Spiritual Bouquets To A Friend
Collected Letters
Rishabhchand
1st. Edition
December, 1999
PREFACE
On the occasion of the birth centenary year of its founder Rishabhchand, Indian Silk House pays its homage and expresses its gratitude to Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, the guiding Forces of Rishabhchand. In 1931, he settled permanently in the Ashram at Pondicherry. His younger brothers, Bimalchand and Sumatichand assumed charge of the business which flourished and prospered by the Grace.
Presently under the able guidance of Sri Bharat Kumar, son of Late Rishabhchand, Indian Silk House will be celebrating its Platinum Jubilee in the year 2001. Books containing excerpts from the letters written by Rishabhchand to his relatives and friends, in English, Bengali and Hindi, will be published, which will give a glimpse of the depth of his inner soul and literary greatness.
In this book, excerpts from Rishabhchand's letters to his friend and co-sadhak in U. S. A. Mr. Rutledge B. Tompkins are published. We are grateful to Mr. Tompkins for his kindness.
INDIAN SILK HOUSE
Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on August 15, 1872. At the age of seven, he was taken with his two elder brothers to England for education, and he lived there for fourteen years. In 1890 he passed the open competition for the Indian Civil Service, but as he had no intention of accepting service under the Government, he failed to appear at the riding examination and was disqualified. At this time the Gaekwar of Baroda was in London. Aurobindo saw him, obtained an appointment in the Baroda Service and left England in January, 1893.
Sri Aurobindo passed thirteen years, from 1893 to 1906 in the Baroda Service,first in the Revenue Department and in Secretariat work for the Maharaja, afterwards as Professor of English and, finally Vice-principal in the Baroda College. In England he received, according to his father's express instructions an entirely occidental, education without any contact with the culture of India and the East. At Baroda he made up the deficiency, learned Sanskrit and several modern Indian languages, assimilated the spirit of Indian civilisation and its forms past and present. The outbreak of the agitation against the partition of Bengal in 1905 gave him the opportunity to give up the Baroda Service and join openly the political movement He left Baroda in 1906 and went to Calcutta as Principal of the newly-founded Bengal National College.
Sri Aurobindo persuaded the new-born nationalist party in Bengal to put forward Swaraj (Independence) as its goal as against the far-off moderate hope of colonial self-government to be realised at a distant date of a century or two by a slow progress of reform. He persuaded the party to take up and finance as its recognised organ the newly-founded daily paper, Bande Mataram, whose policy from the beginning of 1907 till its abrupt winding up in
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1908 when Aurobindo was in prison was wholly directed by him. The Bande Mataram circulated almost immediately all over India and during its brief but momentous existence it changed the political thought of India. But the struggle initiated on these lines, though vehement and eventful and full of importance for the future did not last long at that time; for the country was still unripe for so bold a' programme.
In May, 1908, he. was arrested in the Alipur Conspiracy Case as implicated in the doings of the revolutionary group led by his brother Barindra; but no evidence of any value could be established against him and he was.acquitted: After detention of one year as under-trial prisoner in the Alipur Jail, he came out in May, 1909, to find the party organisation broken, its leaders scattered by imprisonment, deportation or self-imposed exile and the party itself still existent but dump and dispirited and incapable of any strenuous action. For almost a year he strove single-handed as the sole remaining leader of the Nationalists in India to revive the movement. He published at this time to aid his effort a weekly English paper, the Karmayogin, and a Bengali weekly, the Dharma. But at last he was compelled to recognise that the nation was not yet sufficiently trained to carry out his policy and programme. Moreover, as