a burning sensation in the mouth and throat.

What cause? She says from mouth to throat is carpeted with pepper and covered with thin pomegranate grains and she suspects an eruption there. Also you have medicated her throat but under the tongue there is fire. Surrealist Poetry is not your monopoly—even your patients write it.

S informed me the other day that her spine had already begun breaking of itself into two.

Guru, I was badly hit by X's going away... The first question is: why has he gone?

The marvel is that he did not go before.

You and Mother have poured and poured all heaven, as it were, on him—affection, sympathy, love, consideration, etc., and yet he complains of dryness of heart here!

By dryness of heart, he means that the vital is not given free play.

You have very admirably explained in NK's poem Jackal, how the lower nature rushes towards the subconscient, and as soon as I read it I could not resist drawing the conclusion that this is X's present picture, word for word. Do you agree?

Yes, it is that. A certain part of him which belongs to the lower vital was always rushing and has dragged away the rest.

... Why has this lower nature become so vehement this time?

But it has been rising again and again vehemently for a long time.

Many times he wanted to go but you stopped him; why have you failed this time?

This time I didn't try. It was becoming like a dog pulling at his leash and moaning miserably. Can't go on with that sort of thing for ever. So I had promised his outing, Bangalore and Cape Comorin. He changed it to Baroda and Almora after Bangalore. I said, All right. He gave up Almora and perhaps Baroda. I said, All right. Finally no Bangalore, but Calcutta, Almora and anywhere else and several months at least. I said, All right—Then for some reason the old drama (for up till now all was fairly reasonable except the "grim Meditation" affair and the intolerableness of Mother's withdrawal and loss of the Pranam which had made his sufferings just tolerable), of Mother's sternness, desire of death, never never shall I come back here—finally joy of going accompanied with sentimental effusions. That's the whole story.

Will he come back with his lower fires run down and, thus a changed man, jump into the spiritual sea? For a time perhaps, but will not the hydra-headed monster rise up again?

Yes, if there is no radical change. But only Mahakali can bring that about. Up to now we have given her no chance.

Isn't it true that in Yoga desires enjoyed are more harmful than rejected or repressed?

At any rate in this Yoga.

Some say he hasn't gained anything substantial. Why, his psychic has surely developed in these 8 years...

Rather say—it was beginning to develop by fits and starts interrupted by periods of vital violent reaction. Of course if he had stayed and gone through it, the psychic should have prevailed in the end. But—

Did he not realise that there is nothing, after all, in lower enjoyments?

He said so always.

After this realisation can there be a fresh necessity for further enjoyment?

If there is no radical change, there can.

Is it possible that he won't return at all, or will come back after many years?

With X everything is possible.

"Won't return" seems impossible for have you not said that his success is sure and that you will carry him yourself to his goal?

I put a proviso, "If you are faithful to your seeking for the Divine".

How is it that in spite of tremendous cost of Force and Energy, you could not change his views about your Yoga?

His mind changed somewhat, but his vital clung to the feeling of frustration by the Yoga and therefore abused the Yoga. It wanted either satisfaction of its play or brilliant experiences to replace them or both together. Not getting its way, it damned the Yoga as grim, horrible etc. All the time it refused to go on steadily with the thing that would be effective.

Quarrels with J, grimness of A, estrangement with N, etc., etc., are they reasons for deserting this Yoga?

For a man with X's vital they seem governing reasons.

He has read so many of your books, has had so many letters from you, yet he doesn't give any importance to inner things—calm, silent, steady progress? What have you done then, Sir?

You are speaking as if it was his thinking mind that refused. His thinking mind was changing its attitude. It was the vital mind that refused inwardness, silence etc.

Unfortunately he seemed to think that Mother is harder than you: she is grim and doesn't love etc., etc.

That is because Mother's pressure for a change is always strong—even when she doesn't put it as force it is there by the very nature of the Divine Energy in her. But it was just this change his vital did not want—hence the feeling.

He will suffer terribly, I fear, outside. Is it then his soul's necessity for further experience? Has the soul any such need?

If the soul had not, it would not be here in this world of Ignorance It is for the experience of Ignorance that it is here.

It baffles me to think that a man who had so much self-confidence regarding poetry, music, and achieved success with sheer industry, could do nothing in Yoga with so much of your Force...

What a delusion! All the industry in the world could not have made him a poet, a novelist, a prosodist, an effective writer on serious questions... None of you realise that X had talent but no genius before he came here—Tagore is right there, except in music—and even there many criticised him as shallow, limited, superficial; merely pretty, lacking in depth, power, greatness. I saw a letter of an admirer the other day who told X that formerly his music had been full of show and ostentation, but now there was an immense change, it had become true and genuine... But he had a strong vital and Mother and I saw that there was stiff here which could be made into something. And we made it...

He has supported himself in many things, saying that he had your sanction. You gave him absolute freedom...

It was no use interfering—he would have done it all the same. And these things—talks, food, sociality were not the crucial things in his case. To press in his case on these points would only have prevented all chance of his giving an opportunity to the sadhana. It is not necessary in all cases to put this kind of pressure,—it depends on the case and the nature.

Another thing that hurt me was K's revolt. How could he say such things against you when he broke with X aver you and Ramakrishna?

My dear Sir, these fits are periodical with K—it is only the remarks against myself that were new. Ever since he came here, he has been announcing from time to time his departure.

He came here, I understand, on this earth, only for you!

Eh, what?

What has been achieved if after 13 or 14 years of sadhana, there is a lack of faith in the Guru?

Considering what K was, much has been achieved. But in a way nothing is really achieved until all is.

Is that not enough to show that real faith is not yet there?

Faith is there in parts of the being, absent in others.

Now, if K behaves in this way and X can leave the Asram after 8 years, two opposites—what about us?

Opposites, but for the same reasons—a physical mind clinging like a leech to its own wrong ideas of traditional sadhana and a vital that does not want to surrender, to lose independence and its own way of satisfaction.

What have you kept in store for us, Sir? Not sandesh and rasagolla! Will the sadhaks tumble one by one in this way as your Supramental comes nearer and nearer? Then with whom will you enjoy your Supramental? Night and day you are soaring and soaring.

Romantic one! I am not soaring and soaring—I am digging and digging, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard" sort of affair.

You don't even look to see what fires your wings are throwing on our mortal frames!

My wings are throwing no fire. If anything happens to your mortal frames, it is your own kerosene stoves that are responsible.

Why don't you give us any word of hope? When will your Gentleman come down, if he will?

Bother your words of hope. I am concerned with getting things done, (if people will kindly allow it and not be making a row all the time)—not with words.

I am shaken to the roots, for I fear I may share no better fate in your hands. Nevertheless all your promises will be fulfilled one day, for the Divine is eternal and so is the soul.

Well, that ought to be enough.

... How is it that a person professing a deep love for you is strongly attached to another one, and asks you to have trust in him or her? Isn't it a duplicity? I can't tolerate such conduct, and get rather disturbed...

You speak like a Daniel come to judgment. If you could only be calm like Daniel in the den of lions when these things happen, it would be all right.

... Seeing all this I have made up my mind to cut off all vital human relations...

I say that all that is magnificent, if you can do it. But can't you see that it is the inward change that is wanted—the inward plunge? These dramatic outward breaks lead only to new joinings. Neither you nor she can keep to it. If there comes a strong ingoing movement, then it is another matter. That of itself would make it possible to readjust the relations or to withdraw if necessary. But splashings about on the surface—will it lead to anything? It does not look like it.

If I have shown X's other side, it is needless to tell you that I have seen his finer side too, and have profited much by it. Affection can be there even when one criticises somebody, can't there?

Yes, of course.

Outward breakings away and rejoinings, what's the use of that? The remedy lies inside you. Try to go inward, find the Mother there, find your true self, your psychic being. Afterwards J won't matter—you may be her friend or her literary collaborator or neither and it won't make a jot of difference—I have spoken.

You may congratulate yourself, Sir, on this invasion of surrealism [10.3.37]! But L is better. What have you done with S's spine? I saw her still going strong; result of your operation?

The spine was surrealistic—her going it strong is realistic

Krishnayya says that you have asked him to stop Hadensa as it is of no use now.

Nonsense—it is he who wanted to stop, saying no improvement very costly—So I said, he could stop.

P's carbuncle is much better—says bandage is now bondage!

Seems much struck by Mother's force as per cure carbuncle—no gratitude to the doctor. Such is life!

All interest in life has disappeared, Sir! Poems are a bore; what prescription?

Shift to a centre within.

Our chief centre has gone!

I suppose he will find plenty of radii in his new-old circumference.

Poor fellow speaks about my affection in his letter. What an illusion!

Illusion? This is poetry, sir.

Yes, Sir, such is life! But in P's case I must give more credit to Mother, for his quick cure. Good he believes in her Force, for you will have a disciple of the Warrior-land [Punjab] of which you have none.

Have several (not here, but there) but they are almost all neurasthenics!

Only, he is a little too old and too much chaperoned by V!

Great heavens! V has got hold of him—Poor fellow!

We have to get Hadensa tubes for B; shall we?

Yes.

Nishikanta has congestion of throat.

Result of Customs? or of custom?

What about my book, Sir? Haven't decided where you will begin and where you will end? or keeping it for Sunday?

My dear Sir, if your write a Mahabharat, you can't expect the answer however scrappy to be finished in one or two nights among a mass of other work? Nous progressâmes¹⁰⁴—that the state of things.

Still feeling bad—not for the loss of the centre, but don't know exactly.

No? you don't feel অনাথ?¹⁰⁵

Under P, you wrote: "They are almost all nervous thieves"? Gracious!

I didn't. I wrote "neurasthenics"—neurasthenic Warriors, sir!

And about Nishikanta "Result of—or of custom?"

Customs (British). Reference to their outing with Dilip.

How did you hear of this remark anāth?

Any number of vivid reports of the great event—this detail among others.

I find that as a result of your Force, A has had only one vomit today!

Evidently my Force is growing just as my handwriting is improving!

Doraiswamy better; pain.

Is it that he has a better pain? or that the fact that he has a pain shows that he is better; or that he is better but still has pain? An aphoristic style lends itself to many joyfully various interpretations.

Obviously, evidently, undoubtedly, Sir, your Force is growing! By the number of departees, one can see that!

They are not departees—yet. X gone on a spree—says he will one day come back. V sent as a missionary by the Mother—don't expect his mission will be very fruitful though. R went for her property—property and herself held up by family, as we told her it would be etc. So no sufficient proof of Force here. If they had all gone saying ফিরব না, কখন ফিরব না¹⁰⁶ as X threatened once, the proof would be conclusive.

About the "departees", they may come back all right, but why did they go? Because some pressure acted on the old knots and they had to give up the Yoga, at least temporarily. Once one takes up this Yoga, what is family, property or anything else?

But R didn't give up Yoga—she was going on very well. Only the idea of her property shut up in others' hands and ready to disappear, obsessed her. She wanted to bring it and give it to Mother. It was a mistake, for it was not worth the risk and trouble and interruption to Sadhana. But there was a vital push and attachment that made her recur always to the idea.

You have forgotten D.S. who went mad after 8 or 9 years of Yoga?

What Yoga? This idea of D.S. being a great Yogi is a queer thing.

Have you read the letter and poems by X? Anything to communicate regarding the letter?

Nothing special.

The poems seem extremely fine, don't they?

Yes, I said so.

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

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

X is having plenty of garlands, meetings, feastings etc. Spree indeed! ... Good enough for a change, what?

Change, certainly.

Are you writing a Mahabharat in reply to my "Mahabharat", I wonder!

I was.

Guru, I hope you won't "ash"¹⁰⁷ me for spoiling your afternoon "spree", by this letter, will you?

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

Laugh with the sonnets and cry with the letter [X's], if you can. Very touching! If the "কোমল ব্যবহার"¹⁰⁸ of the people there had not been so good, It would have been splendid methinks.

You recommend me a fit of hysteria? No, sir. The sonnets are as usual, quite admirable. So, I dare say, was the কোমল ব্যবহার—By the way, his uncle has developed a carbuncle! And X expects me to cure it! A case for you, sir. After P!

[Regarding a poem of J's:] The confusions of muddy eddies of life are at an end?

Wish they were! Jehovah!

How far down is your plume? Do you see the great Tail yet?

Tail is there—but no use without We head.

Why did you say "I was"? Have you stopped writing the Mahabharat, then?

Because I can make no time—Night after night have to write letters, letters, letters, not to speak of other things.

Everything seems to be queer in this world, Sir, especially in this yogic world! When a fellow [D.S.] works hard at French, medicine, trying to improve the Dispensary and himself, and thereby serve the Divine better, it is bad. Too much concentration and meditation is worse.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "and himself.]

There is where you miss the truth and he missed it also—he did not try to "improve himself", at any rate in any Yogic way—he might try to aggrandise himself but that is another matter. Self-aggrandisement does not save from collapse.

When one follows the rule "eat, drink and be merry' it is the worst.

Well, I never heard that 'to eat, drink and be merry' was one of the paths of Yoga—unless Charvak's way is one of Yoga.

I am coming to X's view that your Yoga will always remain yours. Nobody will ever catch its head or tail, except a few perhaps. Let us pin our faith on the "Head" now. The tail has noosed many!

It is not my Yoga that is difficult to get the head or tail of—it is your and X's and others' views about Yoga that are weird and wonderful. If a fellow is brilliant in French and Sanskrit, you think he is a wonderful Yogi, but then it is the people who are first in the Calcutta B.A. who must be the greatest Yogis. If one objects to spending all the energy in tea and talk, you say "What queer gurus these are and what queer ideas", as if sociability were the base of the Brahman—or on the contrary you think everybody must shut himself up in a dark room, see nobody, go mad with want of food and sleep—and when we object to that, you say "Who can understand this Yoga?" Have you never heard of Buddha's maxim "No excess in any direction"—or of Krishna's injunction "Don't eat too much or abstain from eating, don't drop sleep or sleep too much; don't torture the soul with violent tapasya—practise Yoga steadily, without despondency. Don't abstain from works and be inactive, but don't think either that mere work will save you. Dedicate your works to the Divine, do it as a sacrifice, reach the point at which you feel that the works are not yours but done for you etc., etc. Through meditation, through dedicated works, through bhakti—all these together, arrive at the divine consciousness and live in it." Buddha and Krishna are not considered to be unintelligible big Absurdities, yet when we lay [stress] on the same things, you all stare and say "What's this new unheard-of stuff?" It is the result I suppose of having modern-minded disciples who know all about everything and can judge better than any Guru, but to whom the very elements of Yoga are something queer and cold and strange. Kismet!

Have you heard that Y is also tottering, or has tottered already? Couldn't get over the shock of D.S.'s madness?

Y has written to us already. He wants to make a marriage and farewell to the world trip, somewhat like X's... But he has been tottering, as you call it, ever since he was here, so that is nothing new...

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

Why for him? Surrender is the same for everybody.

Any illumination?

None.

There is some law point here and reference to A.P. House¹⁰⁹ also. God knows who this B.K. is, who requires your permission to go into all this business. Well?

B.K. is a "disciple" and has been Manager of A.P.H. but is now to be relieved of his duties. He was at the head of some institution in Khulna—forgotten which. Don't know what status he has for the purpose. Probably he is or was a lawyer—but not sure. Permission be hanged!

[Morning]

You perhaps had a hope that at least you would have some respite with no more of X's voluminous correspondence. Much mistaken, Sir! Much mistaken!

So long as I have not to write voluminous answers.

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

Horrifying idea! Luckily the elites are not in the habit of swarming.

[Afternoon]

All these orations, successes, etc. of X, raise another question—whether the Divine also wanted that His name should be spread now.

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

[Evening]

What? X also has a "message"? But all I heard was that he had become restless.

I said that his [Y's] outing was somewhat like X's—i.e. a social round.

What, Y has gone out to deliver a "message"? What message, Sir?

There is nothing about message. Marriage, marriage—two marriages, in fact. Not that he is going to marry 2 wives, but he is going to see the misfortune of two others consummated and gloat over it.

But why exactly did D.S. tumble?—if not private. Self-aggrandisement only? Can't be!

Why not? Never heard of megalomania?

I heard he was touchy regarding his wife and wife touchy about him—My God, grazes the skin, almost, Sir!

Touchy means what? And how does touchiness graze the skin?

Now about X's tea and butter!...

It isn't butter—it's "tea and talk".

All these were, it seems, generously granted by you to X. No bar, no restriction—full freedom, carte blanche ...

They were granted by me as a concession to his nature, because by self-deprivation he would land himself in the seas of despair—not as a method of reaching the Brahman. He was trying to do what his nature would not allow. It was only if he got intense spiritual experience that he could give up tea and talk without wallowing in misery—Is it so difficult to understand a simple thing like that? I should have thought it would be self-evident even to the dullest intelligence.

You remember your reply to his "ascetic" letter about giving up cooking, shaving his head, etc., etc.? Well, what is this now? Sociability not the base of Brahman, surely? That's what we all thought, but your sanction and support that each has a different path etc., took our support away.

Because I allowed him to talk, and objected to his making an ostentatious ascetic ass of himself, does it follow that the talk and tea were given as part of his Yoga? If the Mother allowed butter or eggs to Y for his physical growth, does it follow that butter and eggs are the bases of the Brahman? If somebody has a stomachache and I send him to the dispensary, does it follow that a stomachache, the dispensary, Nirod and allopathic drugs are the perfect way to spiritualisation? Don't be an a—, I mean a Gandhilike logician!

My poems are now getting less surrealistic and losing all charm of incomprehensibility ...

Necessary transition, I suppose.

Also the power of bold expressions, images, etc. are disappearing... Why?

Get them in another way, bold and original but not surrealistic, so that people instead of crying "Very fine but what the devil does he mean?", will shout "Ah ha! Wah! wah!" in a chorus of approbation for your genius and personality much as X is getting in Calcutta. How do you like the prospect?

Nishikanta and Jyoti say, about my recent poems, that there is much improvement. They're more cogent, harmonious and still retain my originality and surrealism too.

They are more cogent and harmonious; there is also plenty of individuality, fine images, lines and phrases. But the surrealistic audacity of phrase and image is in abeyance. My suggestion is that it has to come back without the surrealism and with this greater clarity and harmony and more perfect building. That's why I said "transition".

I say, there's a fellow in this world who says that besides occasional emissions of normal and orthodox kind with dreams, he gets almost daily slight discharges without dream in light sleep (day sleep or morning sleep renewed after waking) and there are "internal" discharges which don't come out until there is (after some days, I believe) a proper discharge. This he supposes due to a liquification of the semen due to former bad habits. When there are these internal discharges his head becomes empty and giddy, and he expects if it goes on there will be no head left—or at least nothing inside it. Now I have heard of internal haemorrhage but not of internal discharges which seems self-contradictory in self as a phrase. I can understand habitual loss of semen or weakness in retention due to past misuse, but what is this? Does your medical science shed any light? have you had any experience in treatment of such things so as to give me a direction for this distressed traveller towards headlessness? What?

I am afraid I can't throw much light on these "internal discharges", unless it means that instead of coming out they flow hack to the bladder due to some obstacle in the urethra. Hardly a possibility.

They can be stopped halfway by will in an emission—but he does not mean that.

If there is constant excitement there might be a constant dribbling also...

But it is only in these two sleeps and without dream. He says waking time is all right.

Or there might be a gleety discharge which may be mistaken for semen.

Hasn't spoken of that. But would it come only in special sleeps like this?

What does R say on this matter?

Haven't asked him. Afraid of a resonant explanation which would leave me gobbrified and flabbergasted but no wiser than before.

But is he really sure that they are seminal discharges?

Can't make out. He distinguishes them from emission, speaks of slight discharges and internal discharges—same thing apparently.

Lastly, if his testes have undergone some degeneration, the internal secretion may be deficient.

How could that be described as internal discharges in two special kinds of sleep?

Is my surmise enough to understand the matter?

No.

J is very much fascinated by the variety in chhanda in Dilip's and NK's work, and doesn't want to rest content only with the old forms. You say both forms can be beautiful. Why not try then this modern form, since we are your "modern disciples"?

No objection to trying. But is the form of Dilip and Nishikanta general in modern Bengali poetry? I thought it was Dilip's departure and much criticised by many? I don't think a rule or school can be made of these things. Let each follow his own genius.

যুগধর্ম্ম¹¹⁰ must be satisfied. You can't pooh-pooh it, when you want things to be intelligible to people. Otherwise they will damn it.

I don't follow the যুগধর্ম্ম myself in English poetry—There I have done the opposite; tried to develop old forms into new shapes instead of being gloriously irregular. In my blank verse, I have minimised or exiled pauses and overflows.

Lord, sir! If you want to be intelligible and read by people, why do you write symbolic and sometimes almost surrealist poetry?

In your comment on my poetry, why did you underline "audacity"? French sense?

If I had intended the French sense, I would have written "audace"

The word means boldness, daring. Does it suggest anything more? I don't like these "suggestions". One has ego enough and to spare. So please don't write: you have done this, you have done that!

Don't understand all this. I thought you would like to get the "audacious" originality back again in full in better form, so I suggested that the transition could very well be moving towards that. What the hell has all that got to do with egoism or with personal effort either?

Why bloat the ego still further when you know that suggestions and that sort of thing are no use? In Yoga, you say surrender, and in poetry—this personal effort business? No, Sir, no!

Wait a minute—Where have I said that there is to be no personal effort in Yoga? Kindly read the passages in The Mother about tamasic surrender and the place of personal effort in the sadhana.

I think my expressions were rather surrealistic, so you helled them.

What expressions?

Well, what I meant by "suggestions" was that I shall be led to think it was I, my great personal effort, that brought in the boldness of images, audacity, etc. Won't that be egoism and personal effort business?

Do you mean that you don't want your poetry to improve because that would make you egoistic? Very queer, sir.

What about the book, Sir?

What book?

[After I gave a brief interpretation of a poem of J's, Sri Aurobindo gave a further explanation.]

... Very complicated operation. Kindly explain or translate or do something to remove my bewilderment. I am afraid your prose is becoming as surrealistic as your poetry—full of ellipses and suppressed concepts. Today it has bewildered me thrice (see your poetry book,) where I have had to ask "what expressions?" "what book?"

If these internal discharges can be stopped halfway by will, what happens to them? Do they go back to the vesicles or come out in the urine?

Don't know—they don't give any sign afterwards.

... But is it not usual to have losses without dreams in sleep?

Yes, but that is quite another matter.

I hear it is common in people who have misused their parts, and the fact of their getting them after sleep, may be due to lack of voluntary nervous control.

In sleep.

Or if the prostates are enlarged, they may press on the vesicles more directly in the lying position, and thus cause the discharge.

Yes, constipation also produces discharge.

I can't think of any other possibility. Does he unconsciously do involuntary movements in sleep, I wonder!

Not likely.

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

Why? You think an Avatar has to take in the Bank troubles of his Chands? No fear!

How the devil could I mean that I don't want my poetry to improve? I certainly want it to improve to its zenith, but it must not bring in the egoistic idea that I have done it by my own power, as your expressions "you have to do this", "you have to bring this etc., etc." is very likely to feed the egoism. That's all, Sir! Not clear?

Well, sir, if I can't say you, must I write "that body" or "the phenomenon of an apparent Doctor-poet"? Or there must be an impersonal commotion in the apparently personal part which might be pragmatically called "doing this" or "bringing this". That would discourage egoism; but it might discourage my writing also as well as stifle your poetic inspiration while you stared at the roundabouts.

"What book?" you ask after 2 or 3 weeks? My "Mahabharat", Sir, or Ramayana, if you like!

Good heavens! who would have thought of that?

Yes, I tried reading The Mother, but the first chapters gave me a fright and made my blood freeze—"no use, no use" resounds everywhere, resulting in the idea of giving up even the ghost of Yoga!

I suggested to you to read the passages referring to the necessity of effort so long as the Force does not take up the whole business.

About "internal discharge", I had a talk with Rajangam. Could you please wait till tomorrow?

Yes, certainly.

...I am now waiting only for the Mahabharat, and in the meantime sharpening my sword!

Well, don't brandish the sword in the void—that's all.

[A long report on "internal discharge".]

Any remedy?

Y asked me if I had written to you anything about X, she would like to see your answers. Will you take the trouble, Sir, to cross the portions of your letters that I can show her? [Sri Aurobindo twice underlined "cross" and "can".]

Good Lord, sir, I can't do that. You forget that I will have to try to read my own hieroglyphs. I have no time for such an exercise—I leave it to others.

Today I have written 3 poems, Sir, from 2.30-4.45 p.m. Remarkable isn't it?

Colossal!

N had fever in the evening again... Couldn't find anything in the lungs. Still something incipient may be going on as he had already pleurisy. Anyway, we can give him some medicine—Ayurvedic or allopathic?

That's the doctors' business. Whatever has been good for him.

I took Sanganswami to the oculist. He will scratch the conjunctiva a little suspecting something there.

About the remedy I am afraid! [I suddenly took up N's report.]

Afraid of what? Will make things worse?

But, I suppose, some nerve tonics, sedatives and gland products will have an effect...

I read with amazement—thought it was all about Sanganswami's eye.

J says she makes no mental effort; tries to keep quiet, yet nothing comes down.

Difficulty of shunting the train.

Guru, here is a history, a prayer and a task! I hope you will note the dates of X's performances.¹¹¹

Noted, but he is sometimes late in his information. That doesn't matter though.

He has given me some work—shall I ask Anilbaran and Nolini? But for Anilbaran your sanction is necessary.

Sanction for what? The suggestion is rather vague.

Shall I send him Arjava's poems?

If Arjava consents.

You will note, Sir, he writes that he does not doubt that his material success and fame and glory are by your Force, but all doubts are about his yogic success. Can't understand his contradiction. Does he mean he has capacities in some lines which the Divine can push, but yogic capacity nil, so the Divine can't pull?

That's his latest idea—though not so late, for it was growing for some time.

Anyhow... There is going to be plenty of money, Sir, of which Mother has great need!

No objection if it comes.

Please explain your "shunting". How can the difficulty be solved?

When one has run always on one line with great success, it is difficult to shunt to another. Time, aspiration, inner working. Sorry if I am indefinite, but—

... Despair doesn't seem to help.

It doesn't.

On the other hand, it hinders, doesn't it?

Yes.

A quiet aspiration with faith works best.

Quite so.

Preaching?

Very correct preach.

I told J confidently that poetry is bound to develop.

Of course it will.

Today J named me an "angel of hope", Sir. From a "devil of despair" to an "angel of hope"? Your Yoga has worked, Sir! You can congratulate me a little.

Mille félicitations!

"Mille félicitations"? Thank you, Sir! But just note that it was with regard to poetry only. Yoga has to come. Without that no felicitations are any good, at least for me.

Well, well—all in due time—mille félicités as well as félicitations.

A funny thing happened last night. It began this way: since 6.30 p.m. I had been feeling the Mother's Presence, and more vividly yours, until I went to bed.

In the evening when I went to the pier, for a while your entire face appeared vividly before my eyes. I was so happy that I forgot the moon above and was drinking in your Presence. Then gradually it dissolved, leaving only the outline. At times it seemed to be before me, at others as if' the whole sky was pervaded by your Presence. I returned home, but went again to the pier at 9 p.m. with J. While she was talking, I was perceiving the outline of your Presence, and no other thought came in or went out. J's talk had no effect on it. Within I was automatically uttering your name and the Mother's.

At 10.30 p.m. I went to bed, after a short concentration. I was in a sort of semi-slumberous state wherein a great pressure was being exerted on the head. The whole body became hot and was perspiring. The pressure increased so much that I said I must come out of it or burst. It was such a possession. I relaxed myself' and rolled into sleep.

I hope you will pick the grain out of the chaff What sort of an affair is this, Sir? Trying to cut my throat or burst my head?

Very good indeed—that is something like a beginning.

Well, sir, the Presence not finding an entrance into your waking mind easy, tried to take advantage of half sleep to do it. (Half sleep is always a favourable condition for these things). But your body consciousness, not being familiar with such spiritual penetrations, got into a stew—and as a stew is accompanied by heat and steam,—so your body got hot and perspired.

Naturally, when it found so much resistance, it increased to meet the resistance.

Obviously, to burst is undesirable.

Throat not in the picture—Tried to steal a march into your head.

Did I do anything wrong by trying to relax?

It is better to relax than to burst.

...Sometimes I have felt inclined to doubt the Presence, but I think I should not, what?

Certainly not—doubt under such circumstances is perfectly imbecile.

Still a small snake of doubt says (not regarding yesterday's feeling, though), "It is all imagination—"

Rubbish!

It goes on "If not... why have you to concentrate and call the Presence? By its very nature the Presence should at once make you see that it is there as if it were an object before you, without making you imagine things."

Sir, is the Presence of a physical nature or a spiritual fact? And is the physical sense accustomed or able to see or feel spiritual things—a spiritual Presence, a non-material Form? To see the Brahman everywhere is not possible unless you develop the inner vision—to do that you have to concentrate. To see non-material forms is indeed possible for a few, because they have the gift by nature, but most can't do it without developing the subtle sight. It is absurd to expect the Divine to manifest his Presence without your taking any trouble to see it,—you have to concentrate.

Just now, as I am writing to you, I feel as if the Mother were looking at me and you too, but from your invulnerable fortress.

It simply means you have a subjective sense of our Presence. But must a subjective sense of things be necessarily a vain imagination? If so, no Yoga is possible. One has to take it as an axiom that subjective things can be as real as objective things. No doubt there may be and are such things as mental formations—but, to begin with, mental formations are or can be very powerful things, producing concrete results; secondly whether what one sees or hears is a mental formation or a real subjective object can only be determined when one has sufficient experience in these inward things.

What should i do to develop this experience further? It is the very Thing, you see, isn't it?

Yes, of course. What you have to do is to grow and let the experience grow.

Is this what you call going inward?

[Sri Aurobindo drew a line from the word "inward" leading to his reply.]

No, not quite—but it is evidently the result of some opening from within—for without that opening one cannot become aware of Presences or Forms that are super-physical in their nature.

This experience, I feel, is the means of escape from worldly pleasures, isn't it?

Yes.

I feel now some strength; nothing can disturb me in my relation with people. Good?

Exceedingly good.

Please give me some necessary instructions, not depending on my notes, as to what should be done. If I have seen the tail it must lead me to the head!

There is nothing to do but to go on concentrating and calling the Presence within and without you, the opening, the power to receive and let it come. The more the mind falls quiet during or as the result of concentration, the better (no other thought in or out). But no need to struggle for that, must come of itself by the concentration.

C is involved in a cheating case; by some compromises he can get out of it...

What does he mean by compromises? Lies? If he goes on with this sort of thing, how the devil is he ever to come out of his messes?

...Z attributes her trouble to R's insufficient or even negligent treatment. Strange! I saw that R took much care and he cured her of that terrible attack of hiccough. Such is life, Sir! What?

Z is a liar and says anything she wants to—she is also semi-hysteric and believes anything she wants to. Such is life and such are humans.

Shall we try Fandorine? Her back-ache also is due to retroversion of the uterus, probably.

If it is retroverted uterus, Fandorine will have no effect. If it is bad circulation etc., then it is the best. Anyway you may try it.

S.B. has intense itching—the whole body is swollen and red.

But what nature of eruption? She has sent a howl—can't sleep, etc.

B complains of more pain!

Yes, he has also sent an epistolary howl.

Suggesting enema from tomorrow. Lead and opium lotion for injection. This lotion, as you see, is sedative and astringent.

I suppose it can do no harm?

Is not B too sedentary for a man with piles?

The trouble is that people expect their ailments to disappear by a miracle! Doctors are not Gods and Gods are not always miraculous, are they?

Miracles can be done, but there is no reason why they should be all instantaneous, whether from Gods or doctors.

Suddenly at 5 p.m. B's pain vanished. so I justify his epistle, Sir! His thundering scowl burst your ear!

It wasn't a scowl, even a thundering surrealist one—it was a tympanum-piercing howl—so one had to do something.

K gave her baby 2 spoons of milk of magnesia. Result—copious motions with blood and mucus discharge; no sleep, restlessness, crying, etc... Looks like irritation due to heavy dose of magnesia! Must K's babies have something every time she comes here?

Well, if she gives them 2 spoons of milk of magnesia, they are bound to. That was the way D's last baby got killed here, though M began it before she came. But the result was a dysentery which nothing can cure. But does your Science approve of purging babies of that age? In France, Mother says, the doctors (those who specialise for children at any rate) forbid purgatives being given on any excuse to children under twelve months.

Some Force from you is wanted, for the baby can't aspire and surrender, Sir!

Exactly! that's why milk of magnesia should not be given. Any baby treated in that way will need much aspiration and surrender to counteract the results.

[About the patient with the "internal discharge":] He says that only after slight sleep or rest he feels giddy, weak and the condition lasts for 2 or 3 days. From this he gathers that there has been the discharge.

It is only gathered then! I was insisting that it was not possible, but the fellow ne voulait pas démordre.¹¹²

But do you know that he is awfully, terribly and damnably constipated?

I knew he was constipative, but not so adverbially.

By the way, I want to know, just as a piece of information, what Mother is going to do about the awful smell around Belle Vue.

Smell was that of Godard's prawns. The Municipality has just thundered at him and given notice to the prawns to quit. I am told that there is a sensible odorous amelioration since the last two days.

2 p.m.

I asked Mother through Nolini, whether I should give an emetine injection to K's baby, she said—No medicines to babies under 1 year.

Emetine injection to a child of that age is not approved.

What Mother says is that this is not an illness, but an accident caused by the purgative given. The tissues have been hurt and have to recover. What would be best is to give not a medicine properly speaking but something which would protect the injured issues while they reformed. Mother does not know whether what is given to adults for that purpose can be administered to children.

They say that the pains seem to have decreased, as the child slept well.

As regards diet, he is given freely barley water, whey and glucose water. Shall we give milk?

Milk might be too heavy. The diet seems all right.

Now I am wondering if Nolini heard it right. Did Mother disapprove only of emetine or all medicines?

Mother had said to me about the purgatives, not about medicines. Emetine for a child like that she would of course never sanction.

[Between 2 p.m. and 8.30 p.m.]

31.3.37

Nirod

In view of the nature of the illness of K's child and its development, I think we cannot take any longer the responsibility—if you think best, we can call in Dr. Valle who, I hear, has a child of his own and ought to have some experience with the maladies of children. You might see him at once, if possible.

Sri Aurobindo

[Evening]

...Now emetine being out of the question, we can give what we gave yesterday: 1) Bismuth 2) Soda Bicarb 3) Kaolin...

Kaolin was the kind of thing Mother was thinking of as utilisable.

I asked Nolini, he said—no medicines, no medicines. But your evening answer [to the note written at 2 p.m.] doesn't say that. It says—no emetine, no purgative, but "something which would protect the injured tissues..." Again at the end you say "Mother had said to me about the purgatives, not about medicines." It is all very puzzling an d I am in a fix...

Well, since medicines have been used, and the atmosphere is not the right one for No-medicine, you can go on,—but nothing violent like emetine. The Mother offered to call Valle and in that case of course the responsibility would be with him, but K has refused.

What do you say, Sir, about this poem? Somewhat forced and artificial, no rhythm?

I am afraid so. Rather drum-drum-drummy-brang-clangy.

I have marked in two places, please see if they jar your ears.

I am afraid they do.

April 1937

Have you ever had a headache by giving up tea?...

Yes, of course. Whenever you stop it suddenly, gives headache in revenge.

Today I stopped the habit of morning tea. The result: a headache since 11 a.m. Or is it the Force trying to break my precious head?

No, it is the tea-habit, furious at being given up.

About K's baby—there seems hardly any improvement in the number of stools, except that blood has stopped. Don't you think the number should decrease now; if possible, stop altogether?

Decrease certainly—slow down to nothing—but sudden stoppage might not be so good—although usually if it is the right medicine it does happen.

Does Mother favour Dover's powder? That will reduce the number which was 20 today.

Can't suggest anything,—since medicine needed, must find your way.

20 motions in a day too much for a child of that age.

4.30 p.m.

Guru, finished! My concentration, peace, bliss, all gone! At this moment I am dull, dull like clay and hence am compelled to write and groan.

After I wrote about the experience, the thing gradually melted away. Why? The devil knows. All I have done, if they can come under any criminal section, is that I have enjoyed some food with Anilkumar and Nishikanta, and narrated the experience to X.

That would have been better left undone.

... Suddenly to drop into an underground cell is, I don't know what.

Everybody drops. I have dropped myself thousands of times during the sadhana. What rose-leaf princess sadhaks you all are!

Sometimes I cannot but subscribe to S's opinion that this Yoga is not for us... Some say the preliminary stage is the same in all Yogas; only the later stage is difficult here. I don't think it is true, for here, from the very start, it works for the change of nature, working to the very details, which other Yogas know nothing about. They leave the nature out altogether.

According to those who have practised them, in the old Yogas one has to be prepared to pass 12 years simply disciplining, disciplining without a single experience before one can expect as a right any single experience. If one gets experiences so much the better, but one can't expect or claim.

Therefore one has to build a strong foundation; consequently more time, more bricks, more work, more money, etc., are needed. Then how can the initial stage be the same as in other Yogas?

Allow me to point out that here there are any number of people who have had experiences which would be highly prized outside. There are even one or two who have had the Brahman realisation in a single year. But it is the fashion here to shout and despair and say we have got nothing and nobody can get anything in this Yoga. I believe the pretensions of the Pondicherry sadhaks to have an easy and jolly canter to the goal or else think themselves baffled martyrs would be stared at with surprise in any other Asram.

Perhaps or certainly, you are giving Force to K's baby, but why no visible effect? He is an infant, no resistance on his side... You cured D's acute abscess in the abdomen, simply by your Force and no medicine. Where is the trouble here?

Don't talk nonsense. It is because he is an infant that the Force cannot work easily on him D is not an infant.

I am rather worried. No blessed opening in any direction. One has to grope and grope. You don't give any blessed intuition either!

The Mother has no intuition for medicines for infants—You must find out yourself.

If you like, I will completely stop all medicines and leave him to you and Mother.

That we cannot tell you to do. It could only have been guaranteed at the beginning and with a proper mental atmosphere in the people.

Shall I report twice a day about the baby?

Yes, certainly.

(1.30. p.m.)

I thought breast milk should be suspended for K's baby, when you said that milk is heavy [31.3.37].

It was supposed that you meant cow's milk. Mother's milk, if the mother is healthy, is the best medicine for these things—Calomel is not to be given. Also it is better not to follow R's advice in these matters or to try too many medicines. The mother's milk and sleep are the most important things for cure—some medicine is a help at the most. More—too many medicines—make things worse rather than better. Anyhow what the Mother wants is for it to be possible for the mother and child to go to Madras tomorrow night with D. She has ordered K to that effect.

[Evening]

[After the summary of A's prolonged treatment had been given:]

So is it hopeful or hopeless?

Hopeful on the whole.

I could not write poetry for 2 days. Along with the heavy work, a disgust for poetry has seized me, just when things were coming up. Misfortunes are usual with me, so no use complaining, what?

Rubbish! Such "misfortunes" are usual with everybody—including myself.

[Afternoon]

... It seems K and her child may go, though perhaps a little risky, as absolute rest is indicated...

He will not be running about in the train. What is meant by absolute rest for a child of 4 months? To stay here is much more risky.

Mother's milk and sleep are now available, though the former not much. What about the number of stools? Can you help that?

Medically, the effective treatment for the case and the person has not been found—Yogically, the mother has proved to be not a receptive instrument and the child also does not answer to the Force except for a short while and in a slight degree—the wisest thing for them is therefore to go.

[Evening]

For heaven's sake don't include yourself in the misfortunes!

But I never said that I was one of the misfortunes.

I am not Brahma to take them as part of the lila!

I thought everybody was Brahma, সর্ব্বমিদং ব্রহ্ম.¹¹³ Anyway you are trying to do Yoga, so the sooner you adopt the lila attitude the better. Moreover, plenty of people undergo these "misfortunes" without lamentations—take them as the ordinary stuff of life.

No poetry today either! Hellish!

Well, you can try to straddle back into heaven tomorrow.

For K's baby, by "absolute rest" I meant that the jerkings in the train may not be very desirable.

I don't see why it should be worse than other rockings.

I have consulted all the writings on diarrhoea, all give only symptomatic treatment.

There you are in company for once with the homeopaths.

But whatever little the doctors have found by experience to be effective, is not acceptable to you. For instance they recommend Calomel, you say not to be given...

It is no use discussing these matters—the Mother's views are too far removed from the traditional nostrums to be understood by a medical mind, except 'those that have got out of the traditional groove or those who after long experience have seen things and can become devastatingly frank about the limitations of their own "science".

You remember Valle's treatment of Valentine? He gave all the blessed things one after another—2 or 3 emetine in spite of negative stools, opium, etc., till he cured her.

That is to say, he experimented at random—till Valentine cured in spite of all this ill-treatment of her body. And yet you call medicine a "science".

If I had dealt with the case, I think you wouldn't have allowed me emetine at all? Why? Because of my inexperience or you don't want that anything drastic should happen by our treatment?

Certainly not, under your responsibility. Doctors acting on their own can try the kill or cure method—it's their own business.

I admit it is quite possible for Science to be wrong as it has been shown repeatedly.

Very obviously.

I would have tried anti-serum and astringents, opium etc. and I think most of the doctors would have done that.

Try everything one after the other and together and see if any hits—that seems to be the method.

K doesn't believe that milk of magnesia is the predisposing cause of the child's illness.

Of course she won't, as that would make her responsible.

D says it is quite harmless. But it may be harmful also and it was so here.

If it may be harmful, how can it be declared harmless?

Otherwise I don't see why after 6 or 8 motions, diarrhoea should have started.

Ideas differ. Both the Mother and Pavitra were horrified at the idea of a child of 4 months being given a purgative. The leading Children's doctor in France told the Mother no child under 12 months should be given a purgative, as it is likely to do great harm and may be dangerous. But here, we understand, it is the practice to dose children freely with purgatives from their day of birth almost. Perhaps that and overadministration of medicines is one cause of excessive infant mortality.

You didn't say anything about the medicines for S.

What medicines? Sudarshan? you say she refuses.

Have you observed that the bodies of sadhaks and sadhikas have become abnormally sensitive? Even a small dose of medicine produces reactions. Good or bad?

It shows a more sensitive body consciousness—good, if it becomes more sensitive also to the Force.

Last evening's curry of potato and tomato didn't keep well, I am afraid. I took it at about 8.30 p.m. and found a bad smell.

Mother tasted it just after meditation—it was then very good still. But tomatoes can't be kept too long, especially in this hot weather—unless it is very carefully done. Up to 8.30 was probably too long and it must have turned.

I have scratched the whole poem out of existence! And yet when I completed it, I was so happy thinking it was something great! Fool!

Every poet is such a fool. His work is done in an exalting excitement of the vital mind—judgment and criticism can only come when he has cooled down.

Well, Sir, any good this poem, or goes to the same basket?

This one is very fine. No W.P.B., please.

I can't get the current back. Even the taste has disappeared. On the contrary a fear has grown, lest my poems be good-for-nothing.

Nonsense! No poet can always write well—If even Homer nods, Nirod can often doze—that's no reason for getting morally bilious

Once I asked you to give some advice as regards the treatment of a patient, you replied: "... I have no medico in me, not even a latent medico." [1.4.35]

Of course not. If it were there, I would develop it and run the Dispensary myself. What would be the need of a Nirod or Becharlal or Ramchandra?

Then the other day regarding K's baby you wrote that the Mother has no intuition for infants.

No intuition for stuffing infants with heterogeneous medicines.

Well then, if you have no latent medico and Mother has no intuition for infants, can you tell me how by the force of devotion, faith, surrender, etc., is one going to get guidance from you? If the Divine hasn't got it, where the deuce will it come from?

What logic! Because Mother and myself are not Engineers, therefore Chandulal can't develop the right intuition in engineering? or because neither I nor Mother are experts in Gujerati prosody, therefore Punjalal can't develop the inspiration for his poems?

If the Divine can't guide me externally which is much easier, how can he guide internally, and if he has no medico, wherefrom will the medico come to him within?

Oh Lord! what a question! To guide internally is a million times easier than to guide externally. Let us suppose I want General Miaja to beat Franco's fellows back at Guadalajara (please pronounce properly), I put the right force on him and he wakes up and, with his military knowledge and capacity, does the right thing and it's done. But if I, having no latent or patent military genius or knowledge in me, write to him saying "Do this, do that", he won't do it and I wouldn't be able to do it either. It is operations of two quite different spheres of consciousness. You absolutely refuse to make the necessary distinction between the two fields and their processes and then you jumble the two together and call it logic.

If the medico can be revealed from within, why could it not be revealed from without and tell me to give antidys. serum to K's baby, which I hear has been administered and found to be effective?

Damn it, man! Intuition and revelation are inner things—they don't belong to the outer mind.

If you or Mother can't guide me concretely, how will the guidance come later on, I wonder.

Do you imagine that I tell you inwardly or outwardly what expressions to use in your Bengali poems when you are writing? Still you write from an inspiration which I have set going.

Can you satisfy my logical brain box, Sir?

Your logical brain box, sir, is such a rule-of-thumb, Dr. Johnsonian sort of affair that it is quite impossible to satisfy. If ever you succeed in emptying the brain box of its miscellaneous contents and being mentally silent, then you will discover how these things are done.

If I am to carry on the medical work well, I would like and expect to have an opening in that line... Please don't say that I cogitate and hesitate. It is precisely that that I want to avoid. Shall I adopt the surrealistic method, i.e. to keep quiet for a moment and whatever strikes first, go ahead with it; only be careful in case of poisons?

There is a vegetable called "bubble and squeak". That describes the two methods you propose. "Bubble" is to go on tossing symptoms about in the head and trying to discover what they point to—that's your method. "Squeak" is to dash at a conclusion (supported by a quotation) and ram some inappropriate medicine down the patient's throat,—that's X's method—But the proper method is neither to bubble nor to squeak.

You remember once I told you of this surrealistic method and you cried Good Lord!? [28.10.35, p. 365]

I did and I repeat it; I don't want this Asram transferred to the next world by your powerful agency.

Once Mother asked me to try this method, i.e. instead of analysing the various possibilities and probabilities and then diagnosing by elimination etc., just keep quiet and go at it.

Well, so that's how the Mother's statements are understood! A free permit for anything and everything calling itself an intuition to go crashing into the field of action! Go at it, indeed! Poor it!

What the Mother says in the matter is what she said to Dr. Manilal with his entire agreement—viz. Reading from symptoms by the doctors is usually a mere balancing between possibilities (of course except in clear and simple cases) and the conclusion is a guess. It may be a right guess and then it will be all right, or it may be a wrong guess and then all will be wrong unless Nature is too strong for the doctor and overcomes the consequences of his error—or at the least the treatment will be ineffective. On the contrary if one develops the diagnostic flair, one can see at once what is the real thing among the possibilities and see what is to be done. That is what the most successful doctors have; they have this flashlight which shows them the true point. Manilal agreed and said the cause of the guessing was that there were whole sets of symptoms which could belong to any one of several diseases and to decide is a most delicate and subtle business, no amount of book knowledge or reasoning will ensure a right decision. A special insight is needed that looks through the symptoms and not merely at them—This last sentence, by the way, is my own, not Manilal's. About development of intuition, afterwards—no time tonight.

Regarding the vaccination you referred to, shall I ask the hospital doctor to come and do a few cases and then from the next day I can do; or shall I ask them to show me a few cases at the hospital? Either can be arranged for. Valle says all the members have to be vaccinated. André says all are not necessary. He has asked me to see him tomorrow morning.

The letter sent to us by Valle with Gaffiero's counter-signature expressly offered to us the management of the whole affair by our own doctors, so that there should be no intervention of the authorities with all its inconveniences—we have only to make a report of the persons vaccinated and their reactions. They, if we have to vaccinate at all, are just the conditions Mother wants. She does not want their doctors or infirmiers¹¹⁴ to come in. So you will avoid that. Ask them to show you a few cases so that you can do the thing yourself—that is the only course Mother sanctions.

Valle of course had to say that everybody was to be vaccinated, but really they are offering us by this arrangement some freedom in the matter which we shall not have if they come in. The Mother proposes to have the workmen and servants vaccinated and a small number of the sadhaks, especially those who go out and mix with the town people—enough to make a sufficient show on paper. She expects that Gaffiero will pass the thing and let the matter drop without insisting more—he is very favourable to the Asram. Only the thing had better be completed before he goes to Europe.

Valle seemed to say that one of their members has to be present, to write down the reports etc. which has to be done in a special way and on the spot. It can't be done by one person. I said we have assistants, we can very well manage it, once shown how. As I pressed my point, Valle seemed rather annoyed thinking, perhaps, "What's the harm if just a compounder or infirmier comes?"

In their letter they very distinctly stated that they did not want to impose their doctors and infirmiers on us, we could do it well enough on our own and they wanted only our report as to persons vaccinated, reactions, etc. Now they are going back on what they said. I suppose it is because you have shown too clearly that you were somewhat new over the matter—

He also said, "It may not be effective, for the vaccine may solidify or get spoilt in some way."

It is true of course about the vaccine.

André seemed more liberal yesterday. He said he would come and do the whole thing. He will perhaps bring an assistant.

Do the whole? In a single day? with the same knife? with what kind of sterilisation?

He didn't insist on all the members. So I suppose he can bring the compounder and finish the servants in one day.

Certainly, all the members are not to be vaccinated. There are people in ill health, some with weak hearts etc. You are going to expose them also to the risk of 'the reactions'? Sometimes the vaccination knocks people ill for a day or two. If many of the workers are to be down together, who will do the work? People in a state of debility, e.g., N, T, L, X, A, S, those who have already fever, or skin disease, those who are otherwise contra-indicated are all to be included in the hecatomb? The whole thing is preposterous and you must not allow yourself to be hustled into doing anything they tell you. We must first know what we are prepared to do, who have not on any account to be exposed to this poisoning, etc., etc. and do only what we consent to, not what they insist on. I am farther informed that for two days after vaccination one is supposed not to do any physical work or exertion. How then are you going to vaccinate all the servants or workmen in one day? If there are 20 or 30 people down with fever together are you going to trot about all day and night looking after all? This won't do at all. Everything will have to be carefully considered and arranged beforehand and you must not allow yourself to be hustled into any premature action and arrangements. There is no epidemic raging that all should be done in maddening haste—it must be done little by little in a manageable way. We have not to take them into confidence as to whom we vaccinate and whom we don't, either, or let them know that we are not doing it to all—unless they themselves say it need not be done to all.

The only way out for the vaccination seems to be that the compounder can come and do a few servants at a time (3 or 4) and you can be there and learn and afterwards you can take up the rest of the thing yourself.

Guru, C's letter! Do you notice what he says about outside disciples and D's going? Any truth?

Can't make out anything from the fellow's Bengali flourishes. What does he say? I can only make out that B has told to him what Bishwanath told to B about what Mother told to Bishwanath; but what it was I can't make out—Only that for that reason D and others were allowed to flit. Kindly enlighten.

Today 4 persons were vaccinated. It is a very simple affair, but there is going to be trouble, it seems. The assistant says it is not possible for him to come every day only for 4 persons, neither can he leave the vaccines etc. without Valle's permission. He says there's hardly any reaction, except a slight fever in children. So what's the harm in vaccinating more people?... The thing is that they have stock vaccine tubes (sealed) for 50 people—not less than that. Once a tube is unsealed, it has to be used up in a day, or discarded. Today already we had to throw away some. If, by chance, there is none one day, we can simply drop that day. But for that, the assistant said, Valle's permission is required, otherwise we can buy from the pharmacy. If Valle doesn't allow the first, we'll be compelled to buy. But what a cost it'll be! I'm sceptical about Valle's permission, because he insists on the staff's presence and I don't know that he would like only 4 persons at a time. So what's to be done about it? Gaffiero will have no objection, I think. But Valle is in charge. And the difficulty is how to say all this in French.

And yet it was Valle himself who wrote saying that they would not impose their doctors or infirmiers upon us!

Valle and Gaffiero don't pull on well together.

Mother has asked Pavitra to see Gaffiero tomorrow. Pavitra will be going at 9, so you must go to Pavitra's before 9.

"Creating language from the sleep of God", how can one do that?

From where else are you going to do it? The Word comes out of the Silence. I have myself written about Inspiration bringing "thoughts Hewn from the silence of the Ineffable."¹¹⁵ If anybody can't understand, tant pis pour lui.¹¹⁶

I have fallen into the old pit of lack of enthusiasm. Source exhausted, it appears!

Source of enthusiasm? The source of poetry seems to be there, all right.

The vaccination business has been now fixed. If we do only 4 persons, it will take too long. (Can't be finished before Gaffiero goes in May.) Suppose, after seeing the reaction, if any, of the fellows done, we increase the number to 10—half from B.S. and half domestic, or half domestic and half sadhaks?

Workmen not to be touched till the roof is finished—on Tuesday. Then you can have 4 + 4 servants and workmen, + 2 sadhaks. But get a list of sadhaks done (in consultation with Amrita) and we will mark off those who must not be poisoned. For the rest you will have to do those whom you can induce to make themselves victims on the sacred altar of Science, so that Valle can say with self-satisfaction "Ah ha! the Asram has been vaccinated."

How funny that Valle acceded to Pavitra and was an adamantine rock to me!

Valle said it was only out of compassion for you because you said you knew nothing about it and were so much at sea! He did not put it in that figurative language but it was the purport of his plea.

I am afraid D [a child] has obstinate constipation. I am damned, for, except enema, castor-oil is the drug for children in our "Science".

All "science" does not recommend castor-oil for children—I think it is a nineteenth century fad which has prolonged itself. The Mother's "children's doctor" told her it should not be done—also in her own case when a child the doctors peremptorily stopped it on the ground that it spoiled the stomach and liver. I suppose you will say doctors. disagree? They do! When K's child reached Madras, the first doctor said "Stop mother's milk for three days", the second said "Mother's milk to be taken at once, at once!" So, sir. Anyhow for D Mother proposes diet first—small bananas Pavitra will give, very good for constipation—papaiya if available in the garden. Also as he is pimply, cocoanut water on an empty stomach. Afterwards we can see if medicine is necessary.

I wonder why you flared up at the idea of my using the surrealist method in treating patients.

I didn't flare up. I was cold with horror.

By "go at it" I obviously didn't mean sending your Asram to the next world! No, not at all. I meant only this: say a case comes with pain in the stomach, loss of appetite, etc., I simply keep silent, suddenly comes to me the suggestion—gastritis, without any analysis of symptoms.

Doctors don't mean it, when they do that kind of thing. It is not deliberate murder with them, but involuntary or, shall we say, experimental homicide.

Mother told me to practise the intuitive method, I thought. "Go at it" was simply my military language! I thought this is one of the ways to develop intuition—if it can be developed. Otherwise how the deuce is it going to come? Going to open suddenly?

She said that you have to stop jumping about from guess to guess and develop the diagnostic insight—seeing what comes from the intuition and then looking at the case to see if it is right. But to take the first thing that comes and act on it, is guessing pure and simple. If after a time you find that your perceptions turn out to have been automatically right each time, then you can be confident that you have got the thing.

How do the most successful doctors have intuition, by a flash or what you call an inner sight?

Some have it by nature and develop it by experience.

Or do they get it by plenty of experience, treating, curing, killing, etc.?

Well, there are some who after killing a few hundreds, learn to kill only a few. But that is not intuition; that is simply learning from experience.

Rajangam thinks that behind their success there is plenty of experience; their familiarity with various diseases, and manifestations, shows them immediately what's wrong with a case.

Of course, experience is of great importance, but still it is not everything.

Book knowledge will not always succeed in practice, experience will do; but experience must stand on adequate book knowledge. Since you have neither book knowledge nor experience, you have no medico—so no intuition, I suppose.

Excuse me, you can have intuitions—with book-knowledge or even experience.

You will perhaps say that there are plenty of doctors with plenty of experience, but that they are not all successful. True, but the other thing is also true that successful doctors are supported by their varied experience.

Some succeed from the beginning.

How do you solve the tangle?

What is the difficulty? Experience is necessary, book-knowledge is useful for the man who wants to be a perfect doctor; observation and discrimination are also excellent provided they are correct observation and discrimination; but all these are only helps for the flair to move about supported by a perfect mental confidence in the flair.

Then about the inner and outer guidance: of course all this trouble comes from not knowing anything about the queer action of the complex Force formula.

There is also some inability to grasp the philosophy of things.

The internal guidance is possible only when the subject has sufficient receptivity, isn't it?

Certainly.

When one hasn't that receptivity, outer guidance will surely be the only course.

How is the outer guidance to give intuition? It only by itself supplies a ready-made course of action which the person blindly follows.

For instance, you give me Force for English poetry—some lines come all right, others are jumbled, wrong, etc., and these things you correct by outer guidance, i.e. by correcting, changing, etc. till I become sufficiently receptive and then only a few changes will be necessary.

I do so in your English poetry because I am an select I nowadays avoid poetry. In Bengali poetry, I don't do it. I only natives offered by yourself. Mark that for Amal correcting or changing as far as possible—that is in order to encourage the inspiration to act in himself. Sometimes I see what he should have written but do not tell it to him, leaving him to get it or not from my silence.

You say the same thing about Gen. Miaja with his military knowledge and capacity. Exactly, if he has these things, he can receive your right Force.

It does not follow. Another man may have the knowledge and receive nothing—If he receives, his knowledge and capacity help the Force to work out the details.

It seems that though you have no patent or latent military capacity, your Force has, and it wakes up in the man the right judgments etc.

Not in this life.

This is all a mystery beyond my ken.

May I ask why? Your idea is that either I must inspire him specifically in every detail, making a mere automaton of him, or if I don't do that, I can do nothing with him? What is this stupid mechanical notion of things?

The Force having military knowledge, poetic power, healing virtues, etc., the embodiment of the Force also must have the latent general, poet, medico, etc.—sounds strange to me otherwise.

Because you have the damnably false idea that nothing can be done in the world except by mental means—that Force must necessarily be a mental Force and can't be anything else.

The strangest thing of all is that if the Divine wills, why can't an effective drug in a case be revealed to him, medico or no medico?

Why the devil should He will like that in all cases?

I am to induce the victims for the sacrifice? Good heavens! Do you want me to be sacrificed by your disciples? Please mark off those who are to be vaccinated, instead of the other way round.

Can't do that.

Of course my suggestion of voluntary sacrifice was a joke. It is an official order from the Government department, and we can't contemptuously wave it aside—we can only minimise its incidence.

As to Force let me point out a few elementary notions which you ignore.

(1) The Force is a divine Force, so obviously it can apply itself in any direction; it can inspire the poet, set in motion the soldier, doctor, scientist, everybody.

(2) The Force is not a mental Force—it is not bound to go out from the Communicator with every detail mentally arranged, precise in its place, and communicate it mentally to the Recipient. It can go out as a global Force containing in itself the thing to be done, but working out the details in the recipient and the action as the action progresses. It is not necessary for the Communicant to accompany mentally the Force, plant himself mentally in the mind of the Recipient and work out mentally there the details. He can send the Force or put on the Force, leave it to do its work and attend himself to other matters. In the world most things are worked out by such a global Force containing the results in itself, but involved, concealed, and working them out in a subsequent operation. The seed contains the whole potentiality of the tree, the gene contains the potentiality of the living form that it initiates, etc., etc., but if you examine the seed and gene ad infinitum, still you will not find there either the tree or the living being. All the same the Force has put all these potentialities there in a certain evolution which works itself out automatically.

(3) In the case of a man acting as an instrument of the Force the action is more complicated, because consciously or unconsciously the man must receive, also he must be able to work out what the Force puts through him. He is a living complex instrument, not a simple machine. So if he has responsiveness, capacity, etc. he can work out the Force perfectly, if not he does it imperfectly or frustrates it. That is why we speak of and insist on the perfectioning of the instrument. Otherwise there would be no need of sadhana or anything else—any fellow would do for any blessed work and one would simply have to ram things into him and see them coining out in action.

(4) The Communicant need not be an all-round many-sided Encyclopaedia in order to communicate the Force for various purposes. If we want to help a lawyer to succeed in a case, we need not be perfect lawyers ourselves knowing all law, Roman, English or Indian and supply him all his arguments, questions, etc., doing consciously and mentally through him his whole examination, cross-examination and pleading. Such a process would be absurdly cumbrous, incompetent and wasteful. The prearrangement of the eventful result and the capacity for making him work his instruments in the right way and for arranging events also so as to aid towards the result are put into the Force when it goes to him, they are therefore inherent in its action and the rest is a question of his own receptivity, responsiveness etc. Naturally the best instrument even is imperfect (unless he is a perfected Adhar), and mistakes may be committed, other suggestions accepted etc., etc., but if the instrument is sufficiently open, the Force can set the thing to rights and the result still comes. In some or many cases the Force has to be renewed from time to time or supported by fresh Force. In some directions particular details have to be consciously attended to by the Communicant. All that depends on circumstances too multitudinous and variable to be reduced to rule. There are general lines, in these matters, but no rules; the working of a non-mental Force has necessarily to be plastic, not rigid and tied to formulas. If you want to reduce things to patterns and formulas, you will necessarily fail to understand the workings of a spiritual (non-mental) Force.

(5) All that I say here refers to spiritual Force. I am not speaking of the Supramental.

(6) Also please note that this is all about the working of Force on or through people: it has nothing to do with intuition which is quite another matter. Also it does not preclude always and altogether a plenary and detailed inspiration from a Communicant to a recipient—such things happen, but it is not necessary to proceed in that way, nor below the Supermind or supramentalised Overmind can it be the ordinary , process.

[I sent a translation of C's Bengali letter where he wrote about his lapses.]

...Well, well, I am not so bad after all, am I?

No,—I should say that compared with most people you are quite decent!

But C seems to have made a lot of progress, hasn't he?

Can't certify so long as the brothel walks about with him.

C writes about your letter "abortioning" him with regard to his falsehood. Can't you abortion him of his brothel? (I suppose it is some other word, but it reads like "abortioning".)

You may read, if you like, my letter of 2.4.37. The first part of the letter hardly requires the answer you gave, as fortunately I have got back the condition. But I would like to know if telling of experiences may have a bad effect.

It may.

The difficulty of your Yoga, even in the first stage, seems to me to be greater compared with the other yogas.

The difficulty is a myth. The difficulty is in the change of Nature or transformation which comes afterwards. Otherwise the difficulty in the beginning is the same for this or any other Yoga. Some go fast, some go slow here, also elsewhere.

Sir, here is the enlightenment on C's letter [7.4.37]: "I have heard from Benoy that Sri Aurobindo is now concentrating on outside sadhaks. A day may come when his work may be done even by those staying outside. Benoy has heard it from Bishwanath who has been told by the Mother, that is why D and a few others have been allowed to come out. Any truth in it?"

No truth whatever! Mother said nothing to Radhakanta.¹¹⁷ It is probably one of Benoy's romances or it may have been built on some casual remark of R—which was immediately turned into "Mother's saying" with additional superstructures.

This sort of notion is unfortunately current even in the Asram.

There are hundreds of false notions current in the Asram.

The other day K was saying that you have written to him that, even living outside, sadhana can be done, for it is done by the psychic which can receive from anywhere.

Of course it can—there are plenty of people doing it outside in Rangpur, Chittagong, Gujerat and elsewhere. How far they will get is another matter.

So staying here is not absolutely necessary; and simple staying won't give anything either.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "simple".]

Of course not. If simple staying did it, the servants and workmen would be yogis by this time.

... I told him that there is surely a difference between doing sadhana here and doing it outside. There is a great thing in the Mother's touch etc... He said all that is ভাঁওতা!¹¹⁸

? Don't know the word.

Is it only for physical transformation that staying here is necessary? Otherwise sincere sadhana can be done elsewhere as well as here.

I don't suppose the later stages of the transformation including the physical would be possible elsewhere. In fact in those outside none of the three transformations seems to have begun. They are all preparing. Here there are at least a few who have started one or two of them. Only that does not show outside. The physical or external alone shows outside.

About the vaccination, Chandulal says some carpenters and painters will not be working on the roof building. So shall I start with them?

That is all right.

Then, as to the sadhaks, if you don't give a notice, I am afraid everyone will refuse or individually approach you for permission to be left out.

A notice would have to be given, of course. I am marking on the list with a red dot those whom we positively want omitted (but it does not mean all else have to be vaccinated) and with a blue dot those who ought to vaccinate without doubt because they go out and mix with town people or mix with them in some other way. A red line means visitors or short time residents who need not be bothered. Over the rest I am still cogitating.

Can your letter on Force be read out to a limited few?

Yes, but only a few. No copies.

Guru, another wire from Chand! "Nirod Asram Pondicherry Biswanath asks look arya Correspondence Tomorrow blessings." If you understand what he means, please give an answer, if any!

You can wire to him that it is not sanctioned. Nolini will write to Radhakanta.

Besides those whom you have vetoed for vaccination, I'm afraid many others have to be done so. I had to exclude M, J, B and S, for they had pox before.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "had pox before".]

Those who have had pox once are not vaccinated? That's all right. I forgot myself, I think, old Laxmi. Shailaja says he had "got it" (I don't know whether vaccination or smallpox) a year ago—I have told him to report the fact to you. Vithalbhai has, I suppose, to be exempted, he has several ailments; he says he has been twice vaccinated. Ambu and Nagin are under R's treatment, the latter for debility—they also I suppose go out. There may be others.

Why, Sir, you didn't know that smallpox fellows are not required to be vaccinated?... A book says one attack generally protects for life, but second attacks are not very uncommon and the protection tends to wear off in time. My theory smashed? Well, exception proves the rule, what?

Well, there are people who say that smallpox attacks immunise for only a few years. But if it is as you say, then there are others, I suppose. There is Amani¹¹⁹ among the servants for instance who nearly died of smallpox. I myself had a slight attack in Baroda soon after I came from England—so you needn't try to come up and vaccinate me.

You have written to Shailaja that the effect of vaccination lasts 5 years, and revaccination is not required within that period.

That is what one book says.

But I gather that French regulation requires vaccination every year...

Why not every week?

Whom are you vaccinating? Mother wants to have the report every day.

How do you like this poem,¹²⁰ Sir?

Well, the rhythm seems to me all right and the poem is exceedingly beautiful. Al.

Why the devil am I having a headache these last 2 days?

Supramental trying to find a place in your head?

[Regarding the interpretation of a poem of J's:] When there is no fire of Aspiration, the psychic opens the door?

It can, by a pressure from above. It may be that the preparation was over, so that the fire like everything else had sunk into silence, waiting for the descent under whose pressure the psychic door flew open.

That is hardly possible in your Yoga. No aspiration, no nothing—says your teaching.

Never taught anything of the kind. I got the blessed Nirvana without even wanting it. Aspiration is the first or usual means, that is all.

You seem to be, by the way, like Bernard Shaw in matters of vaccination. Do you deny the profits of one of the greatest discoveries of medicine? Not for yogis, but for the public?

Can't discuss that. Have not denied partial effectivity, though complete it is not, since it has to be renewed every year, as you say. The whole Pasteurian affair is to me antipathetic—it is dark and dangerous in principle, however effective.

You struck me dumb with surprise, Sir! That poem was exceedingly fine? I thought absolutely otherwise. What does your "A" mean at the end?

It is you who surprise me. I should have thought the poetical quality of these stanzas would have been self-evident. On metre etc. I cannot pronounce, for in Bengali metre I am not an expert—so I only wrote that it seemed all right. What I wrote was of the poetical quality and after reading it 2 or 3 times to make sure, the estimate remains. It is Al (not A)—A1 means of the first quality.

We are short of three persons for vaccination; I propose to make them up tomorrow.

Make up—how? I thought you had daily only enough for tell vaccinations, and, if all were not used, those remaining over have to be thrown away?

Well, don't discuss the effectivity of vaccination, if you don't like, but please enlighten us with your Supramental Light as we are rather hidebound in our glorious "science".

No time for showing the glorious Science its errors. Too busy trying to get the supramental Light down to waste time on that. Afterwards, sir, afterwards.

Sada & Co. refuse the vaccination point blank! Till now none has succeeded in doing them, they say! Well?

Nothing to be said, unless you tell them to go and be d—d in their own way!

After reading so many Bengali poems and Dilipda's learned lessons on metre, you ought not to say that you are not an expert in Bengali metre, Sir!

Read them? Flip-flopped through them, you mean—how could all that strenuous technicality remain in the head?

Look at this Bengali sonnet. How is it?

Very fine indeed except for the concluding couplet which might be called a flat drop! What the deuce, sir!? What kind of coupletitis is this illness of yours? anaemia finalis.

Another letter from C, saying that your chiding had wonderful effect, Sir. Lots of worries gone! So it is not my "abortioning", Sir! [10.4.37] Yours entirely. I am not used to these things, not yet, at least! It was, by the way, "chastising". Gracious, chastising is miles away from "abortioning"!

Can't be, can't be! You must have misread it. I stick to the abortion.

Can the observing of these moral obligations which C mentions be a help in Yoga?

Yes, sir, if done in the right spirit, it will.

J says you called her also "sir"!

So I did—but I was answering to you.

Guru, this poem seems a very fine poem, though I can't follow it.

You are a very difficult follower. It is because you follow your own mind instead of identifying with the mind of the poem.

[Against a portion of the interpretation I had cancelled:]

!!! What a confusion!

... Rather complicated, this.

No, sir; it is your mind that has got complicated.

...After a talk with J, the poem seems clear and my criticism wrong ...

Luckily I thought of reading the end first, otherwise I would have had to swear at you at length all the way instead of growling slightly here and there.

Identifying with the mind of the poem or the poet or with anything else—are all fine phrases to me, Sir.

It is the only way in which poetry can be read—every lover of poetry does it.

But how to do it? God alone knows. From your remark it seems to be very easy. Any process?

No process needed; it is done automatically. Never heard of entering into the spirit of a poem? If you can enter into its spirit, what is so difficult in entering into its mind?

You couldn't still resist swearing even when I cancelled a portion and corrected myself? Beast of Burden?

Who? I? or you?

Swore a little first, then went into the cancel. Had intended to come back and swear more, but cancelled the farther intention of swear.

What is it, Sir, Sada & Co. to be dead? dead!

No, sir, not dead, but damned! damned! damned!

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

It isn't so easy to make it tumble.

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

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

What is this medical word, Sir? "What kind of coupletitis"?

Yes, that's it—like neuritis, laryngitis etc. so coupletitis, illness of the couplet.

It appears that D [a child] is getting 4 motions a day and today blood. Something will have to be done before it gets worse.

When we were discussing about the Force and the Spanish General Miaja [6.4.37], you said: "Let us suppose... I put the right force on him...", why did you say "right"? Is there also a wrong Force? Can't be, for it is the Divine Force.

Don't remember what exactly I wrote—so can't say very well. But of course there can be a wrong Force. There are Asuric Forces, rajasic Forces, all sorts of Forces. Apart from that one can use a mental or vital Force which may not be the right thing. Or one may use the Force in such a way that it does not succeed or does not hit the General on the head or is not commensurate with the opposing Forces. (Opposing Forces need not be Asuric, they may be quite gentlemanly Forces thinking they are in the right. Or two Divine Forces might knock at each other for the fun of the thing. Infinite possibilities, sir, in the play of Forces.)

Even if it can't be wrong, its efficacy will vary with the power of the communicant. For instance there will be a difference between Ramakrishna's and Vivekananda's Force, and therefore in the resultant effectivity or ineffectivity.

Naturally.

What I want to know is whether the Force, applied or directed, is always the right Force. Can there be any mistake in the Force, in its misapplication or in its failure to get the desired result?...

What is a mistake? Eventually the Force used is always the Force that was destined to be used. If it succeeds, it does its work in the whole and if it fails it has also done its work in the whole. ন তত্র শোচতে বুধঃ ।¹²¹

My main point is the Intuition. The Force has evidently a close connection with the intuition or any other faculties which are awakened by the action of the Force.

In what way? A Force may be applied without any intuition—an intuition can come without any close connection with a Force, except the force of intuition itself which is another matter. Moreover a Force may be applied from a higher plane than that of any Intuition.

By the way, it seems your Supramental is a magnificent something wide apart by gulfs and seas from all other Powers and Forces.

Certainly, otherwise I wouldn't be after it.

You won't say anything about the Supramental till it descends. It is this great mystery about it that makes us pin all our faith on it and the word Supermind goes from mouth to mouth. Ah, if we could have faint glimpses of it!

Not much utility in this mouth to mouth business. If people set themselves seriously to the task of psychic or spiritual opening or development, it would be much more useful—even for the coming of the Supramental. If I tried to explain about the Supramental, it would be all UP with the Supramental. The rest of the lives of the sadhalcs would be spent in discussing the supramental and how near Nirod or Nishikanta or Anilbaran was to the Supramental and whether this was supramental or that was supramental or whether it was supramental to drink tea or not etc., etc. and there would be no more chance of any sadhana.

In my Bengali poem of yesterday, you asked me: "What's this word?" Well, I meant it to be ত্রস্ত,¹²² but wrote instead ত্রস্ত ।¹²³ A স¹²⁴ sat on top, you could have cut it off.

Thought it ought to go off, but it snapped its fingers and said it was too big and clear and positive to be treated in that way.

Any necessity of making মূর্চ্ছিতা¹²⁵ feminine?

Hallo! I thought you were in favour of the feminine being used for everything, even words which were originally masculine and neuter?

স্মৃতি¹²⁶ personified?

স্মৃতি or memory is in all languages feminine and is personified as a goddess or a feminine form—yet you object! Queer! Anyway if she can have a বক্ষ¹²⁷ why can't she be figured as a person?

We examined D's stools—not dysenteric at all...

As regards treatment, how about trying one or two days greens? Boil them in water and give with rice?

Very good idea.

After that we may try a dose of castor-oil. I wonder if he has an anal fissure ... The pain he complains of is at the anus and not around the umbilicus.

If so, can't it be discovered? If that's the thing Anthenor pommade is indicated after quarter litre wash—if he's too young for enema with the tube, a poire might be used.

S has a hard red swelling about the left elbow joint; no cause...

Sir, in this world there is nothing without a cause—unless you hold the ultra-modern view that causation does not exist.

We have been giving some perfumed toilet powder to C for sweating. K asked for it; now S also has asked for it. Don't know if it is for sweating or "contagion". Can't go on at this rate, can we?

No. Can't give to everybody. They must get their anti-perspiration from the Prosperity normally.

D has no fissure. I have advised green vegetables for him.

I forgot to say that the Mother puts her entire veto on castor oil for D.

No luck about Intuition?

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

By the way S must be added to the list of vaccination impossibles. R asks me to warn you and Amal that if you vaccinate, you will get back your old friends the boils and Amal his old companion the stye. I pass on the warning to you without farther piling up the agony. A very nasty affair this vaccination, in any case.

Guru, this poem is in blank verse. The rhythm seems quite all right. Still the austerity and force have to come, I think, no?

Yes, good rhythm, fine poetry.

Of course, it is not the epic style, but in its kind it is very good.

I don't like the sound of phāṭi ṭuṭi, do you?

Sounds somewhat too much like somebody dropping and breaking cups and saucers—doesn't fit in with the rest of the style.

"I go mad when I see a deer in the spring woods ..."

Not really?!!

Why ask and exclaim "Not really"? You told us that sincerity is not indispensable in poetry, neither true facts. You should have appreciated the beautiful figure of expression in that line.

Well, it was not a question of reality, but of verisimilitude. And then the vision of you gone mad over a deer was a little upsetting.

I have changed the line to: "In the spring woods I get excited like the bees ..."

Umph! This is less upsetting.

I don't understand the poem. It says the swans, flowing in the shoreless vast, tumble into the sleep of creation. What is this sleep of creation? The swans don't seem to have come into creation at all, as they are still asleep. Or is it that after aeonic travels high up, the soul comes down into this Ignorance of creation?

Confound it sir, it was when it was above creation that it was awake—in creation it is asleep and dreaming—as you are when you are vaccinating people, though you mayn't think it—the vaccination is only an ugly dream. You were high up for ages in the Above and then you came down into the cosmic Dream to vaccinate people and write poetry. You are a Swan (or is it a Goose? হংস¹²⁸ you know) who fell asleep in the moonlight and tumbled into a dream of medicine.

What is the epic style? What elements are required for successful blank verse?

I spoke of epic style because you talked of austerity and force.

Special austerity and ojas needed for epic style, not necessary in other blank verse.

Speak of English blank verse, if you plead ignorance of Bengali.

Good Lord! you don't want me to expatiate on all that now? I believe I wrote about it to Amal¹²⁹—I mean for English blank verse. For Bengali I decline all authority.

Greens seem to have no effect on D. He still has 4 or 5 motions, but no blood. We have to go into the details regarding his diet, the number of motions and their relation.

Yes. What about pastilles charbon both to help against diarrhoea and also to fix time taken for digestion?

I quite agree with you, Sir, about the beastly nastiness of vaccination, though in which way, we may disagree.

It is beastly and nastly in all ways, so there is no room for disagreement.

S has been put out of the ring and so also Amal.

Then add Ishwarbhai and Madanlal to the Vaccinatory Untouchables.

What is this I hear—U decamped last night! D's departure seems to have come as a tempest and blown away many. Victory of the hostile force you can't yet handle?

I am not handling any hostile force.

U and A were apparently doing very sincere sadhana, no question about that.

What is meant by sincere sadhana? In the Mother's definition of sincere, it means "opening only to the Divine Forces" i.e. rejecting the others even if they come. If A and U were like that, how did they go? It would indeed be a miracle.

A seems to have gone for health...

A went, not only for health, but to see his dear Guru who is preparing to shuffle off the mortal coil and for other motives of that kind. Quite natural, isn't it?

As for U, he has been going some dozen or dozen and a half times, only pulled back with great difficulty. Wants immediate siddhi in perfect surrender, absolute faith, unshakable peace. If all that is going to take time, can't do the Yoga. Feels himself unfit. Not being allowed to reach the Paratpara Brahman at once, had better rush out into the world and dissipate himself into the Nihil. Besides got upset by every trifle and, as soon as upset, lost faith in the Mother—and without faith no Yoga possible. Reasoning, sir, reasoning—the mighty intellect in its full stupidity. Understand now?

Each time somebody leaves the Asram, I feel a kick, a shock, a heartquake...

May I ask why? People have been leaving the Asram since it began, not only now. Say 30 or 40 people have gone, 130 or 140 others have come. The big Maharattas, B, Y, H departed from this too damnable Asram where great men are not allowed to do as they like. The damnable Asram survives and grows. A and B and C¹³⁰ fail in their Yoga—but the Yoga proceeds on its way, advances, develops. Why then kick, shock and heartquake?

You said long ago that the Supramental won't tolerate any nonsense of freedom of movement or wrong movement. Is this the kick he is imparting from high up?... In these two months he has struck a tall tower like K and a fat buoy like D; how many of these!

And what then?

In NK's letter you wrote that it is the hostile Force that is snatching away people, not the Divine Force that is driving them away. I hold the view that the Supramental is descending concentratedly and that those who resist, who are between two fires, have either to quit or to submit.

Not so strongly or concentratedly as it ought, but better than before.

Even if it were so, that is their own business. The Divine is driving nobody out except in rare cases where their staying would be a calamity, to the Asram (for instance it could decide one day to drive H out); if they cannot bear the pressure and rush away, listening to the "Go away, go away" push and suggestion of the Hostiles can it be said then that it was the Divine who drove them away and the push and suggestion of the Hostile is that of the Divine? A singular logic! The "Go, go" push and suggestion have been successfully there ever since the Asram started and even before when there was no Asram. How does that square with your theory that it is due to the concentrated descent of the Force?

The Supramental not tolerating any nonsense comes to that, doesn't it?... But really, if the more you are busy with getting down the Supramental Light, the more such things are happening, I am afraid you will have to stop the business or let whosoever drops be hanged.

Why should I stop the business—that is to say postpone the possibility for another millennium because A or U gets shaky or many others look homeward? Will that postponement change the lower nature or get rid of the Asuras?

What's the idea? What's the occult secret? You promised to give me some lessons in Occultism—here is an occasion. Please expatiate, and pacify my nervous shocks. Otherwise I have to close down my poetry, vaccination, patients and every blessed thing, and gaze at the sky and exclaim—what? what? what chance?

What occult secret? It is a fact always known to all Yogis and occultists since the beginning of time, in Europe and Africa as in India, that wherever Yoga or Yajna is done, there the hostile forces gather together to stop it by any means. It is known that there is a lower nature and a higher spiritual nature—it is known that they pull different ways and the lower is strongest at first and the higher afterwards. It is known that the hostile Forces take advantage of the movements of the lower nature and try to spoil through them, smash or retard the siddhi. It has been said as long ago as the Upanishads "Hard is this path to tread, sharp like a razor's edge"; it was said later by Christ "Hard is the way and narrow the gate" by which one enters into the kingdom of heaven and also "Many are called, few chosen"—because of these difficulties. But it has also always been known that those who are sincere and faithful in heart and remain so and those who rely on the Divine will arrive in spite of all difficulties, stumbles or falls. That is the occult knowledge pertinent here.

I have expatiated—but in the line of common sense, not occultism.

I have written 5 sonnets, Sir. Record! Gave a big dose? But are they only great in number, as in your young days?...

Eh?

We are staggered at Romen's success in poetry. Metre free, blank verse, whatever he touches, comes out remarkable!

Regular metre he has not yet done, but he succeeded remarkably in the free metre of his lyric.

While, in my case, after so many lessons in metre, you damned each one of them!

Surely that's a misstatement. I believe I gave several of them nice compliments.

Don't you think D eats too much for his age?

Morning—some raisins, cocoa, 4 slices of bread + banana
Noon—3/4 bowl rice, curds, greens
Afternoon—fruits
Evening—4 slices of bread, greens, milk
Night—oranges

Greens and raisins can be stopped. But the diet does not seem otherwise excessive. Raisins may easily irritate.

By the way, you didn't understand me. I didn't mean that you damned my poems, but my metres or rather my innovations in metres.

Oh that! Of course. Your irregulars were very rough with the poor English language. As for Romen, I understand he simply hooks on to the source and lets it tumble through him. That explains his success: যোগঃ কর্ম্মসু কৌশলং¹³¹—যোগ = joining on, hooking on.

Charcoal given to D. He has had 3 motions—all healthy, but rather bulky for his age. What does Mother say to a small dose of Mag. Sulph. or Soda Sulph.?

No.

Sometimes deficient fat digestion, due to liver derangement, may produce bulky stools; but then it would be clay colour. Enema won't have action on liver.

What is the need of purge or enema, when there is free motion, healthy, though in excess?

Do you know beforehand whom you will vaccinate? If so Mother also would like to know beforehand. (Question of experiments with Force.)

I am afraid I have to multiply exemptions—Khirod, (too busy to have leisure for fever,) Dikshit (do, also very bad health); Atal (do, too busy, also frequent previous vaccination).

By the way, I suppose you enquire before vaccinating, whether they ever had smallpox. Dasaratha Reddy, I believe had some kind of pox here just before going but don't know if it was small or chicken.

Isn't it high time that you opened up the medical channel in me, Sir? I feel ashamed that being a doctor I can't cure cases!

Medical channel? Rather rocky perhaps and sanded—but if poetry could open, why not medicine?

How is this sestet, Guru?

Very pleasing. (Going to use new adjectives occasionally).

And this poem, how is it?

Very pleasing also.

I dreamt last night that you said it was an exceedingly beautiful poem. Will it be fulfilled?

I have already said it—so it would be nothing new.

Medical channel rather "vichy"? "Vichy"? and—wha It means anyhow the thing is not easy, but why not?

Rocky, sir, rocky. Sanded—silted up with sand from both sides.

No place for the current. Have to blast rocks, dig out channel, embank.

What about D? He says you gave him a medicine—what medicine? And the result of the charbon? He says it came out after 5 hours. Is that correct? If so, the conclusion?

Some other new adjectives? Oh Lord, no! Have enough, your "pleasing" pleases me not!

Dear me, dear me! I was tired of writing fine and beautiful (you forbid "good") and thought I was very clever in getting a variation. You are hard to please! What do you say to "nice"? "exhilarating"? "épatant", "joli, très joli", "surprenant, mon cher"?¹³² Let's have some variety, Sir.

Romen hooks on and Nirod cooks on? No, Sir, I too let it tumble now!

Well, this has tumbled very well.

I am damned, Sir! The only medicine I gave D was one pill of charbon...

As regards diet, I would favour stopping banana and papaya, for they are laxatives, as you know.

Yes, unless it is likely to lead to constipation. Anyhow you can try and see the result.

If Mother sanctions, we can give small doses of Bromide and Tinc. Belladonna to inhibit the excessive nervous stimulation.

No medicine.

By the way, M has sprained his foot. You might enquire whether he needs or wants any medical assistance.

D doesn't seem to be digesting curry ... Why not try some olive oil?

Yes. If olive oil difficult to digest, could mix a little lemon juice.

In place of banana and papaya, oranges can be increased.

Yes.

[P had the point of a needle stuck in her palm.] Can't take it out. Tomorrow is X-ray. What does Mother say?

You can take the X-ray.

M is all right. No medical service required.

Yes. He says it became suddenly and miraculously all right in the last hours of the night's sleep.

[A poem.] What adjectives, Sir? New or old?

Very pleasing again.

P's X-ray taken. Philaire will see the X-ray plate. If he decides to operate, can it be done? Or should the plate be shown to Mother first?

Mother would certainly like to know before any operation is made, where the thing is, how deep and what the operation would involve.

Some improvement in D's condition. He wants to eat something in the afternoon. Mangoes are laxative, so I disagree.

Mangoes—no! But care must be taken that it does not swing round to constipation again.

What can we give? Biscuits? He wants sweet biscuits.

Glaxo biscuits perhaps.

One thing, people from the Washing Dt. should not be vaccinated together or immediately one upon the other; but at intervals of a few days, so as to prevent any difficulty in the work in case of hives. The Aroumé depts. are those in which one has most trouble because of dropping off of workers for illness or.any other cause.

What about this poem, Sir? Pleasing or pleasant?

Both at once and very!

Sadhaks are getting rare for vaccination. Whomever we approach, says "no", alors?

What's to be done? Must make the best of it.

Philaire says that P's needle can be extracted by operation under local anaesthesia.

I suppose it has to be done and we can only hope that Philaire will really prove skilful and manage with least trouble and least unfavourable incidence.

P is of the nervous type and with them there is usually the maximum of trouble.

D had 4 motions ... given half an oz. of olive oil.

Thought he was better!

By the way, am I also going into the Amalian relapse? These blessed poems don't seem to catch. I have now a positive distaste for writing.

I don't see any relapse. Your Matra-brittas¹³³ are always excellent, sonnets up to the mark—Perhaps you miss the glories of surrealism—the magnificent images and smiting lines? Anyhow you have gained in harmony and finish. Perhaps when you magnify and smite again, it will be in a more perfect way.

A spree will improve matters?

Spree, sir, spree! what do you mean?

P's operation tomorrow at 9.30 a.m. Please circulate some Force!

P in order to facilitate matters for tomorrow, has started menses today. What cheer, brothers? In view of the fact that anaesthetic may be necessary it might be safer to postpone for two or three days—what?

Tomorrow's list of people for vaccination: Krishnayya Premanand, Nishikanta ...

Krishnayya? not an unhealthy subject? won't bite? Besides D.R. badly off for workers. Leave it to you, sir.

K has swelling of left ankle (old injury).

Why revived? She is talking of bone injury etc.

Amrita was to have offered himself as a victim on the altar of vaccination, but he has been kindly bitten by the dog of the Privy Councillor, so although there is no hydrophobic danger, it is better for him to cure before being bitten by the vaccinator.

"What cheer brothers or bothers!" Never heard of such a phrase, Sir! Most 21st century, I am sure. Even Wodehouse hasn't that!

It is both. You don't know the story of Pavitra and Khitish and the bother? Pavitra who had just come here with a rather French pronunciation of English, said to K "I am a brother to you all" and Khitish cried out "Oh, no, no!" Pavitra insisted, but Khitish still cried out with pain and politeness in his voice "Oh, no! no! no!" It turned out K had heard all through "I am a bother to you all"! so brothers are bothers and bothers are constant brothers to us, insisting on inhabiting the Asram—or at least visiting it, like the vaccination P's needle etc.

"Why revived?" [K's swelling in the ankle.] God knows! If I know, it is her dancing gait that has brought it by some twist there. Bone injury indeed!

She has been weeping and saying nobody cares for her because you said it was nothing and I didn't jump to her bone suggestion. So Mother gave her Siju to embalm her wounded feelings.

A few D.R. workers remain to be vaccinated: N, S, I.K. etc.

Not very eager to have them bitten—what will become of D.R kitchen if they go over? You don't want to eat?

...Vaccination today—if you allow Krishnayya.

Allowed.

Here is an English poem¹³⁴ written between dozes!

Compliments! you have reached the summit with one bound! Magnificent.

Don't quite follow what you meant by "magnify" and "smite again".

Refer back to "magnificent" images and "smiting" lines.¹³⁵

This poem [J's] is sent as an illustration of what follows.

Tonight there is a mass of correspondence and I have not been able to deal with even half of it. So tomorrow.

J asks why it should be called blank verse. Is it simply because rhymes are absent?

Yes.

Blank verse means verse without rhyme; it is applied usually in English to the unrhymed pentameter.

Is this absence of rhyme made up for by other things?

That is a question of the success of the blank verse as poetry—not of the metrical category into which a poem falls.

Is there a variation of pauses?

In English variation of pauses is not indispensable to blank verse. There is much blank verse of the first quality in which it is eschewed or minimised, much also of the first quality in which it is freely used. Shakespeare has both kinds.

Where is this poem different from a sonnet, except in rhymes lacking?

That is because the sonnet turn or flow has been used without the rhyme which is an essential part of the sonnet structure.

J says she doesn't think she is really a poet. By Mother's pressure she has been led to write things.

Mother's pressure means what? She wanted to write poetry and attempted, at first without much success. Afterwards the channel opened as it did with others.

If she were a poet, she wouldn't write with so much difficulty. She would spontaneously go on writing like a well gushing out.

Every poet does not write like that. Some of the greatest have written with labour and constant self-correction.

She adds that she would not always fear Mother's displeasure if she didn't write etc., etc.

Why should Mother be displeased if she didn't write? Is it a task that Mother or I have set her against her will?

She says that with the difficulty of blank verse, the dissatisfaction has grown to such a height that she feels like giving up poetry.

Whether to write blank verse or not or to write poetry or not, is purely a matter for her choice. She asked for poetic, inspiration and it was given her. Now she seems to complain because it has been given her—it is not her own, therefore not valuable.

Well, Sir, she was saying that before writing today, she had some fear, a lack of confidence lest the blank verse become again unsuccessful.

Why? The one hope of doing well is to write in a cheerful attitude, without too much mental insistence and open herself to the Inspiration quietly and confidently till it comes. Fretting and fuming can only block the passage.

Please give the factors that make blank verse successful. We have read your letter to Amal. Is that all?

I don't know any factors by which blank verse can be built up. When good blank verse comes one can analyse it and assign certain elements of technique, but these come in the course of the formation of the verse. Each poet finds his own technique—that of Shakespeare differs from Marlowe's, both from Milton's and all from Keats'. In English I can say that variations of rhythm, of lengths of syllable, of caesura, of the structure of lines help and neglect of them hinders—so too with pause variations if used; but to explain all that would mean a treatise. Nor could anyone make himself a great blank verse writer by following the instructions deliberately and constructing his verse. Only if he knows, the inspiration answers better and if there is failure in the inspiration he can see and call again and the thing will come. But I am no expert in Bengali blank verse.

I told you that D.R. and B.S. workers have almost all been vaccinated. Sadhaks, 30 done, and no more forthcoming. So shall we close the show here?

I suppose it can be closed.

Thank you sir, for the compliments! I have reached the summit, but next time you will find me in the abyss!

The abyss can also produce poetry.

If one could remain there!

In the abyss? why?

May 1937

Shall go tomorrow to enquire about P's operation ... I think it would be better to see it again on the screen tomorrow evening, for the needle may have shifted.

Yes.

Why do these things—tooth trouble etc., come to the Mother? I hear that you throw them off very quickly when they try to come to you. The Mother could do the same.

I have not to deal with the sadhaks—except through correspondence.

I am feeling feverish, cold in the head, bad headache. Due to sea bath and diving? What a pity!

Pains of pleasure, I suppose.

Which is better:

"To a motionless abode—intense hushed seas"? or "of deep hushed seas"?

My God, sir, the line with its tangle of sh and s sounds would be unpronounceable like Toru Dutt's "Sea-shells she sells".

Guru, from this quatrain you will see that I have tried a hell of a lot to improve or rewrite it and yet not successful!

"Plunge there like pearls in timeless trance-repose;
Culled from spring-garden of fire-coated seeds.
The nectar-rays of heaven's golden Rose
Shower on the calm expanse—like pollen beads."

So I see, but your plunging quatrain plunges and splashes a lot without arriving anywhere near coherence. There is still no possible connection between the ideas and images here and there that go before and after.

[The following questions were put by J:]

How may I learn the epic style of blank verse?

I suppose it is best done by reading the epic writers until you get the epic rush or sweep.

Is it too early for me to learn it? Kindly say a few words, and if there is no harm in my trying it at present, please give some force and inner guidance for it.

Epic writing needs a sustained energy of rhythm and word which is not easy to get or maintain. I am not sure whether you can get it now. I think you would first have to practise maintaining the level of the more energetic among the lines you have been writing ...

[The first 3 questions were put by J:]

Kindly say who are the epic writers. I want to read them all. Is your "Love and Death" an epic, and "Urvasie", and "Baji Prabhou"?

Love and Death is epic in long passages. Urvasie is written on the epic model. Baji Prabhou is not epic in style or rhythm

Are your 12 recent poems¹³⁷ too in epic style?

No, they are lyrical, though sometimes there may come in an epic elevation.

Will "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" help? And who are the other epic writers in English? Kindly mention all the epic writers in all the languages—it is good to know them, at least.

"Paradise Lost", yes. In the other Milton's fire had dimmed. In English Paradise Lost and Keats' Hyperion (unfinished) are the two chief epics. In Sanskrit Mahabharat, Ramayan, Kalidasa's Kumar Sambhav, Bharavi's Kiratarjuniya. In Bengali Meghnadbodh. In Italian Dante's Divine Comedy and Tasso's (I have forgotten the name for the moment¹³⁸) are in the epic cast. In Greek of course Homer, in Latin Virgil. There are other poems which attempt the epic style, but are not among the masterpieces. There are also primitive epics in German and Finnish (Nibelungenlied, Kalevala)—

Our vaccination list is ready. Will send a duplicate to Mother tomorrow, before submitting it to the hospital.

You will send a copy to Pavitra, for he will have to write to Valle as it was to him that their original letter came.

S has been complaining of her extreme weakness, pains etc. which are so great that she is on her way to death—her ribs can be counted, her stomach etc. have become microscopic; her pains terrible; often she can hardly get up from her bed in the morning; often her breath comes gaspingly through weakness. She says she took medicines from you for eight long days without any change; when she told you, you said "It's the only medicine I have", so she dropped treatment. On my telling her that she may have to go to Bombay side for treatment, she says she will prefer to die near to the Mother—not a comfortable prospect for the Mother, but she may live if we give her one cup more milk a day and butter—which have been accorded. Ah yes, before the demand for butter, she wrote that she can't eat—she feels too ill.

It is true that Mother finds her looking very down and seedy. Any enlightenment from Science?

I send you the poem again. How do you find the effect, on the whole? I have very little credit though, this time.

...I think between us—putting aside all false modesty—we have made a rather splendaceous superrealist poem out of your surrealist affair.

Still, something, what?

Certainly. Mine are only the finishing touches.

I hear D is having the same number of motions. Is there any harm in giving an enema?

It could be given with guimauve in it, provided the stock of guimauve is unspoilt with no insects in it. But it is a French medicine with special proportions etc.—you have prepared before? for they won't know how to do it.

Yes, we have prepared it before... Shall give it tomorrow afternoon or day after morning?

Very well.

I have been thinking of studying medical books daily one hour, but can hardly manage it, though at the same time inflicted with doubts as to the utility of studies and lacking in practical experience, I do not know what to do. Please give some Force. Must run two horses, what?

Why not?

The difficulty is still lack of living interest in it—what you call enthousiasmos!

Enthousiasmos does not mean living interest or enthusiasm—it means the inrush of the creative force or godhead, আবেশ¹³⁹—You don't need that for chewing medical books.

I consulted doctors in the hospital about D's case. They say it is a mild form of colitis, and recommend Stovarsol—which is a very strong drug; or Biolactyl—a product of intestinal flora, which is very mild. Perhaps Mother won't favour any medicine.

No. Neither stova nor flora.

A is complaining very much of his ill health, physical depression, lack of energy, which are constantly increasing, so much so that it is impossible for him to do any mental work. Something has to be done. But first we must know the cause. Anémie cérébrale? slow poisoning by liver or kidney? something else? Mother wants you to arrange for the usual examinations (urine, blood) so that it may be found out.

[A's case.] Anémie cérébrale! Good God, no! It is anaemia hepaticus.

Who is this hermaphrodite? [Sri Aurobindo changed "hepaticus" to "hepatica".]

... Is blood-examination necessary? for what? Malaria or simple blood-count?

I don't know—it is to satisfy A. He thinks' he has a colonisation of colon bacilli—spreading where they ought not to be (like certain nations) or else liver poisoning or kidney poisoning--he feels in the morning as if he had been poisoned in his sleep. It is to decide between these scientific theories that so many examinations were suggested.

About the treatment, I don't give anything today depending on your remarks + results of urine exam etc.

Must know first what he has.

Please give some Force tonight to rewrite two poems. A great bother this chiselling business—and uninteresting too. But perhaps it's pleasant for you as you cast and recast ad infinitum, we hear, your poetry or prose.

Poetry only, not prose. And in poetry only one poem, "Savitri". My smaller poems are written off at once and if any changes are to be made, it is done the same day or the next day, and very rapidly done.

By the way, you said that these two lines of Amal's poem:

"Flickering no longer with the cry of clay
The distance-haunted fire of mystic mind",

have an Overmind touch. Frankly speaking, I thought the first line I too could have written myself. Can you show me where its super-excellence lies?

What super-excellence? as poetry? When I say that a line comes from a higher or overhead plane or has the overmind touch I do not mean that it is superior in pure poetic excellence to others from lower planes—that Amal's lines outshine Shakespeare or Homer, for instance. I simply mean that it has some vision, light etc. from up there and the character of its expression and rhythm are from there.

I appreciate the previous lines much more. Amal too is puzzled. Is it definable? Is it in assonances, dissonances, rhythm or what?

No. You do not appreciate probably because you catch only the surface mental meaning. The line ["Flickering no longer with the cry of clay"] is very very fine from the technical point of view, the distribution of consonantal and vowel sounds being perfect. That, however, is possible on any level of inspiration.

These are technical elements, the overmind touch does not consist in that but in the undertones or overtones of the rhythmic cry and a language which carries in it a great depth or height or width of spiritual truth or spiritual vision, feeling or experience. But all that has to be felt, it is not analysable. If I say that the second line ["The distance-haunted fire of mystic mind"] is a magnificent expression of an inner reality most intimate and powerful and the first line with its conception of the fire once "flickering" with the "cry" of clay, but now no longer is admirably revelatory—you would probably reply that it does not convey anything of the kind to you. That is why I do not usually speak of these things in themselves or in their relation to poetry—only with Amal who is trying to get his inspiration into touch with these planes. Either one must have the experience—e.g. here one must have lived in or glimpsed the mystic mind,. felt its fire, been aware of the distances that haunt it, heard the cry of clay mixing with it and the consequent unsteady flickering of its flames and the release into the straight upward burning and so known that this is not mere romantic rhetoric, not mere images or metaphors expressing something imaginative but unreal (that is how many would take it perhaps) but facts and realities of the self, actual and concrete, or else there must be a conspiracy between the "solar plexus" and the thousand-petalled lotus which makes one feel if not know the suggestion of these things through the words and rhythm. As for technique, there is a technique of this higher poetry but it is not analysable and teachable. If for instance Amal had written "No longer flickering with the cry of clay", it would no longer have been the same thing though the words and mental meaning would be just as before—for the overtone in the rhythm would have been lost in the ordinary staccato clipped movement and with the overtone the rhythmic significance. It would not have given the suggestion of space and wideness full with the cry and the flicker, the intense impact of that cry and the agitation of the fire which is heard through the line as it is. But to realise that, one must have the inner sight and inner ear for these things; one must be able to hear the sound-meaning, feel the sound-spaces with their vibrations. Again if he had written "Quivering no longer with the touch on clay" it would have been a good line, but meant much less and something quite different to the inner experience, though to the mind it would have been only the same thing expressed in a different image—not so to the solar plexus and the thousand-petalled lotus. In this technique it must be the right word and no other, in the right place, and in no other, the right sounds and no others, in a design of sound that cannot be changed even a little. You may say that it must be so in all poetry; but in ordinary poetry the mind can play about, chop and change, use one image or another, put this word here or that word there—if the sense is much the same and has a poetical value, the mind does not feel that all is lost unless it is very sensitive and much influenced by the solar plexus. In the overhead poetry these things are quite imperative, it is all or nothing—or at least all or a fall.

Guru, my Bengali poem was not even pleasing this time? Alas! Or did you forget it in the sweep of the cataract that came down into your pen?

Quite forgot all about him! Anyhow not very successful—pretty but wobbly—like someone unsure of his legs but just drunk enough to be sentimental.

... It is quite possible, I am sure, to write such lines like Amal's, without knowing the technique etc.

Of course.

Amal says the lines didn't come originally ready-made like that. He had to change and alter, being guided solely by the ear or some vague feeling, and stuck on to the right thing.

Necessarily—until the ear and feeling are satisfied, one has to do that. For overhead poetry to come with a faultless rush one must be very very.¹⁴⁰

You talk about inner vision, inner feeling, etc., but the blessed writer himself doesn't know very often he has visioned something; all the same he writes.

That you must have in order to understand and judge about the source, touch etc. But one can write without knowing anything.

Last night, by Jove, was a trial indeed! After constructing the first 6 lines, I was dozing and dozing, and in full doze, wrote the whole poem. So much was the "trance" that after finishing the poem I couldn't even revise it properly and went to bed. Sleep came immediately! ... Really, Sir, your Inspiration or Force has a very queer way of working: by dulling, benumbing and paralysing the senses.

Of course. If you could write in a doze, perhaps you could even achieve something supramental.

You found the original line nice, but no meaning. That is the trouble, Sir! Sometimes you say, "Why the deuce do you want the meaning?" Another time, "Nice line, but meaning?" A contradiction, Sir.

Well, but the other lines have a meaning or try to have. If you wrote all nonsense, then it is different.

No contradiction! Nonsense hangs together and meaning hangs together—but nonsense intervening in sense hangs apart.

Amal says that "concentrated blood" is very fine but how can it be lost in the night?

Concentrated blood sounds like condensed milk. It's the blood that's lost or the night?

Sorry, but I had to rewrite the last lines. As they stand they are simply magnificent nonsense.

D, they say, is getting better... One or two more washes, if necessary, will perhaps set him right.

Yes. We can see for 2 or 3 days and give another if necessary.

You seem to have "transformed" the sun into a majesty of night!

No, it's condensed milk—oh, I mean, blood.

To tell you frankly, today's poems¹⁴¹ seems to me very fine Sir. But you will find many flaws, probably.

It is an English poem and shows that, in spite of lapses in detail, you are getting hold of the language and its poetic turn. It is not so original as the first one, but excellent poetry.

I am sending you today's poem so that you may show me the un-English overtones and undertones and other defects.

What the deuce! Overtones and undertones are not English or unEnglish; but I have pointed out the unEnglish ambiguities. Perhaps you will say that it is a surrealistic poem? But it has too much an air of logical building for that.

If you have time, I would like to know what exactly are these overtones and undertones [8.5.37].

I was speaking of rhythmical overtones and undertones. That is to say, there is a metrical rhythm which belongs to the skilful use of metre—any good poet can manage that; but besides that there is a music which rises up out of this rhythm or a music that underlies it, carries it as it were as the movement of the water carries the movement of a boat. They can both exist together in the same line, but it is more a matter of the inner than the outer ear and I am afraid I can't define farther. To go into the subject would mean a long essay. But to give examples—

Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know,¹⁴²

is excellent metrical rhythm, but there are no overtones and undertones.

Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust¹⁴³

there is a beginning of undertone, but no overtone, while the "Take o take those lips away"¹⁴⁴ (the whole lyric) is all overtones.

Again

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him¹⁴⁵

has admirable rhythm, but there are no overtones or undertones.

But

in maiden meditation, fancy-free¹⁴⁶
has beautiful running undertones, while
In the dark backward and abysm of Time¹⁴⁷
is all overtones, and
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,¹⁴⁸

is all overtones and undertones together. I don't suppose this will make you much wiser, but it is all I can do for you at present.

"Break that chain, find in the soul's lonely sign
A fountain of volcanic deluge-fire,
The rock-embedded source of spirit-mine
The immortal wine of sovereign Desire."

Sir, this is a surrealistic tangle. You find a fountain of volcanic fire in a sign and that fountain is the source of a mine (rather difficult for the miners to get at through the volcanic fire) and also in that source is a wine-cellar,—perhaps in the rocks which embed the source, but all the same a strange place to choose. Perhaps for the miners to drink.

Nothing in A's stools [8.5.37]. Some Vichy water may do him good.

Vichy water has to be taken fresh—stale from France in bottle it is not safe.

May I take a "sea bath" twice a week? It will help in filling up my clavicular depressions and developing my pectoral and intercostal muscles, perhaps. If Mother doesn't want, I won't.

Mother is not encouraging the practice but neither is she forbidding it,—except for some. She is neutral. She leaves you free to choose.

[The following questions were put by J:]

Is there a difference between blank verse and poetry which is quite epic and blank verse and poetry which is written only in the epic style, model or manner?

I don't quite understand the point of the question. Poetry is epic or it is not. There may be differences of elevation in the epic style, but this seems to be distinction without a difference.

Surely there must be some difference between an epic, true and genuine throughout, and a poem which is only in the epic style or has the epic tone?

An epic is a long poem usually narrative on a great subject written in a style and rhythm that is of a high nobility or sublime. But short poems, a sonnet for instance can be in the epic style or tone, e.g. some of Milton's or Meredith's sonnet on Lucifer or, as far as I can remember it, Shelley's on Ozymandias.

What are the qualities or characteristics that tell one—"This is an epic"?

I think the formula I have given is the only possible definition. Apart from that each epic poet has his own qualities and characteristics that differ widely from the others. For the rest one can feel what is the epic nobility or sublimity, one can't very well analyse it.

In Sanskrit epics, e.g. Kumarsambhav, what has made up the rhythm? And how does it sound so grave, lofty, wide and deep?

It is a characteristic that comes natural to Sanskrit written in the classical style.

How can one have all these qualities together?

Why not? they are not incompatible qualities.

English seems to have the necessary tone more easily, but is it possible in Bengali?

I don't know why it shouldn't be. Madhu Sudan's style is a lofty epical style; it is not really grave and deep because his mind was not grave or deep—but that was the defect of the poet, not necessarily an incapacity of the language.

"Kumarsambhav" was my textbook in LA., but I have not read all of it. May I ask Kapali Shastri to help me read it?

I don't know if it is necessary for a poetic, not scholarly reading of the poem.

It is only the 1st seven cantos that need to be read.

What does the double line indicate against lines 11, 12?

Double line means double fine.

Good God, Sir, you have made the Spirit a swine!

No, sir, I haven't, though the spirit often becomes a swine. But you have made the spirit-mine into the spirit's mine which is a deterioration.

I take my pen to write, a fear creeps in saying that perhaps what I shall write will be un-English and surrealistic and all labour will be lost. You are taking so much trouble and giving your precious time, is it worth while?

It is because you are finding your way. you have got the inspiration, but the mental mixture rises from time to time; that has to be got rid of, so I am taking trouble. I wouldn't if it were not worth while.

Ishwarbhai is suffering from inability to eat or digest what he has eaten. Mother proposes to treat him like Amrita with nux vomica and with syrup of bitter orange. He will probably come to you for them; give and instruct him.

A says his trouble has increased: headache, flatulence, many motions (due to Soda Sulph.). So we shall give him another mixture...

No need of that—he has been having good motions since he is taking Triphala.

[The following question was put by J:]

I would like my present poems to come in a few lines, but the epical tone to be more and more perfect every day.

The epic movement is something that flows; it may not be good to try to shut it into a few lines. There might be a danger of making something too compact. If that can be avoided, then of course it is better to write a few lines with a heightened epic tone than many with the lesser tone.

I am having a blessed fever since the morning; aches all over the limbs; a damn business it is, Sir! Could not do any work. Read a detective story as treatment. Taking one Pulv. Glyc. Co.

Detective story as treatment, and Pulv. Glyc. and Company as amusement? Right!

A enquired if too many purgatives were good. I wrote to him that they have been stopped. Dr. Becharlal recommends a dose of castor oil or enema, to clear out the bowels.

More purgatives? after the triumph of the soda sulph. and A's own pathetic question?

Please give a few examples of conceit in English poetry Not very clear about it....

Conceit means a too obviously ingenious or far-fetched or extravagant idea or image which is evidently an invention of a clever brain, not a true and convincing flight of the imagination. E.g. Donne's (?) comparison of a child's small-pox eruptions to the stars of the milky way or something similar. I have forgotten the exact thing, but that will serve.

This hill turns up its nose at heaven's height,
Heaven looks back with a blue contemptuous eye—that's a conceit.
O cloud, thou wild black wig on heaven's bald head,

would be another. These are extravagant specimens. I haven't time to think out any ingenious ones, nor to discuss trochees adequately—have given one or two hints in the margin.

Some more conceits, ingenious all of them:

Am I his tail and is he then my head?
But head by tail, I think, is often led.

Also

Like a long snake came wriggling out his laugh.

Also

How the big Gunner of the upper sphere
Is letting off his cannon in the sky!
Flash, bang bang bang! he has some gunpowder
With him, I think. Again! Whose big bow-wow
Goes barking through the hunting fields of Heaven?
What a magnificent row the gods can make!
And don't forget
The long slow scolopendra of the train.
Or if you think these are not dainty or poetic enough, here's another:
God made thy eyes sweet cups to hold blue wine;
By sipping at them rapture-drunk are mine.
Enough? Amen!

...About Rajani's blood report, urine and blood are connected as রজনী [rajani] to দিবস [divas],¹⁴⁹ or blood circulation through the kidney contributes to the formation or excretion of urine. When blood sugar rises beyond the normal it is excreted in the urine. But since his sugar is high with a consequent high sugar percentage in the urine, it has been marked + + in the report.

Well, you haven't told me if there is any meaning in the + + 2.5 except that it corresponds to the blood urine like রজনী পালিত [Rajani Pālit] to Diwakar.¹⁵⁰ Does it matter if it is 2.5 or 250 so long as it is + +? When is it considered a high amount and when is it considered very serious? You have said nothing about stool. Nothing abnormal? R is supposed to be suffering from dysentery.

You said [9.5.37]: "... For overhead poetry to come with a faultless rush one must be very very", and left the sentence unfinished. Is it "very very Sri Aurobindo-like"?

But I am not aware that I write overhead poetry with a rush.

Everybody is aspiring to write from the overhead plane, so why not I? Possible?

Maybe.

If one can write all from the highest plane, i.e. overmind and supermind plane—as you have done in Savitri, is it evidently going to be greater poetry than any other poetry?

Nobody ever spoke of supermind plane poetry.
Is Savitri all from overhead plane? I don't know.

... You lay down certain features of overhead poetry, e.g. greater depth and height of spiritual vision, inner life and experience and character of rhythm and expression. But it won't necessarily outshine Shakespeare in poetic excellence.

Obviously if properly done it would have a deeper and rarer substance, but would not be necessarily greater in poetic excellence.

You say also that for overhead poetry technique, it must be the right word and no other in the right place, right sounds and no others in a design of sound that cannot be changed even a little. Well, is that not what is called sheer inevitability which is the sole criterion of highest poetry?

Yes, but mental and vital poetry can be inevitable also. Only in O.P. there must be a rightness throughout which is not the case elsewhere—for without this inevitability it is no longer fully O.P., while without this sustained inevitability there can be fine mental and vital poetry. But practically that means O.P. comes usually by bits only, not in a mass.

You may say that in overhead poetry expression of spiritual vision is more important. True, but why can't it be clothed in as fine poetry as in the case of Shakespeare? The highest source of Inspiration will surely bring in all the characteristics of highest poetry, no?

It can, but it is more difficult to get. It can be as fine poetry as Shakespeare's if there is the equal genius, but it needn't by the fact of being O.P. become finer.

Your Bird of Fire which I take as overhead poetry, is full of excellent poetry.

Is it?

Nobody said that O.P. could not be excellent poetry.

If one could write like that, is there not going to be a greater creation in all respects?

Maybe; it has to be seen.

... I suppose all spiritual poetry does not come from overhead planes.

No, it may come from the spiritualised mind or vital.

I don't see really why overhead poetry will only excel in expressing spiritual things and not also excel in a superior form than the lower plane poetry.

It may perhaps if the floodgates are fully opened.

Could you enlighten me on your overhead and underhead poetry?

In what way?

In Rajani's report, you seem to make + + separate from 2.5%. It is not so.

Not at all, I simply wanted to know exactly what 2.5 indicated, if anything.

We examine chemically first a sample of urine, i.e. by chemical reagents, which is called qualitative test. You ought to know that from your English Public School chemistry, Sir!

Never learned a word of chemistry or any damned science in my school. My school, sir, was too aristocratic for such plebeian things.

Good Lord, the fellow is harbouring all sorts of organisms! Of course, it is in a way expected, for diabetes diminishes resistance to infection. But he is, I gather, coming to supramental treatment soon! Everything clear now? ... He doesn't seem to be taking Insulin treatment.

The Civil Surgeon Fisher who fished him into the hospital, talked vaguely of a possibility of Insulin in the future if the examination proved the necessity, but the new civil Surgeon Kapur who is making him caper out of hospital, positively forbids the use of Insulin. So!

[Rajani's case.] Oh, it is Kapur! Lt. Colonel N. C. Kapur?

I suppose. Can't be two C. S. fellows with a name like that.

It is very strange your school had no chemistry.

It may have had in a corner but I had nothing to do with such stuff.

But for I.C.S. you had no science?

Certainly not. In I.C.S. you can choose your own subjects.

Perhaps these newfangled things hadn't come out then?

They were newfangled and not yet respectable.

The D.R. cart servant has elephantiasis of the left leg. Now it has increased—the whole foot is swollen. He was complaining of pain... Are we not likely to be responsible for any accident (a remote possibility)?

What accident?

... He ought to be given leave for some days till the pain subsides, for with pain to carry on the work will only set up a vicious cycle.

Evidently he ought to be on leave without pay. If pay is given they don't care. Cart service seems hardly suitable for that illness. There is however a hammerman in the smithy who goes on with a leg like that.

I am afraid my source of English poetry is exhausted before it has begun. The Guru is supposed to take up the shishya's troubles!

It seems to me to be rather J's trouble. She writes fine epic verse and says she is unable to do anything worth while—you write a fine sonnet and decide that your inspiration is exhausted. Queer.

Tell me, please, how I should improve. The details are very difficult to manage.

You have the inspiration, whatever you may say. The management of details still defective can come only by practice.

By a lot of reading and writing or only reading?

Either.

Please bring me back that buoyance, faith and joy, force and confidence. Otherwise finished! Your working is extremely fine and diplomatic, I must say. Gave me an exceedingly fine poem to begin with and cheered me up. Then—"Go on, my dear fellow—spading, efforting, labouring and perspiring! Oh it will come, it will come!"

It is not my working, but your moods that are queer. You get something no reasonable being would expect under the ordinary laws of Nature and then you fancy you haven't got it and wail because everything is not absolutely, continuously, faultlessly, increasingly, illimitably miraculous through and through and always and for ever. In no sadhana that I know of does absolute sustained perfection in everything come with a rush and stay celestially perfect for ever more. If it were so there would be no need for sadhana—one would only have to gaze at heaven a little and grow wings and fly into the spheres a triumphant godhead.

Your overhead poetry, Sir, not a snatch of it has ever come into Bengali poetry—our Bengali poetry?

I can't say. I can recognise the thing well enough in English, because I know the symptoms of the O.P. abnormality there. In Bengali it is more difficult for me to detect. I suppose I must try to train my ear for that.

"Tapering fingers of an infinite Force
Mould life's grey mire to a bright rhythm of sun:
Through a gold network of vessels lustre-spun
Its luminous blood into earth's darkness pours."

Sir, what the hell is the meaning of lines 5,6? What are these clumsy vessels doing there, either? Into whose kitchen have you trespassed? Cooking blood? But why not then "earth's cauldron"?

Anyhow kick the vessels out. A gold (something) network lustre-spun would sound fine, but I don't know what something to put as I have not the least idea what you are after. Cryptic, by God!

I am greatly surprised to hear that you have to train your ear to judge the source of Bengali poetry. Is it a question of the ear?

Great Scott, man! Poetry and no question of the ear?

Just the other day you wrote that by the inner vision, inner feeling, etc. one must understand and judge the source of poetry. How does the ear come in now?

Have you read only that sentence and not other things I have written about overmind rhythm etc.? Only the other day I said, I think, that Amal's line changed (Flickering no longer) would lose the overtone (rhythmic) and with it the overmind touch.

If you put the stress on the ear, O.P. would only be a question of rhythm, or at least principally, no?

Very largely. The same words, thought, substance with a different rhythm would cease to be overhead at all. I said that clearly and gave the instance "No longer flickering" instead of "Flickering no longer". How is it you miss these things?

... Right word in the right place, apart from the substance, of course, is the first criterion.

Why apart from the substance?

All this you can see at a shot, ear or no ear, as if a line is rocketing down from the O.P. just before your eyes—

And ears.

And you say "Ah, it is illumined, that's Intuition!" That you have to train your ear is a surprise inattendu!

Strange point! Who does not know that without rhythm poetry is nothing? If poetic rhythm is unessential, pray why not write in prose?

Nishikanta's translation of Amal's poem¹⁵¹ is really splendid, but is it also from the same plane as the original? Perhaps not, for Nishikanta's plane appears to be rather subtle vital.

Maybe. I don't remember what plane Amal's poem came from.

Is the spiritual value of a poem lost in translation by the difference of the planes, though it may be poetically excellent?

If you mean the spiritual substance, I suppose it would be lost. I was looking at the poetic beauty of Nishikanta's rendering which is on a par with the original. As for the subtle .vital, the vital sublimated enters largely into Amal's poem, even if it is a sort of super-vital.

[D.R. cart man's case.] By "accident", I meant sudden heart failure. But Rajangam says there's hardly any danger of the sort. I saw the man in the smithy—his condition has now become chronic. This D.R. fellow's condition it seems, diminishes as soon as he takes rest, and comes back with work.

Mother is under the impression he was relieved from cart work But if it is like that he must take rest.

A "cheer brother" again! [28, 29.4.37] N.P. has hydrocele on the left side, Sir. Dr. R is a specialist in that. Shall we pass him on?

No.

But I hear that R himself is unwell. What's the matter? Ear trouble? Self-drugging?

(Vital up, perhaps.)

Given A more M.T.

A finds your M.T.—which he says is reduced in dose—ineffective. He says he was as well with Sudarshan or with Triphala.

(I see he says that he is worse than eight days ago—says that Sudarshan and the pills were stopped to try the mixture, but the mixture is not helping perhaps because it is reduced in dose without any compensation such as S or T. He asks also whether it is worth while being treated if the cause of his illness is not known or if it cannot be cured. In fact you have not said for what you are treating him or on what base, so I could not answer. I said I would ask you.)

How is today's poem? Not very successful, perhaps.

Miraculously successful, sir, except for one ornithological detail.

It sounds rather big.

Not only sounds, but is.

Oh yes, you didn't understand my "vessels"? Because you forgot, Sir, that I am a medical poet. Vessels are not for cooking only—there are also blood vessels; and you should have made it out as blood was also there.

Let me point out to you that vessels of gold can only mean pots and things, not blood vessels. if you say "golden vessels", it might be otherwise provided you put a footnote "N.B.: physiological metaphor". For non-medical poetry veins would be better and not puzzle the layman.

... Why the devil does A write all these things to you? Are you prescribing or are we? and what the devil is the use of his knowing the medicines and doses, pray? He could have asked me.

Well, what about the free Englishman's right to grumble? This is not London and there is no "Times" to write to, so he writes a letter to me, instead of to the "Times".

Surely, there is a twist somewhere.

There is always a twist, sir, always.

And, didn't I tell him and report to you that it is his chronic liver trouble—liver enlarged? He has forgotten it evidently!

I knew it was liver, but I had myself forgotten about the enlargement.

Anyway, I won't fume.

Don't. Losing one's hair is always a useless operation. Keep your hair on.

Only tell him, please, that he ought to let us know instead of sending a boy with an empty bottle, if he doesn't want to present his honourship himself or shall I tell him myself?

Dear Sir, tell him yourself, tell him yourself. I will pat you on the back in silence from a safe distance.

A servant boy has hookworm; we suggest Eucalyptus + castor oil mixture. So?

Right you are. Go for him, give him castor and pollux.

20.5.37

Nirod

We are informed that P has got boils, ringworm and other privileges all over his body and he is scratching himself and wiping the dishes with his busy fingers. This, I believe, is objectionable according to medical science as well as to common sense? You had better interview him and insist on his taking some kind of treatment, also your good advice. What?

SRI AUROBINDO

There are plenty of alternatives and questions in this poem;¹⁵² I hope they don't annoy you.

No, it doesn't annoy—but, sir, you have written a magnificent poem without knowing it and that is absurd. The foam-washed shore on the edge of time is splendid, twilight's starry heart-beat is splendid; lines 7, 8, 9, 12 are O.K., while the couplet, sir, the couplet is a miracle. If these are not 0.P., they ought to be.

Quite awfully fine. Gaudeamus igitur.¹⁵³

The bakery servant's ulcer is varicose ulcer. Rather difficult to heal, for according to medical science the first step in treatment is rest of the parts affected. But since it is not bad, we may hope to cure it. About the risk, Mother has taken the responsibility.

Mother was told it was a wound and nothing much and the varicose affair was separate.

What responsibility and what risk? No one is responsible for the effects of an illness.

Why do you call it "absurd", Sir, writing a magnificent poem without knowing? If I knew I would have been glad, but there is a greater pleasure in surprises, isn't there?

Surprise of what? Surprise of not knowing till somebody tells you?

Your remarks are rather mysterious. "If these are not O.P., they ought to be" means they are not? and "these" means also lines 7, 8, 9, 12, I suppose, but you say they are O.K.

I mean just what I say. It is evidently the overhead inspiration that is trying to come, that it changes into something more mental in the transmission. Lines 7, 8, 9 are those that can be suspected of being actually O.P. in rhythm, movement, spirit and turn of the language. But the poetry of the rest is not the less fine for the mental intervention.

O.K. in English is something like all right, quite fit, etc. no?

In American English.

Can your remark on my poem, with the Latin put right go into circulation?

No.

Amal says it is Gaudumus igitur.

What's that—that's not Latin! There is no such word as gaudumus. I wrote "gaudeamus".¹⁵⁴

... About the bakery servant—as the Mother knows, standing occupation is not good for these conditions; they tend to increase it. The risk I spoke of is no doubt remote; what happens, at times, is that blood in these veins clots and in that case one may be cured; if that does not happen, the clot can travel to deeper vessels and then to the heart too, or to the brain...

Well, those are things that happen in the course of illness and the employer is not responsible. As for risk, he has to work for his living and it won't help him if we refuse him work. In Europe a large percentage of the working class have varicose veins, yet their work is standing work all day and they go on with it.

In the couplet, Amal says, especially your line "Light through her [earth's] dead eclipse of mind is poured," is magnificent. Is it?

Yes.

How I struggled with the line, and you, Sir, by just a touch here and there fixed it up! I wish I could do that.

It is a question of getting the right words in the right places instead of allowing them to wander haphazard. Naturally it depends on inspiration, not on any clever piecing together. One sits still (mentally), looks at the words and somebody flashes the thing through you.

Oh, this blessed mind! But how the hell does it intervene?

By suggesting an inspiration of its own or a form of its own for the inspiration that is coming and in a hundred other ways. The mind is very active and clever for interference.

At times there are good lines, at others utter failures. If I had doubted at every moment, questioned, I can understand.

The mind can suggest as well as question.

I don't seem to have still caught the metrical rhythm.

It is not the metrical rhythm you have not caught—it is the fact that in English words the stresses cannot be shifted about at pleasure. It can only be done occasionally and within judicious choice.

About the poem of yesterday, this remark will do: "Quite awfully fine ... A magnificent poem".

[Sri Aurobindo put brackets around "Quite awfully fine".]

This is too jocular a form for a solemn "remark". The rest by itself sounds as if you had written the Iliad. Better say more modestly "An extremely fine poem".

By the way, I know that Mother's programme is too crammed; still, I was wondering if I could be occasionally or rarely put in edgeways as one of the interviewers. Any decision will be taken with yogic samatā.

Better not press that now. Wait for better times.

You seem to have had no time yesterday to read my poem Golden silence of indifference?

All that was really there last night? How astonishing! I didn't see it. However I have answered now.

N.P. is complaining of violent pains "just below the joint of the thigh" connected with the rapid enlargement of his hydrocele. Is there any danger of a complication such as hernia—something of the kind was suggested once by somebody in connection with another case of hydrocele, I do not know with what authority. If there is, it ought to be looked to, without alarming a very alarm-able patient. What are the pains due to anyway?

In N.P.'s case there is no "rapid enlargement" of the hydrocele. It is of the same size as we saw before.

It was his hallucination then? or fear made him see double?

By the way, can you not send one or two sonnets already written, of yours?

Impossible at present.

Rajlakshmi has eczema, can i try the medicine Mother gave for that servant?

Pavitra has some medicine for eczema, you might ask him for it. Mother was thinking to keep the other medicine for some time in case there should be any recurrence of the ulcer of Krishnaswami.

In this poem should I put 'faint murmur" or "radiant murmur"?

Faint away,—all right—better than radiation.

At night I felt damnably sleepy over the writing. What's the matter, Sir? Had to jump into bed disgusted.

Result of inspiration I suppose—sends you to sleep.

... P has a very rotten physique, Sir!

Well, you will have to pull him out of this before we send him home.

Shall we show N.P. to Philaire, tomorrow? Operation out of the question, perhaps?

You can exhibit him to Philaire, but operation out of the question.

Exhibited N.P. to Philaire. Operation is the only remedy, so?

Mother says NO—So?

The rubber sheet Mother gave for the dispensing table is worn out. She had given a shawl which is very good. Shall we use it then?

You can buy a rubber sheet for it.

Mother does not recollect about the shawl.

There is hardly any substantial result of my writing poetry every night. Should one store up and then spend economically, effectively, splendidly now and then, say twice a week, like Amal? Which method do you advise?

Can't say. You have progressed much by the present method Could try the other now and then for perfection if you like.

Perhaps in all the poems there is a touch of inspiration, but is that going to he heightened by storing up for some time and then allowing the gush—that's the question before you.

It is a question before you, sir—not before me.

Guru, J has been terribly puzzled and worried, myself a little less, about your "too overmental style"!

Ornamental, not overmental.

... She exercised her mental faculty too much? Epic movement has to surpass that?

No, sir—You must read my epic handwriting properly first—afterwards exercise your mental faculty.

By the way, you have absolutely forgotten to send that "Presse Médicale" with your notes [2.2.37]. Brooding over it?

No. Went to limbo.

I have progressed much, you say? Very glad and thank you, Sir. But the latest poems don't seem to come to much, do they?

What the big h do you mean? Don't come to much? What did you expect more than the praise that has been given? Want to be told that Homer, Aeschylus and Shakespeare all rolled into one were not a patch on you? What's the idea?

The poem which you have marked throughout with single and double marginal lines, is only a fine sonnet?... Not that I mind very much, but I was surprised to see the remark. Can you clarify?

Again what the damn do you mean? When an English poet achieves a fine sonnet, he feels like a peacock and spreads his tail—and you say "only a fine sonnet". Well, I'm damned! Surprised myself to see your remark on my remark.

About the poem of yesterday, I don't feel like changing the last line. The poem hasn't come to much except as an exercise. You have said nothing about it.

Don't talk blithering nonsense. Change that line and send the poem back to me.

D seems to be wounded by our and your silence. Do you think he may be more Pondicherry-minded by a little connection: soothing words, one or two poems, etc.?

Yes. Better send some soothing remarks from time to time.

May I know why Mother says No to N.P.'s operation? I want to know your viewpoint. Hydrocele operations are supposed to be without any risk at all. If we leave it as it is, it will grow bigger.

What operation? tapping? I have known cases of hydrocele operation being performed times and times but the thing always cameback. It is N.P. who is asking for operation?

Will you wake up from limbo and scratch something on the paper?

How can I when the whole thing has gone to limbo?

June 1937

"Sitting alone under the shade of the tree
Wrapt in a hushed profundity of night..."

A tree gives shade in the day—here it is night when all is shade Please change.

I was struck by R's sonnet! By Jove, looks like a sheer genii—I mean genius, what?

Perhaps both—genii producing genius.

[The following question was put by J:]

What is the best way to get to the source of epic poetry and have it securely established?

One has to grow into it—there is no other way. Once the epic inspiration has opened, this growth is possible and, if the inspiration is sustained, fairly certain.

Arjava has fever again. He thinks it is due to indigestion. I hear that he takes some syrup cocoa sanctioned and sent by Mother. When I asked him about his diet, he didn't mention it. Too much sugar won't do, I think, as already he can't even digest D.R. vegetables.

There is no sugar put in—the sweetness is that of concentrated cocoa. Mother told him he could take it thrice a day; but it is possible he takes too much of the syrup at a time. The usual rule is to take a little syrup with much water. He is exhausting a bottle in 4 days which is immensely rapid. Certainly too much sweet syrup may not be good for the damaged liver.

Yesterday I had a dream of a very beautiful plump boy—Amal's golden child¹⁵⁵—who came with tenderness and affection to my side. But he was a lost child whose mother was searching for him, then she found him. I had a very pleasant feeling. Anything in this?

Your higher being, I suppose. Glad you have found him, if only as yet in a dream.

Why don't you give me some experience, Sir? Afraid of breaking my head?

All in good time, I hope.

How is it, Sir, you had no remarks at all for my poor poem? No lines¹⁵⁶ either!

Probably was too much in a hurry for remarks or linings.

What about today's poem?

Quite up to the mark.

I am surprised to hear that the beautiful child in my dream, was my higher being. Why did he go away with his mother if he is my being?

He has no other mother than the Mother, so if the Mother accepts him, what is there to lament over?

... Could you be a little more generous in your explanation so that I may put in some more vigour to find him in reality? And why does it make you glad simply because I have found him in my dream?

What is once found in the inner being is likely to be found in the outer consciousness—that is why.

[Question by J:] P says that he is going to write an article on "the only vernacular epic", Tulsi Ramayan in Hindi. But Meghnadbodh is an epic too in a vernacular. How can he say then that Tulsi Ramayan is the only one? Won't it be wrong to write like that publicly?

Of course, it is a wrong idea. There is not only Meghnadbodh but Kamban's Ramayan in Tamil—But I suppose P knows neither Bengali nor Tamil.

I don't know the cause of Y's sudden diarrhoea. He took something at Mrs. S's place, or D.R. mango?

Perhaps. I don't know. He speaks only of oranges as diet after attack, but he wrote some days ago about [...]¹⁵⁷ things. He is asking for green cocoanuts two a day. Mother says green cocoanuts can have a laxative, even a purgative effect. What do you say?

This morning, at 4.30 a.m., while returning after urination, K fell down unconscious with froth at the corner of the mouth. At 6.30, he was complaining of terrible frontal headache... He says he concentrated in bed for 20 minutes, before going for urination, quite conscious throughout. He remembers nothing about the fall nor my visit to him, but he answered all my questions quite well.

There is nothing wrong in the system. We must eliminate the possibility of the Force as a cause, since he was consciously meditating, he says, before getting up. I have heard of A falling down once while meditating in standing position.

No previous history of epilepsy.

[No reply.]

Strange that you didn't write a word on K! I wanted you to clear out the possibility of the Force as a cause...

Bunkum about Force. Obviously if a man goes into trance while standing or walking, he may fall down,—Ramakrishna had often to be held up when he went off suddenly while standing. But it doesn't produce results like that. I don't believe he is such a mighty sadhak as to go off into nirvikalpa samadhi¹⁵⁸ for several hours. Moreover it does not give froth at the lips.

Since I've got no instruction, I suppose he has to get the stools and physical examination done independently?

I think so.

About epilepsy, I am not quite sure, for it usually doesn't occur at his age.

Quite so. If he is sure that nothing happened like this before, it can't be epilepsy.

"Bury these quivering clay's repeated cries
In the dumb earth's eternal grave of sighs."

Shall I make it "clay's repeated wave" and bring "grave" at the end of the last line?

Eh! how can there be a wave of clay? I have put pit instead of grave—I am damned if I know what it means, but it sounds awfully fine.

K is all right today. Another examination tomorrow.

It turns out that his statement is a lie as I thought—he has had these fits before.

J has eczema on fingers and legs. Oil and sunbath not very effective. She finds that ice application gives much relief when there is itching. But I don't know really if ice can cure eczema.

Sahana cured her skin with ice, but it was perhaps not eczema.

I thought for eczema the less the water the better it is.

I cured mine with force + very hot water, but I don't recommend it to others.

Will you kindly ask Mother? Last time J was cured by constant and persistent sunbath + oil. This time?

Mother says she knows only sunbath.

We think A's illness is chronic mucous colitis... What do you say to screen-examination, and X-ray, if necessary?

If you like.

"This gentle breeze free from all petty cares
And fragrant peace of the blue-hearted noon ..."
It is rather funny, no? Breeze free from all cares!

Care worried breezes are gentlemen we don't know—on earth at least.

And breeze rather than the peace should be fragrant, no?

Why the devil should any fragrance of the breeze prevent peace from being fragrant too?

"With a tranced petal of the pale-white moon
Are a vast breath of God that with us shares."

What does the breath of God share with us? our meals?

Instead of saying "... that with us he shares", I have dropped "he" in order to be more English.

How does the absence of a personal pronoun make something more English?

The couplet seems flat. What do you say?

Flat! the rhythm is like that of a carriage jolting on a road full of ruts.

I hear Mother kept silent about blood-exam for K?

Why should Mother object? They can do what they think necessary.

Can there be fear and anger at the same time?

Fear and anger very often go together. Evidently you have not studied cats fighting ...

Do you think I have a lyrical hand in English poetry or does my gift seem to be more in grave things?

You have acquired the latter better up to now because you have put more practice into it and found your way.

I will try lyrics, whatever may happen, what?

All right.

Why do I find your "Songs to Myrtilla" so difficult?

It is a mystery.

I don't understand a single poem there. The English there seems awfully difficult.

Nonsense. There is nothing difficult about it—it is plain ordinary English.

I forward X's letter. He supports in this letter, very strongly, his belief in human affections. Y came to me just now and recounted her discussion with X on the subject, and her having lost all faith in human love and affections, as a result of her past experiences. Is Y far wrong?

Obviously not. On X's own argument, if his experience justifies him in believing in human affection, Y's justifies her in not believing in it.

... One can't say that there is no truth at all in human feelings and sentiments.

There is a "truth" in everything, the question is what kind of truth and how much of it.

I don't know what you have written to X about it; he says that he has your support.

I don't think I wrote anything about that. It was about his power to persuade others and also about his helping a certain person in her illness by prayer.

... The fact is that wherever he has gone, the Goddess of Love has, as if, enjoined all to pour love upon him; so he is a confirmed believer in these things.

What is the fact is that he has vital attractiveness of a magnetic character and naturally¹⁵⁹ it works in people when he wants it to do so.

By his charm and personality, atheists seem to have become theists, materialists inclined to Yoga, favourable towards Pondicherry, etc., etc.

It is to be seen how far that goes.

Well then, there is an element of truth in affection...

I don't believe it was the affection that did it. It is the dominating vital force in X. People who were not affectionate by nature, have attached people to them and dominated their minds and lives—e.g. Napoleon.

He also says that he has been betrayed often by friends and suffered much. Is it then his robust optimism that upholds him?

It is a difference of temperament and vital expansiveness.

My questions are: why doesn't he remain content with these affections? Why does he intend to come here for Yoga?

That is another X.

... If human affections were everything or occupy such a big place in life, why did Buddha and Ramakrishna leave the world? How does Sri Aurobindo leave everything? How do patriots die unknown, unnamed, for their country?

Because they can look beyond their small self to a bigger self or to the Self of All...

Please give a satisfactory reply to all these questions.

I am not going to perorate on this problem but I shall write something brief if you send the book again.

Guru, why won't you perorate? Fear of publicity?

No, Sir. Subject too old and thin.

Do you think X's affection for me is genuine? I hear that he has spoken very highly of me to others.

Perhaps he feels like that when he writes or when he gets a letter from you; perhaps something in him has got that feeling there always, expressed or latent in a corner. At the same time he used to write to me long lamentations in the desert saying he couldn't stay here because he had no friends in the Asram.

Human affection is obviously unreliable because it is so much based upon selfishness and desire; it is a flame of the ego sometimes turbid and murky, sometimes more clear and brightly coloured—sometimes tamasic based on instinct and habit, sometimes rajasic and fed by passion or the cry for vital interchange, sometimes more sattwic and trying to be or look to itself distinterested. But fundamentally it depends on a personal need or a return of some kind inward or outward and when the need is not satisfied or the return ceases or is not given, it most often diminishes or dies or exists only as a tepid or troubled remnant of habit from the past or else turns for satisfaction elsewhere. The more intense it is, the more it is apt to be troubled by tumults, clashes, quarrels, egoistic disturbances of all kinds, selfishness, exactions, lapses even to rage and hatred, ruptures. It is not that these affections cannot last—tamasic instinctive affections last because of habit in spite of everything dividing the persons, e.g. certain family affections; rajasic affections can last sometimes in spite of all disturbances and incompatibilities and furious ruptures because one has a vital need of the other and clings because of that or because both have that need and are constantly separating to return and returning to separate or proceeding from quarrel to reconciliation and from reconciliation to quarrel; sattwic affections last very often from duty to the ideal or with some other support though they may lose their keenness, spontaneity or brightness. But the true reliability is there only when the psychic element in human affection becomes strong enough to colour or dominate the rest. For that reason friendship is usually or rather can oftenest be the most durable of the human affections because there there is less interference of the vital and, even though a flame of the ego, it can be a quiet and pure fire giving always its warmth and light. Nevertheless reliable friendship is almost always with a very few; to have a horde of loving, unselfishly faithful friends is a phenomenon so rare that it can be safely taken as an illusion—the enthusiasm of a triumphant return and his own habit of exaggeration, for he seems to take easily social kindness for friendship, is probably responsible for X's; probably if he remained three years in Calcutta, he might change his tone in spite of his immense capacity for attracting people. In any case human affection whatever its value has its place, because through it the psychic being gets the emotional experiences it needs until it is ready to prefer the true to the apparent, the perfect to the imperfect, the divine to the human. As the consciousness has to rise to the higher level, so the activities of the heart also have to rise to that higher level and change their basis and character. Yoga is the founding of all the life and consciousness in the Divine, so also love and affection must be rooted in the Divine and a spiritual and psychic oneness in the Divine must be their foundation—to seek the Divine first leaving other things aside or to seek the Divine alone is the straight road towards that change. That means no attachment—it need not mean turning affection into disaffection or chill indifference. But X seems to want to take his vital emotions just as they are—tels quels—into the Divine—let him try and don't bother him with criticisms and lectures; if it can't be done, he will have to find it out himself. Or perhaps he wants to clap on the Divine to the rest as a crowning ornament—shikhara¹⁶⁰—to his pyramid of loves and affections. In that case—

Good Lord! I have perorated after all.

I wrote these three funny stanzas last night in a somnolent consciousness. I don't find any head or tail anywhere.

There is not any head distinguishable, about tail I don't know.

If the stars are of melody, why the deuce should one weep?

Stars of melody means opera singers, who can I suppose weep. Melodies can also be sorrowful. But if it is real stars you mean, I don't see why they should weep.

Should it be stars of misery?

Certainly not, the phrase has no meaning.

The last stanza seems too surrealistic. What?

Well, well—there is a rather mystifying and alluring incoherence—Still—

Why the devil am I having so much difficulty in writing? And so much sleep too? The English stream is drying up or the lyrical attempt bringing the pain of labour?

Probably. It is besides I think the melancholy JaCques in your imagination who is interfering. Perhaps the higher Inspiration wants to find a lyrical form and he cuts in with the sorrowful strains of the past—wrinkles on a smooth face, you know. So the stars can't manage their melody.

Guru, do you find anything in this poem?

Very fine lyric—This time you have hit the bull's eye. I have altered only a few phrases that were weak.

"Wandering on the wild seas of thought" won't do perhaps?

Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, is a piece of highway robbery—you might just as well write "To be or not to be that is the question" and call it yours.

Please read Surawardy's poems and give your opinion on the one about the "old man's" tears. Amal says that he is under Yeats' influence.

Am obliged to postpone these tears—mine as well as the old man's.

At places his poetry is very fine. If only he had left out the melancholic old man's tears it would have perhaps sounded better, what?

Evidently—the old man's tears and the young woman's tennis.

[Regarding J's narrative:] This whole part seems very poetic, but can poetry come in narrative poems?

Do you mean to say that the rest of the poem is prose or mere verse? Poetry does not consist only in images or fine phrases. When Homer writes simply "Sing, Goddess, the baleful wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus, which laid a thousand woes on the Achaeans and hurled many strong souls of heroes down to Hades and made their bodies a prey for dogs and all the birds; and the will of Zeus was accomplished", he is writing in the highest style of poetry.

Guru, here is the tail of the poem I had begun. I am afraid the typing is as pale as the moon's eye and the tail as mistily mystifying as the head! What?

Agree.

I hope you get the link throughout. Is it poetic?

Very. Don't know what it all means, but meaning is superfluous in such poems. The more mystifying the better.

"Voyaging through strange seas of Thought"—highway robbery? Shakespeare's or Sri Aurobindo's?

Wordsworth—one of his best known lines.

Medical report—nothing—all old cases.

A wants a tonic for his debility, Kaviraji if possible. Duraiswam has suggested to him "Chyavanpras". Well?

Are some of the lines in today's poem too long for a lyric?

It does not depend on the length of lines but on whether the rhythm sings or not. If it talks instead of singing, then the rhythm is not lyrical.

Had any time for the old man's tears and the young woman's tennis?

No.

[A's case.] For debility, I know little about Chyavanprash. Rajangam, Dr. Becharlal and books say that it is a marvellous remedy for debility etc. So, I suppose, we can get some from Madras when Doraiswamy goes.

Very well.

Is he still consuming the same amount of syrup cocoa?...

He says he has reduced the quantity.

You are surely surprised, staggered at the long ethereal lyric I've sent you!

Staggered is not the word for it. What on earth have you done?

See, Sir, I sat down to write and it came. I feel it is a good fish.

Fish or fishy?

I have caught, though I'm not sure whether it is a sprat, trout or a salmon, which?

A sprat, sir, a sprat and a weird one at that.

"Hush, tread softly like a bride,
See, the night is dreaming."

Good! God!

"Between the shadows of her curved lips
A white smile is brimming."

Christ! Woogh!

"Oh, what angels have come to kiss
Her virgin face.
What rapture thrills her soul
With diamond rays!"

Holy Virgin!

"Do not wake her, let her sleep
Through the desert-day."

Who? Night? Where on earth is she sleeping?

A bit of philosophy and metaphysics has spoilt the poem intended to be a fine piece of poetry, no?

My dear sir, what possessed you to write in this vein of the most tender and infantile Victorian sentimentalism in this year of the Lord 1937? And who or what on earth are you writing about? Night sleeping? What's the idea? It sounds as if it were the sleep of Little Nell (Dickens).

"Between the crescent tender lips..."
[Sri Aurobindo underlined "tender".]

Woogh! Night's lips are tender?

Please try to restore it to its deserving beauty.

I am afraid I can do nothing unless you shed some light on what you can possibly mean. At present I am at sea.

A rather funny idea, no?

Very funny.

Can Night sleep through desert-day?

Never heard of her behaving in this way before.

It will take 3 or 4 days to get Chyavanprash from Madras. Meanwhile A can take Kola, if he wants.

Very well.

Sir, I have shoved the poem back to its own century! But that's what comes of hooking! Where does your theory of hooking go?

It depends on what you hook on to.

I suppose you will put in a corollary now: How the devil am I to shed any light when I don't know myself what I'm writing?

I always did. I never said that whatever you hook on to, the result will be the same. You have hooked on to two things at a time—one which is Victorian, sentimental, melancholy, tragic-pessimistic and thin in its language, images, emotional tone—the other which is from above, full, coloured, packed with suggestion and significance. The first was in you already, I think—the other has come with the upward opening. In today's poem both are there, but neither at its best or worst. In stanzas 4, 5, 6 the second comes out strongly, in the last two the first comes out. I have had therefore to reconstruct these last two which were out of harmony with what went before in their tone.

I took the night as a lady who after long travails and seeking arrives at the peace of the Infinite and enjoys the fruit. Is it impossible to symbolise the night or day like that?

The figure of the lady was terribly small and sentimental, much too domestically human for a power like Night.

[Question put by J:]

I chose this story for trying out the epic style:

Krishna-Gautami whose only son died, prayed to Buddha to give his life back. Later she became a disciple of Buddha ... I feel almost no impulse to write ... I doubt if the subject is a fit one for trying the epic style.

... As for the fitness of the subject, it depends on how you treat it. The epic tone can be used very well for it, but it must not be pitched too high, as if one were speaking of Gods and Rishis and great heroes as in Homer and Virgil or in Meghnadbodh or similar poems, so the river swelling in echo¹⁶¹ of the lamentation of one who is an ordinary woman is out of place. The possibility of epic treatment lies in the subject, the universality of death and grief, the calm high wisdom of Buddha etc.

A called me up in the afternoon. Fever! said no liver trouble...

Mother thinks he would like to have his blood examined at the hospital and on the occasion, a consultation with Valle. She sounded him and he seemed to smile at the suggestion. Anyhow you can speak about it to him.

I sounded A. He says he could wait and see how the new drug is going to act. But what's this blood-examination for? One examines blood for malaria, anaemia and syphilis...

The blood examination is A's own suggestion. He says his uncle died of pernicious anaemia and how can we know that he is not suffering from pernicious anaemia without a blood examination? It is no use discussing the matter scientifically. If you don't want him to die of pernicious anaemia like his uncle or of the imagination of it, the safest course is to have his blood examined and satisfy him that he has not got it—then he may consent to live. Our own idea is the consultation with Valle, for which we have a yet unspoken reason—we will see. If not anaemia pernicious or otherwise, he has got hypercholericitis.¹⁶² Nothing to do with cholera, by the way.

I was rather surprised to hear that Amal has given Dover's powder capsule to L. It contains, as you know, opium, and to give opium without knowing much about it is rather risky.

L had told Mother Amal wanted to give her something which was not a medicine! Dover's powder is not a medicine?

I would like to have two short-sleeved shirts for operation purpose.

Yes. Ask Romen to do them.

The word "bright" has been repeated. I suppose I could have improved the poem.

Bright, birds, clouds and now the infinite (by my fault) are repeated. Hang it all, sir, let them repeat to their heart's content.

Do you think this recent sentimentality could be due to Harin's influence?

No.

I am reading his lyrics at present, so an unconscious imitation of his style?

I don't know. Harin's sentimentality is of a different kind.

A has again pain in the joints, and fever. Shall we then call Valle without waiting for the effect of the new drug? There is no harm in calling him, I suppose.

A attributes the whole thing to climate and spoke also of his increasing irascibility (which is a fact). You might discreetly find out from Valle if he thinks it is due to climate.

No answer to the last portion? ["There is no harm in calling Valle, I suppose."]

Forgot.

There is no harm. Of course you will ask A first.

No news of A today. What's that word plese—"spoke also of his increasing—"?

"irascibility"—due to liver, he says.

In this poem a pale moonlit night appears mist-laden, and leaves seem to smile...

Well you have sharp eyes to see the leaves smile through a mist-laden night.

I have made the leaves quiver, if you won't quiver at it.

I read it without a quiver.

Don't see the link of the first line with what follows... Instead of "weary traveller" it could as well be "weary sheep", I suppose! "I wait and wait like a weary tramp."

Sheep!!! why not "cat" at once? "I wait and wait like a weary cat" would be very fine and original.

As it is, the poem doesn't seem to say much, does it? God knows what to write next.

If God knows it is all right. Evidently he knows what he is doing.

It's a dream which is nothing extraordinary.

Evidently you don't know when you are inspired.

What kind of poetry am I writing now? Very funny surrealism!

There is nothing surrealist nor funny.

And funnier still that I should write these poems—a logical, medical, practical man, what?

That is your idea of yourself? Queer.

How did you enjoy the mangoes, Sir?

Can't say, as I don't get them till tomorrow.

Mother didn't take them, I suppose.

No; she only tastes sometimes.

I hear Mother doesn't like mangoes at all.

It is not a question of liking.

Yesterday I thought K had T.B. or pneumonia. But where are they now? In one night everything over!

Shobhanallah! With your diagnosis one would have expected him to be already in Paradise.

He had sudden severe pain in the chest, cough, and blood in sputum, with a rise of temperature. On the previous day he had cold and exhausted himself in a long sea-bath. So all this gone overnight. Was it just overexhaustion or Force did it?

Of course, I put a Force.

As for K, no, Sir, not in Paradise but in hell of agony, suffering, fever, brown [red] hepatisation, grey hepatisation etc., etc. (nothing to do with liver, though).

What on earth is this hepatisation? Where? Lungs? pneumonic? What etc.? Kindly be less cryptic.

We have got "Chyavanprash" for A. But, they say, it is specially meant for lung diseases, but it is also a renowned tissue builder... All cold producing things, e.g. cold water, curds, lime, fruits, cocoanuts must be avoided.

I don't understand how a medicine for the lungs can be used in his case. He doesn't need tissues either; but nervous energy.

Rajangam says that Chyavanprash is indicated for everything—a panacea. So can we fire?

Yes, if it can be done without stopping his eating cold water etc. and confining himself to pickles and cayenne pepper.

K—Well, red and grey hepatisation are parts of morbid anatomy. When there is pneumonia, the lungs undergo pathological changes from red to grey and get the solid appearance of liver. So the stages are called red and grey hepatisation. Nothing alarming, you see!

But hang it all! Has he pneumonia or not? Is there fever now? Alarming or not, what is his present condition?

Black despair has swallowed me up to the neck, except for the hand with which I write! As regards sadhana, I don't find any rosy tint anywhere. All clouded, clouded and shrouded. As regards poetry, same, if not more. Have devoted myself to a task utterly impossible and wholly useless—a foolish attempt.

Whoosh! Anyhow, as regards your poetry, it doesn't seem to me there is any ground for any indulgence in this black luxury.

I told you long ago that K is hale and hearty and that was the miracle: no fever, nothing at all. You said that according to our diagnosis you expected him to be in Paradise; I said no, not so early, but in a hell of suffering etc.; that's all. That grey hepatisation troubled you, eh?

Naturally, if you say that a fellow who is supposed to be hale and hearty, is brown and grey with a mysterious hepatisation and suffering a hell of agony and not yet in Paradise!

... Please help me to a higher consciousness. Where is the higher Being that I had met with? I seem to have lost everything.

Everything once gained is there and can be regained. Yoga is not a thing that goes by one decisive rush one way or the other—it is a building up of a new consciousness and is full of ups and downs. But if one keeps to it the ups have a habit of resulting by accumulation in a decisive change—therefore the one thing to do is to keep at it. After a fall don't wail and say I'm done for, but get up, dust yourself and proceed farther on the right path.

There is hardly any improvement in J's eczema. What's to be done? I can't try anything else. Kindly ask Mother.

The medicine is practically exhausted—so you will have to find another—we don't know of any that is effective. Eczema is a thing that comes and goes and comes again.

Why is it taking such a long time?

She writes that she has always had it owing to the peculiarity of her skin—insufficient secretion—some gland responsible. If so—

Can't you give her a big dose?

If it is constitutional, a big dose will not be sufficient—it is only by a prolonged action that it could cease altogether.

Deviprasad has an enlarged gland below the jaw. He has been having it for a long time. Looks like a T.B. gland.

!![Sri Aurobindo put 2 exclamation marks.]

This poem is absolute hooking, Sir! As great poetry usually does, you know, the whole thing simply came down, so it must be a genuinely great creation, what?

Come down it did! As for the great creation, well—

Jatin Bal wants to know the last date for permission; is there such a date?

No.

Can a tentative permission be given?

Yes.

If no rooms are available, can he share my room?

I suppose so, if it is large enough for two.

Yes, about J's gland secretion it is true. Almost every doctor in England attributed her skin condition to lack of gland secretion and almost all said it was thyroid, so they prescribed thyroid pills. And her eczema also is chronic, due to the skin.

But deficiency of thyroid gland does not make people fat? J is not fat. It was thyroid gland medicine which turned T into a lifelong skeleton.

Should thyroids be given internally?

I have no idea what are the effects of these pills. These gland medicines seem to be rather risky—only if you are sure.

Can't interpret your exclamations about Deviprasad! What do you say to cod-liver oil?

He is already oily and greasy enough.

Here is another masterpieces¹⁶³—hooking on again, and seems a colossal sample of incoherent utterances. Please try to bring it to a Grecian perfection. And if you succeed in the task kindly illumine me.

I have succeeded. Hooked on again and you must admit that every thing is now coherent, cogent and masterly!!!

"A solitary pilgrimage of the Soul
Rising from dark tombs of death
Whence began all conscious throbs of life
And end in one ultimate Breath."

Is the construction O.K.?

I don't know what you mean by "Whence". Do you mean that it is from the tomb of death life comes and ends there in the ultimate breath? That is what the construction would mean. But trusting to the capital B I have changed to "To whence".

How do you find the masterpiece?

Superb, after my dealings with it.

Amal appreciated yesterday's poem¹⁶⁴ very much. He says that it has become a very fine poem. Agree?

Of course, very fine indeed.

J is not fat, but she seems to think so. People say she is in Tulsi's group which has naturally alarmed her. And she is thinking of dieting: cutting down rice, bread, etc. What do you say to that?

That seems to me nonsense—in any case cutting down food is not advisable.

S came today with a sad and determined face and said that he could not sleep at all, too much pain. Twice you kept silent over his treatment. Silent again?

How can I prescribe? It is your business.

I admit, Sir, that yesterday's poem is damned masterly and superbly beautiful. Only if I could be the master! I ask myself "How much of it is yours? Well, since nothing is yours, why shed tears?"

Can't say that nothing is yours.

Do you think hooking like this will continue or a time will come when everything will be a finished product?

Certainly, you have sometimes had it; but still usually there is the mixture of an old poetic mind and your own romantic sentimentalism helping it. That luxury has got to go, so that the inspiration from a higher source may come out clear.

"The moon's pale songs ringing in the dark
Are its own mystery-voice ..."

Can songs be pale?

May, but moon's songs are rather toffee.

Have you brushed aside Surawardy's poems?

No, I have combed them only. I send you the results. A few lines are extremely fine, others are very good, others give a fine poetic turn. But he lapses from all that to a modernist rhythmlessness and triviality to which I cannot get accustomed. Anyway—fashion is fashion and the Time spirit has its tricks,—so I leave it there.

Yesterday what did you write, Sir—Moon's songs are rather "toffee"? Toffee! Gracious! Bonbon?

Yes, too sweety-sweety.

July 1937

What do you think now of this piece, Sir? What do you think—fine, very fine, eh? Never mind what you say, I find it damn fine!

Sir, I fully admit it. No need to bully me into assent with a damn Amen!

The revolution in rhythm is not my fault. Sometimes you allow truncations, sometimes you don't. What to do?

Revolutions of rhythm must produce new rhythms, not no rhythm at all.

In the other line ["A voice threading the dimness, faintly heard!"] is it "threading" or "threatening"?

Threading, sir—why the deuce should there be a Pondicherry squabble, however faintly heard, in this business?

[The following question was put by J regarding a poem she had begun on Buddha.]

Do you think I should change the lines? I realised that I know nothing of Buddhistic teaching except the word Nirvana. Kindly say a few words on what Buddha stood for or taught his disciples.

I don't know about the change. Buddhist teaching does not recognise any inner self or soul—there is only a stream of consciousness from moment to moment—the consciousness itself is only a bundle of associations—it is kept moving by the wheel of Karma. If the associations are untied and thrown away (they are called sanskaras), then it dissolves; the idea of self or a persistent person ceases; the stream flows no longer, the wheel stops. There is left according to some Sunya, a mysterious Nothing from which all comes; according to others a mysterious Permanent in which there is no individual existence. This is Nirvana, Buddha himself always refused to say what there was beyond cosmic existence; he spoke neither of God nor Self nor Brahman. He said there was no utility in discussing that—all that was necessary was to know the causes of this unhappy temporal existence and the way to dissolve it.

I can't quite make out the link between the stanzas, and some things do not seem logical.

Well, sir, it is quite obvious that your poem is hopelessly inconsequent. For a man of logic (?) such divagations must be a release, I suppose.¹⁶⁵ However there is good stuff in it and I have tried to put the three meanderings right.

... It is not blank verse, Amal says, as there are rhymes—seas, centuries, memories, etc. What sort of a poem is it then? Shall I allow rhymes as they come?

Let us call it modem verse which is never anything, blank or unblank, but rhymes when it feels inclined to and doesn't when it isn't.

I am sure you won't find much inconsequence here, and you will be charmed by the subtle beauty of the poem...

Great Jehovah!

... except, perhaps, at places it may be too "toffee" for you!

The toffee is there!

S complains of a lot of weakness, buzzing in the ear, no appetite, sound in the abdomen... I am afraid we have to take an X-ray in order to see if we can do something. Just now he was complaining of burning pain.

You can have the X-ray.

...Unless our blessed nature changes, there is no help at all. But change of nature is not a question of a day. Till then suffer like this?

One can decide not to suffer. But obviously otherwise, until the nature changes, there will be trouble.

I shall write in detail about my trouble...

All right.

For J, André advised auto-haemo therapy or auto-sero therapy [blood injection into the muscle] which he says is very good for eczema and asthma.

It must be done by André, if at all. It is very fashionable now. If J consents, you can try it.

There is Rajlakshmi also with the same trouble, so if you allow, we may try André's treatment.

I don't think.

As for J's case, you seem to be much behind time, Sir! You don't favour these new discoveries!

How is that? About the blood injection juggle? I told you it was fashionable and you could fash along with it if you liked or rather if J liked—provided André did it.

S—no relief! We gave him some alkali tablets.

There is a blood curdling letter from S. If it is to be taken as accurate, the whole affair must be nervous, Mother says—She asks if you have tried charcoal tablets with him.

You said that it was fashionable, but hinted that you don't like the fashion: "If you liked or rather if J liked, if at all—don't they mean that?

Nonsense, sir. Where on earth did I hint anything? Where did I write that? I said it must be done by André if at all—which had to do with the person who was to do it, not with anything else. For the rest I said if J consents, you can try it. Where the hell in that simple phrase is there anything about either my disliking or your liking or anything else that you have put into it? Really now!

For S, this time we hadn't tried charcoal, but yesterday we began it and are continuing it. Yes, the letter is blood curdling and his symptoms too, if they are true... God knows how to cure him.

If he does, send him a telephone!

I am almost sure you will howl this time, seeing my poem. But I can't help it.

I won't howl, but only sigh.

By the way, I am reading Harin's lyrics. But I find that his influence does not suit me. My poems become, according to you, sentimental, romantic; while when I read Amal's poems, there come in unconsciously some lines high and lofty and you smile and say "Aha, ha! This fellow has done something!" How is this? Is there some affinity as far as our Inspiration goes? Amal seems to think so, do you?

Certainly, your real inspiration is nearer Amal's than Harin's—the inspiration that makes you write strong and original things. Under H's influence you seem to become secondhand and reminiscent of past poetry. There is however a lyric vein of another kind which came out in your dream-poems—it is that that sometimes tries to come out in your lyrics—but it is not like Harin's.

Do you think then I should stop reading Harin and read more of Amal?

No, I don't suggest that.

What about Arjava's source? Do we have any affinity?

Maybe. His poetry is very fine and powerful.

Guru, C writes that his anti-Mohammedan spirit leads him to violent political speeches and talks. Is it yogic or safe?

Neither. Especially as there is now Muslim Raj in Bengal.

S's pain is now setting into a definite character: acme going down before food and then complete relief by food; then after 2 or 3 hours it resumes. These are, I fear, more ulcer pains, but X-ray revealed no ulcer...

Before food? that seems queer. I don't see how it can be ulcers, if nothing was shown. More likely nerves.

My boil seems to have subsided, but the blessed legs are aching terribly: can't walk after my athletic exercises at this old age, Sir. System won't bear it, it seems. Give some embrocation, please.

You have been doing Olympic sports? What an idea!

This boil paining all the time. Please do something, otherwise I can't do anything.

Why so boiled by a boil?

I am simply formenting it 3 or 4 times a day. Anything else?

I suppose there is nothing else to do.

I suppose these physical impurities are due to the vital, what?

Eventually, yes.

You know how my vital is. You must have scented it from up there! Still you want us to write [5.7.37].

It is you who proposed writing and I thought it better to let the pen draw something out.

Otherwise you won't act and will let us go on suffering. Divine Law, I suppose, what?

My dear Sir, I suffer the Divine Law myself—damned slow affair.

... I have now no push at all for sadhana; vital is peaceless, restless and unhappy. Can't concentrate at all. Life is dull and deathlike in consequence!

Well, what can you expect if you go on yielding either within or without to temptation like that? It sets you at strife with your own mind and higher vital, to say nothing of the psychic.

... Darshan is approaching and I can't remain in this condition and come to you with a glum face, to see you glum too.

I won't be glum—I shall receive you with a cheerful grunt.

I kept myself steady for a couple of months, why the devil not one month more? You will say—a usual feature in Yoga. That is no comfort to me. I'm getting discouraged.

Rubbish! Be a spider.

... It's all an old story, Sir, and it will repeat itself till—?

Till your vital physical consents to its being kicked out—which may be, if not tomorrow, day after tomorrow if it chooses.

Here is Dilipda's letter. Please solve the duel between the homeopath and the surgeon. He looks up to you for advice...

What's this rash suggestion in the letter about ear? Surely even a specialist wouldn't perforate the inside of the ear? Besides Dilip insists on his nose.

But who am I to decide between the two mighty opposites—hotneopathic stalwarts (bigots is an unpleasant word) and allopathic stalwarts? The only safe course for a prudent layman is to shake his head wisely and murmur "There is much to be said on both sides of the matter." But it seems to me that the thing is already done—he has started with the allopathic treatment and will have to go through to the end.

I can't say much about the pumping and washing of the ear. Do you want him to undergo it?

Pumping and washing sounds very Hathayogic. Harmless therefore let us hope.

This B. Babu has some cheek, I must say, uttering nasty things about you.

Well, it is nothing new. He has been saying nasty things about us for some years past.

But is he really gifted with some power?

I suppose he has or had some powers, but his mind seems to be rather chaotic, accepting all sorts of mental, vital and other perceptions and suggestions as the truth, without discrimination. Barin told me a lot about his wonderful (prophecy and knowing everything about everybody) powers, but I was disappointed to find it a glowing jumble of truth and error both taken as the very truth. No harm in a mixture of truth and error if one observes and goes on steadily clearing out the mixture. But otherwise—

X writes that he can't go to see K, though that was one of the motives of his going to Calcutta.

It is a pity he could not go to K.

... Why this bitterness against "Asramites"? From where has he really got this idea that we are unsympathetic towards him?

He says some of the Asramites!

On the other hand, I think, most of us have a deep and genuine feeling for him which he doesn't see because our expression is so different from worldly people's.

Yes, but X likes universal patting and patting is rare in the Asram, preaching is more usual.

You remember he said that he is a great believer in expression. Is expression the only real thing in life?

No. Expression is all right provided it is the right expression of the right thing. But it is not necessary to be always expressing and expressing.

What do you express when you come and sit like the immovable Himalayas at Darshan? Yet people feel joy, peace, etc., etc.

Of course. But X's difficulty is that he is accustomed to live outside not inside and feel sensible impacts and react to them—expression you know—The inner silent feeling of things is not much in his line.

...At any rate I don't believe that the sadhaks are in any way worse than worldly people whose affections and sympathy have blinded X. This place being small, one's defects stand out and criticisms come to one's ears and get magnified.

Yes.

Can he say that he has no enemies, no backbiters outside?

Well, outside being large, he can give them a wide berth.

I have heard it said that ordinary sadhaks—the Toms, Dicks and Harrys—who would be nowhere beside X in the outside world and who would have nothing if they did not have a shelter here—even such people criticise him.

? The quality of the sadhaks is so low? I should say there is a considerable amount of ability and capacity in the Asram. Only the standard demanded is higher than outside even in spiritual matters. There are half a dozen people here perhaps who live in the Brahman consciousness—outside they would make a big noise and be considered as great Yogis—here their condition is not known and in the Yoga it is regarded not as siddhi but only as a beginning.

They say—why, the sadhaks had nothing to sacrifice; they were beggars, and are kept so comfortably here. This is an exterior view of things, isn't it?

Sacrifice depends on the inner attitude. If one has nothing outward to sacrifice, one has always oneself to give.

A visitor once said, "Oh, how happy you all are here, so comfortably kept, no thoughts and anxieties. Life is plain sailing." When he was asked to come and stay here, he replied that he had no time!

The difficulty is that most of the sadhaks are still full of desires, so their renunciation is not a thing that becomes very perceptible. If they had the inner tyaga,¹⁶⁶ it would create an atmosphere that people coming here would feel.

... Now I have decided to keep aloof as much as possible from tea-table and music, especially before Darshan. It may hurt X, but I can't help it.

Perhaps if he understands that it is a preparation for darshan, he may not be so hurt.

Shall I pass on your observation about K to X ("It is a pity he could not go to K.")?

What's the use—since he has to remain in Calcutta.

Yes, from the description it seems to be the nose and not the ear. But in a previous letter he spoke of the ear. Doesn't know what he is talking about? Ear-trouble, nose-trouble?

Perhaps he had both.

[The following two questions were asked by J:] Is your "Love and Death" a narrative poem?

Certainly.

Narratives then can be made or written very poetically not like a mere fact-to-fact story-telling?

But what do you mean by poetically? A fact to fact story telling can be very poetic. Poetry is poetic whether it is put in .simple language or freely adorned with images and rich phrases. The latter kind is not the only "poetic" poetry nor is necessarily the best. Homer is very direct and simple; Virgil less so but still is restrained in his diction; Keats tends always to richness; but one cannot say that Keats is poetic and Homer and Virgil are not. The rich style has this danger that it may drown the narration so that its outlines are no longer clear. This is what has happened with Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and Lucrece; so that Shakespeare cannot be called a great narrative poet.

How did you find Monomohan Ghosh's poems on Love and Death?

I don't remember anything about them and am not sure that I have read.

S says that he feels very hungry now, especially in the evening. Only milk not enough. I fear to give him anything else at night.

But why is it so bad with him? T gets on very well with her ptosis, keeping only a few rules like not moving about for some time after meals.

I think we should replace S's loss of liver by liver-extract. It is a rather costly medicine, that's why I hesitate.

He has sent me another tragic letter.

I hear that A has much pain and can't even move about. But it shouldn't be so bad, as it is the sole.

Becharlal did not seem to think much of it—said it should be all right in 3 days.

Self: Nose boil seems to be boiling down slowly; but at noon I had a terrible headache, fever too. Feeling fed up, really!

Cellular bolshevism, probably.

What's this "cellular bolshevism", Sir?

Bolshevism of the cells rising up against the Tsar (yourself). Also the Bolsheviks carry on their propaganda by creating Communistic "cells" everywhere, in the army, industries etc., etc. You don't seem to be very up in contemporary history.

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

His Bengali handwriting is too much for me.

There is a tangled problem which is absolutely beyond me.

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

There is a clash between ethics or spirituality and worldliness, so he seeks your advice.

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

Guru,

At last C has dared to ask for August Darshan permission Do you dare to permit him?

Mother considers it wiser for him to abstain. She says "Better not."

For S, ... I can't increase his evening meal yet. My idea is to build up gradually the diet so that the system may be accustomed and strengthened at the same time. No use upsetting the stomach, liver, etc.—what?

I suppose so. Don't understand the ways of a fallen stomach sounds too much like a fallen angel—but S is not that, (no angel, that is to say) whatever his stomach may be.

A has gall bladder trouble and I suspect congestion of right kidney too ... We have to give bile salts, moderate dose of salts ...

Mother says to be careful about salts, as they often help formation of stones.

Does Mother mean common salt? I meant mag. sulph. and soda-sulph.

No, she meant medical salts.

Mind and vital rather restless. No interest. Tried to write poetry, wouldn't come. Can't get it back. What to do? Forcibly sit down and scratch and scribble?

You can try. It might dribble back like that.

Guru,

What the deuce is "Brahman consciousness" [12.7.37]? The same as cosmic consciousness? Does one come to it after the psychic and spiritual transformations?

Is it something like seeing Brahman in everybody and everywhere or what? It is not spiritual realisation, I suppose, I mean realisation of Self? You see I am a nincompoop in this business. Please perorate a little.

Eternal Jehovah! You don't even know what Brahman is! You will next be asking me what Yoga is or what life is or what body is or what mind is or what sadhana is! No, sir, I am not proposing to teach an infant class the A.B.C. of the elementary conceptions which are the basis of Yoga. There is Amal who doesn't know what consciousness is, even!

Brahman, sir, is the name given by Indian philosophy since the beginning of time to the one Reality, eternal and infinite which is the Self, the Divine, the All, the more than All, which would remain even if you and everybody and everything else in existence or imagining itself to be in existence vanished into blazes—even if this whole universe disappeared, Brahman would be safely there and nothing whatever lost. In fact, sir, you are Brahman and you are only pretending to be Nirod; when Nishikanta is translating Amal's poetry into Bengali, it is really Brahman translating Brahman's Brahman into Brahman. When Amal asks me what consciousness is, it is really Brahman asking Brahman what Brahman is! There, sir, I hope you are satisfied now.

To be less drastic and refrain from making your head reel till it goes off your shoulders, I may say that realisation of the Self is the beginning of Brahman realisation;—the Brahman consciousness—the Self in all and all in the Self etc. It is the basis of the spiritual realisation and therefore of the spiritual transformation; but one has to see it in all sorts of aspects and applications first and that I refuse to go into. If you want to know you have to read the Arya.

Is living in that consciousness an ideal condition for receiving the Supramental descent?

It is a necessary condition.

I heard that no one here was prepared for this Supra-mental descent?

Of course not, this realisation of the Self as all and the Divine as all is only the first step.

What's the next step?

The next step is to get into. contact with the higher planes above spiritual mind—for as soon as one gets into the spiritual Mind or Higher Mind, this realisation is possible.

Now the big question is: Is the realisation of the Self a state of perpetual peace, joy and bliss?

If it is thoroughly established, it is one of internal peace, freedom, wideness, in the inner being.

Is it a state surpassing all struggles, dualities and depressions?

All these things you mention become incidents in the external being, on the surface, but the inner being remains untouched by them.

Are all troubles of the lower nature conquered finally—especially sex?

No, sir. But the inner being is not touched.

Or is it that sex-desire rises up in the Yogis, but leaves them untouched, unscathed? No attraction for them? It must be so, otherwise how can they be called siddhas?¹⁶⁷ No danger of a fall from the spiritual state?

It may be covered up in a way—so long as it is not established in all parts of the being. The old Yogis did not consider that necessary, because they wanted to walk off, not to change the being.

Why do you call it a beginning only? What more do you want to do except perhaps physical transformation?

I want to effect the transformation of the whole nature (not only of the physical)—that's why.

Could you whisper to me the names of those lucky fellows, those "half a dozen people", so that I can have a practical knowledge of what that blessed thing—"the Brahman, consciousness"—is like?

NO, SIR.

How can you have a practical knowledge of it by knowing who has it? You might just as well expect to have a practical knowledge of high mathematics by knowing that Einstein is a great mathematician. Queer ideas you have!

Are they Anilbaran? Pavitra? Datta? Dyuman? Nolini? Radhanand, but he can't be for he is Brahma himself, so keeps himself secluded like him, no?

???????

Self—Pus still coming out. Nose also angry!

What a bad-tempered "pussy" cat of a nose!

I dreamt that the Mother was building a very big hospital in which I would be a functionary... Dream of a millennium in advance?

It would be more of a millennium if there were no need of a hospital at all and the doctors turned their injective prodding instruments into fountain-pens—provided of course they didn't make misuse of the pens also.

Why so furious about infective instruments, Sir? They are supposed to be very effective.

That doesn't make an increase of hospitals, illnesses and injections the ideal of a millennium.

But why the deuce are those instruments to be replaced by fountain-pens? Want doctors to be poets or clerks? Or is it a hint to me to write more than prescribe?

I was simply adopting the saying of Isaiah the prophet, "the swords will be turned into ploughshares", but the doctor's instrument is not big enough for a ploughshare, so I substituted fountain-pens.

A swelling—size of a cherry—has appeared inside my nose... The tip is damn painful. Knifing is not advisable. I hope it won't leave me with a nose like that of Cyrano de—quoi?¹⁶⁸

Let us hope not. That kind of nose wouldn't suit either your face or your poetry.

What's this devil of a condition I am passing through? No interest in anything—as if the whole world were dead, blank. There is no uprush of sex or desire and all that. But still a negative blank state! Experience of Nirvana? Tamasic vairagya? I am simply inactive, trying to keep myself steady and hoping that it will pass in time. But will it? No active way out?

Well, it may be one of two things. (1) The vital has dropped down and says "if I can't have what I want in this damned world of yours, alright I non-cooperate and ask for nothing." Hence the flatness—Result of course, tamasic vairagya. This kind of thing often happens at a certain stage of sadhana.

(2) Drop into the physical—first complete acquaintance with the principle of Inertia proper to the physical when it is moved neither by vital, mind, nor spirit. Lies flat waiting for the breath of God or any breath to stir it, but making no move of its own.

Hold on and call upon the Spirit to breathe.

I think you are exerting a damn lot of pressure, what?

Not so much as that—or if so, it is automatic

Guru, after all some poetry has come out. The head and tail seem to be all right, but the body has elongated beyond proportion, no?

The body is all right as well as the head, except for that impossible shining face of a voice. It is the tip of the tail that is defective.

I was urgently called by R to see his wife who had received a wound on the head by falling down... Two accounts were given, one in the morning, another in the evening, for the fall being the cause of the wound in such a place. Both were unconvincing. Better to trust than distrust, what?

Amen!

I asked R if he was going to write to the Mother about it; said no! Very funny!! Relying too much on self or automatic action of the Force?

He did not write when (he says) he was sick unto death recently Calling the Force in silence!

You know V is having difficulty in breathing through the left nostril. Maybe due to polypus. Do you know what he does? He has got some string, besmears it with bee's wax, passes it through one nostril, brings it out through the mouth, and then puts it into the other nostril. Feels much better! Hathayogic treatment, he says. I have no idea, have you? Any danger in it? Can't opine myself; only I think the rope is misplaced!

It is done by the Hathayogis with a cloth, I believe, just as they clean their entrails from throat to anus with a cloth. For them there is no danger, for they are trained but if it is done by a self-sufficient ass or even by an untrained amateur simply there may be danger in these things. Mudgaokar the Bombay judge (known to me) tried the cleaning of the nose with water, a simple Hathayoga process, and had trouble with his proboscis in consequence. It did not approve of his way of dealing with it.

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

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

I hadn't understood "Psh" in Chand's letter. Got it at the last moment, by intuition, Sir: Paresh!

Yes.

I see! It needed intuition to find that out!

S's same trouble continues or worse. Why are you silent on liver extract?

Extract liver—no objection.

A new trouble! Taint of acidity, burning in my throat. The Force is experimenting on me my patients' maladies to take them more seriously?

Who knows?

What is the damned meaning of this poem?¹⁶⁹ What's this path? What's the height? Both being illumed by the moon etc.? It seems I have simply described Nature, giving free rein to imagination. Mystifying, no?

Why do you want any damned meaning? It is a mystic picture—plenty of mystic significance which is best left unintellectualised, but no damned meaning.

A height is a height of being, sir, and the seas are seas of the soul, and the path is a path to infinite peace and light. "That is all we know or need to know" as Keats has been telling you every day for the last hundred years. The path naturally goes across the tranced figure—it couldn't possibly get home otherwise.

...Please clarify.

Absolutely refuse to clarify anything. Let us leave it in its own radiant swoon of mystic misty wistful light.

Then at the end, what's the "slumbering seas", suddenly? Can't make out.

Why suddenly, man—you have been having seas and waters all the time.

No connections! A horrible mess, Sir! The beauty of the poem is buried under it, I fear, what?

Lord! Lord! If you had intellectualised the business with your connections, there would have been no beauty in the poem or at least no mystic beauty.

Through Surawardy's poems? Seems to be a genuine poet no?

Have not inspected the fellow yet. May perhaps do it tonight.

Please see Surawardy's poems and say something communicable to the old man!

Don't want to communicate—prefer on this point to be incommunicable—not to you of course, but to Calcutta (old man will hear of it.)

Old man is done?

How done? How am I to know if he is done or undone (by the young woman?)? He is in Calcutta.

What's this, really? J had eczema and now asthma! Is there any truth in the popular belief that when eczema disappears, asthma appears? Homeopathic theory, they say.

Never heard of it. The eczema of any number of people disappears without their getting asthma. It is the weather and a certain susceptibility in her physical to these things—no need for all these out of the way theories.

S—pain, burning "normal", i.e. you understand, I hope, this means normal pain.

Yes, of course. It is the patient who is abnormal.

Surely you know what I meant by "old man is done"?

Surely I did, but he was not at all done by me, so I had to pass on your question to the young woman.

D wants the poems back, you know.

Well, well—I will try to push my way through him.

People say I am getting absolutely bald, Sir. Two things I feared—one a big tummy and another, a smooth baldness.

Couldn't be saved from one. If you can't grow new hair, please help to preserve the little I have, Sir.

What one fears, is usually what happens. Even if there were no other disposition, the fear calls it in. Who knows, if you had not feared, you might have had the waist of a race-runner and the hair of Samson.

I read in Mother's Conversations¹⁷⁰ that skin, hair and teeth "belong to the most material layers of the being", so spiritual Force takes a long time to act on them. Is it true?

Painfully true.

Then I have no chance till the Supermind descends?

I suppose not. And who knows what fancies the Supramental may have.

This is absolutely a third-rate poem.¹⁷¹ What to do?

What a queer card you are! It is as good as the others.

No use asking the virtue of the poem!

Very fine and glowing, sir.

Guru, here are Dilipda's letter and poems. He wants to know your opinion. Perhaps in the afternoon you will have some leisure.

What an idea!

Please read each one of the poems. I have glanced through them and they are really wonderful.

Have had time to read only two as yet.

Dilipda says that his poems are now appreciated. Personality incarnate?... And the "old man"? How is he?

Old man suspended by the eruption of Personality—perhaps tomorrow.

August 1937

The last two lines of the poem are too long, perhaps? Oh, N complains of evening fever 100°, for the last few days.

Part of your poetry? Can't scan it.

I have read Dilip's poem—there is the force of a new inspiration in the language and the building and turns of thought, something more intense and gathered together. I think there is something less mental, a new and more vibrant note.

I have gone through Surawardy. He has certainly a fine poetic vein, but his success is less than his capacity—The two poems, China Sea and Asoca Tree are very fine—the rest are in a lower pitch; there are fewer deliberate descents into the commonplace than in the old man poems, but also not so frequent, intense felicities of expression and powerful lines.

... You have perhaps said somewhere that when the Supra-mental descends, everything will be comparatively easier. Do you mean sex-conquest too?

This force seems to have been pushing strongly in recent days—for there are others who have been stumbling—luckily the stumble gave them a reaction which has made them more awake to the necessity of "no-indulgence".

The notion of "equality" seems to be a bugbear to people who have personal ties, though the giving up of them will be more than compensated by getting the Divine within, for, after all, what are these human ties of ego or sex?

The Yoga cannot be done if equality is not established. Personal relations must be founded on the relation with the Divine in himself and the Divine in all and they must not be "ties" to pull one down and keep bound to the lower nature but part of the higher unity.

What is your idea of special relationship? Won't predict?

There is nothing to predict. I have been saying the same thing all along (what I say above) and if there is to be any fulfilment of this work, it can be on no other basis. As for founding it on this [...]¹⁷², it can't be done.

...There are situations when one is faced with either telling a lie or the truth, and one can't decide which. Sri Krishna says in the Mahabharata that lies are permitted at times, and that they are as good as truths, e.g. a truthful Muni, by showing the robbers the hiding place of travellers and causing their death, went to Hell. What's your opinion?

Naturally—nobody is called upon to expose others to death by telling a truth like that. But the lie was not the best way from the spiritual point of view.

You say physical sex action must be avoided by all means. Why so strict on it while tolerating vital-physical lapses?

Because the physical action breaks a law without which the Asram cannot stand and the work cannot be done. It is not a personal matter, but a blow aimed at the very soul of the Mother's work.

Outside sadhaks indulge and get a child, e.g. Y and others. Mother disapproves and the man who does it has no longer the same grace as before, but he is not in the Asram and his lapse hurts only himself and his wife.

The last portion of your remark¹⁷³ is rather cryptic. "This force" means the Supramental Force?

What the devil! I was speaking of the sex force.

Is it descending, then?

The sex force? By God it is, descending and ascending too.

What did you mean by giving them "a reaction"? Physical reaction?

I meant that they got so alarmed at the closeness to a precipitous fall that they stopped indulging the vital physical.

Have I any chance, Guru, of coming out of this vital struggle?

Of course.

If you are with me, I shall be all right. But don't be with me as with X. You couldn't keep him here; forces took him away! Doubt!

I repeat that he took himself away. No Force can take a man away, who really wants not to go and really wants the spiritual life. X wanted the "Divine Response" only, not spiritual life—his doubts all rose from that.

Why do you lay so much stress on our writing everything to you? Can't we pray to you and ask for help? Isn't it as good as writing?

Not writing means trying to conceal. That is a suggestion of the vital.

Consciousness and intensities can rhyme?

Not that I know of, but all things are possible in a world of infinite possibility.

K's pus in the eye is not getting less; better inject gomenol and then vaccine, if not cured. So?

You know best—or at least can try.

A's liver again! He has finished 3 Takadiastase bottles. He finds good effect from it. We require another bottle now. Should we buy it?

Buy the take-a-distaste and keep his liver quiet for God's sake. He shows signs of starting his lamentations again. The bottle to keep the baby quiet!

[The following report was written by Dr. Becharlal:] D has pain in the abdomen, liquid motions, vomiting... He has no teeth, so its very difficult to masticate the food, hence the tendency to indigestion... He eagerly wishes to be instructed by my Holy Mother, what food he should take tomorrow: usual food or only milk and whey?

Is it not the rule so long as the teeth are not replaced to take only liquid food?

I don't know about Ekalavya's epidermis. Can he be compared to a বনদেব¹⁷⁴ without being one? But Gods and Goddesses are supposed to be fair, no?

Who says? Krishna was নীল,¹⁷⁵ other gods have different colours red, white, black, yellow and green. If he had নীলোৎপল আঁখি¹⁷⁶ what prevents him from being like a বনদেবতা?¹⁷⁷

If you have no light, let these poems remain, Sir.

I have plenty of light and to spare.

Why the devil is this sex force descending and ascending so vehemently now, in place of the Supramental?

If people want it..., what else can you expect than that it should rise?

I don't know what you mean by descending. It is not a high force from above that it should descend—It is a force from below or around.

Judging by the degree of vehemency, shall I say that the Supramental Force is vehemently coming down in this form? Or it is at least some Divine Force, giving a last kick at the Sex Force?

The Divine Force has nothing to do with it. It is the sex and other lower forces that are attacking in order to make it impossible for the Divine Force to do its work, or the Supramental to descend. They hope to prevent it altogether or, if by some miracle, it still descends, to limit its extension and prevent anything more than an individual achievement.

"New centuries open their eyes..." You won't agree, perhaps, that centuries have eyes?

I agree to everything and anything—let them have ears also. When one can write like that, all objections vanish.

"Appear to me" doesn't appear very pretty.

No it isn't pretty—it is first-class.

... Well, anything to say?

I have said it. Why the hell 'can't you always write like that? The inspiration came clean through this time.

Z has no fever. I think he should take Chayavanprash; but it is a costly drug, we can't supply much. I wonder if he has friends to help him with some money.

I believe he has some thousands of rupees stored up with which he is maintaining his populous family in Bhavnagar, (those who have not been able to push themselves in here owing to our stubborn and inhuman or superhuman resistance). But he doesn't want to acknowledge its existence.

Why the hell can't I write? Why the hell, indeed! Because I don't want to—that's all!

My why the hell was an ejaculation, not a question.

If I were to ask you that question, I know your prompt answer would be—no poet can always maintain a high level! Isn't that the answer?

Obviously, if it is put as a question, that is the only answer. But it wasn't.

Can one break a dream?

I suppose one can. If you are dreaming and somebody pokes you in the ribs and says, "What are you groaning about? Wake up," wouldn't he be breaking your dream?

S is again bad; pain started right after lunch and other troubles also.

Does he remain quiet after the meal for a sufficient length of time or prances about?

Here is a long letter from D. You can skip portions—at the end there is a reference to T. Their quarrel won't be made up in this life, it seems.

I have glanced through.

Musician-poets at loggerheads—what can you expect?

I thought, in spite of everything, T has a sort of affection for D, no?

So they both said.

There is an engineer who wants to come here for a month. Can't make out whether he is asking for permission. What's your opinion?

Can't make out, myself, anything about any engineer—so have no opinion. Not anxious for a rush this time.

J's eczema is still spreading... She can't resist scratching it.

How is it to cure if she scratches?

She asks whether it is any good prolonging the treatment with this ointment—Acecholex. So will it be better now to take sun-treatment with oil?

Very difficult to say. This is a thing in its nature obstinate and needing a long treatment. Constant changing of medicaments more often encourages the obstinacy than curing it.

The channel is rather choked, as you will see. This poem is no good. Still, better to send it: I thought, to get a contact.

There is much "good" in it, on the contrary.

Too busy to give us Force? Darshan is over, Sir!

Darshan is over but karshan¹⁷⁸ is not.

"Slumbering birds awake with a start..."

"With a start" O.K.?

No—it makes me start.

Shivalingam (a servant) has a boil on the face. Not very happy about it.

He is not? Hard to satisfy these people!

About Shivalingam, I'm sorry! I meant that I was not happy.

I supposed so.

I'm doubtful about this poem. One mind says very fine another says damn! So?

Both are right—the damner because you didn't quite get the proper expression, the other because the substance is very fine.

By the way, do you find plenty of repetitions in the ideas?

There are repetitions in the last few poems, variations on the same theme. Vedic, what? Variations fine, though!

For J's eczema and asthma, Dr. André says that antiarOphylactic injection is very good. Shall we try?

I don't know what anti-anaphylactic means (my proficiency in quasi-Greek is not very great) but it sounds swell. No objection.

Guru, Anjali and Jatin have written to you regarding their visit here. Perhaps you will give them a reply. It seems they are not very definite about how long they will stay... Jatin can stay with me, but could you avoid putting Anjali with Y? I can't judge your work, but it is permissible to state the circumstances... Inconveniences, sufferings, etc. do not matter if Mother thinks it is needed for Y's good...

I have not yet had time to place Jatin's letter before the Mother and decide on an answer. I shall do so as soon as possible and let him know the result.

Please let me know for future guidance if I should at all interfere in this way.

No objection.

25.8.37

Nirod

If Jatin and Anjali are to stay till November, Jatin can stay with you as now; the difficulty is about Anjali. Mother has only 2 rooms that she can offer her and they are both bad. There is the room in Belle-Vue, formerly occupied by Narmada who has shifted now into a better one; it is a very bad room, dark and ill-ventilated and it opens into K's with only a curtain between. I suppose you know also that the ... sadhikas in the house are fairly noisy and can make themselves very unpleasant when they want to! Alternatively, there is the room next to M's—also bad, though not so bad as the other. Perhaps you know what kind of neighbour M is—if the next door neighbour does anything of which she does not approve, it will be tempests without end and howling enough to take the roof off. I can't write these things publicly, ... and you will put matters in their fierce naked light before Anjali—for her judgment and decision. She must decide with full knowledge of the circumstances so that she may not blame the Mother afterwards if trouble or discomfort is there. (I may add that even a cricket making a noise near her deprives M of sleep and sends her into flames of wrath or gulfs of depression). So there you are.

SRI AUROBINDO

... Breaking all crag-teeth distances
Of the dark abysmal dominion."

Sir, this "crag-teeth" is a too obvious theft.¹⁷⁹

Y is not pleased with Jatin staying with me. She says because I wanted him to stay with me you agreed... Is it true that you have acceded to my desire?

No. But even if it had been a desire, what objection? To want to put up a friend in one's room is not a crime. For my part, I am glad to have him there and think it is good for him and you.

... Please give Y some Peace and Protection.

She must be ready to receive it—i.e. she must take and keep the right attitude.

Jatin wants to know if you will write anything more to him.

Yes.

Please give me your constant help and protection.

I will certainly give that.

For A's chronic colitis [6.6.37], we have tried our best, but without any result. Dr. Manilal says why not try homeopathy? Will R take him up?

I don't know that we are ready to hand him over to R just now at least. Besides, R himself does not seem eager to take any cases.

"... Recalling to my memory dim-paced
Foot-falls of a paradisal star..."

But, my dear sir, a star has no feet and the picture of a star walking about on 2 feet in the sky is rather grotesque, so I have had to invent a godhead of a star who can do it all right.

Last night I dreamed that I had gone to a distant relative's house. There I met a friend of mine looking hideous because his nose had been eaten up by a disease. I thought of curing him by calling down the Mother's Force. Then I actually felt the Force coming down; when I put my hand on him, lo, he was cured! Miracle and concrete Force in dream?

A feat on the vital plane. If you begin to be conscious of the force there, it ought to travel down before long into the physical also!

Can Jatin and his wife attend the stores¹⁸⁰ on the 1st?

Yes.

Arjava says his medicine for decoction is exhausted, so he has to stop. How is that? It is Sudarshan I suppose. But that can be got at any time from Punamchand's father as well as any of his other medicines—So they should be ordered in time before depletion.

My store seems run down! No words, images or ideas, all gone!¹⁸¹

Well, if a run-down store can produce a poem like that, it is a miraculous run-down store...

Please give an all-round poking, will you?

All right—I shall try to give the all-round poke.

It seems, according to Ayurveda and common Indian belief, .that onions fried in ghee are almost a specific for piles and an admirable laxative. They also have a cooling effect. I know that they make the whole body damn hot, but their heat-properties have a stimulating effect. Any views, popular or personal, on this remedy?

Mother does not know that they are laxative or cooling—it has an energising effect. Perhaps it is effective for tamasic people—it is doubtful if it helps piles. It is taken like that largely in Japan, but it is not supposed there to cure piles.

As for S, we have exhausted our means. One thing remains—liver extract which I have withheld till now.

You can try that—since it is his liver—let's see if it extracts him out of his agonies.

R comes to us now and then for allopathic drugs. Today he came and asked for apomorphine. This drug is only used in urgent cases of poisoning where evacuation of stomach is immediately called for... We don't know anything about the case. We are asked to give certain drugs, we give; for what case etc. we don't enquire because he may not like it. What should be done in such cases in the future?

God knows! Perhaps, if it is anything really dangerous, play the Artful Dodger¹⁸² and, otherwise, pray fervently to God that nobody may be poisoned. But for whom does he ask this, I wonder? Alys? He has no other patients except Lakshmi perhaps at the moment.

"Half-veiled figures of unknown splendour
Smile with the happy utterance..."

Can they smile?

May or may not, but smiling here risks being inane; so I dodge the smiles out.

Now that X has returned, J wants to publish her novel... Is there any fear of complications?

It can be taken up, but I refuse to prophesy anything about complications. X seems to be in a beatified mood just now; perhaps he will be saintly and good-tempered about it, but one can't be sure.

September 1937

I send you the letter of a diabetic sadhak asking me if he can take rice once a day. I can only pass on the question to you. What shall I reply to his piteous and pathetic request? For enlightenment, please.

Guru, I hope you won't call this a Victorian, sentimental, romantic poem and make me crush my bones by a fall from the sky of ecstasy!

Nothing of that kind in it.
Your bones are safe this time.

... By the way, you haven't returned my medical report book. Mother says it is not there! How? I sent it last night!

Forgot to shove it in. Afterwards it got covered with other books and files—so undiscoverable.

What does Mother say about making S a hospital bird for some days? I think he will benefit by it. This neurotics do you know.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined the last sentence.]

What on earth does this cryptic sentence mean?

Only the place is a bit nasty with lots of flies and proletariats.

I fear it might depress him greatly. If nothing has any effect, there might be a consultation with André.

If vetoed, I may try Tonekine injections—(containing arsenic, eau de mer, etc.).

But is this dried liver curable by treatment? Mother says she had an acquaintance who suffered from it, but nothing could cure him. There was nothing left of him but bones and some appearance of skin. Only he kept it up to the age of 80 and died after burying all his relatives and most of his friends. But this S takes just the wrong attitude, making the most of his illness. Just read the letter I send you. What is all this jerks, hammering, beatings, lumpings, movements? Neurotics? facts? if the latter, what do they "indicate"—to use a favourite phrase of sadhaks when relating their experiences.

He said just now that as soon as he took milk in the evening, there was fierce burning

But what about liver extract?

Meanwhile you can try the sea water etc. tonic

"Green locks of virgin woods
Waived by a gentle breeze..."

What the deuce is this "waived"—You waive your claim, not your hair.

I don't think S's ailment is curable. They say that the liver can regenerate. But what about atony of stomach?

If it can regenerate, how do you say it is incurable?

Well, what about it?

He says that you have asked him to continue treatment—treatment which is of no use? Every day must I hear his long-drawn, ghastly, tragic tales and sit tight and deaf? He says it gloriously—Faith etc. is natural with him. Um! I hope the Force can do something.

I have told him that if he wants to be cured by Force, he must give up all quarrelling, cantankerousness, rancour, complaining, etc., etc., because it is these things that have dried up his liver and debased his stomach—also that agitation and howling stop the Force.

... Anyway, given him Liver pills today.

That's the Liver Extract?

Yes, that is the liver extract... His liver can regenerate, but will depend on the amount of healthy tissue surviving... And atony? How is the stomach going to get back its tone and its position, its lost glands, epithelium, etc., etc.? Homeopathy can do it, I hear.

Well, if H can, then it is possible.

I don't know about our branch, unless the fellow gets fatty suddenly, perhaps there's a chance.

Fatty? Rather difficult, but it sometimes happens like the opposite process.

He says he felt a relief yesterday, from 5 p.m. till this morning. He had a diamond smile (teeth, I mean) today. I took the opportunity of showing him that the Force has demonstrated that it can cure and he must satisfy the Force (so easy to sermonise, alas!), we can do, almost zero.

Of course it can, if he keeps himself open. But will he?

[The first 2 reports were written by Dr. Becharlal.]

P has been getting slight fever nowadays. You will see here the prescription...

Mother says that it would be better to give him Indian medicines out of plants, like Sudarshan or something similar instead of these drugs. Purani had offered some sort of preparation which is given in such cases. Mother would like to know if it can be given.

He is to continue soup of vegetables, if he cannot digest milk. He says he gets nausea by taking milk. He needs rest.

He has been given complete rest for several days; but he is restless and wants to do some work. But he did a little yesterday after the milk which had upset his digestion and become worse. He had been rapidly getting better before that with a medicine given by Pavitra, but which is now exhausted. He was asked again to take complete rest. He says however that you have told him he can do some light work.

I find that Dr. Becharlal has forgotten to mention P's diagnosis: his eyes were deep yellow, colour of the face also faintly so. Rate of heart 58. No liver enlargement or diminution. So it is diagnosed as jaundice.

Most of these facts were given by B in a letter this morning. But there was no mention of the non-enlargement of liver. It was that Mother especially wanted to know.

Is the sex Force still strong [6.8.37]? What makes it so strong?

It is strong—nothing has made it strong. It has simply come up.

... Please give your Force and protection and blessings.

I shall put it there.

Dara has a hoarse cough. Had no sleep last night. Takes only milk; has no appetite.

Mother says when he came to pranam today his head was very hot. He complains of the painfulness of his throat which prevents taking anything but tea and milk. What about one or two teaspoonfuls of honey in a cup of very hot milk? Mother can give him the honey.

Guru, this poem¹⁸³ knocked me on the head when you slammed the door on correspondence. Now my head is all right, so it wants to try its luck again. So?

Very beautiful. You seem to have found yourself in English poetry.

"... Dim reminiscences
Of flights across thy skies..."

Too many S's?

[Sri Aurobindo cancelled the s of "flights"]

I have beheaded one that was in excess.

October 1937

[Sri Aurobindo stopped all correspondence due to some eye-trouble, and the Mother, instead, took up the medical correspondence.]

Mère, veuillez-vous me dire comment Sri Aurobindo se porte?

[The Mother put brackets around "veuillez-vous" and wrote above it "Voudriez-vous".]

Très bien, mais je tiens à ce qu'il ne reҫoive pas de correspondance pendant quelques jours encore. Si vous avez quelque chose d'urgent à me communiquer vous pouvez le faire.¹⁸⁴

I am thinking of giving some milk to Jiban [convalescing from jaundice] at night.

For the milk it might be better to wait a little more—

[A letter from Sitabala:] Ma! for the last few days I have been having a severe attack of headache... My head feels empty and I cannot walk with S's steps... I do not have good sleep nor can I eat well. I pray to you for speedy recovery.

With humble pranam at your feet
your child Sitabala

Nirod

I would like you to see her—It might be "arterio-sclerose" Will you verify it and let me know? I suspect also that she is constipated, it is to be ascertained.

If it is arterio-sclerose Pavitra has some good medicine for it—

I am afraid these are not the signs of arteriosclerosis—except the headache... But she is badly constipated which may be the simple reason of her troubles. We shall examine her urine. Please advise what to do.

You might first examine the urine and treat the constipation. We shall see for the rest afterwards.

N was better last night—the temperature remained 102°... He has eructation, especially after taking milk... There is always a persistent rise of temperature in the evening. There are injections for bringing down the fever, e.g. Diéménal and Omnadin.

Are not these medicines a bit dangerous?

I wonder why J's eczema, once improved, comes back again. It has been there for 5 or 6 months and is trying to spread...

Have you ever tried to wash the place with a cotton pad dipped in Listerine (pure) dusting afterwards (when dry) with an antiseptic powder?

No, I have not tried Listerine etc., but only Acecholex. First of all we don't stock Listerine, secondly if it can be procured from the Pharmacie, what antiseptic powder do you suggest? And should there not be a bandage after the dusting?

Not at the Pharmacie but perhaps it can be found in Appadorai's.

The powder must be a composed one, but for the composition all depends on the patient's reactions.

The bandage seems to me only good to prevent the scratching.

You saw Jiban at Pranam. Should there be any change in diet?

He seems to be progressing.

If it is convenient, you may reply in French. It will help me to learn the language.

Pas de réponse ce soir¹⁸⁵—

For J's eczema, I wonder if Acecholex is proving to be too strong now; otherwise why should the wound become so raw after scratching?

It may be.

I think tomorrow we shall buy Listerine.

If the skin is too raw it may burn.

N is not very well. He is much troubled by hiccoughs etc... I think his mind will be quiet if somebody stays there at night. Can his adjacent room be spared?

It is not possible as Chimanbhai is arriving and the room is kept for him.

Last night N slept well except for a little hiccough now and then, lasting half an hour. But I wonder why he sleeps so much. We are not giving him any hypnotic except 15 grains of bromide in one dose. Due to Force?

It seems to me more the effect of the bromide and it may be safer not to give him too much of it.

Sitabala got a slight headache after a cold bath... She asks if she could have hot water.

Yes, she can have. Inform Amrita.

... N is the same. Do you advise any outside consultation or Dr. R? Or shall we wait?

We can wait a few days more.

November 1937

J's eczema looks very well... Should we try Listerine now or see again with the present medicine, for the last time?

[The Mother marked with a vertical line "or see ... time?"]

Yes, it is better.

Jiban is better now. Dr. Becharlal says he can take a cup of cocoa in the morning. He can also take up his work from tomorrow. Jiban wants your sanction.

Surely he can work now. It will do him good.

Please look at Jiban well tomorrow; we want to know if his diet can be improved.

On Sunday he seemed almost all right—Diet can be improved.

... Shall we give N some solid food? What about Bovril—we have a bottle in stock, or some brandy?

Bovril is better than brandy—

Shall we give Jiban some vegetables or only milk in the morning, to begin with?

Do you think he will be able to digest the milk? He can take vegetables but it would be better if they were simply boiled.

In J's case, the powder composed of acid salicylic, alum, pulv. calamine Bismuth carb., starch, talc powder has to be cleaned each time we apply Listerine, or shall we clean it with Listerine itself?

Listerine itself can be used for cleaning.

N is taking now: 5 cups of milk, 1 litre barley water, soup, 1 loaf bread, 2 or 3 oranges. Is it sufficient?

It seems to me sufficient.

J says there is much burning by Listerine. I apply it 4 times a day. The powder clings to the surface and forms a sort of hard crust...

It may be that you are putting too much Listerine and too much powder at a time. The powder is only to be dusted. Also the composition of the powder may be changed if it is too heavy and sticky. To remove the crusts once a day you may try vaseline or "glycérolé d'amidon".

Had an urgent call from M. He says he had high fever (only 101°!), aching body, etc. Looks like a contagion from Nishikanta.

The best would be to disinfect the house with camphor or sulphur or formol.

Camphor or Sulphur is to be burnt like incense powder isn't it?

Yes—

I have asked Sitabala to take enema for some days. Can the hot water sent for bath, be used for enema? It is boiled, I suppose.

This is not quite sure. But you can inquire about it—

N's hiccough is much less, but he is getting very weak.

Is he in bed all the time?

For Jiban, shall we begin with one cup of cocoa in the morning?

You can try—

S says every symptom has increased after Sudarshan. He is raising other problems. Wants a stove for hot water, wants his food sent home in the rainy season, etc., etc. To give a stove simply for a small quantity of water is absurd. He can take it from the Dispensary. The servant can bring his evening meal with mine.

This arrangement is all right. No stove needed.

What about the morning meal? He is going on with one thing after another.

It seems to me that he could go without danger to the D.R. for his morning food.

Bula's movements of the right arm are still restricted. I don't think there is any fracture. Shall we see under screen costing Rs. 3, or X-ray costing Rs. 6? Which one? [The Mother marked "screen" with an arrow.]

Yes, this.

... For N, shall we call in André who is a T.B. expert? Or wait a few more days?

It may be better to call André—

J asks if she should come to meditation in the rain—as the eczema will be exposed to water.

But how does she do for her bath?

J says for the last 6 months she's been taking half bath, i.e. bath up to the thighs with a lot of acrobatic feats. She just sponges the legs... Should we apply Listerine and powder 3 times now instead of 4?

Yes.

About N, André says, it may be either pleurisy or some liver abscess. He sees no signs of T.B... N is quite upset because we have called in another doctor. So please advise if anything is to be done.

We will see after examination.

N's X-ray tomorrow. How shall we carry him? Rickshaw may be uncomfortable. Will the car be available?

Both cars are under repair.

J is having a lot of itching. I feel that olive oil, almond oil or cocoagem may do her good. Your opinion, please.

You might try almond oil but see that it is quite fresh. It gets rancid very quick.

Now we are applying Listerine thrice a day.

You might reduce it to twice.

Can milk be given to Jiban at night, and curds at noon?

You can try.

N s X-ray is done. There is an encysted patch of pleurisy on the right side, and commencement of T.B. over the whole area of both the lungs. André says the condition is bad. He can be shifted to the hospital, but the treatment can also be done at home. André warns that precaution against contagion is to be taken. It seems to Dr. Becharlal and me that the hospital would be better. Here nursing will be very difficult. I wonder how many will offer their services, if they know that it's T.B. I am not sure that N will agree to go to hospital... If you want that he should be kept here, we shall do our best. But if you want him in hospital, the sooner the better.

P.S... Though the case is serious, I have not lost all hope. I believe that if you want to cure him, you can do so, as you said the other day, "by some accident". Our medical treatment for it is next to nil.

[The Mother wrote above "by some accident", within brackets:]

Not accident—miracle.

I am wondering if we should keep him and try to nurse him ourselves. The question of diet too is a little difficult...

It is impossible to make proper arrangements here for diet and nursing nor can we run the risk of contagion in an asram of 150 people. Sending him to the hospital is unavoidable. So the sooner he goes the better. It cannot be left to his choice.

Now that N has been sent to the hospital, his room has to be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected.

It must first be disinfected by burning sulphur with all openings closed. Afterwards the furniture will be removed and thoroughly cleaned and the room itself will be whitewashed entirely.

N says he may hire a servant just to be by his side.

That can be done—

S says he can't digest the Asram curry at all, and soup and vegetables did him much good.

It is better to give him soup and boiled vegetables.

Guru, I dare to disturb you as daring has become a necessity. I feel utterly blank and am in need of some support, I can't write poetry by myself, without your help. Have you stopped the correspondence because of your eye-trouble or for concentration? In either case, then, I don't insist on your seeing my poems. You will understand that I don't write for the sake of writing, but for a support from you. Please give me a line in reply, after which I won't bother you any more.

Apart from the eye-question, I have stopped because there are certain things I have positively to get done before I can take up any regular correspondence work again. If I start again now, I shall probably have to stop again soon for a long long time. Better get things finished now—that's the idea. You must hold on somehow for the present.

"O Beauty, write in immortal scroll
The passion of my creative fire."

[Sri Aurobindo:] I am afraid writing fire in a scroll is too difficult an operation—even for Beauty unless she has become entirely surrealistic since I first made her acquaintance.

V wants to go to see N in the hospital. Should he?

No.

This old man L.N. has come back worse from home. Don't you think he had better go to Madras and get himself treated there?

That would be the best if he is willing to go—

I examined Dayakar today. He has continuous fever. I've asked them to give him' milk and soup. Or can soup be omitted?

No, soup is very good.

[The following report was written by Dr. Becharlal.] For a long time, I have been asking Lakshmi to do some work—to start some light work; at least to move about in the Ashram compound, sit for a few minutes in the Reception Room etc.... But I have been told by Champaklal that she has been regularly sitting at the gate at Vithalbhai's duty time and talking. I have asked her today very gently not to sit at the gate...

It is better also that she should not sit in the reception room.

December 1937

Sitabala's headache has a definite relation to food. We suspect ulceration which was previously cured by olive oil. Definite diagnosis is possible only by X-ray. Do you advise it?

Yes, it is better to do it.

Dr. André says that N's is decidedly a hopeless case. Should his family be informed?

No, it is better not, for obvious reasons.

Can Jiban take regular Asram food?

He ought to be able to take it—

What should be done with N's things? Shall we distribute the clothes among the servants? Flask, easy chair, blankets, etc...

I was thinking of asking André if we can make a present of all these things to the hospital.

... Should we show A and L to André?

They can both be shown to André. What is to be done in A's case will depend on André's diagnosis.

N's death has touched me a little... If his case had been diagnosed earlier, he might not have died so soon. Here comes in the question of experience as a doctor. Intuition takes a long time to develop and a very energetic sadhana has to be done side by side. If you want to keep me as a doctor, I am tempted to ask you to send me to a big hospital for a period of training. Two or three deaths have occurred since I have come in, and people are perhaps blaming me for my lack of capacity.

I do not believe in the usefulness of a stay in a hospital—the "energetic sadhana" is much better. I can console you by assuring you that those who died had to die.

L has astigmatism of both the eyes. The veins in the eyes are congested. For accurate observation, the oculist says, it is better to dilate the eyes with atropine though it is not absolutely necessary.

Better not.

She has to stop sewing, I am afraid, because even the eye-examination gave her giddiness.

Yes, I have told her already to stop embroidery.

I think it would be better to try sun-treatment before taking to glasses.

It can be tried. But you must give her very detailed and exact instructions as she is a bit careless about herself.

I think B's is a case of phlebitis, due to chill. It would be better if he did less walking and took more rest.

Phlebitis requires an absolute immobility in bed, but it seems strange that it should be that. Dr. Bannerji told me that the real phlebitis was extremely rare in India. All the same it would be better if he took complete rest for a day or two—

Sitabala says that for her constipation she used to take bran boiled by S. She finds it a bother, so can it be taken raw?

[The Mother underlined "taken raw".]

Certainly not.

From tomorrow we shall give Shivalingam iodide and mercury, internally. But I wonder if you will like mercury being given.

[The Mother underlined "if you will like mercury being given".]

No, I do not like.

We examined B today as he was complaining of more pain at night. He has no fever and there is no deep pain, so he will be all right in 2 or 3 days, I think.

Surely it is nothing serious.

Yes.

L.N. has appeared again... Rajangam spoke to him and he consents to go home after the 31st, if you will sanction.

Yes, it is better if he goes home.

N.P. has again that "terrible pain" on the right side. We are giving him one aspirin and one dose of salt.

N.P. is fearing the results of the salt and asks not to take it.

L has again got a relapse. Shall we call André to see her now or shall we try some tonic injections?

You can call André.

1938

January 1938

In B's case, I find a small vein is tender and knotty, the muscles are quite free. So has it affected the vein now or was it so from the beginning?

So, most likely it is varicose.

"The wandering waters of my life
Wash thy eternal shore...
But thy impregnable silence bears
With calm their passionate moans."

[Sri Aurobindo:] Good Lord! don't moan like that.

Laxmi is complaining of obstinate constipation. Is she not taking the castor oil recommended by André?

... I don't see that S's general health is worse.

He does not look so bad.

Don't you find him better? or shall we show him to André?

Not necessary.

You have seen our indents for this year, sent by Rajangam. You must have observed that R has asked for 30 or 40 allopathic drugs, and you have sanctioned them. I was wondering how, being a homeopath, he should require these. For what purpose? Is it legal, etc., etc.?

[The Mother marked "30 or 40 allopathic drugs".]

Are they poisons? Because in that case it cannot be given and the best way would be to delay the order—until he writes to me and explains for what purpose he wants them.

In that list of indents, there are at least 8 or 10 which come definitely under the act of poisonous drugs... Rajangam said that these will be potentised by R, in alcohol. I asked, "Then, why doesn't he get them directly from the Homeopathy pharmacy? That would be very safe in every way..." Rajangam replied that as we have got a contributor, from Alembic, it's easy to get them; but i he gets from the Homeopathy pharmacy, Mother will have to pay for them...

Rajangam's explanation is satisfactory. So they can be bought.

February 1938

K's scabies and asthma are almost all right. Shall we give him some sodium cacodylate injections as tonic?

Yes, if there is no "contre-indication".

Perhaps you have noticed that there is still a little swelling in B's leg. Do you want André to be called?

We can wait a few days more.

What about L? She says she had no motion for 7 days!

What do you think of Rushi's cyst? It is not a wart.

It is nothing much. I suppose it will fall by itself.

L doesn't like enema as it has bad after-effects. [The Mother underlined "as it has bad after-effects".]

What bad effects?

I don't know if habitual laxatives will be good.

Habitual laxatives are harmful and purgatives still worse.

R has difficulty in swallowing. She is another case of constipation. She hasn't got a healthy colour, has she?

Neither good nor very bad.

L—The bad effects of enema are weakness, windiness and loss of appetite. Dr. B asked her if she would like to go to Bombay. She is very willing and says she will come back after some time. So shall we ask her to arrange for it?

Yes, certainly.

P has come with a doubtful skin disease—It is better to take him to the hospital and ascertain what it is.

Dr. André says that P has leucoderma, and it is not contagious. But it's better to examine the blood... Could it be done?

Yes—

K [suffering from asthma] wants to take curds...

He might try.

We examined Rangachari—his heart seems to be dilated. It is also weak. I understand he has come here with the idea of doing Yoga. If we have to bear his responsibility, André had better be consulted.

We have no responsibility, he is living outside. But if the case is serious advise him to go to the hospital.

J says that she has dandruff and consequently losing her hair badly. She has heard that you have suggested a "Lemon cream" for such cases, to some others. Will it be good for her also?

I'm sending her a bottle.

You have asked Benjamin to take some vegetables. How to give them? Only boiled? They can't be fried, can they?

I suppose he can take fried things, but you might ask André about it.

It is pepper and spices he fears, not oil or ghee.

For Benjamin, are the vegetables to be fried here? Or we can ask Lakshmi to do it as she too would like to take some.

You might offer him boiled vegetables. We shall see how he likes them.

Mother, in the last two Pranams, you seemed to have indicated to me that I have done something wrong somewhere.

[Sri Aurobindo:] Nonsense!

Coming on just before Darshan it is weighing on me. May I know what it is, if anything?

[Sri Aurobindo:] Nothing at all—quite imaginary.

"Brilliance breaking the night-shell
Like laughter-peels of a ringing bell."

[Sri Aurobindo:] Lord, sir! A bell is not an orange.

Should we give Romen treatment for his enlarged liver?

You can start the treatment.

Benjamin has been advised to take raw tomatoes. Can he buy them himself from the bazaar?

The tomatoes can be bought from the Bazaar, but surely Benjamin has no strength to go himself to buy them.

Guru, please have a look at this poem...

[Sri Aurobindo] What the deuce is the meaning of "lineage" here? Lineage means ancestry. And what the greater deuce is "liege"?

"The deliverance from the grave—
Earth's crucifixion of the Light
That is bound like passion's galley-slave—..."

[After Sri Aurobindo's correction on 20.2.38:]

"For thy deliverance from the grave—
Earth's crucifixion of the Light
In the earth-bound, Nature's galley-slave—..."

You have repeated "earth".

I should have thought it clear that the repetition is intentional. Earth does that crucifixion in the earth-bound—once the earth-binding ceases, the soul is free. Cf. St. Paul, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"

I am much delighted and relieved to .find that you have not lost your sense of humour by your Supramental transformation, Sir!

Where the deuce do you get these ideas? From Dilip? The Supra-mental being the absolute of all good things, must equally be the absolute of humour also. Q.E.D.

Benjamin doesn't like boiled vegetables. He wants them fried. The other day Dr. André took the vegetables home and had them fried for him.

[Mother:] Is it not possible to have them fried in the dispensary?

Shall we give a bottle of Lithiné to Charupada? Cost? Free?

[Mother:] It can be given but he will have to pay customs.

I have a mind to try some injections of liver extract on S. if you permit...

[Mother:] Yes, you can do.

March 1938

Here is N's letter. I don't like his tone at all.

Neither do I.

He asks, "Won't Sri Aurobindo see my poems even after 5 or 6 days?"

Can't promise anything.

Have you any answer to give to his letter?

No.

"Nature is apparelled with a poise
Like the wings of a drowsy bird..."

Sir, if you walk through Pondicherry apparelled only with a poise, the police would arrest you at once. What would happen to Nature if she tried a similar eccentricity, I don't know.

O dear, dear, what have you done, Sir? Havoc, indeed! You couldn't get the trochaic rhythm in yesterday's poem?¹⁸⁶

My God, that was intended for trochaic? You are sure it was not anapaestic or dactylic or all three together + iambic? That would be a more accurate description of it. I couldn't make out what metre was intended so I reduced all to a single one, octosyllabics.

"Incense-woven words thy heaven-reveried."

Words can be woven with incense?

They may be but can't be woven by incense, but what the deuce is the construction of this line? and the meaning?

Woven-incense words and heaven-reveried.

[The poem of 6.3.38.] Why, the construction is quite clear; you can take "words" referring to prayer, if you refer "it" to seed, it can be made "word". What do you say? And words are "heaven-reveried", of course. Not clear? But "woven-incense words" don't get me.

Incense-woven words (or word) thy heaven-reveried—has absolutely no coherence, meaning or syntax, in English at least. In German, Sanskrit or Japanese it might perhaps do. The reference of words is quite clear, but that does not save the Bedlamic syntax. "Woven-incense" words is a Hopkinsian compound—that and my alteration of "thy" to "and" gives the line a clear and poetic sense, and it is the best I can do with it. Otherwise the whole will have to be changed. If you dislike Hopkinsese (though your line is ultra-H), you can do it in straightforward English "Words like woven incense heaven-reveried."

NK's poem? Please see if you can manage it so that I can write at least that you have seen it, what?

Nishikanta later on. Have done too much for one night.

[Chand's wire:] "Why silent great struggle protection." Guru, I don't know why he says "silent". I have sent the Darshan blessings on 23rd or 24th which he must have received.

But you have not given him protection.

Reddy's relative has got urticarial rashes all over the body. André asks us to wait and see.

[The Mother underlined "urticarial rashes".]

[Mother:] Is it not that she has been given too strong medicines?

Benjamin wants onions also in the vegetables. As you don't favour onions, I hesitate.

[Mother:] You can give him.

"In my soul's still moments you bring
A rapture from the vast untrod
Spheres of Light through slumbering
Arches of misty groves..."

Why "misty"? and why is the rapture brought through groves? A woodland promenade? I think both the mist and the groves ought to disappear.

"The scented air your gold locks leave
Haunts like a heavenly piece of art."

Doesn't it suggest that she was using a fragrant hair-oil?

Plenty of romanticism and incoherence and outburst, perhaps.

R and I are there in plenty, but O is not in evidence.

Should the word "frost" go?

No, it might be left to freeze.

Is this fellow Hopkins or Hopkensise? Whoever he may be. I am for the new stuff so I keep your "woven-incense".

Hopkinsese is the language of Hopkins—quite a famous poet now in spite of your not having heard of him—a fore-runner of present day poetry. He tried to do new things with the English language. A Catholic poet like Francis Thompson.

What's Bedlamic, please? Never heard of him, I'm sure!

Bedlam is or was the principal lunatic asylum in England. You have never heard the expression "Bedlam let loose" etc.? Bedlamic syntax = rollickingly mad syntax.

Guru,

Dilipda requests me, as you will see, to type this letter [Dilip's letter written to Sri Aurobindo, from Allahabad], for your facility. I will certainly type it out, if required. Kindly send ii in the afternoon. I have helped you here and there—in pencil. Surely the Supramental is a greater decipherer than the inframental, what?

Read—very interesting.

You said that I have found myself in English poetry [13.9.37].

Now it seems I have lost myself, what?

You are flopping about a bit, but not lost.

"The rich sun-mirrored fuming blood
Running through choked earth-laden pores."

What's this bloody fuming phenomenon? Won't do at all. Pores too! It suggests a bloody sweat like Charles IX's (of France).

Is the construction all right?

No, can't make out head or tail of the beast.

Guru, you must admit that I have hit this time, what?

Bull's eye!

André has prescribed some medicine for S's suspected enlargement of thyroid gland. I send you the prescription.

[Mother:] Considering S's character I do not think it is quite safe to try this medicine.

"O symbols of His jewelled reverie
Burn myriad-hued
On my diamond altar a prophecy
Of His solitude."

You shift the accent on "prophecy"?

I don't see how shifting the accent on prophecy (quite impossible) would make it better. There would be no rhyme as écy can't rhyme with rie, but only with "greasy" or "fleecy" and the whole thing would sound like an Italian talking English. I take "altar a" as a dactyl—a light dactyl can sometimes replace a trochee.

Today I missed meditation as the boy whom we operated upon for tonsil stopped breathing; after half an hour's struggle, we succeeded in restoring the pulse. I wish I could know if you had heard my call so that in the future I may call with greater faith.

[Mother:] Forgot to tell you yesterday that I heard your call all right.

"Shine on their path O star-hearted Dawn
With your gold-crested sun
The quest of dumb centuries burn upon
Their dim flame-pinion."
This stanza is no good, I think.

The first two lines are all right, the last two not. It is a devil of a job to get a true rhyme for dawn! and a true rhyme is badly needed here. "drawn" "fawn" "pawn" "lawn" "sawn"—none will do, not even Bernard-Shawn. Got a stroke of genius with a hell of a compound adjective. For the rest I have sandwiched some of your words in here and there and got out a something. I think it does well as a close.

Shine on their path, O high-hearted Dawn;
Let your gold-crested sun
Crown the dumb quest of centuries dim-withdrawn
With its flame-union.

I understand S is taking mercury ointment for a long time. I hope she Ls not using it continuously.

[Mother:] For what is she taking the ointment? and who is giving it to her? Is it not better to stop it?

Guru, Mother is supposed to have said to X that I am one of those who have done harm to him. I would like to know how so that I may correct myself in the future... My impression was quite the contrary, for I thought he felt lonely, so he should ask Mother for permission to come for tea in the morning and how much he should associate himself with me. If he wants to come, I should at least be careful not to harm him.

Mother never said anything of the kind about you. On the contrary she has always approved of his going to you because you give him a physical support, encourage him to eat, etc. What she said was about Y (she has told Y himself to that effect) because of his wrong ideas, advocacy of all kinds of self-will and self-indulgence, etc., and recently to X himself about Z.

"Heart-beats of a lustrous life,
In myriad images unfurled."

Good Lord! How do you unfurl a heart-beat?

Dyuman has sprained his finger. There is evidently no dislocation. Still if you want screen-exam, we can do it.

[Mother:] I think it is not necessary.

Angamathu's swelling and ulcers on feet are better. He is not working in the smithy now, but he has to come all the way from near the station, for dressing. Wouldn't it be better for him to go to the hospital as it is nearer?

[Mother:] Yes, it is better.

"... Floating like a nightingale's moon-crested song
On the enamelled ocean-floor."

Nobody can float on a floor. Try it and see!

Bala's¹⁸⁷ stye burst. He didn't turn up in the afternoon.

[Mother] He was driving the car.

I'm afraid "God" is coming too much in this poem.

Where is he?

Seen my scansion? Too great, perhaps?

Never heard of such scansion in a trochaic metre. Is it the new prosody?

Much too great.

Besides, what kind of grammar is "a myriad" with a singular noun?

Flowing like the rays of gold impregnable
Sun, on sky-blue dome."

Ugh, sir! Sky-blue dome is as stale as hell.

Could you tell, X to make some time for taking soup? Today it got spoilt. After seeing you he can come this way.

[Mother:] I shall tell him but I'm not quite sure he will listen.

Chand writes: "... I shall try to come to Pondicherry after joining service..."

[Sri Aurobindo underlined the word "try".]

"Try!" What about our permission?

"Voices of some birds are heard..."

Some birds? Very vague and weak—unless some in American sense! Put anything else, e.g. sky-birds—

"... Pouring from their luminous-rhythmed feet
Songs of a magic-hearted moon."

Songs from feet?

Never! If people began to sing with their feet, the world would be startled into a magic-hearted swoon.

Mulshankar has headache and vomiting. They are recurrent nowdays. I am thinking of trying to find a remedy by the method you suggested ["energetic sadhana", 8.12.37]. But has it the possibility of success? I raise the question because some diseases seem to have no remedy at all, e.g. S's, L's and A's. Can't say definitely about Mulshankar's. It is also a chronic thing from his childhood. Of course it doesn't mean that for that reason it has no cure. Anyway. I shall try; please give your help.

[Mother:] Nothing is incurable but it is the hidden cause of the illness that must be discovered. I'll put in French what I mean:

C'est un fonctionnement qui est mauvais quelque part, pasune lésion—etl'origine de ce mauvais fonctionnement est probablement nerveuse (due à quelque chose de faussé dans le vitalceci est l'ultime cause psychologique).¹⁸⁸

Guru, I hope this poem,¹⁸⁹ will pass.

Exceedingly fine.

Well, that's some inspiration! (American sense of some!) O.K to the nth degree...

Mrs. Sankar Ram has a very bad defect of the eyes—The ophthalmologist suspects something wrong in the fundus of rt. eye (she had an accident). To be sure, he wants to dilate the eyes with Homatropine—but he doesn't promise a cure. Shall we dilate and see?...

[Mother:] No, it is better not

Mrs. Sankar Ram wants me to ask you whether new glasses should be taken.

[Mother:] I suppose so.

We are thinking of giving S: 1) Some iodine, 2) Bromides, 3) Quinine and 4) Thyroid extract. If you approve of any of these, kindly let us know which. Of course, they have their somewhat uncertain and harmful side-effects.

[Mother:] All these drugs seem to be more dangerous one than the other. It is safer to abstain from them.

Can the Flute be metaphored as a bird, or can it be taken as a mysterious Bird?

Good Lord! no! A flute can't wander about like a bird and have a flaming heart and all. Better leave it vague as it is, to be taken as any blooming mysterious bird.

My life is veiled in a sleep of light,
A hush that nothing breaks;
The world before my inward sight
Into pure beauty wakes.

Life that is deep and wonder-vast,
Lost in a breath of sound;
The bubbling shadows have been cast
From its heart's timeless round.

In its lulled silver stream now shines
A lustrous smile of God
Whose brilliantly curved outlines,
Flashing on the memory-trod

Caverns of slumbering earth, there bring
A glow of the Infinite,
While my soul's diamond voices wing
Into a heaven of light.¹⁹⁰

Guru, I fear this is only a sprat—not even a perfect one, perhaps; for "earth" has strayed away from "my" without any link between them.

It is not a sprat, sir; it is a goldfish. You seem to be weak in poetical zoology. It is perfect, except for the one fault you have detected. The only alterations, (except the "pure") I find needful, are meant to obviate that defect, by going back to "my", so connecting the first and last lines (also aided by the repetition of "light") and making the rest appear as closely connected with it. Like that it makes a very well-built and finely inspired poem. If you can produce more sprats like that, there will be much wealth in your fisheries. It is much better than the other recent ones, except the stress poem—nothing decorative,—all there!

About yesterday's poem, I am still "weak" in finding the "gold" you found in my fish. I don't see what beauty is there to make you mark certain lines thrice—e.g. "Into a heaven of light", which is a very simple, ordinary sort of line, I should say. I admit it is well-built and devoid of decoration, but to see it as you see it—hum! well, could you explain a bit? But I can increase this sort of "wealth" if you are at my back!

There is probably a defect in your solar plexus which makes it refuse to thrill unless it receives a strong punch from poetry—an ornamental, romantic or pathetic punch. But there is also a poetry which expresses things with an absolute truth but without effort, simply and easily, without a word in excess or any laying on of colour, only just the necessary. That kind of achievement is considered as among the greatest things poetry can do. The three lines are put in yesterday's poem wherever that happened.

A phrase, word or line may be quite simple and ordinary and yet taken with another phrase, line or word, become the perfect thing. If you look you will see that my 3 lines are put against the two last lines taken together and not this one only by itself. So taken they express with perfect felicity something that can be seen or felt in spiritual experience. The same reason for the other three line encomiums. E.g. A line like "Life that is deep and wonder-vast" has what I have called the inevitable quality, with a perfect simplicity and straightforwardness it expresses something in a definitive and perfect way that cannot be bettered; so does "Lost in a breath of sound", with less simplicity but with the same inevitability. The two lines that follow are very fine but they have to labour more to express what they want and express it less absolutely—still they do so much that they get 2 lines, but not three. The same distinction applies to the next two lines "In the lulled silver stream etc." and the four that follow. I don't mean that highly coloured poetry cannot be absolutely inevitable, it can e.g. Shakespeare's "In cradle of the rude imperious surge" and many others. But most often highly coloured poetry attracts too much attention to the colour and its brilliances so that the thing in itself is less felt than the magnificence of its dress. All kinds are legitimate in poetry. I only wanted to point out that poetry can be great or perfect even if it uses simple or ordinary expressions—e.g. Dante simply says "In His will is our peace"¹⁹¹ and in writing that in Italian produces one of the greatest lines in all poetic literature.

"And thy magic vastness wraps my secret hours
With its conquering breath of flame..."

Breath won't do. You have breathed once already.

Benoy got a scorpion bite at 8.30 p.m. Luckily he didn't get violent pain as one would expect from the size of the scorpion. Should such cases be reported to you at once?

[Mother:] Not necessary unless it is a serious case.

April 1938

Guru, D has suddenly stopped writing to me though it's two weeks since he went to Calcutta... I wrote in one of my short replies' that' I have nothing to write about. He might have taken it in a different light. But is he really as sensitive as all that? God!

Quite possible with D. He might think that you mean "what a nuisance it is to have to write to this fellow" or "what can I find to write to a fellow like you?" Must be careful with D—and in fact with most people, if you can judge from the sadhaks here.

Tomorrow I shall write D a mild, sweet letter. Alas, Guru, what you say is so true, so true! One has to be a perfect and complete Yogi—no joke, not a word in excess... Do you believe that people here are more sensitive than people outside? Some persons think that the Asram is a "rotten" place with jealousy and hatred rampant among the sadhaks.

Outside there are just the same things—The Asram is an epitome of the human nature that has to be changed—but outside people put as much as possible a mask of social manners and other pretences over the rottenness—What Christ called in the case of the Pharisees the "whited sepulchre". Moreover there one can pick and choose the people one will associate with while in the narrow limits of the Asram it is not so possible—contacts are inevitable. Wherever humans are obliged to associate closely, what I saw described the other day as "the astonishing meannesses and caddishnesses inherent in human nature" come quickly out. I have seen that in Asrams, in political work, in social attempts at united living, everywhere in fact where it gets a chance. But when one tries to do Yoga, one cannot fail to see that in oneself and not only, as most people do, see it in others, and once seen, then? Is it to be got rid of or to be kept? Most people here seem to want to keep it. Or they say it is too strong for them, they can't help it!

Dr. Sicar once told me, after that stove incident, that this Asram lacks "fraternity", while the Ramakrishna Mission is ideal in that way.

I am afraid not. When I was in Calcutta it was already a battlefield and even in the post-civil-war period one hears distressing things about it. It is the same with other Asrams...¹⁹²

D was disgusted with the sadhaks here, and N also wrote about it, and many others think that the world outside is not so bad.

If so, then I suppose they will stay there?

D finds the world outside much better, to which I would reply that here we don't believe in appearances.

D associates only with the people who like and praise him and even so he does not know what they say behind his back. For a man who has knocked about so much he is astonishingly candid and easily deceived by appearances.

—And life is precisely inner here...

Is it? If people here were leading the inner life, these things would soon disappear.

Since we have to lead a life in a concentrated atmosphere, all the ugly things become at once prominent, and add to it the action of the Force on the subconscient for purging of all dross.

No doubt. Also in this atmosphere pretences and social lies are difficult to maintain. But if things become prominent, it is that people may see and reject them. If instead they cling to them as their most cherished possessions, what is the use? How is the purging to be done with such an attitude?

I shall be very careful with D, and even if I have nothing to write to him, I shall write rubbish!

Right! Rubbish is usually better appreciated than things worth saying.

Formerly I heard that X didn't much appreciate D's singing, but now—just see! Is it a change in D or a "pretence" of X?

Everybody agrees that D's singing has undergone a great change—so it may be that.

Doesn't X, a great intellect, realise that whatever D has achieved, has been done because of some inner gain through your Force?

A man may have a great intellect and yet understand nothing about spiritual things or spiritual force. X's knowledge in these matters does not seem to go beyond closing his eyes and feeling nice and peaceful.

I wonder why these people don't understand the work you are doing.

How the deuce do you expect them to understand something quite foreign to their own nature and experience?

I suppose they don't recognise your spirituality. Otherwise how to explain X's and others' love for Buddha and their miscomprehension regarding you?

Love for Buddha is an established tradition, so anybody can follow it. Even the Europeans praise Buddha.

I read the other day a talk between a Moslem and Sarat Chatterjee about our Asram. The Moslem says that the whole Asram has grown up from abnormal circumstances as it were; by which he means that you fled away from the political field; "defeated, discouraged, disheartened", a failure, in one word, and started on Asram.

Have read it. The Moslem was K.N., if I remember right—flaring atheist and God-beater. So what do you expect?

And he says that the Asram, judging by the ideals it stands for, is a great enemy to the society... It doesn't recognise the "individual entity"; somebody gets "Light" and everything has to be done according to his dictates.

Very bad that. To do according to the dictates of the masses i.e. ignorance multiplied to the millionth is so much better!

"They are, at thy touch, reborn
Into new shapes and thoughts;
And my soul's prayer adorn
With their bright starry dots."

This is decoration with a vengeance dottily so. One might just as well write

"And my soul's verandah adorn
With starry-red rose-pots."

Then the soul of Donne would rejoice. But Donne should be doffed here.

Do you find any meaning in my stanza?

Yes, except that the dots have too much meaning.

You have spoken of the original inspiration becoming "mentalised". Could you tell me how it gets mentalised?

This mentalisation is a subtle process which takes place unobserved. The inspiration, as soon as it strikes the mental layer (where it first becomes visible) is met by a less intense receptivity of the mind which passes the inspired substance through but substitutes its own expression, an expression stressed by the force of inspiration into a special felicity but not reproducing or transmitting the inspired beat itself.

P has a dry cough. Some sedative cough mixture will do her good. She wants your approval before we give her medicine.

[Mother:] Yes, I told her already to go to you for medicine.

Guru, this property business has been redirected to me. All I understand about it is that the zamindars are now claiming our property. Chand and 'his mother are also partners. Shall I ask Chand to do what he thinks best or approach my people to do something? My people won't do anything, I fear, and I don't rely on Chand either; he is lazy, except for his own matters.

I can't say your exposition of the matter 'is clear. It is your family property? If so, your family ought to look after it. However you can tell Chand as you propose.

"Dressed in white robes she came
A figure Of purity..."

This is not very impressive, these two lines—sounds too much like a lady's visit.

"O rare figure of Light
I pray for thy measureless boon:
The yearning of the night
For the splendour of thy moon."

It breathes-a little of Intuition, perhaps?

Good Lord, no! This is not intuition,—it is mind manufacture.

"Murmuringly I roll
Along a grey beech..."

What the deuce? Why a beech and not an oak or pine-tree? Or do you mean beach?

Guru, I bade the mind keep quiet and allow intuition to flow in and by golly, it has! what?

By Jove, yes!

I cherished a wish to flourish as a story-writer long before the English and Bengali Muse sat on me. Now English poetry has caught me and Bengali poetry has gone to sleep. It seems my English poems are much better and deeper than the Bengali ones... Should I try my hand at story-writing?

Your Bengali poems seem to me to be very good, though less vividly original than the English, except at times. Don't know anything about your stories. Why not keep to poetry at present, writing English usually and Bengali when you can?

By the way, you are sitting comfortably over Nishikanta's poem. He will make my life uncomfortable when he comes back, saying I have done nothing for him!

To be able to be comfortable is so rare in this world of discomfort! However I may see whether I can sit up one day and look into the thing.

P's cough is less, but she feels rather weak. Shall we wait a few days more for screen-exam or take it tomorrow?

[Mother:] It is better to wait one or two days more.

As far as I can see P's is a simple case of bronchitis neglected for 15 days! Still as one should always exclude T.B. and screen-exam helps in that, I proposed it.

[Mother:] Yes, but be very careful not to frighten her.

I hesitate to write in this high tone: "I am the Light of the One, Voice" etc. It sounds high and grand. Some don't like this tone at all. D is one. They call it insincere. A poetsadhak has no justification for using this tone?

If such poems are put as a claim, or vaunted as a personal experience of Yoga, they may be objected to on that ground. But a poet is not bound to confine himself to his personal experience. A poet writes from inspiration or from imagination or vision. Milton did not need to go to Heaven or Hell or the Garden of Eden before he wrote Paradise Lost. Are all D's bhakti poems an exact transcription of his inner state? If so, he must be a wonderful Yogi and bhakta.

N.P. showed me Sri Aurobindo's letter to him regarding his ailment. How interesting to know all these factors! We think the Divine can cure us, even magically, if he wanted, but don't see that it is our own resistance that comes in the way. But suppose we had given one injection of morphia, the pain would have subsided and he would have gone to sleep. The subconscient would have failed to act then. I suppose morphia will act on the body and thus stop the subconscient which acts through the body?

The morphia stuns locally or otherwise the consciousness and its reaction to the subconscient pressure and so suspends the pain or deadens it. Even that it does not always do—Manilal took five morphine injections in succession without even diminishing his liver inflammation pains. What became of the power of the drug over the subconscient in that case? The resistance was too strong just as the resistance of N.P.'s subconscient to the Force.

If the patient had been outside and a doctor had cured him, how would he have conquered this subconscient resistance? If you have no time, could I have a few lines on this subject, from Sri Aurobindo?

In much the same way as Coué's suggestion system cured most of his patients, only by a physical instead of a mental means. he body consciousness responds to the suggestion or the medicine and one gets cured for the time being or it doesn't respond and there is no cure. How is it that the same medicine for the same illness succeeds with one man and not with another or succeeds at one time with a man and afterwards doesn't succeed at all? Absolute cure of an illness so that it cannot return again depends on clearing the mind, the vital and the body consciousness and the subconscient of the psychological response to the Force bringing the illness. Sometimes this is done by a sort of order from above (when the consciousness is ready, but it cannot always be done like that). The complete immunity from all illness for which our Yoga tries can. only come by a total and permanent enlightenment of the below from above, resulting in the removal of the psychological roots of ill health—it cannot be done otherwise.

P is about the same. Pavitra has sent us a bottle of Pneumogein, and one of Pulmoserum. Shall we try Pulmoserum as it contains Codein which may be more useful?

[The Mother drew a line indicating "Shall we try" and underlined "Pulmoserum".]

Yes.

Dr. André asked me if I had any communications from Sri Aurobindo on medical things. May I show him yesterday's letter?

[Mother:] Yes.

[Mother:] K is complaining of weakness. I told him to ask you for a tonic (not medicine).

I hope Dilipda is writing to you!

Telegraphing—Musical conference and still greater musical conference!

Guru, the Muse is too whimsical. Still, I suppose, there is some way, what?

I don't know that there is, except to catch the inspiration by the hair when it comes, and keep it till the poem is done.

If I could know what time you send in the Force or what's your best time, I could get an optimum result.

I have no best or worst time—it depends on God's mercy.

Sitabala's boil looks like a carbuncle... We have a good anti-vaccine for it, to be applied locally, which we had tried in Parkhi's case. But it gave him a severe general reaction—fever 104°. So, should we try?

[Mother:] It may not be prudent to try.

Purani brought Mrs. Sahmeyer here. She had an accident in Moscow: suspected fracture of a rib on the left side, but the doctor said none;—without X-ray. The pain subsided, but it has recurred here. I said X-ray is best. But who will pay or shall we pay considering her as an Asram member?

[The Mother cancelled "Sahmeyer" and wrote below "Sammer ".¹⁹³]

It is better to pay—I will pay—Nothing must be asked from her—

"Through the night's pendulous haze
Stars wane and glow..."

Pendulous! You might just as well write "suspensive".

In the last stanza, instead of "whorl", shall I put "unfurl"?

Good heavens, no! Don't unfurl.

The rest of the poem I leave at your mercy, Sir!

I have had no mercy upon it, as you can see. I have not put double lines because it would be an encomium on my own ravages, but you can consider the lines to be there.

You seem to be in an illusion as regards my inspiration! Do you think it comes in a rush or that I feel its glow?

Never nursed such a thought.

No, Sir, no—or exceedingly rarely! I have to wrestle, Sir!

So have I.

"A withering ball
Of fire on the wide canvas of time
Fades to a dot..."

What's this ball of fire on a canvas? Have you reflected that the canvas would be burned away in no time?

We have caught a parrot which can't fly. What to do with it?

[Mother:] Feed it with grains and fruit until it can fly away.

"With myriad titan hosts
That gather and conspire..."

Look here, I say! You seem unable now to write a poem without dragging in the word "myriad"!!

Then you will see no "myriad", Sir, though "many" is peeping like a coward! But I don't understand why you are so wry over "myriad". In that case, heaven, spirit, luminous, shadow, dream, etc. have to go and I shall be left with what?

"Myriad" is an epithet, not a key-word like heaven, spirit or dream. An epithet recurring in every poem (even if it were luminous!) ends by sounding poor.

Guru, I feel rather dry and barren! The other poem you have uplifted twice.

Excuse me, no! You uplifted once, I repeated the operation Changed back the second uplift to a mere lift.

[Chand's wire:] Inspectors contact uncongenial Trying avoid.

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

H had pain in the eyes last night... Looks like a mild attack of iritis. If you want, we can take him to the ost. tomorrow.

Mother You can wait one or two days.

"Mystery's heavenly fane" all right?

Get rid of this fane, please. So long as we keep it, all emendation will be in vain.

"The flames of a timeless dawn..." Can "flames" be made singular?

No, it can't be singularised, as intuition will then walk of in a huff.

"... the wan shadows are cast
From its sleepless whirl..."¹⁹⁴

... End of 1st stanza all right? and the repetition in the last stanza?

I can't make out for the life of me what Pare these wan shadows and why they poke their pale noses in here!

As you wrote it it is a dream-poem. I have tried by a few alterations to wake it up—now, I think it is truly excellent as a vision-poem. It must be "thy sky" [instead of "the sky"]—for otherwise it is the ordinary sky and since Science has shown us that that does not exist—it is only a hallucination of blue colour created by azotes or some other such chemical entity, anything written about the ordinary sky can only be either unconvincing or purely decorative. So!

Repetition all right and very effective.

[Chand's wire.] "Progressing again debt case Tomorrow."

Voila, another, Sir! I wrote to him not to waste money on unnecessary registered letters and telegrams, but Chand is Chand! So!

Well, well, let us accept the inevitable প্রকৃতিং যান্তি ভূতানি¹⁹⁵ means All animals follow their nature.

K—[18.4.38] Melatone didn't give him much good effect. As it looks like nervous fatigue, Kola may do him good. If you have any more Nergine, he could resume it, perhaps.

[Mother:] I have no nergine.

"Haunted by wild desires..." Wild is all right?

No, too wild!

H has slight pain in the eyes today. [Maybe iritis due to T.B. Prescribed cod-liver oil.] If you have no objection, we can try salicylates by mouth.

[The Mother drew a line indicating "salicylates".]

It is so bad for stomach!

May 1938

"I have seen in thy white eyes
A spark unknown,..."

White eyes = eyes without pupils which would be rather terrifying.

By the way, yesterday while meditating, I saw clearly that you wrote "excellent" for yesterday's poem¹⁹⁶—almost the same as "exceedingly fine". This is the third or fourth time I had such a prevision. Some faculty growing, Sir? Or a coincidence?

"Coincidence" is a quack scientific word which like many such words states the fact that two things coincide (here your prevision and my opinion coincide) but does not explain the fact—If a man sees a snake in dream in the night and each time crosses one in the day, that would be a coincidence of dream and snake. But to say so leaves the real question untouched, viz. why the coincidence?

... Don't know how J will react to your remark that you are too busy to see her poetry now. That is the Lord's business.

It is rather her business.

She has given up Bengali poetry thinking that you haven't much time to take it up. Perhaps English will be easy for you. Well?

She tells me I can do her poem for her in 3 minutes. I have told her it would take half an hour or 20 minutes at the least—which is a fact as it is in a terrible mess.

I asked her to take up some other work so long as poetry can't be done. But her sadhana can only be done through her own line, i.e. literature, not through sweeping etc. Alas, alas! Even R and K [artists] have taken up some other work, she can't!

Of course not—because she is not sincere about it. The idea of sadhana through her own line is a mere excuse—it is a vital satisfaction she is after.

What exactly is vital interchange?

Difficult to specify. There is always a drawing of vital forces from one to another in all human social mixture that takes place automatically. Love-making is one of the most powerful ways of each drawing up the other's vital force, or of one drawing the other's which also often happens in a one-sided way to the great detriment of the "other". In the passage come. many things good and bad, elation, feeling of strength, and support, infiltration of good or bad qualities, interchange of psychological moods, states and movements, depressions, exhaustion—the whole gamut. People don't know it—which is a mercy of God upon them—but when one gets into a certain Yogic consciousness, one becomes very much aware and sensitive to all this interchange and action and reaction, but also one can build a wall against, reject etc., etc.

Dr. Rao thinks that it is better to isolate R.L. from public work. We shall have to see the blood result.

[Mother:] Let her be examined first.

The mischief is that she is very useful in the D.R. just now, but I shall see if I can have her replaced as, evidently, it would be better if she did not do public work.

Guru, I learned from Ishwarbhai that you want me to send up this letter [on vital interchange]. I wonder if you can deal with the subject a little more liberally on the typed sheet, as it is rather an important and interesting phenomenon.

My impression was that I had written much more—but that is probably an adhyaropa¹⁹⁷ from the copiousness of my other reply on the feminine woman. Anyhow I have added a little to the rather stumpy note. You can type and give a copy to Ishwarbhai.

[Sri Aurobindo's revised version of the letter of 2.5.38]

There is always a drawing of vital forces from one to another in all human social mixture; it takes place automatically. Lovemaking is one of the most powerful ways of each drawing up the other's vital force,—or of one drawing the other's, which also often happens in a one-sided way to the great detriment of the "other". In the passage come many things good and bad, elation, feelings of strength, fullness, support or weakness and depletion, infiltration of good and bad qualities, interchange of psychological moods, states and movements, ideas helpful and harmful, depression, exhaustion—the whole gamut. In the ordinary consciousness one is not aware of these things; the effects come into the surface being, but the cause and process remain unknown and unnoticed because the interchange is subtle and covert, it takes place through what is called the subconscient, but is rather a behind-consciousness covered by the surface waking mind. When one gets into a certain Yogic consciousness, one becomes very much aware of this covert movement, very sensitive to all this interchange and action and reaction; but one has this advantage that one can consciously build a wall against them, reject, refuse, accept what helps, throw out or throw back what injures or hinders. Illnesses can also pass in this way from one to another, even those which are not medically regarded as contagious or infectious; one can even by will draw another's illness into oneself as did Antigonus of Macedon accepting death in this way in order to save his son Demetrius. This fact of vital interchange, which seems strange and unfamiliar to you, becomes quite intelligible if one realises that ideas, feelings etc. are not abstract things but in their way quite concrete, not confining their movements to the individual's mind or body but moving out very much like the "waves" of science and communicating themselves to anyone who can serve as a receiver. Just as people are not conscious of the material waves, so it is and still more with these mental or vital waves; but if the subtle mind and senses become active on the surface—and that is what takes place in Yoga—then the consciousness becomes aware in its reception of them and records accurately and automatically their vibrations.

Mother has said in "Conversations" that one can lose everything (I don't remember the exact words) by just a look from another.¹⁹⁸

Did she deal with this subject at any length? If so and if you remember where, you can indicate the passage to Ishwarbhai.

Or one can-lose even by passing by somebody unfavourable. That is something dreadful, Sir!

Quite true, it often happens. It is the reason why Mother looked with some uneasiness on tea parties and things.

Is that one of the reasons why Anilbaran down-casts his glance as soon as he meets our eyes?

It may be—to minimise interchange.

As if he has seen a "sin"—to quote D; and which D deeply resents and complains of.

D could never bear that Yoga and spiritual inner life could have any claims as against social intercourse.

Is that the way to "build a wall" against anything undesirable?

It is a wall of consciousness that one has to build. Consciousness is not something abstract, it is like existence itself or ananda or mind or prana, something very concrete. If one becomes aware of the inner consciousness, one can do all sorts of things with it, send it out as a stream of force, erect a circle or wall of consciousness around oneself, direct an idea so that it shall enter somebody's head in America etc., etc.

Can it be said also that people who are "powerful" love-makers have a need in some part of their being or part of their make-up? D surely has no need, he has enough vital strength and all that to spend.

People with vital force are not only always throwing it on others but also always drawing it from others. D does it in the form of praise, affection, submission to his influence, sexual surrender, etc. Otherwise why did he feel so much and become miserable, if he was criticised, refused affection or submission, etc., etc.? If he had no need, it would not have affected him.

I wonder if transmission of diseases also plays a part in this interchange.

Yes.

I don't understand why you call it "the mercy of God", just as there is exhaustion, depression, there is also elation.

Because ignorance is bliss and they would feel very uncomfortable if they felt these things or were at all aware of them. As for the elation they get it without needing to know the cause.

[Chand's telegram:] "Great inertia again letter follows."

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

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

"Replete with the essences..." how do you like it, Sir?

Great Scott! Replete! essences? petrol? This line is terribly philosophic, scientific and prosaic.

S has had a terrible cough and high fever since yesterday noon. Any mixture to be given?

[The Mother marked the last portion of my question, with a line.]

It might be better to know first what it is—

Guru, I have absolutely gone for the Muse today in a terrible vengeance against her uncharitableness. The weather is splendidly hot and if the Muse makes me perspire still more, well, I shall be turned into a 'Perspiring idiot"!

But is a perspiring idiot worse than a dry idiot? I don't think so.

"A purple shadow walks along..." It sounds rather like a sentry walking along, no? Seems funny!

"Walking along" suggests not a sentinel but someone taking a constitutional stroll on the beach in the hope of getting a motion. Too colloquial.

"Life is a lonely journey..."

? For most it is a chattering peopled journey—Besi "lonely' comes at the end.

I've already told Sahana that I shall give her that letter [on vital interchange].

In that case you can do so, but it is better if she does not show it to others.

In the future, I will take her.

? take her where?

N.P. came to me with a letter from Agarwal. I asked him to forward it to you, for your advice.

Don't know anything about this.

On grounds of medical ethics I can't give any opinion, I said, especially as he has approached Agarwal who is more competent than I. One thing struck me in his note, when Agarwal says that he cured N.P. in a day because Mother's force works actively through him. It may be that the force works, but so actively as to cure him in a day?

Why not? If there is sufficient receptivity, then time does not matter.

Alas, the force works through me in months, if at all!

Agarwal has self-confidence and with that one can always succeed. If there are failures, nobody notices, because they are covered up by the high notes of the song of self-confidence.

Don't understand at all these subtle things. The same disease, the same treatment, except hip-bath, purging 20 times, fruit diet, etc., and he cures in a day!

But even without the force, in ordinary cases, with the same disease and the same treatment there is sometimes cure and sometimes no-cure.

By the way, it is very interesting to note the difference of appreciation between D and T regarding the famous singer Kesarbai. T says, "I am forced to say it is good, though I can't say that I like it," while D is absolutely beyond words in praise of her.

Well, doesn't criticism boil down to that "I like it" or "I don't like it"? What more do you expect?

But then T is also a connoisseur!

My dear sir, what is the use of connoisseurs if they don't have opinions entirely different from every other connoisseur?

"Eternities come and go
Like clouds of drowsy time..."

How can Eternities come and go like clouds of Time—they wouldn't be eternities any longer.

Guru, this is another specimen of "thoughtless" writing, though I had to doze for about an hour. It is a great bother to concentrate on every line and finish a poem, perspiring like an "idiot". I think I shall try the habit of down whatever comes, and then widen or narrow it as required.

That is my own method—I put down what comes and deal with it afterwards in the calm light of intuitive reflection.

Where is this Intuition gone in my case? No chance of re turning? What does it mean by giving a flying visit?

That kind of hide and seek is a frequent phenomenon of poetic inspiration.

Guru, when I read that your method of writing poetry is the same as mine, I said: "The shishya's method must be the same as the Guru's," but when I read the rest of your letter, I sat down! "Calm light of intuitive reflection"! O Lord, how to do that? Your Intuition says everything to you? Have you nothing to think whether right or wrong? Alas! how then can the shishya follow the Guru!

Good Heavens! After a life of sadhana you expect me still to "think" and what is worse think what is right or wrong. I don't think, even; I see or I don't see. The difference between intuition and thought is very much like that between seeing a thing and badgering one's brains to find out what the thing can possibly be like. Intuition is truth-sight—The thing seen may not be the truth? Well, in that case it will at least be one of its hundred tails or at least a hair from one of the tails. The very first step in the supra-mental change is to transform all operations of consciousness from the ordinary mental to the intuitive, only then is there any hope of proceeding farther, not to, but towards the supramental. I must surely have done this long ago otherwise how could I be catching the tail of the supramental whale?

"My soul keeps its wide calm
Amidst the surge..."

For heaven's sake don't bring calm in at the end of a line. One has to rhyme with balm, palm or psalm, and to bring any of these in without an obvious effort of manufacture is a Herculean feat. Of course if you slam in an Imam or warm up to an alarm, it becomes easier but at the cost of an uneasy conscience.

These two poems followed as if one piece. But I find some difference. Both seem to have a similarity in thought.

They seem to me separate. Probably the broadcaster above forgot to announce "Here I begin some new stuff."

Don't get into a fit over the rhyme—it can be done once in a way.

Nolini wants a very good recent poem of mine, to try in "Viswabharati" (Tagore's paper). I wonder if they will publish it. Would an "intuitive" poem be better or a coloured or stressed one?

Depends on the poetic taste of the Viswabharati editor about which I know nothing.

Roch (an Atelier worker) came today after 4 or-5 days! Diarrhoea stopped the very day, but no motion since then. He has pain in the abdomen, fever, weakness. What to do with these people? They don't want to go to the hospital, neither do they come here regularly. How to treat such cases?

[Mother:] I suppose you have to threaten them with a refusal of treating them if they do not come regularly—We used to be very strict that way before and it had some effect.

Though I didn't get into a 'fit", I couldn't escape a slight fine tremor over two "beyonds". How do you explain that?

Well, to silence the tremor, the best is to substitute "above" for the second "beyond"—peace be with you!

And is there a suggestion of 3 vertical lines in the 4th stanza, or cancelled as an after-thought?

No, it was a vain attempt to substitute one line for two.

Guru, this fellow Chand wants a power of attorney. It is a bother to find out Notaire Public, buy a French (?) form and all that. Shall I wait for Doraiswamy's coming?

There is no certainty about the time of Duraiswami's coming and meanwhile Chand may have gone to join. himself to his better half, the Calcutta Corporation. Why does not Chand send you the power of attorney ready drawn up; you can go with Purani and sign it before the Consul.

Nateshan (a painter in the carpentry dept.) has syphilis. He has ulcer on the foot—an open wound. Rishabhchand says that his habits are also dirty. I'm afraid we shall have to send him to the hospital for injections. I asked Rishabhchand to give him an outside work till we hear from you.

[Mother:] Yes the man must go for treatment to the hospital and we cannot give him work until he is cured.

"The moon then rises from the grave
Of earth..."

Lord, sir, and what of the astronomers? A moon rising out of the earth. If it is an irresponsible occult moon, that should appear more evidently.

Mr. Raymond¹⁹⁹ says he had an attack of influenza and now feels very weak—no appetite, no taste for food. I think he will profit by some bitter tonic. I didn't suggest it to him, though.

[Mother:] You might suggest.

... André gave Mr. Raymond a tonic—Carnine Lefranco, which, I find, is a concentrated meat extract. I would have preferred something else...

[The Mother underlined "meat extract".]

[Mother:] Better not give it—meat is not good for him—

We want a large vessel for preparing soup. What about an aluminium vessel (if you have one in stock), just the kind we have for the milk in D.R.? Soup can't be prepared in such vessels? Enamel ones have been specially ordered from France, I hear. But I don't think there is any chance of getting a fresh stock now.

[Mother:] Aluminum vessels can be used for soup quite well, but I fear there are none in stock. However we can have one from Madras or Calcutta.

R. L. had vomiting sensation in the afternoon. Wonder if it is due to small doses of arsenic... I have stopped it.

[Mother:] Yes beware of the arsenic. Some people cannot stand it at all.

I am tired of these moons, stars, suns, etc. It seems as if spiritual poems can't do without them.

Excuse me, they can. ন তত্র ভাতি চন্দ্রতারকাং ।²⁰⁰

You say "ন তত্র ভাতি চন্দ্রতারকাং", that may be a spiritual experience, but to express it in poetry is rather difficult. Harin has sun and moon in plenty. Amal has "stars" coming in almost every one of his poems, said his friend Saranagata.

That was Amal's own preference, not the spiritual poems' necessity. I read the other day a comment on Keats' poetry that he always writes about stars and that there is a spiritual reason for it.

We haven't had many of your poems to go by. This is one point against spiritual poetry. Another, it seems to me that spiritual poetry is bound to be limited in scope and less full of "রস বৈচিত্র্য"²⁰¹ (to quote Tagore) and a little monotonous, every time soul, spirit, etc. coming in in slightly different garbs.

Ordinary poems (and novels) always write about love and similar things. Is it one point against ordinary (non-spiritual) poetry? If there is sameness of expression in spiritual poems, it is due either to the poet's binding himself by the tradition of a fixed set of symbols (e.g. Vaishnava poets, Vedic poets) or to his having only a limited field of expression or imagination or to his deliberately limiting himself to certain experiences or emotions that are dear to him. To readers who feel these things it does not appear monotonous. Those who listen to Mirabai's songs, don't get tired of them, nor do I get tired of reading the Upanishads. The Greeks did not tire of reading Anacreon's poems though he always wrote of wine and beautiful boys (an example of sameness in unspiritual poetry). The Vedic and Vaishnava poets remain immortal in spite of their sameness which is in another way like that of the poetry of the troubadours in mediaeval Europe, deliberately chosen. রস বৈচিত্র্য is all very well, but it is the power of the poetry that really matters. After all every poet writes always in the same style, repeats the same vision of things in "different garbs".

In connection with J's poetry, you had said long ago that there is a danger of repeating in mystic poetry.

The danger but not the necessity.

You know when Sahana sent some of her poems to Tagore, he said that the world creation is full of a variety of rasa. The poet's mind should not be confined to one single প্রেরণা²⁰², however vast it may be.²⁰³

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "however vast it may be".]

But Tagore's poetry is all from one প্রেরণা. He may write of different things, but it is always Tagore and his prerana repeating themselves interminably. Every poet does that.

He hints that only spiritual inspiration dealing with things spiritual and mystic should not bind a poet's creation. Well?

Well and if a poet is a spiritual seeker what does Tagore want hilt to write about? Dancing girls? Amal has done that. Wine and women? Hafez has done that. But he can only use them as symbols as a rule. Must he write about politics,—communism, for instance, like modernist poets? Why should he describe the outer aspects of বিশ্ব প্রকৃতি²⁰⁴ for their own sake, when his vision is of something else within বিশ্ব প্রকৃতি or even apart from her? Merely for the sake of variety? He then becomes a mere litterateur. Of course if a man simply writes to get poetic fame and a lot of readers, if he is only a poet, Tagore's advice may be good for him.

Nishikanta and Harin have more variety, perhaps. But on the whole don't you think we are likely to be lacking in this rasa and variety?

It is not a necessity of spiritual poetry; but if it so happens, I don't see that it matters so terribly.

Tagore says that it is unbecoming for a poet to mention that his discovery of a metre is new or difficult.

That is a matter of etiquette. Tagore popularised the স্বরবৃত্ত²⁰⁵ and there was a big row about it at first; he left it to his admirers to shout about it. Dilip being a prosodist prefers to do the fighting himself, that is all.

I wonder why one should not mention that a chhanda is new, if a poet discovers one. He may not say that it is difficult, but why shouldn't he speak of its newness? For instance the discovery of your stress rhythm had to be mentioned in order to be grasped.

Obviously.

Tagore being a master of chhanda, says this?

Also an inventor of new metres.

Dilip seems to have made chhanda a mathematical business; that's why many complain that his poems can't be read.

Is it true?

Once Tagore wrote to Sahana that he couldn't appreciate Dilipda's language and style (didn't say whether of prose or poetry).

Why did he praise him (to Dilip himself) now?

Can't you send some of your poems? You owe me one, you know.

What poems? I am not writing any, except occasionally my long epic (Savitri) which cannot see the light of day in an embryonic state.

"The zephyr from an inscrutable height
Blowing like strains of a lyre..."

Zephyr from an inscrutable height? The zephyr is a sweet little romantic wind incapable of heights.

With difficulty I have avoided moon, stars, etc., but in one place I have put "sun" which I hope you will kick out.

Kicked!

"No more the dark world calls
With its alluring voice..."

Lord, sir—let this dark world and its alluring voice be far from us. It jars here, bringing in the note of the often heard obvious.

K feels fatigued again. It may be better for him to take another bottle of the tonic. Shall we buy one?

[Mother:] I have sent to the Dispensary a bottle of Wincarnis; you might try it on K.

Guru, again with a Herculean effort I have kept out most of my blessed "dear" terms, with what effect, you know.

Yes, only aureole remains. There is of course immortal—and eternal, but these we have allowed. Also "glow, wine, splendour" perhaps; but if we go too far in exclusiveness, your inspiration may cease to glow also. So we will be moderate in our exactions on the Muse.

T has fever (two days) and pain on the left side which makes it difficult to move or even turn on the bed. Better see her and it may be best to call André to see what is the matter with her, for she has been complaining of bad health for long—weakness, inability to work, lassitude, etc.

T's X-ray taken, and André says that it may be T.B. He says that injection at present is not desirable. I wonder if she could be spared from the kitchen work, for she has become very weak.

[Mother:] The best seems to me that she should stop 'the kitchen work at least for a few weeks until she becomes stronger—

André has prescribed Tricalcine (calcium), shall we buy it?

[Mother:] Certainly.

He has also prescribed some extra alimentation: oranges, milk, butter, soup, etc.

[Mother:] For a long time I was giving her orange juice, she herself asked that it should be stopped. I am still giving her biscuits every day. She was getting butter and also asked to stop it, because it was making her fat! In fact she had stopped the orange juice because she was taking much milk and her stomach cannot stand both at the same time.

... T's diet is strikingly poor. She has agreed to take 2 or 3 oranges a day. But I hear you are short of oranges. If available, papaya will be good, and mangoes and other fruits.

[Mother:] Oranges are difficult but "mandarines" (loose jackets) can be found at the bazaar. I suppose it will do—papaya and mangoes can be given daily for the moment.

Then if you have no objection, she should have some other vegetable. At present she has a little distaste for D.R. curry, so she doesn't take much of it. She can either prepare it herself or L can do it. We could even ask Lakshmi.

[Mother:] She has dislike of the D.R. food because she is cooking it herself. So I do not think it is quite safe to ask her to cook for herself.

About work, it will be decidedly better to stop cooking, but she must have some other light work to occupy herself.

[Mother:] She is doing embroidery. Is there any objection to that?

She seems not to want to stop the cooking work although we wrote to her to stop it. It might be better to tell her that she must stop it.

As for medicine, what do you think of Chyavanprash? It is widely used in India for lung trouble, and is very effective, they say. She can take it with Tricalcine.

[Mother:] Yes.

[A note from the Mother later in the day:]

Nirod

It is better not to press T to take Lakshmi's food, but perhaps L would agree to prepare some food for T—You might ask her—and if she agrees perhaps she could come to the dispensary for cooking as she may not have the needed things with her.

... André said he fears T has T.B... At present she has no taste at all due to fever. So I have asked her to take more fruits.

[Sri Aurobindo:] When it becomes necessary to have special food for her, you will have to arrange directly with L about it.

"Lonelily like a sheep I go
Along the watermark of time..."

How is this sheep? "Lonelily" Harinian?

[Sri Aurobindo:] don't know if it is Harinian, but it is certainly impossible. Sheep is too sheepish,—you might just as well say, "like a mouse".

Guru, do you find any blessed progress?²⁰⁶ Getting rather "hopeless"!

A very fine poem, sir. Progress blessed, not hopeless.

"Lonelily" is impossible? or it's impossible in this context? Surely you have seen H using it very often. If you haven't, then I'll show it to you tomorrow, or only H can do it?

The word simply doesn't exist, any more than "lovelily" or "sillily" or "wilily". You can say "lonesomely" if you think it worth while, not "Ionelily". H is no authority for the use of English words. I did not correct his English when I saw his poems—I left the responsibility of his departures to himself, except when he himself asked on a particular point.

"A strange intensity glows
Through its wild frame
Sweeping all barriers flows
Its mystery-flame."

What is this domestic broomstick work on barriers? If you mean, sweeping away, you have to say so.

Guru, I was rather depressed not to find any double lines in yesterday's poem.

I said it was a fine poem—that is the equivalent of lines.

I have tried to drag the Muse out; has she come out?

She has come out but trailing three cliché tails behind her. Most reprehensible conduct for a self-respecting Muse.

I am caught by a fear that the store is over and nothing new will come.

No fear!

I don't understand why Lele told you that because you are a poet, sadhana will be easy for you through poetry, or why you quote it either. Poetry is itself a damn hard job and sadhana through poetry—well, the less said the better! Or perhaps he saw within your soul the Sri Aurobindo of future Supramental glory?

Because I told him I wanted to do Yoga in order to get a new inner Yogic consciousness for life and action, not for leaving life. So he said that. A poet writes from an inner source, not from the external mind, he is moved by inspiration to write, i.e. he writes what a greater Power writes through him. So the Yogi karmachari has to act from an inner source, to derive his thoughts and movements from that, to be inspired & impelled by a greater Power which acts through him. He never said that sadhana will be easy for me through poetry. Where is "through poetry" phrase? Poetry can be done as a part of sadhana and help the sadhana—but sadhana "through" poetry is a quite different matter.

Dr. André said that he saw T walking one day. She should take complete rest for a week.

[Mother:] Rest is all right provided she remains in the open (on a terrace or in a garden). To remain all day shut up in a room is not so good.

T is much better today. But what about some prunes (tinned) to help her motion?

[Mother:] Yes, you can ask from Dyuman.

K found Wincarnis very good. It is over, should he have another bottle?

[Mother:] One bottle costs more than Rs. 3. It must be taken only if it is quite indispensable.

What about the man (B.S. worker) who fell and got wounded? is he not to come for treatment?

Guru, why for some time has my poetic inspiration waned? Does the Divine want me to stop for the time being or is it a temporary phase? At times I strongly suspect that you have left me to shift for myself, perhaps relieved very rarely whenever your Supramental leisure allows, by a little whiff Is that so?

It is probably because you had hitched on to a certain province of insight and inspiration from which the poetry came. Your abandonment of its "standing terms" (which was quite right, for one can't go on writing the same subject and language for ever) has pitched you off and now you are trying to hook on elsewhere but have not quite grappled your "moorings" into the right spot. Sometimes it catches on, sometimes it doesn't. E.g. in stanzas 1 and 3 hooked, in stanzas 2 and 4 dishooked, stanza 5 half-hooked, half-dishooked.

Which or what?

Neither and nought.

Guru, your theories are irrefutable, Sir! O wonderful, they are! I have hitched, I have pitched, I have hooked and dishooked!

But that is not a theory. It is a fact.

You take a fancy to hook me on to some "insight" and "inspiration" at very little expense of your Force and "golden sprats" are caught! Then suddenly you cut off the threads from below or above and my net is gone!

Excuse me—did nothing of the sort. It was you who got dissatisfied with the sprats because of the sameness in the shine of their eyes, fins, tails and other accessories.

Showing me a future possibility, you shut partially at least, the opening. Now I knock and knock—nothing!

Not at all! It is you have started tunnelling in another direction.

Can't make things so damn cheap, that's your idea, I suppose.

I don't "make" anything cheap or dear. They are so by nature. These, sir, are the usual vicissitudes of the poetic career and unless you are a Dilip or a Harin writing away for dear life every day with an inexhaustible satisfaction and producing tons of poetic matter' you can't escape the said vicissitudes.

How far does this poem go in the hooking business?

Much better. Only one stanza hookless.

Now a little about my prose [property]. Doraiswamy said that the mere fact of the property being in my name is not enough; for though the joint family is now disjointed, the other partners can claim a share in that property unless they have allotted it to me...

But what was the understanding when it was put in your name?

You see a tangled business. I don't think then even a pie will come to me. I don't know why creditors are not taking up the property. Has it not been allotted to me then?

You will have to get reliable information as to what is the real situation.

If it is left, it will simply be swallowed up by zamindars for nothing. If sold at least the creditors will get some amount and my 'fair name" not fouled!

Certainly, to sell is the only thing—only your right of property in it must be put beyond doubt. There is no profit in letting the zamindars get hold of it—except of course the profit to the zamindars. But why should you be philanthropic to that now much abused class? Get what you can out of it; even if it is only for your creditors.

Engineer (Mr. Sammer) has hardly had any motion for some days. No pain or mucus. Free purging by salts would have done good, perhaps, but I held off, giving a simple mild laxative. Enema not effective, he says.

[Mother:] Yet it is only "guimauve" enema that would do him good. Laxative is not advisable as he is working hard and must not be weakened. It must be due to exposure to the midday sun.²⁰⁷

Guru, some consolation that you realise I am "tunnelling". Please realise too that at some time the "tunnelling" may come to a bursting point!

Hold hard! hold hard!

The blessed stars have appeared again in this poem.

Never mind! Once in a way they can peep in provided they don't overdo it.

[Mother:] When is André expected to come back?

André will be going on the 3rd or 4th and will be back within a week. He is not allowed a longer leave as there are all new hands at the hospital.

Chand says that one day he will commit suicide due to lack of faith! My Gracious, are you specialising in a lot of sentimental screw-loose fellows as disciples?

It looks like it! What a museum! But this kind of collectioning has been my luck and not my intention.

In view of my present obstinate difficulty, sometimes I think if it wouldn't be better to go out for a while and come back perhaps changed, transformed. If it is so, please allow me and many others to go every year. Your Supramental work will be made half easier!

Logically, that would mean everybody in the Asram taking a month's trip to the Himalayas, Calcutta, Cape Comorin etc. and returning, if not as supermen, yet as fully-fledged psychic angels. Easy!

I've marked that at times Mulshankar doesn't like my interference or "orders".

That will not [do]. He must accept your orders, as he is there only as your assistant.

Reading Y's letter, if you have any suggestions to make regarding Mulshankar's work, please let me know. I am not satisfied with the way we are going on at present.

I don't know that there is anything to change. Datta and others give very good reports of Mulshankar's behaviour and attention to them when they go to the Dispensary in your absence. I am not prepared to believe otherwise on the strength of Y's solitary statement.

A hospital clerk requested me to speak to Dr. R to treat him for his heart-disease. If he is treating cases, shall I ask the clerk to approach him directly?

[Mother:] R is not taking cases just now—

[Sri Aurobindo:] S is complaining of a mysterious illness (fever) in which she gets very cold in the full heat of the day and her skin is cold outside but as hot as chilies inside. Perhaps as she is always complaining of catastrophic physical states like this, she might be shown to André like the other specimens.

S had slow fever for the last few days with plenty of perspiration. André finds nothing in the lungs. He thinks it is neurasthenia...

[Sri Aurobindo:] That was the Doctor's (Dr. Banerji's) view also.

He has given urotropine and gardinal for her nervousness, shall we give them?

[Sri Aurobindo:] She refuses medicines with contumely. She has by the way always had exceedingly scanty and difficult menstruation.

Here is a letter from X. You will see that a portion of it is addressed to Z. But Z told me I must not give her X's letters. So I hesitated to give it before asking you. I find that one has to be careful at every step to see on which sentiment, emotion etc. one is trampling. So, Sir, shall I give it to her?

I couldn't decipher X altogether. But if there is anything Z has to know (there is something about copies of something that has come out?) you can tell her without giving the letter—It is better to shut up about the rest. Z and X both in talk and otherwise have always upset each other and caused crises and shindies—no use risking a disturbance now that in his absence she is going on very nicely.

"Oceans or rocks of solitude
For a winged release aspire..."

Weak?

It is not weak, but rather obscure. What is a winged release of oceans and rocks? However, it sounds well.

June 1938

Why can't you understand oceans and rocks aspiring to winged release? Haven't you read Tagore's "Balākā" where the earth, hills, rocks yearn to fly also, seeing the flight of a flock of cranes? Surely you have!

I am not an expert in Tagore. In English, rocks might just manage to aspire to be birds, but it would be regarded as fanciful—if oceans started that sort of thing, it would be regarded as beginning to be excessive.

In yesterday's poem, you seem to have put paeon in 3 or 4 places. Is that so?

Paeon? I don't think I did it consciously,—don't remember. In this metre I generally run to anapaestic-iambic, but I may occasionally plunk in a paeon or two in the exuberance of my soul.

R.B.'s pain is more marked just below the apex. I couldn't touch a single spot without her crying "Pain, pain." I can't make head or tail of the thing. It has been with her for 7 years, she says. I might consult André.

[Mother:] Yes, it is better.

B's piles still quite the same.

[Mother:] What "pommade" are you giving him? is it Anthémor He was complaining that the pommade was increasing his pain.

Should we stop giving K honey? He has taken it for quite a long time.

[Mother:] No harm, he can continue.

J has a small pimple in the left eye. I think saline eye bath and drops of argyrol will do. What does Mother say?

Yes, I suppose it is all right.

We have no kājal.

If kajal is wanted, why not have some prepared? People are asking, but Mother can't supply everybody.

I am sending you the power of attorney draft sent by Chand. It's in Bengali; you will see how difficult it is to translate the terms into English. What the hell am I to do?

I have not the hell of an idea!

Doraiswamy is coming this Sunday, I hear. Shall I ask him?

He may be coming, but as yet he has not announced it.

Or your I.C.S. knowledge would be help enough? I.C.S. people are supposed to be Gods, you know, knowing everything!

Good Lord, sir! I was a probationer only and had nothing to do with these elaborate idiocies. If I had been a practising civilian, I might have had to do it, but probably I wouldn't have done it and they would have chucked me out for insubordination and laziness.

With whom am I to go to the Consul? nothing to pay?

Purani will take you and find out everything and arrange everything.

Any influence of Wordsworth in my poem?

Good Lord, any? There are whole chunks of Wordsworth—esp. the childhood's days and growing years etc.

This poem has opened a new vista for me and gives me the hope that perhaps long poems and new things are not impossible, what?

If I can improve it further, give me the suggestions, and I shall do it.

It is a very uncertain mixture. Some lines and stanzas are so merely Wordsworth that they can't pass. The whole childhood and fading business is Wordsworth and everybody would ask, what's this old stuff copied here for? Much of the rest is Wordsworth romanticised. On the other hand there are blocks of mysticism. The poetry is good and there are very fine lines and stanzas, but as a whole it must be more inspired and Wordsworth chucked out and replaced by Nirod.

R.B. has very little pain [below the navel] even while walking. But no appetite at all.

[Mother:] I find her rather yellow in colour.

Yes, I also marked R.B.'s coloration. She was better in the morning, but her pain has increased. I can't find out at all what sort of trouble it is. It has been with her for the last 7 years!

[Mother:] Have you seen if it is not a moving kidney?

Guru, I have come to the end of my tether. Blessed Wordsworth took all the worth out of my words. So I have kicked out every blessed remnant and sentiment, lakes and rills and years, I hope. How do you find it²⁰⁸ now?

It is a true রূপান্তর,²⁰⁹ the Deformed Transformed—the whole poem is now exceedingly fine throughout. No need of lines; all would have to be double-lined.

Thank you, Sir, for yesterday's unexpected success. I was raging against you that you have left me alone! Even a dribbling Inspiration can be miraculous, what?

Often more miraculous than the flowing ones.

Did you receive the letter Dilipda mentions?

I had a letter from him some days ago.

"Slowly unfold before my vision
World after world of light..."

These 2 lines seem to be a theft from your sonnet.

No. Anybody can see worlds unfolding before the vision. It is only if the language is reproduced that it can be called a theft.

I think it is better to open Bala's abscess. Shall we do it here or in the hospital?

[Mother:] It might be better to take him to the hospital.

P.S. Arjava told me to-day that he had gone to you, almost a week ago, for a tonic and that you had given one which did him a lot of good, and then you told him that there was no more of it in the dispensary and gave him something else which had not a good effect. Can you tell me what was this first tonic and if it is available here?

R.B. says she has no pain today even while walking. She can take more oranges.

[Mother:] I fear we cannot go on increasing oranges like that. They are not easily found in the market and they are costly.

We gave Arjava an Ayurvedic tonic called "Lohasava" containing iron. It is available in Madras.

[Mother:] It is better to order for some.

[Sri Aurobindo:] S has started taking douches daily—she writes that she is taking salt lotion (is it permanganate?) in the douche, and has taken from the dispensary but not in liquid form and has to melt in hot water "till she gets the right colour". Now in the old Doctor's time S once as an experiment took a tenfold dose of permanganate in her douche just to see whether it would not cure her at once in a trice! So Mother considers she cannot be trusted in these matters (she believes too much in her own cleverness) and she says the exact amount needed should be given her every day so that no "mistakes" may be possible.

X came.to me with the letter you have written to him. He said that he showed the letter to D but D had not done anything, not even spoken to Mother about it saying that he had to make some changes and arrangements. I was much surprised that D hadn't put it before the Mother. He should have at least done that.

But why on earth should things be done in a slap-dash hurry just to please X? Mother said nothing to D and did not ask him to make the new arrangement at once. There are many things beside the mere displacing of one sadhak by another that have to be considered and he was quite entitled to consider all that was involved before placing the matter definitely before the Mother for orders.

I thought that perhaps D did not want X in the kitchen, as he would not be able to do with him as he did with N and that your praise of X's cooking might not be palatable to him.

It would be quite natural if he felt like that. Since N and S are working, there has been a halcyon peace in the kitchen (in the D.R. also for different reasons) which are unprecedented in their annals. For years and years it has been a cockpit of shouts and quarrels and disagreements, all the "big" workers quarrelling with each other, each trying to enforce his own ideas and all (except Charu) trying to ignore and push aside D, all getting furious against the Mother because she did not "side" with them (X has also written that if Mother "sides" with D in a clash between them, he would not stand it), and the "little" workers quarrelling with each other or with some big worker. It was like the present state of Europe or worse. Things got so bad that Mother had to eliminate J, M and others and quiet down other would-be-bosses in order to still the uproar, for each time somebody who was till then less boisterous arose to take up the inheritance of quarrel and revolt. Finally we had arrived, as I say, at a halcyon peace—it might have been the tail of the supramental, it might have been only a lull; but anyhow it was precious. When we got X's letter showing by signs with which we were familiar that he was preparing to take up the inheritance, our immediate reaction was "No, thank you!"—hence my letter. We were determined to put our foot down at the first sign and not wait for farther developments.

X told me that he has definitely told D that he won't make any independent move whatever D gives, he will cook with that.

In his letter to us he wrote that he did that because he did not want to increase his own disquietude. He said that his idea was after a month or so to improve the cooking after his own ideas. He spoke of independence in the work and intimated that D's duty should be only to give whatever the রাঁধুনী²¹⁰ asked for and not exercise any farther control as he was quite ignorant of these matters. His whole tone was that of one preparing for militant self-assertion. Now he seems to deny or forget all that and wonders why I wrote any letter to him at all.

X seems to be going off the trail altogether. His letters are full of the kind of stuff we used to get from B, Y at his worst, and many others. Abhiman, revolt, demands, challenges, ultimatums, commands "You will give me the D.R. upstairs room or I won't remain; you will answer without delay; you ought to have done this, you must do that," charges against the Mother of falsehood, bad treatment meted out to him alone and to no other, etc., etc., also the wickedness of other sadhaks against him (P.S., S etc.); announcement of his coming departure etc. Announcements also that he will stop eating. Also a vital mind taking up partial and misrepresented facts stated by others and without any knowledge of the real situation making false inferences (e.g. that the Mother had not spoken in truth) etc., etc. All that built up into a dark and dismal farrago of which we have had a hundred examples in the past. But it is now long since I have decided not to answer letters of that kind, leave the revolters to their own devices. They expect us to flatter them, soothe them, fall at their feet and beg them not to go, comply with their demands, inundate them with anxious love and affection of the vital kind and generally dandle and pet their vital ego. We have seen that to do anything of that kind is disastrous and makes things a thousandfold worse; the vital ego and its movements increase and reach an Asuric stature. So no more of that. I wanted to answer X and put the truth of his state plainly before him in the most quiet and temperate way because it was his first outbreak; I have already pointed out to him that there is one remedy and only one, for him to reject and fight out his vital mind and ego. But he listens only for a moment and the next day "cela continue". I have no time now to go on answering this kind of letter. If he wants to do what I say, there is a chance for him; but if he doesn't, we are not responsible for his failure.

Because I did not at once assure him of the increase of his work, he has now written announcing fasting and departure, refusal of the work—accompanied by some damn fool nonsense about Mother's frowning eyes, and serious face which is his own imagination. Et voilà.

Didn't you receive my private note-book yesterday? I positively sent it. It must be mysteriously lying somewhere there. I hope it hasn't gone to someone else!

I kept it because I thought of writing something about X and his antics but had no time.

R.L. wants half a cup of extra milk as she feels hungry in the morning... Can she have it?

[Mother:] Yes, for a time.

L has again a vomiting sensation and a headache. Last time we gave her Santonin twice with no apparent effect. Shall we repeat?

[Mother:] May not be advisable.

Guru, oh Lord! what a lot you have written! I feel called upon to respond to it a little. I had a talk with X and asked him all that he had written to you and Mother. First he said it wasn't anything much; then I told him about your letter to me and he said: "I wrote that I had a mind to try to improve the D.R. cooking gradually, but I realised it is impossible, so I have given up the idea..."

? I saw nothing in that letter about giving up the idea of improving the cooking.

"And that if D goes against Mother and Mother supports him against me, then it will be natural for me to have abhiman..."

Why should Mother support D against herself?

X came to me today with your letter which has pacified him.... I am almost sure if you hadn't replied, he would have gone away, and he did express such a desire, I hear²¹¹.

He says he went up to the station and came back.

He had decided already not to come back to Pondicherry after he went out—so it is not new. He came back because when at Cape Comorin he meditated on Shiva and Krishna, they none of them showed up and he could only see Mother and myself!

From what I learn from you and Kanai, I find that things have not been very well with X, from the beginning. His asking for a room in D.R. etc. was revealed to me only now. This incident only set the flame to his heaped-up grievances; otherwise I don't see how a man could write like that from a single instance of this sort...

He had any number of grievances

(1) not getting an easy chair,

(2) not getting an almirah,

(3) not getting the D.R. room on the terrace (reserved especially for visitors),

(4) my letter which was quite general about poetry, Yoga etc., he says I told him that his poetry was all humbug (ভন্ডামি) and that his sadhana was humbug and all our efforts on him were পন্ডশ্রম²¹²—Needless to say I never wrote or suggested anything of the kind and in fact wrote nothing about his poetry or his past sadhana. There were other grievances, but I have forgotten them.

God allow that I may be left some common sense even in the vortex of my troubles. You surprise me by saying that Y also wrote such letters to you!

At least a dozen in which he was going to take the next train to commit suicide decently in some distant place. You don't know what a tug of war it was for some years together. Of course his letters were not so crude as X's but they were bad enough. All that was very confidential however. We both "kept up appearances" outwardly, and saved his face as much as possible.

I hope it is a lesson enough for X.

One can never be sure—when a thing like that has seized a fellow, it is apt to turn up again and again. But I hope for his sake it won't—for I have no longer my old unwearied patience which I showed to B, ft or Y and many others. Also I have no longer time for endless soothing letters. However his present attitude in his last letter is blameless—he seems to have understood.

Z has a slight temperature. Given her an Ayurvedic drug galoye. Should we give her soup?

[The Mother underlined "soup".]

Yes, it is better.

Our rose water is exhausted. Pavitra asked me to enquire if you have any.

[Mother:] I have some but it arrived from France in an iron drum. In spite of filtering there is still in it a slight tinct of rust. For any toilet preparation it is not harmful, but for eyes?—If you want I can send you a bottle—

T says the oranges are very sour.

[Mother:] No good oranges can be found and we are receiving no more from Bombay.

Please send us one bottle of rose water. We can try it.

[Mother:] I am sending one bottle.

Guru, I am not lucky enough to be able to follow your method [6.5.38]. This little piece has taken me about 2 hours and after an hour's slumbering concentration, mind you! After every line I had to stop for 10 or 15 minutes to concentrate for the next line—so it went on...

Let me remind you that Virgil would sit down and write nine lines, then spend the whole morning perfecting them. Now just compare yourself with Virgil; you have written 16 lines in 2 hours. That beats Virgil hollow.

You flatter me by comparing me with Virgil, Sir. But you forget that my 16, 20 lines are nowhere beside his 9 lines and that he didn't require Sri Aurobindo's corrections!

That is why he spent the greater part of the time, trying to correct them himself.

Today's poem has turned into "prosaic" philosophy. All philosophies are, I fear, prosaic. But in poetry it is inadmissible. What's to be done?

The only remedy is to extend the philosophy through the whole poem so as to cure the disparateness. Also it must be a figured philosophy. Philosophy can become poetry, if it ceases to be intellectual and abstract in statement and becomes figured and carries a stamp of poetic emotion and vision.

R.B. is much better today, but is taking very little food.

Shall we give her an extra cup of milk?

[Mother:] In that case you will have to stop the oranges because much milk with oranges can give pains again.

She wants to join work. We advised her to take rest a few days more.

[Mother:] Yes, it is better.

I want to take up French again, especially conversation, as I find it will be very useful now. To begin with grammar and verbs will be rather dry, perhaps. Can you give me a few practical hints?

[Mother:] The best is to speak—courageously at every opportunity.

Dr. André has prescribed for Z the same medicine as for T, plus Arsenic. Do you sanction Arsenic?

[Mother:] It is to be seen if she can stand arsenic. Perhaps you might make a very careful trial.

As an alternative, he has suggested sodium cacodylate injections.

[Mother:] If the arsenic fails, this might be tried—

Her diet is very poor, she feels very weak. I don't know what to do. Can you suggest something?

[Mother:] But, evidently, the most important is the food—Unhappily these young ladies are very fanciful with their food; it is the palate and not the hunger that governs their eating.

Have you any honey in stock, or shall we buy some form the bazaar?

[Mother:] We have just received honey; you can ask from Datta.

[A separate note:]

Guru, please read T's medical report tonight. I am absolutely staggered at her sudden voracious appetite. Finished one cabbage in the evening! Have you pumped some Supra-mental Force into her stomach or what?

[Sri Aurobindo:] I have of course put pressure for no fever and a good appetite, but did not expect any supramental effects in the latter direction.

By the way, I find her quite sweet and simple...

[Sri Aurobindo:] You seem to be easily impressed by surfaces. You ought to know by this time that "girls" are almost always complex and often psychoanalytically so. Someone whom I know might tell you if he answered sincerely to the question that he had found her one damned incarnate complex. She is simple of course in the sense that she has not a sophisticated mind or intentions.

It would be advisable to give Z now and then some vegetables like karela, cucumbers, potatoes—which she can eat raw or boiled, at home; extra milk too.

[The Mother marked the whole question with a vertical line.]

You can propose to her any of these things. She may choose. If there is any objection to her eating spices, it is better not to let her cook because she likes food when it is terribly hot.

I think it would be better to screen-examine Bala's lungs.

[Mother:] Yes.

He is very nervous and his diet is very poor.

[Mother:] Yes, he needs badly a tonic—what about Cacodylate injections?

Guru, even after writing 200 poems, my poetic sense hasn't developed! On the contrary, barring those intuitive poems, these later poems aren't as good as the sonnets and lyrics of the first glorious days. Decadent genius?

No decadence, but the throes of an attempt at change of cadence.

This poem is either exceeding or damned—which?

Damned! that is to say, romantic.

Let me say again that in condemning things as romantic, it is because they are of the wilted echo kind. "Nectarous flow" "fountain music" "bright ethereal voices" "echoing notes" "far windblown lyre" "break upon my listening ear" etc. are perhaps new to you and full of colour, but to experienced readers of English poetry they sound as old as Johnny; one feels as if one had been reading hundreds of books of poetry with these phrases on each page and a hundred and first book seems a little superfluous. If they had not been written before, the poem might be pronounced very fine, but—I have tried my best with three of the stanzas to organise them, but except for stanza 2 out of which a very fine image can be made and the two lines marked, with no entire success. The third and fourth stanzas are hopeless. Where the deuce does your inspiration draw these things from? From remembered or unremembered reading? Or just anyhow? It looks as if some unknown nineteenth century poet from time to time got hold of you to unburden himself of all his unpublished poetry.

If you could spare, please send those cherries for T. I tasted one; they're very good.

[Mother:] Sending 2 boxes—

I was the 19th century poet myself perhaps, trying to take revenge!... The lines are coming just anyhow, even after a head-breaking concentration! To see things happen this way after so much labour is very disappointing and discouraging.

If it is a rebirth effect, it will obviously take time to get rid of it; no use grudging the labour.

I couldn't understand clearly whether Z could take the vegetables or milk or both.

[Mother:] Both can be given if she is ready to take.

S (a new-comer) complains of weakness, loss of appetite... He requires some "pick-me-up", I suppose. Shall we give him something?

[Mother:] Yes.

R.B. has again a slight continuous pain... I wonder if it is a gynaecological case. But how to find it without examination? Will she agree to be examined in the hospital?

[Mother:] You can ask her.

Guru, nearly the whole of yesterday's poem came in the evening meditation—hence its intuitive character! Today's came through perspiring trance!

Not intuitive but a very well-inspired perspiration. You seem to have got back your swing.

The mangoes given to T are spoilt usually. Are they bought or sent by somebody?

[Mother:] Mangoes are not bought. They must be coming from one or another garden.

She proposes to take more rice and bread instead of fruits.

[Mother:] If she takes bread and butter it will help.

R.B. has no pain today. Can she begin work?

[Mother:] She may try.

Does Benjamin still require special cooking?

[Mother:] Ask André—

We have a meat extract lying here, bought for Raymond Shall we give it to Bala?

[Mother:] Yes, but it is better if he takes it in the dispensary itself as a medicine. Because if he takes it to his home, his mother may very well take it instead of he—

I fear it is a surrealistic business.²¹³ I don't, understand anything of it!

As Baron says, "Why do you want to understand?" It is very fine poetry—according to Housman "pure poetry", for his view is that the more nonsense, the greater—or at least the purer—poetry. Of course it must be divine nonsense or let us say not "nonsense" but 'non-sense". So there you are. The last stanza is a masterpiece in that line—the clustered memories in the tree of night make also an exceedingly fine and quite original image. But the whole thing is perfect in its type. There is however nothing really unintelligible—only the transition (e.g. from day to the abyss and night and again to the heart and the caves) can be followed only on the lines of the logic of mystical experience—it is nonsense only to the intellect, to the inner feeling everything is quite clear. You have to look at it not from the brain but from the solar plexus! Anyhow the rise of light is a spiritual illumination to the silent day of the inner consciousness—the night and the abyss are the outer ignorance, its brief mortal existence, but even there it brings a momentary relief and an after-effect (trace on the clustered memories of the dark outer consciousness); within the heart there is the beginning of a trance, of change opening to the caves of the luminous deep of the psychic (hridaye guhâyâm)²¹⁴ with its psychic fires. See? But that is only a clue for the mind to follow—this significance can rather be felt than understood.

R.B. has no pain, but no appetite at all! Shall I try small doses of arsenic? It may give good effects.

[Mother:] You can try—with prudence.

Dr. André says that cooking for Benjamin is no longer necessary. I shall inform him tomorrow.

[Mother:] But it must be ascertained that he eats the asram food. It is by not taking it (he does not like it) that he got so bad—

For my piles, local injection or operation is the only remedy!

[Mother:] Beware of operation: it does not cure—

Purani showed me your reply. Since we are giving Iron to R.B., there is no objection to Purani's preparation.

[Mother:] Then if she takes that preparation, it is better to postpone the arsenic—

Dr. André suggests that ওল কচু²¹⁵ (what you call Indian potato) is very good for piles. Can it be given twice a week in the D.R.? It is not for myself only, but for many others who are also suffering from the same complaint.

[Mother:] You might ask Dyuman if they can be found in the market.

Bala is getting on very well, so I have postponed the screen exam. But if you think it's better to do it, I can take him for it.

[Mother:] No, it is better not to have it done as it might make him anxious for his health.

Benjamin says that he can't take Asram food at all. He has taken it before "with difficulty and against his heart"! I suppose, we have to continue?

[Mother:] Yes.

Lalita came with your message to call Dr. André. Do you suspect something else than just boils?

[Mother:] No, but she is a bit nervous about it and is very anxious that all that should disappear quick. The last one in the armpit was very painful. Also she cannot stand medicine internally.

For Benoy's artificial eye, Nagaswami writes to Rajangam that it will be absolutely necessary for Benoy to go to Madras as each specimen varies from person to person, though we mentioned about sending our sample.

Our oculist says that the Madras firms are no good. We should send a sample to Bombay and ask from there. So it's better to enquire there, isn't it?

[Mother:] Yes.

The same process [in writing poetry] gives wonderful results sometimes and foolish ones at others!

It depends on the consciousness-Source you strike; the same method will have different results according to the inspiration fount (or level) you get at.

I suppose Lalita has told you André's opinion and treatment regarding auto-vaccine. You have no objection, I hope.

[Mother:] No, it is all right.

D's bag and letter. I have to help you (helping Guru, I chuckle!) wherever you are likely to stumble in reading the letter.

In spite of your help I had a slow struggle with D's hieroglyphics—but half way through Intuition came to my rescue and I swam through the rest.

You will find from the letter that he is a little or much upset by P.S.'s remark...

It seems to be more much than little. I don't see why he should be upset by it at all.

I can't say if P.S. has said it, nor can I judge D's capacity to understand your Yoga.

The difficulty with D was that he had caught up ideas about Yoga from various quarters and stuck to his ideas like grim death, his mind refusing to understand my ideas and wilfully misunderstanding them. Thus he took supermind for the Vedantic Nirguna Brahman, something dry and high and cold, and the psychic for a pale udasin nirlipta²¹⁶ business with no flame in it and persisted in such absurd ideas in spite of my denials. That obviously was not helpful.

I fear my capacity also is very poor in that direction. But is it necessary to "understand" your Yoga in order to practise it? As far as I understand, it is only your Supermind business that baffles us and some of us are sceptical about it...

Well, it may not be necessary to understand it, but it is advisable not to misunderstand it.

The scepticism is stupid, because how can one pronounce for or against about something one does not know or understand at all?

And some think it not worth while at present to bother about it.

Certainly it is better not to bother about it and to do what is immediately necessary. The attempt to understand has led many to take for the Supermind something that was not even spiritual and to suppose themselves supermen when all they were doing was to go headlong into the ultravital.

You have said that nobody knows or understands anything about it—but I think it is not even necessary, what?

Not at present.

If that is what was meant by P.S. I can see, but to say that D doesn't understand your Yoga is rather—!

I don't know what P.S. meant. I have explained in what sense 17 did not understand it. But how many do?

But—I ask you again—does one need to understand your Yoga in order to practise it? Or, how far should one understand, grasp and assimilate it?

If one has faith and openness that is enough. Besides there are two kinds of understanding—understanding by the intellect and understanding in the consciousness. It is good to have the former if it is accurate, but it is not indispensable. Understanding by the consciousness comes if there is faith and openness, though it may come only gradually and through steps of experience. But I have seen people without education or intellectuality understand in this way perfectly well the course of the Yoga in themselves, while intellectual men make big mistakes—e.g. take a neutral mental quietude for the spiritual peace and refuse to come out of it in order to go farther.

I admit that D, at times, was sceptical about some well accepted things of Yoga, e.g. Force curing diseases etc. But that was scepticism rather than lack of understanding.

Well, but his scepticism was founded on ignorance and non-understanding.

Could you give some light for him and for me?

This is for you, not for him.

N and others are interested to see your answers to D. Will it be advisable to show them?

They might talk and it would reach P.S. and make matters worse.

Anilbaran gave me his novel to criticise. He says it is very impressive and he has seen my criticism of J's poetry.

He says his own novel is very impressive? Or your criticism?

He says that I have a good critical faculty. So, Sir, that's something, what?

Sometimes.

"The sudden resurrection comes
Within the slow
Fire of unremembered history
In its clustered snow."

Now, look here, look here! There is a limit—some coherence there must be! This means nothing either to the brain or the solar plexus.

"... That longs like a winged spirit to fly
Beyond the pale
Zone of terrestrial pathways
Under a veil."

This flying under a veil is an acrobacy that ought not to be imposed on any bird or spirit. Besides the bird was on the moon—how did the terrestrial pathways come in then?

Guru, this is a direct effect of reading Amal's lyrics which you praised so much.

A terrible effect!

I am damned puzzled and baffled!

NO WONDER!!!

The first two and a half stanzas are very fine, but the rest!! Well, well, well, this is nonsense with a vengeance; but the poetry is too pure for any plexus to stand. Something might be done with the fourth stanza if the feathers disappear out of remembered history and the clustered snow goes the same way. But I fear the last 2 stanzas are hopeless. I tried but my inspiration remained weary and unstirred by any rhythmic wave.

"And melts the snow
From its chilled spirit and reveals
Before its gaze
Columns of fire immensities..."

Why should the bird want to go into fire? Hot bath after cold one?

"... The awakened bird
Now voyages with foam-white sails,
That vision stirred!"

A bird with sails is unknown to zoology! Or do you mean that the bird hires a sailing vessel to go into the fires? Lazy beast! And what is it that is stirred by the vision, the bird or the sails? I don't think the last line can stand. You can say of the bird "Flies like a ship with foam-white sails," but then how to end?

If this poem doesn't stir your plexus, I am undone! The expressions may not be apt and felicitous but coherence there is, what?

Yes, except at the end where you make the bird a surrealistic animal with sails and stir the sails with a vision.

Guru, Chand has sent me the power of attorney. But out of laziness I didn't move. Is it necessary to show it to you or to Doraiswamy after typing it?

To me, no. You can show it to Duraiswami. Better get the thing done.

The oculist advised N to take cod-liver oil. N wants to have your opinion.

[Mother:] He can take it.

Whatever Z wants for her diet, e.g. vegetables, fruits, shall I ask Dyuman to get? He has agreed to buy them if you permit.

[Mother:] All right—

The honey we got from Datta is exhausted. I think K can discontinue it now.

[The Mother underlined "discontinue it new".]

Yes.

1) Arjava says that the Asram food is too rich and too spiced for him. Would it be possible to provide him with some boiled vegetables—beetroots, cabbage, potatoes, etc., once a day, at midday?

2) Madanlal since a very long time has a cold which is refusing to go—he is still coughing; it has become almost chronic, I fear. It would be better to interfere and get him rid of it.

I would like you to see to it, even if he says: it's nothing, etc.—

Dilipda has asked for a poem. I am sending the one enclosed, but how much of your remarks should pass?

If it is only for Dilip, it doesn't matter. But there's something wrong. What's "this brief mystical experience" coming in without any syntactical head or tail? Either I have dropped something or you have dropped or else misread. Please look again at my original hieroglyphs.

I am sending you "the original hieroglyphs". I think you have dropped one "of" before "this brief ... experience."

I haven't, but as I thought you have transmogrified what I wrote—It is not mystical but mortal and not experience but existence, "this brief mortal existence".

I am sure you have read the eulogies crowned upon Doraiswamy's head, on his retirement, and enjoyed them immensely at the same time feeling proud of him and saying, "Ha, ha, here is the fruit of my Force!" What? It is indeed a great pleasure to see the prestige of the Asram elevated by at least one man, though I suppose you care a damn for prestige.

Queer idea all you fellows seem to have of the "prestige" of the Asram. The prestige of an institution claiming to be a centre of spirituality lies in its spirituality, not in newspaper columns or famous people. Is it because of this mundane view of life and of the Asram held by the sadhaks that this Asram is not yet the centre of spirituality it set out to be?

I have been really struck by his many-sided qualities. Is that all achieved by your Force alone?

These qualities are all Duraiswami's own by nature. But all that has nothing to do with spiritual achievement which is the one thing needful here.

His legal genius, social charm, uprightness, noble character, etc., were all there or are they your Force's gifts? How far can one be changed by your or the spiritual Force?

Changed in what way? There are plenty of upright people (uprightness, straightforwardness, a certain nobility of character are D's inborn gifts) and plenty of able and successful people outside this Asram or any Asram and there is no need of my spiritual Force for that.

He told me that he began practice with only Rs. 15-30 a month. But that is no unusual.

Certainly not. It's done in America every day.

It was the same with C.R. Das. Apart from legal acumen, I want more to see how far Doraiswamy's character has been changed and moulded by the Force.

Lord, man, it's not for changing or moulding character that this Asram exists. It is for moulding spirituality and transforming the consciousness. You may say it doesn't seem to be successful enough on that line, but that is its object.

I suspect, however, that you are closing in your Supra mental net and bringing in all the outside fish!

Good Lord, no! I should be very much embarrassed Wall the outside fish insisted on coming inside. Besides D is not an outside fish.

But what about our X? When do you propose to catch him or a still longer rope required? I would call that your biggest success, Sir, and the enrichment of your Fishery.

I would not. You seem to have an exaggerated idea of X's bigness (an example of Einsteinian relativity, I suppose, or the result of his own big view of himself.) Whatever bigness he has is my creation, apart from the fact that he was a popular singer when he came. He would have been nothing else (even in music) if he had not come here. The only big thing he had by nature was a big and lusty vital.

We are all watching with interest and eagerness that big operation of yours. But I don't think you will succeed till your Supramental comes to the field in full-fledged colours, what?

What big operation? There is no operation; I am not trying to hale in X as a big fish. I am not trying to catch him or bring him in. If he comes into the true spiritual life it will be a big thing for him, no doubt, but to the work it means only a ripple more or less in the atmosphere. Kindly consider how many people big in their own eyes have come and gone (B, Q, H to speak of no others) and has the work stopped by their departure or the Asram ceased to grow? Do you really think that the success or failure of the work we have undertaken depends on the presence or absence of X? or on my hauling him in or letting him go? It is of importance only for the soul of X—nothing else.

Your image of the Fishery is quite out of place. I fish for no one; people are not hauled or called here, they come of themselves by the psychic instinct. Especially I do not fish for big and famous and successful men. Such fellows may be mentally or vitally big, but they are usually quite contented with that kind of bigness and do not want spiritual things, or, if they do, their bigness stands in their way rather than helps them. The fishing for them is X's idea—he wanted to catch hold of S.B., S.C., now L.D. etc., etc., but they would have been exceedingly troublesome sadhaks, if they ever really dreamed of anything of the kind. All these are ordinary ignorant ideas; the Spirit cares not a damn for fame, success or bigness in those who come to it. People have a strange idea that Mother and myself are eager to get people as disciples and if any one goes away, especially a "big" balloon with all its gas in it, it is a great blow,—a terrible defeat, a dreadful catastrophe and cataclysm for us. Many even think that their being here is a great favour done to us for which we are not sufficiently grateful. All that is rubbish.

I gather from NK that Nirmala doesn't take vegetable at all at noon. Only rice and curds, and that too not much. She is injuring her health!

[Mother:] You might, perhaps, explain that to her—

July 1938

I understand that the prestige of the Asram is in its spirituality, but at the same time when a member of the Asram behaves caddishly, doesn't it naturally reflect on us a little, or does it reflect because we are accustomed to take a mundane view of life and its usual code of morals and behaviour? Is it not natural for us to feel proud when praises are bestowed on Doraiswamy or feel embarrassed when things are said against X?

Natural, but mundane.

If the praise and blame of ignorant people is to be our standard, then we may say good-bye to the spiritual consciousness. If the Mother and I had cared for praise or blame, we would have been crushed long ago. It is only recently that the Asram has got "prestige"—before it was the target for an almost universal criticism, not to speak of the filthiest attacks.

For instance we feel a little "embarrassed" when things are said against X (if they are true) especially mentioning that after staying so many years in a spiritual place, he should behave so.

"Behave so" means behave how? I suppose people complain of him because he mixes on one side in "high society" and on the other with cinema girls and singers. But that is from the point of view of social respectability. It is the spirit that matters. If X did it in the right spirit, it wouldn't matter whom he mixed with. It is true that he puts on a Sanyasin's dress which is absurd if he wants to go into that society—but that is an incongruity only.

I admit that it is a mundane view, and it doesn't stop your bringing down the Supermind, but it affects us favourably or adversely. In what way should we then look at it?

Look at what? What you are looking at is the praise and blame of people, not at any "it". One has to look at "it", not from the point of view of whether it is praised or blamed by the public, but from its inherent relation to the spiritual life.

I know uprightness, honesty, etc. have nothing to do directly with spiritual achievement. But when a lax and loose sadhak develops the contrary qualities, won't that be a change of character and a way to the change of nature by your Force?

Who said so?

Spirituality, in order not to defeat its own object, must develop these.

Develop what? A change of consciousness and nature, yes; but it is not a question of moralising the character, but of psychising it.

A liar can't realise the Divine, can he?

A liar does not usually realise the Divine, because one is seeking for Truth and lying comes across Truth; it is not because lying lowers his prestige with the public. Sometimes a liar realises the Divine and stops lying.

Isn't it because of his change of consciousness resulting in a change of values of life that Doraiswamy could discard all fame, post of honour, etc.?

I don't think so. He never wanted to be a judge etc., he was never an office-hunter. His weakness was of a social character, desir to be generous, liked, scrupulous in the discharge of social duties, attachment to family, friends etc.

Just as you have developed poetry, music, etc., in X, I thought these gifts which Doraiswamy is endowed with, may have been due to your Spiritual Force, not knowing what his born or unborn gifts were.

No, Duraiswami was always a sattwic man, a very fine sattwic type. But for spirituality one must get beyond the sattwic.

Then by X's bigness or big fishness, I didn't mean "big fish" in that sense, nor your biggest success. I meant that he is such a complicated formula—

Not so complicated as others I have had to deal with.

—There are so many warring and contrary elements in him that it will be a job for you to change him, as it has been.

Mainly two—but quite at war with each other. The others in him lean to one side or the other.

With sadhaks like us, it is, perhaps, an easy walk-over for you! But him?

It is easy with nobody, not even with Anilbaran or Khirod or Shankararama or Duraiswami who are yet all sattwic people without any adverse vital element in them.

I read a story by the Mother where she says that the joy lies in taming a turbulent and wild horse.²¹⁷ Such is X's case, and catching him and taming him will be your biggest success! I hope it's clear?

It isn't.

Anyhow you are working on him to change his nature, his mind, vital, etc., etc. Well, if that succeeds, it means he will come and live here.

Certainly; but that is a different thing from fishing or pulling in. It is a quite disinterested spiritual idea without any idea of a "big success" or "prestige".

You said that if people like S.B. came here, they would be extremely troublesome.

Damnably so!

On the contrary I thought and argued that if such vitally strong people once turned to Yoga, they could put all their vital will on one point and all the other things would become minor problems for them.

X also is vitally strong.

For example, for S.B. country is the one thing that matters and nothing else.

Excuse me—country is not the only thing for S.B.—there is also S.B. and he looms very large. You have illusions about these political heroes—I have seen them close and have none.

But you say their bigness will come in the way. Then is our smallness a great privilege?

Bigness = vanity, ambition, self-assertion, a self-confident inability to surrender etc., etc.

Smallness at least gives you a chance.

Do the unbracketed parts in your replies mean that they are public?

No—only that they are not excessively private.

I have shown the document to Doraiswamy and he advises not to go to this Consul who will charge for every erasure, but to go to the Sub-Registrar's office—5 miles from here, in the British territory. Well? In either case I have no money to pay.

Where is it? and are you to go alone or with witnesses or with whom? Let us know a little more clearly. Find out the charges in either case and we can decide and arrange.

Guru, the place I mentioned in the British territory is out of the question. It's only the Sub-Registrar's office, it won't do.

There are two ways:

1) British Consul. Purani enquired. They charge Rs. 6/8, and 6 annas for every erasure. It'll come to about Rs. 8.

2) French Notaire Public whose signature is also valid. His charges are Rs. 6-8... He says we'll get the form in 24 hrs. Purani suggests Cuddalore. Doraiswamy believes that it will be cheaper by a couple of rupees... He has friends who will introduce me to the Magistrate, a witness he can arrange for, etc...

The simplest way is to go to the British Consul and have it done there. It is a difference of a couple of Rs. only—not worth the trouble of going to Cuddalore and all the arrangements. Ask Purani to arrange.

Before Dr. André goes, I think we can have R.B.'s X-ray. André has agreed, shall we take her to the hospital?

[Mother:] Yes.

We have to buy barium meal, if you sanction. I enclose a chit.

[Mother:] Where is the chit?

M has hard stools, and passes blood sometimes. May be the beginning of piles. Shall we give him haritaki?

[Mother:] Yes.

S asks for some more liver injections. We have 3 or 4 ampoules. If you like, we can give them to him.

[Mother:] Is it not too much?

Tajdar complains of becoming more and more weak and lifeless (?). She says her stomach refuses to work, her blood has become very poor, her heart is weak, her liver is out of order, etc., etc.—She wishes to have her blood examined, her liver X-rayed, her urine analysed. I was thinking (yesterday) of asking André to do all that, but now that he is on the point of going I hesitate to give him all that trouble. But in case you see that it will not bother him you can take Tajdar to him—

[Sri Aurobindo put 3 marginal lines against two lines of the disciple's poetry with some of his corrections—

And the cry of the centuries
Pass from your ears.]

This triple line is a compliment to my correction, not to your version.

I showed Tajdar to André. He says the heart is all right. All her trouble is due to indigestion and constipation... I don't know if it is worth while doing the blood examination.

[Mother:] She was asking blood examination for anaemia.

Today André gave an injection to Lalita. Another due on Wednesday.

[Mother:] Wednesday is a very busy ,day for her—she is asking it on Thursday.

What is meant by your "too much" in relation to S? We shall give him only one injection at a time as done before. We gave him 7, if you remember.

[Mother:] Has it not a cumulative effect?

No, it has no cumulative effect as it is not a medicine, but only liver extract. But I was wondering whether it will do him any good.

[Mother:] If he thinks it will do him good there is a chance.

For Tajdar, is it necessary to examine blood for anaemia? It can be done any day, if necessary.

[Mother:] She believes it very necessary as she is convinced "she is fast declining" (her own words). Of course all I tell you is confidential.

Mrs. Sankar Ram has a lot of sugar in urine even after giving up rice. Shall we analyse her blood to see how much blood-sugar she has?

Perhaps. but is not the illness the result of a rheumatic tendency and if this is treated will not that get better?

Bala found the meat extract very good and wants to buy one more bottle himself

[Mother:] We can buy one more for him. After that he will do as he likes.

R.B. was X-rayed today. There seems to be a beginning of ulcer in the duodenum, the radiologist says. If it is that she has to stop all solid food. But you had asked me not to stop it... She is also so ridiculous, what to do?

[Mother:] Before saying anything one must be sure that it is an ulcer.

Shall we buy a bottle of Listerine for J?

[Mother:] Yes.

She also wants cocogem. Shall we supply it?

[Mother:] Yes.

"The growing heart of day
Is lily-white..."

Lily-white cheap?

Not only cheap but gratis.

Guru, this again is a riddle of a poem.

Not very cogent, whether realistically or surrealistically. But see how with a few alterations I have coged it. (Excuse the word; it is surrealistic it). I don't put double lines as I don't want to pay too many compliments to myself. I don't say that the new version has any more meaning than the first. But significance, sir, significance! Fathomless!

As for the inspiration it was a very remarkable source you tapped—super-Blakish, but your transcription is faulty e.g. lily-white rising out of the clay, that horrible "various", and constant mistakes in the last four stanzas. Only the third came out altogether right subject to the change you yourself made of destiny to ecstasy and shot to wrought. But obviously the past tense is needed instead of the present so as to give the sense of something that has been seen.

How to be sure about R.B.'s ulcer? X-ray was the one definite way. It may be sound to take it as ulcer. André has given a medicine, Histidine, which won't do any harm even if it is not ulcer. It has to be given either subcutaneously or intramuscularly.

[Mother:] Give subcutaneously.

Dyuman buys vegetables for the soup, once a week. It would be good if Z could have' a "garde-manger" for storing them.

[Mother:] Yes—ask Sahana for one—

Mrs. Sankar Ram doesn't want to go to the hospital since her nail pain is gone and sugar less, she feels better. I explained that it's better to ascertain [diabetes], but to no avail. So, shall we wait?

[Mother:] Yes.

The "garde-manger" given to Z is rather small. Perhaps it will be better to have a special one prepared.

[Mother:] Yes, but it may take some time. Meanwhile ask Sahana if it is not possible to exchange this one for one in the room of an absentee.

Guru, I have seen how your little touches have "coged" the poem. Does it then show that if my transcription becomes perfect some day, the whole thing will drop perfectly O.K.?

Of course. At present the mind still interferes too much, catching at an expression which will somehow approximate to the thing meant instead of waiting for the one true word. This catching is of course involuntary and the mind does it passively without knowing what it is doing—a sort of instinctive haste to get the thing down. In so doing it gets an inferior layer of inspiration to comb for the words even when the substance is from a higher one.

Even if I revised it, do you think I could have made it better?

Not necessarily.

But how can I when I don't understand at all what I am writing? How to correct? By inner feeling?

No; by getting into touch with the real source. The defects come from a non-contact or an interception by some inferior source as explained above.

If I try to understand the thing, every bit of it seems ridiculous.

Because you are trying to find a mental meaning and your mind is not familiar with the images, symbols, experiences that are peculiar to this realm. Each realm of experience has its own figures, its own language, its own vision and the physical mind not catching the link finds it all absurd. At the same time the main idea in yesterday's poem is quite clear. The heart of day evolving from clay and night is obviously the upward luminous movement of the awakened spiritual consciousness covering the intermediate worlds (vital, mental, psychic) in its passage to the supreme Ananda (unknown ecstasy transparence wrought, the transparence being that well known to mystic experience of the pure spiritual consciousness and existence). In the light of the main idea the last four stanzas should surely be clear—the stars and the sun being well known symbols.

"Super-Blakish" you say? And what "remarkable source" please, inner or over? Looks something damnably mystic, but neither inner nor overhead.

Can't specify—as these things have no name. Inner—over also in imagery, but not what I call the overhead planes. These belong to the inner mind or inner vital or to the intuitive mind or anywhere else that is mystic.

Z is asking again and again if she can join her work. Do you advise it?

[Mother:] She may try a small amount of work. Days must seem dull to her if she is doing nothing.

Guru, I am puzzled! Your additional stanza of yesterday's poem is magnificent. But how can a "body" be born, either God's or an animal's, even if we admit God has a body?

["From which the cosmic fire
Sprang rhythmic into Space
That God's body might be born
And the Formless wear a face." 9.7.38]

It is I who am awfully puzzled by your puzzlement. A body is not born? When the child comes out of the womb, it is not a body that comes out and the coming out is not birth? It has always been so called in English. You have never heard the expression "the birth and death of the body"? What is it then that dies after having been born? The soul doesn't die, nor is it the soul that comes out of the womb! You think God cannot have a body? Brahmo idea? Then what of the incarnation—is it impossible? And how does the Divine appear in vision to the bhakta except by putting on a form = a body? But if you object to God having or getting a body, you must also object to the Formless wearing a face; so the whole significant stanza becomes nonsense. And therefore, I suppose, pure poetry. All the same one can understand a metaphysical (not a poetic) objection to God having a body if one believes that the Infinite cannot manifest the finite or as finite, but that an animal's body is not born is new to me.

"A fire leaps from range to range
And touches a height
Unshadowed by time's sudden change
Or the bulk of night."

Night has a bulk?

It may have, but it is not polite or poetic to talk about it—gives the idea that she is corpulent.

[Chand's telegram:] "Embarkment enquiry 13th July protection." Guru, is he embarking for Mecca? Looks like embankment which, he said, he demolished, of a tenant.

It is the telegraph office here that is embarking him—otherwise there would be no enquiry. He must be in trouble over his arbitrary abolition of his neighbours' embankment.

Here is Dilipda's royal mail! I have copied out the whole letter for you. Hope it is not worse than his original!.

For this relief much thanks!

What about Darshan permission for Kalyan, and his staying in Dilipda's house? Both granted?

Yes.

D is facing a lot of criticism, but he says he has resolved not to mind it.

I hope he will keep to his resolution of not minding what people say. It is a sage resolve and, if kept, will make a huge difference.

Any remarks on his songs?

Nothing particular. They have the usual qualities.

Padmasini seems much reduced. She has no appetite... May we give her small doses of arsenic with stomach tonics?

[Mother:] Yes.

I suppose what you wrote yesterday on D's "sage resolve" is meant for my ears only? Or his also?

It can reach his, but not in that language which he might take as ironic. You can say that I was very pleased to read what he had written on that point; the resolution is a good one and I hope he will keep strength to carry it out. It would make a great difference.

"I dive into the fathomless
Riches of God..."

One doesn't dive into riches—a tankful of bank notes!

T is quite all right now and can do some light work for a couple of hours or so.

[Mother:] She is doing some embroidery work. I think it is sufficient for the moment.

X calls me now and then in the afternoon to taste something she has prepared. So I spend about 15-20 minutes on my way to the hospital.

I like X's smile. It's innocent, childlike—nothing coquettish or sophisticated or trying to captivate.

Very dangerous! especially if you begin to luxuriate in the idea of her unsophisticated simplicity. Unsophisticated or not, if once the vital attachment is made, she will hold you as tightly as the other and with a greater violence of dabi,²¹⁸ abhiman and the rest of it and, finally when the connection is cut, she will say and think that it was all your fault and that you are a very wicked person who took advantage of her foolishness and innocence. Well, well, you know about as much of women as a house-kitten knows about the jungle and its denizens and it is you who are in this field amazingly naïve.

What exactly is meant by a "sophisticated" mind and "naïveté." in English?

"Sophisticated" means well up to everything, artificial and without simplicity; naïve means ignorantly artless, amusingly simple, not up to things.

... If you think I had better stop this social relationship and check the unyogic enjoyment—I shall.

I certainly think that you should stop while there is yet time. It is no use getting out of one net to fall into another.

Guru, you have castigated me for my inexperience, calling me sheep, lamb, house-kitten and what not. You will exhaust the whole zoology on me, methinks!

Why not? man has all the animals within him as he is an epitome of the universe.

Am I really as naïve as all that?

Certainly, there is the naïveté, otherwise you would not have relied on X's simplicity.

Perhaps if X blames me even now, she may be right, for I can't swear that I didn't try to draw her...

But if she joined in, she would have no right to blame anybody but herself. There is no reason. why she should allow herself to be drawn; it would be a proof that she wants it. Besides she is quite capable of drawing herself even if she does it in an unsophisticated manner.

I have resolved that next time X and Y call me, I shall go and "cleverly" tell them that it is the last time. Will it do, Sir?

Yes.

I've given them mangoes and things before, as once you said regarding S's offer of curry, that it was quite trifling and absolutely harmless.

In S's case it was harmless, but similar things in another case might not be. All depends on the inflammability of the human materials in relation to each other. If they are mutually inflammable, a mango or a curry can be the match to light the flame.

I was alert regarding Z, because I felt she had definite intentions. So I am not altogether naïve, Sir. But as regards X, I wanted to keep just a friendly relation.

... It is certainly naïve to think that because a girl is simple i.e. instinctive and impulsive and non-mental in her movements she can be relied upon to be an asexual friend. Some women can be, but it is usually those who have a clear mental consciousness and strong will of self-control or else those who are incapable of a passion for more than one person in their life and you are lucky enough not to be that person.

[Chand's telegram:] "Partial sex failure must succeed." Guru, after the "embarkment", "partial failure"!

What the deuce does he mean by "partial sex failure"—beginning of the operation but no conclusion? "Embarkment for Cytherea" (land of Venus), and disembarcation in mid-sea? What a phenomenon of a fellow!

[Mother:] What about the workman who had his eye wounded?

I don't understand how I compare myself to a star, and then the sun.

Well, the Sun is a star, isn't it? and the stars are suns?

What's the name of that place in the "land of Venus"—Lytheria?

Cytherea, Venus is called Cytherea = the C.ytherean in Latin poetry.

"... Until an omnipotence
Crowned with a white
Immaculate destiny."

Don't white and immaculate have the same meaning?

No, one can be immaculate without being white; but it reminds of Gandhi's "spotless white khaddar". Your emendation is quite the right thing.

I am most disappointed with this poem,²¹⁹ Sir! What do you think of it?

Doubly damned fine! Close all right. It is only the two "withs' that are objectionable, but that is soon mended.

By God, I am absolutely staggered by your dragon image! Such things have been done before?

Not before, but worse things than that are done nowadays.

If at any time I face public criticism, I will say that my Guru is to be blamed.

Certainly.

May I know why you object to dilatation by atropine drops in N's case? Is it due to inconvenience to sight? If so it is only for a few days and that too can be shortened by dropping eserine which contracts the pupil. Otherwise I don't know that there is any other risk.

[Mother:] I know of people who never recovered fully the sight they had before. But in his case there is nothing much to lose, I suppose.

About his deafness, the specialist finds nothing in the ear. But that there is some defect of hearing is certain. It may be either due to a bad throat—he has a bad pharyngitis and some sign of tonsillitis or otosclerosis.

[Sri Aurobindo:] Psychologically it is due to his extreme self-centredness. So shut up in himself that his ear is retiring from outward action. Of course that does not exclude the physical cause which is instrumental.

If it is due to the throat, a tonsil operation... If it is due to otosclerosis which can be a remote effect of rheumatism (he had it) then there is no specific cure for it, though Iodine in some form sometimes gives a good effect...

One can't iodine him on the basis of an "if" for a problematically occasional good effect.

Blood can be tested for hereditary syphilis.

Can always see.

Adenoids and tonsils, you know, to a great extent dull the intellect.

Aided by self-imprisonment, I believe.

So whatever you sanction, please write against each one, otherwise he will bother me about your sanction and permission first.

What to sanction, when the doctors can't say what's what?

Why did you say, in N's case, that doctors can't say?

Because you say "It may be either" and "if" and "if". According to any ordinary logic that means "We" doesn't know but either guesses or infers.

As regards his eyes, it is quite definite—he has trachoma for which the said treatment can be instituted.

No objection to that. I wrote in reference to the doubtful ear.

And as regards his deafness, it is either due to bad throat or otosclerosis, i.e. sclerosis of the bones of the middle ear; in either case iodine can be given.

You didn't say that. You said "if throat, operation"—if osteo-scl. iodine.

It may be does not = is.

Iodine is very often given, especially collosal iodine injection which is very good. But I heard from Dr. Banerjee that you don't favour internal iodine medication; is it true?

What's this word? Cousin of colossal?

Mother does not favour in certain cases; as in those cases it has a bad effect. Can't say for N. But his subconscious is contradictory like S's and inclined to say No to any medicine.

And if it is due to his extreme self-annihilation, why not tell him so?

Where did you get this self-annihilation? I wrote self-centredness. N's self is not annihilated; it is there alive and kicking and governing everything.

What's the use of telling him' It won't go by the mere telling.

He comes and bothers and bothers, saying that medicine has no effect, "You are not looking carefully..."

Is his sight really so bad that he can't take up any work the whole day? I don't know that eyes have to be much used in his electric supervision work.

So he believes.

You don't allow for the potency of auto-suggestion.

Kantilal had sudden pain on the left side of the chest... I don't find any localising sign, but I suspect he is going in for pleurisy.

!!!

Guru, what sayest Thou to this poem? Staggered simply what?

Exceedingly fine again. Often the intuitive again and throughout almost that.

Can't this intuitive faculty grow in my medical sphere and make me see both the disease and the cure?

But in medicine you don't hook on to the intuitive source.

Self-annihilation is my own diagnosis. For, I think, N will revolt if I call him "self-centred" when he is considering himself preparing for self-annihilation.

Anyhow, is there any use of internal medication against that subconscient "No"?

His subconscient is not contradictory to medicines alone. One has to go on in the firm faith that one day it will change. T and others were also like that, but by perseverance something has been arrived at as far as treatment goes.

That word is collosal—from colloidal. I suggested that N should take up some work in the afternoon to which he replied he wrote to you and your answer was—let his eyes get better and best. Otherwise if Sri Aurobindo says, he will surely take up work. Well?

If I tell him to work in the afternoon, he will after a time say his eyes are very bad, very strained, shall he stop? What's the use then?

... S is really extremely difficult to deal with.

He always has been.

Is it his disease that has made him so or his nature?

His nature made the disease.

His friends and his mother say that at home he was quite another person: doing sadhana so well, not caring for worldly things, etc. An admirable fellow in all respects. But something has happened, God knows what, by which he is now completely changed. What can really be the matter, may I know? What sort of difficulty in sadhana is likely to set up such a perverse psychology?

In appearance perhaps he was like that, though it seems to me that there is something of a legend in that. So long as I have known him he has always been sharp and obstinate in pursuing his own idea or interest and the claims of his ego. Maybe, in his first stage of experience, something mental-psychic was there, that gave him the appearance his friends describe, but the vital was not changed, and as always happens, the vital came up for change—and he did not change it, but allowed the old unregenerate vital ego to take hold of him. Hence constant quarrels, resentments, obstinate feuds and hatred, fancies of persecution, neurasthenia, a disorganised nervous system, devastation of the organs by his anger, etc. (liver especially affecting stomach etc.).

The other day his mother was saying that he pines for his past spiritual experiences and visions. Is that then the reason or what? and I am afraid till he or you put that right, nothing is any good.

How can he have them while he indulges and obeys his vital ego to such an excessive extent? The difficulty is that he is self-righteous and priggish in his self-righteousness. Speaks of himself as an angel of meekness and forbearance and all others as wicked devils tormenting this angel martyr. What's to be done with an attitude like that? How can he come out if he does not recognise the necessity of change? It is not that he has not been told, but—

... He has then to shut himself up in his room to escape all disturbances. Even then he will quarrel with the air, light and trees!

Of course.

But if you ask me to do according to what he wants for his health, I will surely and ungrudgingly do it. But you understand how difficult it is!

Do the best you can, knowing that he is both physically and psychically ill.

Romen needs a pair of wooden sandals as the leather ones irritate the patches of eczema he has. Could you please sanction a pair?

[Mother:] Surely he must have. It is to be asked from Benjamin.

Romen was telling me to-day that he always feels tired, very tired, and very often he has head-ache. Is it due to liver? Can nothing be done to relieve him?

Nirod

I send you X's latest epistle, as my capacities are not equal to reproduction—please return the precious document. But mark that it is confidential, you are not supposed to have received it as it contains psychological as well as medical confidences.

I may admit that we are rather inclined to sympathise with her about the guimauve and purgatives and weekly laxatives. Well, what about André's "miksar"?²²⁰ Warranted harmless and directed to the purpose she cherishes?

SRI AUROBINDO

R's tiredness can be easily accounted for; he works like a Canadian lumberman and eats like a Tamil labourer, or even less... Today he came at about 2 p.m., saying that his head was reeling, the whole body aching. Looked like a heat-stroke. I advised him rest.

[Mother:] Is it not better to give him aspirin or something of the kind?

He says he has no appetite in the evening, which may be true and due, I think, to over-exhaustion. How to remedy that? Something to eat or drink at 4 p.m., or an extra cup of milk at bed-time, perhaps?

[Mother:] For a number of days I gave him something to eat at 4 P.M., a fruit or chocolate or biscuits. After a time he refused saying that his stomach was aching—To-day I once more gave him as he told me what you had said.

... I am sure this headache will go if he takes enough food. I wish some fruits could be given.

[Mother:] I shall give him fruits. I hope he will take them.

Guru, today from 1.30 p.m. to 3.45, I waited and waited, but not a line dropped. So I gave up in disgust... Wasting so much time sitting idle! Or is that sort of idleness as valuable as activity?

No. But you can do something else that may be helpful or useful.

Anyway, there is some tendency to think the same words, expressions, rhymes and thoughts. Everything is repeated.

Can't be avoided in everyday writing—or at least, if you avoid, you will be a phenomenon.

So, Guru, another star [Naik] dropped from your firmament? And after 6 years' luminuous presence too!

Luminous? Not very, and rather a shooting or at least tendency to shoot star. He was always going, going and twice or thrice gone—but—returned; now he is gone.

In spite of his violent temper, we liked the fellow.

He had a very nice side to him as well as an insupportable side.

Sometimes it puzzles me to think that you couldn't save a fellow who had worked so well, keeping himself busy almost the whole day.

Busy in too many directions, unfortunately.

Was his vital so turbulent that you couldn't manage to change him?

Vital turbulence? If that were all, it would be nothing much. It was the intermittent possession by a dark violent force that was the trouble. It was becoming so frequent that I had when he asked to go this time to advise him to do so. But the real cause was deeper down. As for saving, one can't save if the patient cherishes the illness, justifies it and refuses to part with it. It was only recently that he began to admit that it was regrettable and had bad consequences, but even so he was unable to make an effort when the fit came. The shock of having to go may perhaps have a salutary influence.

There is no doubt that he truly loved the Mother; but in this world nothing saves, except those who are blessed extraordinary souls.

What does save is the true will to be saved accompanied by a reliance on the Divine. Those who have gone, did they have it?

I fear moreover, that fate has decreed that doctors must quit! You see three doctors have gone already, R doesn't seem to be on very sure grounds. Rajangam and my dear self remain! Ah, the bullet is passing very close, Sir!

Medical profession can't be based on Naik's case—He dropped it with a joyful grunt as soon as he came here and had nothing to do with it afterwards.

I heard an interesting thing that you gave him a big shout! Ah, I wish I had heard it! But I thought you had lost your capacity to shout?

The supramental (even its tail) does not take away any capacity, but rather sublimates all and gives those that were not there. So I gave a sublimated supramental shout. I freely admit that (apart from the public platform) I have shouted only four or five times in my life.

My yesterday's outburst [with S in the dispensary] seems to be part of a general movement; for I hear that our Benjamin had the courage to slap M yesterday. The fellow has some guts, I must say. The Supramental seems to be descending this time, the head, I mean! But it is really striking that M kept calm when he could have easily pulverised the fellow!

Well, that is a result of the supramental also! But perhaps M felt that Benjamin was too small and weakly a figure to demolish. He apologised to the Mother for having lost his control as far as to speak violently to Benjamin!!

There is some trouble now about Benoy's glass eye that we ordered from the Company in Bombay. It does not suit him; he says we should return this one and he will ask friends in Calcutta to send one. I don't think the Company will return us the money. We can only place an order for something else equivalent to its price—1/8.

If you need things from the Company, there is no objection.

Our stock of Sudarshan is nearly over. Punamchand said it is ready, he would send it from Bombay, but no news from him. Many people are taking it now. So shall we get some from Madras for the present?

Can wait and see.

The other day I gave S a new drug, Incretone, as Haemogen was not giving sufficiently good results. That very night I had a dream that the medicine had a good effect: urinary and other troubles were much less. Today the very thing happened...

... R.B.'s pain has given place to burning... Shall we try Histidine injection subcutaneously, or wait?

Wait.

Guru, the same fate today! No poem! You ask me to do something useful or helpful. You mean some reading—poetry or philosophy?

But it seems to me that I have exhausted my source and nothing new will come till after some time, i.e. by some growth of consciousness. Occasionally I may write when even a sameness won't matter much. But to be a "phenomenon" is impossible.

The sameness does not matter much. The use of your writing is to keep you in touch with the inner source of inspiration and intuition, so as to wear thin the crude external crust in the consciousness and encourage the growth of the inner being. The dream you speak of in your medical report shows that the inner being is beginning to awake somewhat, as a result, even in things not having to do with the literary inspiration. For this purpose the "sameness" does not much matter.

In spite of repetitions and sameness, if I persist, I might strike again a new source.

That is right.

Time seems to press very heavily. But to write poetry because of heaviness of time is an unyogic attitude probably. Well!

Neither Yogic nor unyogic.

Today Mother appeared to show some displeasure (or disapproval?) either to me or to the forces acting through me. Cause there must be: my outburst of temper against S, depression due to Naik's departure and my doubt regarding my own fate, etc., etc. Don't know which.

It is the usual false imagination. Perhaps you got it by thinking too much of Naik—for whenever his vital wanted to go wrong or was dissatisfied with itself or people, that was always its movement, to imagine the Mother displeased and then to revolt against her. In that way it succeeded in getting itself into a fit. The fit passed he realised his mistake—but did it again the next time.

It's not important, but the effect is still worse. The blessed vital gets into a revolting attitude and plays mischief by wrong suggestions—the result being as you can expect: all aspiration is clogged up.

Naturally.

I ought to know by now that Mother has no likes or dislikes and whatever she does is absolutely for my own good. But the vital—does it listen? I consider it a dangerous spot in my sadhana. I must cut it out root and branch.

Cut what out root and branch? The habit of wrong imagination and revolted attitude? For that your mind must separate itself from the vital and be able to tell it when it goes wrong, that it is making a fool of itself and that the mind refuses to go with it even one step in that direction. It is always the mind allowing itself to be clouded by the vital that makes these recurrences possible.

Guru; ah, you do relieve me! If you had said that the first day, I would have written a poem! Your first day's answer gave me the impression that it doesn't matter much if I can't write every day.

I said nothing about that, except that the repetition couldn't be avoided in constant writing. My answer was about the idleness—saying it was not good, but if you find writing poetry impossible every day, you must do something else and not keep the time vacant.

I think you enjoy playing with us a little, Sir, or perhaps that's your divine way?

I have no such bad intentions.

... Freed from the long-standing obstacle, I have been feeling extremely happy these two days... The thought that I shall be able to send you poems again and get back a touch from you is apparently the main cause of joy. I wonder if behind this there is the awakening of the inner being as well.

It is certainly the inner being that has the feeling.

Today I wrote a poem and it gave me great joy—but I couldn't write the last two days, so I feel gloomy. How do you explain it?

The joy is good, but the gloom is not.

My days would have been still brighter, perhaps, if I had kept my vital free! ...

The vital needs something to hook itself on to, but for a sadhak women are obviously the wrong things for it to hook itself on to—it must get hold of the right peg.

Twice X brought something to eat for me and Mulshankar. I couldn't ask her to stop it. Is it necessary to tell her? Won't it drop by itself if I keep myself right?

If you keep yourself right, yes—but if the attachment continues, then it is better to break off the occasion.

"Worlds have begun
To unroll like a time-wave,
Each measured beat
Filled with an ecstasy
Of its golden heat."

I fear you will shout against this "heat".

Certainly, the heat would make anyone shout.

Kantilal is steadily improving. He joined work today. Has been advised not to strain himself.

[Mother:] He came back immediately. Could not stand it. Did you tell him that it is bad to sleep in the verandah? He is asking for a room on medical grounds.

You didn't say anything about S's extra milk. Shall I ask him to resume soup leaving it to his choice?

[Mother:] He has got his milk all right. But it seems to me that the soup was better for his health.

We are supplying bowls to those who take soup here in the Dispensary. Some others also come from time to time, so shall we keep a few in stock or shall we ask them to bring their own bowls?

[Mother:] You can ask a few bowls from Purushottam.

"A rapturous throb of stars
I feel in my heart,..."

I think the stars might just as well not be there. It is difficult for a heart-throb to be a star.

"A silver-throated nightingale
Has to my spirit brought
Unimaginable ecstasy..."

What's this nightingale doing here?

Damned if I know, but let her sing.

"My rock-white will manifests now
Through grey barrenness of time
Infinities crowned with the sun-glow
Of the withdrawn Sublime."

"Rock-white" would mean "white as a rock", but a white rock is rarer than a white elephant.

"My heart yearns now for thy divine
Primeval Word,
Bringing a sense of crystalline
Fire-ecstasy, stirred

In every cell and lifted high
Into a gold
Vision of thy Infinity,
Fold after fold."

I don't think infinity can be rolled about like that, but it can be unrolled, that is revealed progressively and continuously before the sight.

Guru, I am afraid this poem has many defects in detail. It was written after a lot of castor-oil drugging!

The castor-oil seems to have been effective at any rate. Very fine poem—only three lines (in themselves very poetic) lack original force (5th stanza).

This "correspondence ban"—how far does it affect me?

It doesn't affect your poetry; the medical report also can come, but it should be quite concise during this period.

"My heart is steeped in that reverie
And drinks a passionless wine..."

Being steeped, can one drink?

Well, you can drink when you are wet.

Rajangam writes that J's chronic complaint of nose and throat has increased. He has suggested douching the nose slowly with cold water and applying menthol-vaseline at the nostrils. She should practise slow breathing exercises, drawing in breath with one nostril and letting it out with the other. She is ready to follow the treatment, if you approve of it.

[Mother:] She can do.

Bala (Atelier) has finished the other bottle of meat extract. He feels very well. Wants to be without any drug for some time.

[Mother:] All right

August 1938

T asks whether it is any more necessary to continue her special diet. She fears she will grow very fat.

[Mother:] It is better if she goes on with her present diet for the moment.

I seem to have an easier flow of inspiration now, but the product is not of such a superior quality, I don't find striking lines and expressions. Is it because of the ease of flow?

Yes, partly. The ease is that of practice in this metrical form and a certain achieved level of style and flow. But that level is not one of constant striking lines and expressions—that is not possible without some effort—not effort of construction, but vigilance to keep the inspiration up to the mark.

Don't you think I should now try some other form.

Yes, perhaps. I was thinking so the last 2 or 3 days.

[I sent Dilip's letter at the end of which I wrote:] Guru, so permission for Darshan given to S. Majumdar and staying with Dilipda too? I also know him, he is really a very fine man.

Dilipda promises me a kingdom for a wire. If I can get your answer today, well, the kingdom will be one day earlier, as the wire will go today.

Can wire and become a king at once.

Guru, thank you for making me a king! But a king without a queen wouldn't look nice, would he?

I tried the new form today, but found it extremely difficult.

That is natural after confining yourself so long to one form. You have to grow a facility in the new one.

R says that you think it wise not to remove the crust of his eczema, but press out the pus and apply medicine over it. But the crust is not healthy; it is formed by the pus itself... [The Mother marked the first sentence with a vertical line.]

It is his own interpretation of the sympathy I showed to his pains. I never intended to interfere with the treatment.

While Agarwal was examining Sundaranand's eyes, he found that his digestive function has not been at all right for a long time. There are poisons accumulated in his intestine, therefore piles and loss of appetite. He wants to know what may be the cause of the derangement and if it will get all right.

[Mother:] It is sure to get all right—the derangement must have been the result of the summer's heat, I suppose—

Guru, I got this letter from Jatin today. I don't know how far he wants to keep connection with me, whether he expects me to receive him at the station. If you think I had better, I shall. Will you put in an advice?

I suppose since he has written informing you of his arrival, you might go to the station.

The other day I dreamed that we had gone to the seaside. We found that the embankment had tumbled down, and a boy of 12 or 13 lay dead upon the rocks; though his limbs were caught in the cracks, they weren't mutilated. Suddenly I found his limbs stirring. Then the scene changed: I called my tired friends who were swimming, to rest on a floating bridge. After a while we swam a race and I came first. Now, what's the link between the two? The boy = the psychic? But the psychic is usually a baby! Any personal significance?

Looks more like a happening in a vital world than symbolic. The psychic does not always appear as a baby, but this is evidently not the psychic—as the whole thing is in the vital. If it is symbolic it could only mean a formation of some vital framework or breakdown of limitations and some inner formation at first overcome by the change, then recovering—the second dream would mean a dealing with the new structure, a swimming to cross the vital, first in fatigue then after rest a renewed vigour in crossing.

But all that is doubtful; for the symbolism of these is not sufficiently marked to be unmistakable.

Annapurna's eyes are watering, and there's a burning sensation. Trachoma. Shall I send her to Agarwal?

[Mother:] Yes.

I hear from Agarwal that you have sanctioned boiled vegetables from here for Sundaranand.

[Mother:] I said to ask you if it would be possible.

If so, for the noon, it can be boiled with Arjava's, and for the evening, it can be simply fried (without any spice) with Benjamin's.

[Mother:] Yes, it is all right.

"The whole universe seems to be a cry
To the apocalypt vision of thy Name."

Damn fine, sir!

Padmasini has a dry cough. Perhaps it will be better to see her lungs under the screen.

[Mother:] Yes, provided she does not get frightened—

"My heart lies now at rest; it has begun
To live within a vast kingdom of soul,..."

Well, "lies" had better change; for one can't live much lying down but one can be at rest (inwardly) and live.

Dining Room servant's legs scalded by hot water...Don't you think it will be advisable to keep some tannic acid solution (which is not a poison) in D.R., so that in emergencies like small burns it can be applied? It is very effective and simple in application.

[Mother:] Yes, it is better but contents and use must be clearly written on the bottle with a red label (for external use only) to prevent all possibility of mistake.

Is not picric acid more effective?

Guru, I became desperate and brought down this poem. God knows whether its head is in normal condition or is lacerated.

No harm has happened to the poetry (whatever be the case with the head) except that rhythm and metre are rather lacerated in some lines of the last 3 stanzas.

[I sent a long report regarding Dr. Manilal's treatment for Z's suspected T.B. There was no reply.]

You didn't say whether you approved of all that Dr. Manilal recommended for Z as regards the treatment.

[Sri Aurobindo:] No objection.

Guru, I expected something new after the Darshan touch, but the same old stuff (in poetry) with the same difficulty in writing!

It is very good stuff.

The difficulty is perhaps due to these few days' interval?

Probably.

Did you see "the seas of rapture in my heart"? All right?

Seas have not to be seen so much as swum on.

And how did you find the Bangalore scientists? They seem to have been much moved, God knows by what!

The supramental, I suppose!

One of them, the hardest nut and a "jewel" of the group, Govinda, was on the point of tears at the farewell! Just think!

Again the supramental! The supramental is beyond all thinking.

Please have some divine compassion and give me something new.

Well, well, well! We'll see.

How long can one keep this Yogic attitude?

Why not? A Yogi must always have Yogic attitude.

I asked Rajani for some cheese, butter, jam and coffee, for R. But R has suddenly stopped coming here for tea in the morning. What then am I to do with these articles? May I send them to you? R doesn't want them?

[Mother:] Keep the things; he may come back again after some time.

"Lost in an ecstasy of germinal sound
That wanders through the night's shadowy bars..."

The deuce! what's an ecstasy of germinal sound? And a wandering one at that?

Please sprinkle your supramental humour how and then. A too matter-of-fact dealing takes our breath away, or at least makes lift damned harder, you know. Or are your humours also decided by Supramental Truth-sight?

It depends on the state of my inner humerus.

God, alas! What a queer fellow your Supramental will be!

Can't be queerer than the mental human! .But I suppose he will seem queer to the queer mental human just as the queer human seems queer to the queer vital monkey and the queer monkey to the queer material jelly-fish. All queer together! and to each other!

"O dream of solitude, visionary flame,
Make the lone deeps of my heart thy home..."

"Visionary" O.K.?

No, it isn't very complimentary, means usually an unpractical fellow who has unreal "visionary" ideas.

"Travelling through hollow spaces of day and night Towards its rich fruition in the Sublime..."

Fruition! would fructify in prose.

The last two stanzas are logical tails, I hope.

The last three hairs of the tail needed a little combing and brushing.

Guru, the last stanza took me an hour and yet I fear I couldn't get an original idea or expression.²²¹

On the contrary, it is eminently successful and well worth the hour spent on it.

You said that you would "see" about giving me something new in poetry. Well, it does not seem that you have "seen" yet, does it?

I simply said that we will see, i.e. how things develop. The idea of these poems is the same as before, but in expression the poetry is becoming more and more authentic, more "seen" than before and that after all is the main thing. The last two stanzas are Al.

I wonder if you could recast or rewrite the whole poem so that I may be fortunate enough to preface my 2nd volume of poems with it. Enclosing a paper,—at your leisure.

Very difficult. In that case I have to keep the two papers and wait for illumination.

Please ask Sri Aurobindo to go through Jyoti's letter... Please advise what to do.

[Sri Aurobindo:] Shoot Becharlal at her as requested.

By writing that letter, everything has disappeared, and Jyoti is happy.

Guru, this poem²²² is really disappointing. I am sure you will find plenty of hurdles...

These are indeed very difficult hurdles but I have leaped them all—only in the process the poem has got considerably reshaped. So I don't put lines except for a few that have remained almost as they were. The last line is magnificent ["A fathomless beauty in a sphere of pain"]—the others mostly needed a revision which they don't seem to have got.

Day by day things are getting so difficult—more than your Yoga, Sir! My head will break one day. Be prepared for it, please!

Well, well, when the head is broken, a passage for a superior light is often created—so either way you gain, a safe head or an illumined one.

September 1938

Z has broken our thermometer. She wants to pay, shall we accept?

[Mother:] If she goes on taking her temperature she must pay as it will make her more careful in future—But is it wise to attract so much her attention on her temperature? It does not seem to help her to cure—

In yesterday's poem, you have hurdled very well indeed! You call this line, "A fathomless beauty in a sphere of pain," a magnificent one, but I did not feel its magnificence when I wrote it and am unable to see where you find it. I think you find behind these things some inner truth which magnifies everything to you, no? Otherwise the rhythm and the word music aren't very striking, what?

Well, have you become a disciple of Baron and the surrealists? You seem to suggest that significance does not matter and need not enter into the account in judging or feeling poetry! Rhythm and word music are indispensable, but are not the whole of poetry. For instance lines like these

In the human heart of Heligoland
A hunger wakes for the silver sea;
For waving the might of his magical wand
God sits on his throne in eternity,

have plenty o rhythm and word music—a surrealist might pass them, but I certainly would not. Your suggestion that my seeing the inner truth behind a line magnifies it to me, i.e. gives it a false value to me which it does not really have as poetry, may or may not be correct. But, certainly, the significance and feeling suggested and borne home by the words and rhythm are in my view a capital part of the value of poetry. Shakespeare's lines "Absent thee from felicity awhile And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain" have a skilful and consummate rhythm and word combination, but this gets its full value as the perfect embodiment of a profound and moving significance, the expression in a few words of a whole range of human world-experience. It is for a similar quality that I have marked this line. Coming after the striking and significant image of the stars on the skyline and the single Bliss that is the source of all, it expresses with a great force of poetic vision and emotion the sense of the original Delight contrasted with the world of sorrow born from it and yet the deep presence of that Delight in an unseizable beauty of things. But even isolated and taken by itself there is a profound and moving beauty in the thought, expression and rhythm of the line and it is surprising to me that anyone can miss it. It expresses it not intellectually but through vision and emotion. As for rhythm and word music, it is certainly not striking in the sense of being out of the way or unheard of, but it is perfect—teiknically in the variation of vowels and the weaving of the consonants and the distribution of longs and shorts, more deeply in the modulated rhythmic movement and the calling in of overtones. I don't know what more you want in that line.

Guru, no, I don't suggest that significance doesn't matter. On the other hand, I said it is more probably because of the significance of the line than rhythm etc. that you call it magnificent. "Magnifies" was used jokingly, of course. As I don't yet understand much of longs, shorts, narrows and thicks of your prosody, I laid the beauty of the line at the door of significance or inner vision. So "false value" is not what I meant. I am rather limited, or my solar plexus is inhibitory to profound things told in a bare and rugged way. For instance, your three lines against:

"A rhythmic fire that opens a secret door,
And the treasures of eternity are found,"

don't stir my mortal plexus very much, while perhaps your penetrating eyes see all the treasures of eternity behind the door and exclaim with rapturous delight, "How rich!" But the other three-lined one: "My moments pass with moon-imprinted sail" makes me say: "Ah, here is something real, wonderful, flashing!" You will admit that this line is more poetic than the previous two lines, though perhaps the force of poetic vision and truth is less? That will indicate to you probably that I am a bit of a romantic sentimental type who wants to see colour blend with vision before getting the plexus stirred from its depth, what?

I am afraid the language of your appreciations or criticisms here is not apposite. There is nothing "bare and rugged" in the two lines you quote; on the contrary they are rather violently figured—the osé image of a fire opening a door of a treasure-house would probably be objected to by Cousins or any other purist. The language of poetry is called bare when it is confined rigorously to just the words necessary to express the thought or feeling or to visualise what is described, without superfluous epithets, without imagery, without any least rhetorical turn in it. E.g. Cowper's

Toll for the brave—
The brave! that are no more—

is bare. Byron's

Jehovah's vessels hold
The godless Heathen's wine;

does not quite succeed because of a rhetorical tinge that he has not been able to keep out of the expression. When Baxter (I think it was Baxter) writes

I spoke as one who ne'er would speak again²²³
And as a dying man to dying men!

that might be taken as an example of strong and bare poetic language. I have written of Savitri waking on the day of destiny—

Immobile in herself, she gathered force:
This was the day when Sathyavan must die.—

that is designedly bare.

But none of these lines or passages can be called rugged; for ruggedness and austerity are not the same thing; poetry is rugged when it is rough in language and rhythm or rough and unpolished but sincere in feeling. Donne is often rugged,—

Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees God's face, that is self-life must die;
What a death were it then to see God die?

but it is only the first line that is at all bare.

On the other side, you describe the line of your preference
My moments pass with moon-imprinted sail

by the epithets "real, wonderful, flashing". Real or surreal? It is precisely its unreality that makes the quality of the line; it is surreal, not in any depreciatory sense, but because of its supra-physical imaginativeness, its vivid suggestion of occult vision; one does not quite know what it means, but it suggests something that one can inwardly see. It is not flashing—gleaming or glinting would be nearer the mark—it penetrates the imagination and awakens sight and stirs or thrills with a sense of beauty but it is not something that carries one away by its sudden splendour.

You say that it is more poetic than the other quotation—perhaps, but not for the reason you give; rather because it is more felicitously complete in its image and more suggestive. But you seem to attach the word poetic to the idea of something brilliant, remotely beautiful, deeply coloured or strikingly imaged with a glitter in it or a magic glimmer. On the whole what you seem to mean is that this line is "real" poetry, because it has this quality and because it has a melodious sweetness of rhythm, while the other is of a less attractive character. Your solar plexus refuses to thrill where these qualities are absent—obviously that is a serious limitation in the plasticity of your solar plexus, not that it is wrong in thrilling to these things but that it is sadly wrong in thrilling to them only. It means that your plexus remains deaf and dead to most of the greater poetry of the world—to Homer, Milton, Valmiki, Vyasa, a great part even of Shakespeare. That is surely a serious limitation of the appreciative faculty. What is strange and beautiful has its appeal, but one ought to be able also to stir to what is grand and beautiful, or strong and noble, or simple and beautiful, or pure and exquisite. Not to do so would be like being blind of one eye and seeing with the other only very vividly strange outlines and intensely bright colours.

I may add that if really I appreciate any lines for something which I see behind them but they do not actually suggest or express, then I must be a very bad critic. The lines you quote not only say nothing about the treasures except that they are found, but do not suggest anything more. If then I see from some knowledge that has nothing to do with the actual expression and suggestion of the lines all the treasures of eternity and cry "How rich"—meaning the richness, not of the treasures, but of the poetry, then I am doing something quite illegitimate which is the sign of a great unreality and confusion in my mind, very undesirable in a critic. It is not for any reason of that kind that I made a mark indicating appreciation but because I find in the passage a just and striking image with a rhythm and expression which are a sufficient body for the significance.

In today's poem the philosophy is old and poetry poor, what?

A poet is not bound to create a new philosophy—he may adopt an existing philosophy, only his expression of it must be his own, individual and true.

René wants tasteless castor-oil. We have plenty of "tasty" castor-oil, but he doesn't fancy that. So shall we buy it?

[Mother:] Yes.

...As if I had become infinity
And God his mystery to me confides...

Is the link missing?

No. If God confides his mystery to you, the rest follows as a natural consequence of that portentous act of His.

I have become a Father Confessor to God, what?

That's not a father confessor but only a confidant. A father confessor would be one to whom God confesses His sins, but perhaps you think the creation is a big enough sin in itself?

You found no answer to my questions, so the delay in sending my notebook?

Well, your arguments are not so overwhelming that I would find it difficult to answer; it was the time to answer that I did not find.

You may note that you quoted some time back [31.3.38] Dante's line: "In His will is our peace" and said that written in Italian it is one of the greatest lines in all poetic literature. Well, judging by the translation (not knowing Italian rhythm), I fear again it doesn't stir me much, but it stirs you much more because you see the profound significance behind it.

How can you judge a line of poetry from a translation? That would be an astonishing feat. I simply gave the meaning of the line in order to point out that poetry can be simple and straightforward in expression and yet rank as the greatest poetry. Its not stirring you would only prove that your plexus is not receptive to great and stirring poetry, it would not prove that the poetry is not great and stirring.

R is going tonight, I hear. I would like to offer the coffee tin and cheese to you, if you won't take the jam and butter. But I will be really glad if you accept everything. R won't take them back.

[Mother:] Send me the coffee and cheese and keep the butter and jam.

Sharing its rapturous wine with every thing
Till all creation be a soliloquy..."

What's this blessed soliloquy doing after a bout of wine?

Well, what else do you expect when a fellow is drunk? But it is more decent to change it into an ecstasy.

Still you have no time, now when the correspondence has gone down?

Who told you that? Since the first it has gone up or rather swelled up and my table is covered with 4-volume letters from one third of the Asram.

I suppose you are busy doing something high and mighty!

I would like to do something high and mighty, but God knows how I shall do it at this rate.

"The magic breath of God's omnipotent Grace
Comes blowing from his soul's fathomless deep."

It sounds as if God had lost his breath and was panting in a vast distress!

[Image 2]

The first six lines are very perfect and beautiful, but after that histories begin.²²⁴ I think the histories might be replaced by geography or anything else and God must really stop blowing and panting.

"Now grows a universe of beauty, crowned
With diamond fruits of everlasting ecstasy."

O.K.?

No; rhythm awkward. I think I should object to a crown of fruits (apples? oranges? jack-fruit?).

Govinda, the Bangalore scientist [19.8 .38] writes that he has written to the Mother, but no reply! Asks me to enquire. What is the mystery, please? Usual timelessness or uselessness?

What mystery? Do you imagine I am conducting a voluminous correspondence with people outside? Put that pathetic mistake out of your head. It would have been a marvel and a mystery and a new history begun in the invisible (upstairs) spheres of the Infinite²²⁵ if I had answered him! I don't even remember what he wrote.

In the letter to me, he challenges God to give him peace, force and faith in this life. Only then will he admit its মূল্য,²²⁶ otherwise no good.

But what মূল্য is he prepared to pay for these fine things? Does he imagine that it is God's business to deliver these goods on order? Queer kind of business basis for the action of the Divine!

He seems to think that we are striving for মোক্ষ²²⁷ or some bliss in the next life! But he does not desire that.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined "next life".]

Why don't you disabuse him of the idea and assure him that we don't care a damn for मोक्ष²²⁸ and less than a damn for the next life?

He wants peace, Force and nothing more; but in this life. Well, can the Divine give them?

Even if he can, why the deuce should he?

That was precisely what I had thought of writing to Govinda Das. Now I can quote you, toning it down, of course.

No, sir, you mustn't make it a quotation from me, but you can unload it as your own original merchandise on your unwary customer.

Dilipda has presented me with a fine pen as you can judge from my writing!

Congrats.

I fear what was being more and more "seen" in recent poems, is now getting more and more "unseen", but, at the same time, giving the same amount of trouble. I can't, for the life of me, get new expressions or thoughts. What can be done? I break my head over them but they remain as damned hard and unprofitable as the Divine! I am paying the penalty of trying to become an English poet and of facing a hard task-master!

What the deuce are you complaining about? You are writing very beautiful poetry with apparent ease and one a day of this kind is a feat. If the apparent ease covers a lot of labour, that is the lot of the poet and artist except when he is a damned phenomenon of fluency. "It is the highest art to conceal art." "The long and conscientious labour of the artist giving in the result an appearance of divine and perfect ease"—console yourself with these titbits. As for repetitions, they are almost inevitable when you are writing a poem a day. You are gaining command of your medium and that is the main thing. An inexhaustible original fecundity is a thing you have to wait for—when you are more spiritually experienced and mature.

"The silent spheres of thought have opened now
Their hidden gates; I enter like a god
In triumphal majesty; upon my brow
Is crowned an eagle-sun, infinity-shod."

Look here now! neither eagles nor suns are in the habit of wearing shoes. Besides this idea of somebody's shoes on your head is extremely awkward and takes away entirely from the triumphal and godlike majesty of your entrance.

Please don't give a start when you see me entering like a god! Too much to bear even in poetry?

Sorry! couldn't help starting. But the start was worse when I got the vision of somebody's shoes on your godlike head.

"The starry light of earth grows suddenly pale..."

Does this starry light grow pale because of the sun?

Yes. besides the starry light is below and the sun is on your godlike head above.

Something queer happened when I was concentrating on these lines:

"I have known the fathomless beauty of the soul,
That moon-like shines upon a universe".

I suddenly saw a very bright full moon, and a feminine figure walking between me and the moon. The face was indistinct.

I think the vision had nothing to do with the poetry. It was an independent phenomenon.

Well, it gave me joy, but means what?

Depends on the significance of the feminine figure; but as the face was indistinct, how to know?

"The footprints of time slowly fade away
From the threshold of my life..."

These 2 lines, you say, have a "prose rhythm". What's that? Can't be explained?

How, can rhythm be explained? It is a matter of the ear, not of the intellect. Of course there are the technical elements, but you say you do not understand yet about them. But it is not a matter of technique only; the same outer technique can produce successful or unsuccessful rhythms (live or dead rhythms). One has to learn to distinguish by the ear, and the difficulty for you is to get the right sense of the cadences of the English language. That is not easy, for it has many outer and inner elements.

"Mortality fades away with dim footfalls
From the measureless beauty of my life divine."

"Life" is not the right word; but if you get upon the mysterious silence of your height divine, all comes in pat enough. Obviously mortality has to walk off when you become so uppish as that.

Guru, so I am installed in X's palace! But my reaction was positively unpleasant. I spent 2 or 3 hours in the afternoon and all the time I was feeling lonely, as if were far away from you. I was quite happy in my little nook! My medical work may suffer. Mother didn't object because I didn't object!! All these thoughts smashed my Muse...

Mother would much prefer that you should be in your own room and she pointed out the objection about your work, but X said you were quite agreeable and, when both you and he seemed to desire the arrangement, she could not very well go on with her objections. Also what she agreed to was your staying there at night, not all the time.

The atmosphere also seemed so foreign to me, I don't know due. to what.

The atmosphere of X's room is not likely to be good for you; should say—it cannot be a quiet one at any rate.

I almost feel my old room is preferable to this kingdom. If you could find some trustworthy fellow to stay, I would rather go back to my room.

You should find somebody to replace you and go back to your own room.

At the same time I don't see what was the necessity of this guardianship. Is it against theft or against Y entering his rooms and arranging?

Doesn't Mother think my medical work may suffer?

She does.

Couldn't you write something in my notebook tonight?

I don't expect I shall be able to do so, but will see.

Chand writes there is no letter from you. So, one word, Guru!

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

Mother must have told you all about the room incident, so I needn't go more into it.

You must have seen in today's paper the great news: Prof. Sanjib Chowdhury of Dacca (belonging to Chittagong, hip-hip hurrah!) has got the Nobel Prize in literature—for his book Songs from the Heights.

Didn't see it. Who the devil is he? The title of the book doesn't sound encouraging; but I suppose it can't be merely Noble Rubbish

But it is extremely surprising that we have heard very little about him! Have you?

Never.

This book has hit!

Hit whom?

Anyway, a great success for India, Bengal, Chittagong! I wonder if you have read it.

Never set eyes on it. No use of success unless it is deserved. Can't forget that Kipling for whose poetry I have a Noble contempt (his prose has value, at least the Jungle Book and some short stories) was illegitimately Nobelised by this confounded prize. Contemporary "success" or fame is a deceit and a snare.

In yesterday's poem, why do you fear the snow will melt when there is no snow? Only the spaces are white like snow, aren't they?

No doubt, but snow and sun together still suggest the incongruity. However it can remain—sun on snow but a non-melting sun.

"The fathomless beauty on the soul's blue rim
Wakes with a heaven-stirring cry
And mirrors on the heart's horizon glass..."

Lord Christ! what a yell for beauty to emit! Besides the correlation waking with a cry and mirroring is not very convincing. For heaven's sake do something about this.

What is a horizon glass? cousin of opera-glass?

"All drunken shadows of thought fade and pass..."

"Drunken shadows"!! If even shadows become bibulous and stagger, what will become of the Congress and its prohibition laws? Besides Rajagopalachari is sure to pass a law soon forbidding the publication of any book with the words "wine" and "drunken" in it.

You may damn as many lines as you like and find as many rabid utterances as you may, but I can't every day go on looking at the void for a line! I have drunk "the wine of Fire", and you see the result!

I have damned only one line and rearranged others. I have even 3 lined the wine of Fire.

I wait for your crushing strokes and then shall see if I can do the repairs.

One line please.

Otherwise down will it go into the W.P.B.

No need.

By the way, you had better hurry up with your Supermind descent, Sir. Otherwise Hitler, Mussolini & Co. will gunfire it like—!

What has Supermind to do with Hitler or Hitler with Supermind? Do you expect the Supermind to aviate to Berchtesgaden? How the devil can they gunfire S; their aeroplanes can't even reach Pondicherry, much less the Supermind. The descent of S depends on S, not on Hitler or no Hitler.

Things look damnably bad, what?

Bad enough unless Chamberlain finds a way to wriggle out of it.

Sahana says you have advised her and Amiya to take calcium. We have calcium lactate which is as good. Shall we give that?

[Mother:] She did not speak of a medicine but of some food which is usually taken in Bengal, but I do not remember its name.²²⁹

You are neither writing in my notebook nor sending me the poem. The "illumination" hasn't yet descended [29.8.38].

These things rest on the knees of the gods.

"Into aflame of vision my heart has grown
And leaves behind this frail mortality..."

What follows is not very favourable, what?

It is the result of your taking French leave of mortality—quite natural.

Chand writes: "You have said 'Well, well!' The meaning has appeared quite clear to me." [11.9.38]

Queer! He seems cleverer than myself.

About the property tangle, he writes that if I share the sale money with my cousins, they will at once sell the propetry with Chand's help. They are 4 partners. My share should be half. So?

A large sum of money?

"Thy Presence wraps around my reveried sense
An air burdened with heavenly frankincense..."

I say, this sounds like making a perfumed package. Reveried?

"And in my soul I feel an awakening
Of thy eternal Beauty ring on ring."

Guru, I smack my lips today in satisfaction, because I find the poem damn fine! Though there are a few anomalies, e.g. heavenly, ring on ring, etc. What do you say?

Umph! Smack away but I smack also with my hand of correction. However the first stanza is O.K. and the last stanza the same when relieved of reveried and heavenly and unwrapped.

Perhaps you find the Presence of my romantic-sentimental self?

Well, there are certainly traces of both romance and sentimentality in the 4th line and the lines 9-11 are as weak as they are incomprehensible. I have corrected but it keeps the romantic touch.

Ah, what a hard Master you are and what a tough customer!

Can't help being that, otherwise you would fall back into a lax and feeble imitative romanticism which would be quite inadvisable. By "romanticism" I mean really "pseudo-romanticism" or sometimes "reproductive romanticism".

Guru, I've prepared myself for further smacks or whips!

Well, well—it doesn't catch exactly—you haven't put enough verbal or rhythmic vim into it. Lacks vitamin. Have put some vit. A and B into it. Some lines not lined because too much mine

Oh dear, dear, what a travail to produce a mouse!

The mouse was all right in intention, but its tail was not frisky enough in fact.

"The rich magnificence of the wandering sun
Reflects my splendour from still height to height..."

I say, there ought to be a limit to your splendour.

If we transfer the splendour from you to God, it becomes all right—results of your extraordinary condition.

Can you tolerate God twice?

I can't—once is enough for him, so I have turned him out of one line, but brought him by pronominal implication into the whole poem throughout. I think that gives it more consistence.

I send you one of Nishikanta's recent Bengali poems, to share my joy with you. The lines I have marked seem to have your O.P. touch, don't they? He seems to have struck a new grandeur and beauty, no?

It is certainly very powerful and beautiful. By O.P. I presume you mean Overhead Poetry. That I can't say—the substance seems to be from there, but a certain kind of rhythm is also needed which I find more difficult to decide about in Bengali than in English.

Didn't you find Vasanti [suffering from anaemia] better than before?

[Mother:] Much better.

I saw Sankar Ram limping. I called him and examined him... The symptoms point towards Purpura. But the treatment is simple, which as you know, is more dietetic: fresh fruits and vegetables; iron and arsenic by mouth. We can examine his urine also.

[The Mother marked "fresh fruits... urine also".]

Yes.

I fear a simple local treatment won't be very effective. Of course, if you want us to leave him alone, we can.

It is better to treat him.

"I gather from the fathomless depth of the Mind
Transparent thoughts that float through a crystal (trancèd) wind
To a spirit-sky and weave a memory
Around the starry flames (glimpse) of Infinity."

I read your variation [glimpse] first as "stumps". What a magnificent and original image! the starry stumps (or star-stumps) of infinity, But I fear alas that it would be condemned as surrealistic. I can't make out the variation for "crystal". Wearied? Tired of carrying tons of transparent thoughts? Surely not!

... A sun-plumed Bird made of immortal Breath."

A bird made of breath! Too surrealistic.

I have got some joy out of this poem. God knows whether that joy will be justified in your hands, or crucified! What more do you demand, Sir? Now please, fire away!

Exceedingly fine all through. The other 3 linings are mainly for the splendour and truth of the image (including of course the perfection in the expression, without which no image would have any value), but the outstanding lines are 8-12²³⁰ which have an extraordinary beauty. I might have put 4 lines, but remembering how you shouted against my first four lining effort, I curled back the impulse into myself and put three only.

We are sorry to hear that you can't decide about Bengali overhead poetry. I consider it a defect, Sir, in your poetic and supramental make-up, which you should try to remove or mend. A defect in the Supramental Avatar is—is—well doesn't fit!

Why a defect? In any case all qualities have their defects, which are also a quality. For the rest, by your logic I ought to be able to pronounce on the merits of Czechoslovakian or Arabic poetry. To pronounce whether a rhythm is O.P. or not one must have an infallible ear for the overtones and undertones of the sound music of the language—that expertness I have not got with regard to Bengali.

In yesterday's poem, I am much tempted to take the "stumps'", even if it is surrealistic. Who cares what it is when you find it magnificent? It was not "wearied wind" but "Iranced wind". Oh dear, dear!

Don't do it, sir, or you will get stumped. The "star-stumps" are "magnificent" from the humorous-reckless-epic point of view, but they can't be taken seriously. Besides you would have to change all into the same key, e.g.

"I slog on the boundless cricket field of Mind
Transparent thoughts that cross like crystal wind
God's wicket-keeper's dance of mystery
Around the starry-stumps of infinity."

I am sorry that you didn't put 4 lines. My shout, you see, was due to a shock—seein 4 lines—a shock of delight.

It didn't sound like it!

You are surprised at Chand's cleverness! Well, Sir, your non-committal Supramental answers are sometimes damned puzzling, so I wouldn't blame him. Anyhow, shall I pass on the remark to him?

You can if you like. But he ought to have known that "Well, well in English is not a shout of approbation, but philosophical non-committal.

It seems he has disposed of his mother's ornaments which were trustingly deposited with him, to pull out a friend from difficulty. His mother has detected the "robbery" by his own admission.

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

"My life grows day by day into a deep
Reverie broken by no mortal dream,
For the mysterious will of the Supreme
Has made it a mirror of His awakened sleep."

... Why the devil do I feel so sleepy when I try to write at night?

Probably your inspiration comes from a part of His awakened sleep and goes back to it.

S again complains of frequent micturition. Once we had given him a gland-product containing pituitary, and it had a goos effect, though temporary. Shall we try again?

[Mother:] Is it worth while if it has only a temporary effect?

... For thy immutable silences abide
Like vast glaciers behind my body's door."

A vast glacier behind a door seems rather impossible. But frozen snow behind a door would convict the housekeeper of negligence.

The doctor in place of Valle asked me about vaccination. I replied that we had done it already last year. He said that there might be a few new-comers who might not have been vaccinated. I think we can say "no" about the inmates, and about workers, they can be done at their own place.

[The Mother marked the last sentence with a vertical line.]

This is right.

I do not think we have new workmen since last vaccination. If required, we have the letter written by Valle and signed by Gaffiero thanking for the help we gave for vaccination.

I hear that J is now shedding tears of joy at the sight of apples, oranges and prunes. Tears of sorrow, tears of joy, oh dear!

"fruity" tears of joy. They move me to poetry

"O apples, apples, oranges and prunes,
You are God's bliss incarnate in a fruit!
Meeting you after many desolate moons
I sob and sniff and make a joyous bruit."

Admit that you yourself could not have done better as a poetic and mantric comment on this touching situation.

Any chance for my book or poem [17.9.38]?

The poem not yet illuminated, can't find anything that would be on the same level as the two opening and one closing stanza. Book in same condition—virgin of an answer.

October 1938

"From the grapes of sleep", "God's vineyard" sound funnily delightful, Sir! You seem to be trying to be modernistic!

Well, I'm blowed! What is there modem about "vineyard"? Vineyards are as old as Adam or almost, at any rate they existed before the flood.

By what modern alchemy do you make—"In God's vineyard of ecstasies" 3 foot?

Why not? I have anapaestised the line, that is all. No alchemy needed modem or ancient. I don't see what is the difficulty.

With "all" you use the verb in singular—harbour Possible? We say "All are mad", not "All is mad".

What the deuce! You don't know that all can be used collectively in the singular, e.g. "All he does is mad." "All is beautiful here."?

I have been asked to inform the workers that Thursday (8 a.m.) has been fixed for vaccination. Shall I tell Chandulal to circulate it among the workers so that those who want to be vaccinated may go there?

[Mother:] Yes.

[About T convalescing from TB.:] It will be better to continue her usual butter, extra milk and tomatoes and fruits. She also feels very hungry.

[The Mother marked this paragraph with a vertical line.]

[Mother:] Yes, better continue.

As for work, she says she is ready to take up anything you give. She will wilcome it if given by you.

[Mother:] I have no intention of giving work other than the one she is doing now.

Guru, so after so much trouble and pain, yesterday's poem was maimed! What a capricious Goddess is the Muse! But how partial to you!

Not at all. I have to labour much more than you, except for sonnets which come easily and short lyrics which need only a single revision. But for the rest I have to rewrite 20 or 30 times. Moreover I write only at long intervals.

The glacier image is a theft from Mallarmé, and not a clever one, perhaps?

It is quite effective here. Thefts from other languages are habitual in poetry

"A tranced silver flame of thy delight,
Within my rapturous solitude I bear
The occult mysteries of the Infinite
Hidden in a bright seed of tranquil prayer."

A flame bearing mysteries in a seed is a mixed metaphor.

"Life breaks no more with multitudinous waves
Upon my luminous silence; its irised fire
Lights only the forlorn shadowy caves
On the edge of time with foams of moth-desire."

A fire lighting a cave with foam and a moth foaming! In English one must be careful to avoid mixture of metaphors whether implied or explicit.

Where are the sonnets or lyrics you have written? We have seen very few of them!

Unseen they count, but not in numbers.

And what did you mean by "for the rest" which you rewrite 20 or 30 times? Did you mean your "Savitri"?

Of course.

Do you think it will greet us one day?

Well, perhaps after ten years if I get time.

What's this romantic nightingale doing here?

The nightingale perhaps came in answer to the need of a rhyme. However it can stay perched there provided it ceases to be white. It has no connection with the preceding lines, so the semi-colon must go.

We have no Camomille you have prescribed for Lalita Shall we get it from the Pharmacy?

[Mother:] What they have there is generally old and badly kept. Perhaps we might try a light decoction of boldo instead. (She has pain 15 to 20 minutes after taking food.)

"The agelong faceted memory of life
Is strewn with silences of the Infinite..."

Lord! sir, what on earth do you mean? "agelong faceted" is "strewn"?

"I live like a rock of diamond trancehood..."

A rock doesn't live.

Seeing this incomplete piece of fire-work, you are sure to swear at me at every step!

Haven't sufficient energy or time to swear at every step,—on where blasphemy is needed.

I want now to play a different game with the Muse: just note down whatever comes; not the old tedious game of waiting, straining and praying for every line till it descends after half an hour! What's the result of the new process?

Very much the same as in the old.

Last night N had shivering with bad joint pains. Today (5 p.m.) fever 103° and a "hammering" headache. He wants your sanction for any internal medication.

[Mother:] Better if he takes medicine.

When I went to foment Lila's leg last night, I just enquired about Nirmala and found her very feverish with a bad headache. I washed her head with cold water and asked Lila to sponge the body with warm water today. My little interference, I hope, wasn't bad.

[Mother:] No, you did well to help.

This time I have kicked out "infinite, eternal, solitude, etc." from my poem. God be thanked!

Congratulations!

Lila's swelling of the leg is still there. Should I leave all treatment now and let it disappear by itself, or continue a few days more the present treatment?

[Mother:] You can go on for a few days more.

Guru, I fear you will find the poem²³¹ suffering from the first signs of flu! There is no harmony at all. It is all because of my "hammering headache".

Well, sir, your flu has made you fluid and fluent, and the hammering headache has hammered out a fine poem. Wa Allah!

It doesn't seem to know what it's talking about.

I don't see what's wrong with it. It seems to know what it is talking about; although you may not know it.

What the deuce, Sir! Are you aware of the raging epidemic [flu, dengue] havoc in the Asram? Too busy with the Supermind to bother about these trifles? How is it that the Asram has become so vulnerable to it this time—the first?

There has been a "progressive" increase in that respect during the last ten years and this seems to be its (present) culmination. In that respect more people are being "advanced sadhaks".

Better stop this epidemic now, Sir! I hear that Vedabrata is the latest victim!

Ramkrishna is promising to join the dance.

Guru, do you see the overhead reflected in this poem? I've hammered it!

I don't know but the overheadache is also reflected, which accounts for the number of alterations that have to be made.

What's this, Sir? My feverishness persists!

Why on earth is your body so attached to the headache and fever?

I don't suppose an illness has any salutary effect on sadhana, that it should linger, what?

Not in the least—needn't keep it on with that idea!

A cement barrel fell on Mohanlal's foot. It's swollen considerably, and there is a wound too. Purani says that fomentation will cure the swelling.

[Mother:] The wound will never close if it is fomented.

Miss Wilson²³² is to come for treatment tomorrow. Should we postpone it as Dr. Becharlal is not well and neither am I?

[Mother:] Yes, it is better to postpone.

Dr. Becharlal was proposing today that we should try to get another helping hand in the Dispensary, as the work has increased a lot...

[Mother:] Quite ready to give you a helping hand—but is it a Sadhak or a servant?

Mulshankar says the present oven is too small, as people are increasing for soup. Can a big one be ordered from the smithy?

[Mother:] Yes.

"A touch of thy hand, a brief glitter of thy eyes
Releases unknown springs from my body's earth..."

Perspiration?

"He held him with his glittering eye"? But this is not the Ancient Mariner. "Glitter of eye" suggests anger, greed, etc.

"Thy vigilant caress leads pace by pace
The lonely caravan of my God-desire..."

A caress can't lead a caravan.

Guru, how is this poem?

Well, the scansion and rhythm seem rather forced at places and some of the ideas are rather headachy e.g. a caress leading a caravan and the suggestion of profuse perspiration and the smile of snow-cool fire. However, being free from headache, I have made a fine thing out of it.

There doesn't seem to be any improvement in the medical atmosphere, Sir!

None. Even all the three Doctors gave the example of getting ferociously ill! The city population follow মহাজনো গতো যেন পন্থা²³³

By the way, I hope you received my prayer for poetry and your poetic chord was touched.

I did, but my Muse refused to work.

Dr. Becharlal says that a sadhak would be better for work in the Dispensary, as a servant won't be able to do the nursing work.

[Mother:] Do you have some name to suggest?

[Sri Aurobindo:] Arjava is insisting on having paraffin oil in stock in the Dispensary (it appears there is none) to be available in case of (his stomach's) emergency. Ask Rajangam to procure it.

Arjava has finished 1 lb. of paraffin in 15 days! ... I don't know any emergency requiring paraffin so badly. It is not emergency, but his continuous consumption that we have to see about...

[Mother:] All the same you can buy the paraffin—

We have no name to suggest for our helper, as it is very difficult to choose. I think whomever you send will be good.

[Mother:] Just now I see nobody whom I can send, but someone may turn up.

Guru, I almost wanted to stop writing as my recent poems turned out unsatisfactory either due to my head or due to the study of modem English verses.

You are too easily discouraged. Such drops in the Inspiration are inevitable when one constantly writes poetry.

But why should the study of verses have a wrong influence?

It depends on what you are studying. There are verses and verses.

Today's poem won't fare any better, I fear.

It is better.

Can a "closed door" seal anything?

No—never did.

You say I am easily discouraged. Oh Lord! in spite of my heroic pulling on, you say that?

Heroic in spite of easy and frequent discouragement.

However, please give me a few names of poets—especially modem poets, whom I should study.

In what sense modern?

By "modern poets" I meant those of the 20th century, i.e. writers who have made a name and are trying to do something new.

I have very little familiarity with the names of modem poets subsequent to A.E. & Yeats and De La Mare, all of whom you know.

There are about a hundred of them moderns, Spender + x y z p2 etc. Before that they were Hopkins and Fletcher and others and before that Meredith and Hardy and Francis Thompson. You can tackle any of them you can lay your hands on in the library. Watson and Brooke and other Edwardians & Georgians would not be good for you.

[After making the corrections in my poem:²³⁴]

Ahem! What do you say to that? It seems to me that between us we have produced something remarkable.

After being poised, how can anything travel, and with eagle-wings at that?

But that is what the eagles do. They beat their wings to give themselves an impulsion and then sail for some time with wide wings poised on the air.

I find that I have written about 186 poems from March to August, of which only 15 are "exceedingly fine".

15 poems exceedingly fine in 6 months! It is a colossal number!

But in any case, compared to last year's poems, there has been a very satisfactory progress, I think. What do you say?

Certainly.

15—a colossal number! Joking? I am tempted to say like Monodhar—"I beg to differ with you in this respect."

Not at all; quite serious. If you take the short lyrics and sonnets (not longer poems) of great poets like Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, how many are there of the first class written in a whole lifetime?

Thirty or forty perhaps at the outside. And you have written 15 in 6 months.

Ah, here am I again! You had three days' respite, no more, Sir! Now you will have to scratch your head to find the right words and expressions!

I don't need to scratch my head—I have only to look at it from above and the words bubble up of themselves—at once or after a time. When they don't, all the scratching in the world is of no avail.

I don't expect anything great here, for the head is dry, mind is weary and the soul languorous, so?

Well, it isn't either dry or weary or languorous.

After a long time my old self is trying to assert itself: lethargy, depression, ennui, lack of interest in everything, aftermath of fever!

Obviously—a stage of it like the rash—a sort of psychological dengue-fall.

When one will take up my file of poems and turn over the pages, he will be sick of these poor repetitions. And yet I don't know how to avoid them. I admit that in daily writing this is bound to happen, still it annoys me!

Well, naturally, if the book had to be published, a selection would have to be made. But as you are writing in order to open yourself more to the source of full inspiration, it doesn't matter so much.

Guru, you say that I have "a much greater mastery of expression" now; that's something. I am now trying to read some English poems of poets suggested by you.

Which of them?

I have doubts here about the lines 4, 7, 12 and the last.

["Whence leaps the splendour of the Infinite",
"My human heart begins to understand",
"The secret Truth hidden in thy heart's sphere",
"Upon the sombre shore of memories".]

They seem to be simple!

My dear sir, these lines are simply exquisite (simply in both senses)—all four indeed, precisely because they are so simple that the emotion and experience go straight through without a veil.

You asked me to read Hardy, Spender, Meredith, Hopkins, besides De la Mare. A.E. and Yeats ... But how will Meredith and others help? Their poetry has nothing in common with ours, except the turn of expression, if that's what you mean. Please tell me whom I should take up first and how I should proceed.

[No reply.]

Guru, you will find in Satya's letter a doubt that you don't read their letters!

The doubt is whether the letters reach me—they reach me all right; do they imagine that Nolini intercepts letters? What the devil does this N mean by saying that Mother has asked her to wait there.

Mother is not in correspondence with her and never asked her to do anything.

This rainy weather makes it difficult for me to go to the hospital. Shall I hire a rickshaw when necessary?

[The Mother underlined the last sentence.]

Yes.

"Stubborn clay"—influence of Meredith?

Meredith? I don't know. By the way, I forgot to answer your comments on your reading the other day [27.10.38]. I thought you wanted to read the modern poets in order to help your style, so I suggested the names. Naturally their substance has little kinship with the things we try to write. They say Thompson's has, but I don't know his poetry very well.

By the way, do you know why Arjava has stopped writing?

He wrote a beautiful poem the other day—but his inspiration has become fitful and far between.

Today I faithfully surrendered myself to inspiration, hence I can't make any head or tail. I hope it has a head and a tail. But I fear, you will chop them off and replace them by something new. If by fluke you find the poem O.K., then please tell me what the 2nd and 3rd stanzas mean.²³⁵

Well, the result is very creditable and it has an obvious head even if there is no tail to make. It is only the irruption of the nightingale to which I object, as that is cheap and obvious. The first two stanzas are very fine; the second develops an admirable image. I don't see what there is to explain in it. A sleep full of dreams, a fantasia of half-forgotten memories as it were, can be very well called "half-forgetful sleep", and such a sleep filled with the importunities of dream-delight (a beautiful phrase) can very well seem like the vastness etc. What is there so difficult to catch in that? The 3rd stanza is also very fine with its idea of the dreams coming up from a mysterious or miraculous depth of nothingness into the silence of the sleep-trance, revealing all that was hidden darkly behind a veil—it is an admirably profoUnd description of the happenings of deep sleep-samadhi. It seems to me perfectly plain, true and simple. But the nightingale won't do; it spoils the depth of the utterance.

I didn't want to read the modern poets only to help my style, but also to get acquainted with their various ways of expression. For instance Meredith says, "... to drill the stubborn earth to shape". I would have hesitated a thousand times to use "stubborn" if I hadn't seen its 'use.

Why? it is an admirably apt epithet in that place.

But while I profit in this way, I get an unconscious influence in other ways. Should I then drop reading these poets?

No, you should be able to read and profit by the beautiful language without losing your own inspiration.

Did I send an English poem of Dilip's along with the Bengali ones yesterday?

November 1938

No, you didn't send me Dilipda's English poem

What the deuce has happened to it then? These dematerialisation are very annoying.

Tripura has a nutlike swelling just on the wrist. Looks like bursitis. I wonder if 7 or 8 hrs. of embroidery daily should not be somewhat curtailed.

[The Mother underlined "7 or 8 hrs."]

It seems to me also that it is too much and I have said so already several times.

[I sent Sri Aurobindo the typescript of his comment of 31.10.38, leaving a blank for a word I could not read.] You have forgotten a word in the other poem. You will see a blank remains. Or you can't make out your own writing? That's fine, Sir!

The word looks like "fantasia" but I am not at all sure—it might be anything else. It is altogether irrational to expect me to read my own writing—I write for others to read, not for myself—it is their business to puzzle out the words. I try to read when I am asked, but I have to make a strong use of second sight with a mélange of intuition, reasoned conjectural speculation and random guessing.

Lila's ankle is still swollen. Some pain on deep pressure and on walking. No fracture is likely. Would it be advisable to see it under screen?

[The Mother marked the last sentence with a vertical line.]

Yes.

Guru, this poem²³⁶ is so simple (and bare at places?) that I fear it approaches flatness.

Well, sir—well, sir—well, sir! I force myself not to break out into strong and abusive language; but really, really, you must mend your defective sense of poetic values. This is another triumph. You must have had, besides the foiled romantic, a metaphysical poet of the 17th century latent in you who is breaking out now from time to time. Donne himself after having got relieved in the other world of his ruggedness, mannerisms and ingenious intellectualities, might have written this poem.

In English does 'journey to God" mean anything?

It means everything.

I am afraid it will take me some time to mend my defective sense of poetic values. I am too much imbued with 17th century influence! Perhaps I would have appreciated this poem more, if it had been written by another person.

What influence? Nobody spoke of any influence.

The merits and defects of poetry remain the same whether written by oneself or another.

I had written the first line of this poem before ["With outstretched arms of prayer I cling to thee], but it didn't stir you so much perhaps because, though beautiful, the necklace of which it was one jewel, wasn't harmoniously beautiful?

Naturally—poetry is not a matter of separate lines—a poem is beautiful as a whole—when it is perfect each line has its own beauty but also the beauty of the whole.

But why metaphysical? Romantic, I understand. Where do you find metaphysics? I hate metaphysics! and who are these 17th century poets?

"Metaphysical poets of the 17th century school" is a standing description of the group or line of poets, Donne, Vaughan, Traherne, Herbert, Quarles, Crashaw and a number of others who wrote poetry of a religious and spiritual character—metaphysical here means that (truth beyond the physical) and has nothing to do with the "metaphysics" of Kant or Hegel or Bradley.

Please throw a glance over the names of the metaphysical poets—I couldn't make out one name which I have underlined.

You seem to have got the names all right.

Have you really put 4 lines against
"Or a delicate tune out of the heart of a lyre
Borne by the magic air of eternity"?
I had missed them first, then I saw and stared and gulped—Really four?

The fourth line is a duplicate—it is really three.

Chandradeep wants an English poem of mine for "Kalpataru" magazine. Should I give it?

If you like, though it does not, I think, usually drop into poetry.

Last night I got stuck at every stanza and had to send you and Mother frequent S.O.S.'s to rescue me. Do you really receive these signals, or do your impersonal Forces intercept them and do the necessary?

As we receive some hundreds of such signals daily, we are obliged to be impersonal about it, otherwise we would have no time for anything else.

Guru, ah, now I see! That's why my poems are not always uniformly super-successful or even successful, some being crippled, some mentally defective, some consumptive and so on. Only when your personal Force intervenes, they turn out miracles. I thought so, Sir, I thought so!

Man! Your explanation is too neat to be quite the thing.

S has broken 2 eye-cups in 9 months! She wants another now.

[Mother:] You can give her one more.

"Beyond the flickering lamps of thought our mind
Soars like an eagle from height to greater height..."

An eagle flying beyond lamps! No, sir!

Guru, ah, what a difficulty I had in writing this poem!²³⁷ And yet it is not satisfactory!

I am afraid not. As it stands it is a struggling failure. Now just look at my alterations and see how finely easy it was all the time! Wa Allah! It seems to me at the moment one of the finest poems we have yet written. Praise be!

Guru, you seem to be in a mood of swallowing all the Bengali poems—Dilip's and NK's. Mine too the same fate? Please don't swallow it, je vous prie.

Actually I had Dilip ready last night, but was too lazy to fish out your thing and put him inside you. Here he is now.

Have you any honey or shall we get it from the bazaar?

[Mother:] I have some. Shall send after a day or two.

This time, Sir, the poem²³⁸ looks to me damn fine. I know you will say, "Well, well!"—but we have very rarely agreed on any point! But does it really leave your plexus cold?

Very fine, yes, and perfect in expression; but I don't know about damn fine, for that is a tremendous superlative. Such a solemn phrase should only be used when you write something equalling Shakespeare at his best.

Yes, Sir, your alterations appear extremely easy, but the fact that they didn't come to me even after struggling breaths, proves them otherwise. Of course if I had been the Lord of all Inspiration, I would have told you the same thing. Anyway I am glad that "we" have achieved something. But do you still stick to your yesterday's remark?

Well, my enthusiasm has abated a little except for the first 2 stanzas and line 3 of the third. The rest is not quite equal to the first two stanzas not having quite the same stamp of original authenticity. There is more in it of fine writing, which makes it less perfect. All the same it is very successful. Still some changes suggest themselves to me as necessary. Like that my first glow of appreciation begins to return, as the last 2 lines are so lifted up more naturally on the wave of what comes before. The "distances of air" and the "tune" brought in a wrong note and the "Are" of the 12th line is weak and does not convey the full significance.

Trtpura's finger is getting worse. We can't stop the pus-formation. Shall we take her to the hospital?

[Mother:] I have no confidence in the people who are now in charge of the hospital. It would be better to consult Duraiswami's friend Srinivas Rao who is at Cuddalore.

[Mother:] By mistake yesterday I wrote Bangalore²³⁹ when I meant Cuddalore. Srinivas Rao comes often here, that is why I mentioned his name.

Guru, "Shakespeare at his best"? The very name of Shakespeare makes my breath shake with fear, and to talk of equalling him at his best, oh, people will call me mad, Sir. If someone else had told me that, I would have called him mad! But I don't know what to say to you! You stagger me so much!

Well, but look at logic. G.B.S. declares himself the equal, if not superior, of Shakespeare. You write better poetry than Shaw ever did (which is easy because he never wrote any). So you are the equal (if not the superior) of Shakespeare.

But, if I remember aright, some of my lines you have called "damn fine"! So?

Did I indeed? Then, logically, it must have been equal to the best of Shakespeare, otherwise it couldn't have been so damned. This also is logic.

Now about this poem, I fear to ask you about the merit, as it is so simple, and written so easily.

Simplicity is not the test. There can be a supreme beauty of simplicity and there can be the opposite.

Honey? [8.11.38]

[Mother:] Ask from Pavitra—He must have forgotten—I have told him the very same day to send a bottle to you.

Guru, not at all satisfied! nothing flashing!

Well, well, you are difficult to satisfy—It may not flash but it gleams all right.

Besides, you broke my power of judgment on yesterday's poem which I thought was a triumph!

Well, perhaps I shall consider it a triumph if I read it again after six months. I won't insist on Horace's rule that in order to judge poetry rightly that has been newly written, you must keep it in your desk unseen for ten years and then read it again and see what you then think of it!

I give you the lines which you have called "damn fine" Sir!

"While the whole universe seems to be a cry
To the apocalypt-vision of thy Name."

Mm, yes, I can't deny the fineness—but perhaps I ought not to have damned it without proper regard to Shakespeare.

I know your enthusiasm will abate now, and perhaps you will only say, "Yes, they are very satisfying!"

Why do you object to a poem being called satisfying? It is high praise.

Or you will say that yesterday's "damn fine" can't be equal to today's, what? I find your remarks exceedingly mysterious, which justifies your being a "Mystery-Man"!

Which remarks? On Shakespeare? They were logical, not mystic.

What about the poem I requested you to write? No head or tail?

Which poem?

"Which poem?" indeed! My poem I requested you to rewrite, Sir!

Oh that! It is still in cold storage. No flame as yet for cooking it.

"I gain the summit of thy loneliness
In whose vast spaces like an eagle I dwell
And drink from thy Spirit-cup a measureless
Delight, O Mystery inscrutable!"

—I hope you won't say, "Drink like an eagle?"

I am afraid I have to—an eagle drinking in vast spaces from a cup is too extraordinary a phenomenon.

By the way, I am surprised to see that in spite of 3 marginal lines over the whole poem, you call it only "very fine". Not a mysterious remark?

How is it mysterious? What do you expect three lines to come to then? Damn fine? That would be Shakespeare.

You seem to have told Doraiswamy that nobody has told you anything about Tripura. How is that? In yesterday's report there was her condition stated!

[Mother:] I never said such a thing to Duraiswami. I simply asked him how Tripura was to-day.

Venkatram and Nagin continue the soup. Is it necessary?

[Mother:] They might be asked if they still want it.

Guru, three poems in one day! What do you think of it?

Stupendous!

I am thinking of giving a little pāyas to a few friends on the occasion of my birthday [17th November]. It will be done on Thursday and not Saturday at Anilkumar's place. But if you don't approve of the idea, I will gladly give it up.

[Mother:] It is all right.

Guru, this is the 3rd poem I spoke of I hope you will find it satisfying.

Quite.

But I fear "Beauty" is coming too much in my poems.

Perhaps it had better be suspended for a time.

Do you find something new in most of my recent poems?

Yes.

Or are they repetitions? The expressions and words are yet the same perhaps.

Well, many words and ideas appear frequently, but it does not give the impression of mere repetition.

If we prepare the Ayurvedic drug Sitopaladi here, one pound will come to Rs. 2/8; whereas the patent rate is Rs. 1/8. So shall we buy?

[Mother:] Yes.

I had a talk with Ravindra about preparing Ayurvedic drugs here. He asked me what were the drugs we required. I replied that we didn't require any particular ones, but we now and then tried preparing some, following the directions on the labels. Moreover we find that whatever Ayurvedic drugs we indent, are contributed by somebody from Alembic. It is only when our stock gets exhausted in the middle of the year, that we have to buy.

He says it is not worth while to prepare any drug less than 10 pounds at a time, which is a huge quantity and runs a risk of getting spoiled. So, I think, under the circumstances we have to give up the project.

[Mother:] Yes.

Guru, I wrote this poem today. It gave me such a damn thrill that I thought I must share it with you tonight. Don't you think the thrill is justified?

The thrill but not the damn.

It seems tomorrow's affair is going to be a regular feast. But this is the last one.

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

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

[A note from the Mother:]

18-11-38.

Nirod

Have no fear, it is not because of your feast that the pranam was stopped and I shall give you your interview tomorrow.

with love and blessings.

Guru, I am afraid nothing great is here; all old stuff and expressions rather poor.

I have changed the order of the last stanza's lines, making the first, part of the passion affair and not of the tranquillities. Also I have made slight changes everywhere. I rather fancy the resulting "stuff"—not poor, I think. I am inclined to give it three cheers, I mean three lines.

Dilipda asks me to inform you that K is a little sad to hear that he has to stay out. He is coming here for good.

Is he? Has he got permission for that? I thought it was only for darshan.

Is it not possible to give him a room? If not, would it be advisable to share mine with him till Mother can give him a room?

Mother has no separate room for him, but if Hiren Bandhu wants to share his room with K, that can be done. You have not to share your room with K.

"Creation born from his motionless delight ..."
Motionless delight? Have you experienced it, Sir?

Of course. Why on earth shouldn't delight be motionless? What kind of delight should the immutable Brahman have, for instance, if not an immobile delight?

[Dilip's telegram:] "Nirod Asram pondicherry arriving tomorrow evening train Heldil".

Guru, this is from Dilipda—Heidi! is not he, of course. But who is it then? Can your Supramental Intuition solve it? But mine has: it is H of Hashi, e of Esha, I of Lila,—Di of course, you know. What do you think, Sir, of my Intuition? He perhaps thought he would beat us!

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

Sanjiban has pain in the throat: tonsillitis and pharyngitis. I don't know if I should give him any gargle, as I understand you like to leave things more to Nature.

[Mother:] In some cases gargles can be quite useful.

So Dilipda is coming tomorrow morning... I shall be obliged to minimise my contact with him as X will be there most of the time. Dilipda doesn't know perhaps that we have no connection at all; but of course he will know from others.

Well, if he finds out from others, he ought to understand and if he doesn't you can explain to him the situation.

Guru, I couldn't give much time today, as I was all the time thinking of finishing the poem, to catch your train! I hope it is not altogether a bad business, what? Most of it looks like repetition.²⁴⁰

It may be repetition but is an exceedingly fine repetition. I was going to say "damned" but Shakespeare only withdrew the expletive. Lines 4-6, also to a less degree lines 11-12 have an overhead accent in their substance and turn of expression. If you go on like that, some day you may find yourself writing overhead poetry without knowing it.

About yesterday's poem,²⁴¹ I dreamt that it was exceedingly fine—only a dream!

But who said it wasn't?

I am sorry I don't understand where you get "lower and supreme consciousness" in yesterday's poem, nor how you make "magic bars separate" them...

I don't get these things anywhere "in" the poem—naturally, because the poem is not a treatise on metaphysics or spiritual philosophy, but only a series of mystic images, but I get it "from" the poem. You asked what was the meaning and I gave you what I gathered from it or, if you like, what it would have meant if I had written it. But anyone can put another intellectual version to it, if he likes.

Bars usually divide something and as they can't very well be dividing the Spirit or supreme Being itself, it must be dividing the supreme from the lower, especially as you have shadow-spaces of sky immediately afterwards filling with transparent peace which can only come from the removal of the "lid" well-known to shut mind from what is beyond mind. Especially as there is an infinity of "thought", the sky must be the sky of mind and mind is part of the lower (non-supreme) consciousness. If that is not the meaning, I am damned if I know what the meaning can be—at any rate, if there is any other, it surpasses my capacity and range of spiritual or occult knowledge. As for the superconscient, the Supreme is the superconscient, so that there can be no doubt of that—the tranquil spirit's deep and the beatitude of sleep are not part of the ordinary consciousness but can only come in the superconscient or by the meeting of the superconscient and subconscient. You speak of Nature being a song of eternity which it can't be (its roots being in the subconscient) unless there is the meeting of the superconscient and subconscient—the latter being a part of the fathomless deep of the spirit. That meeting is effected through the subtle or inner planes and the inarticulate prayer can only be the aspiration that rises from inconscient and half-conscious Nature calling for the union. That's all.

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Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

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Introduction

Mother's Comments on the Correspondence

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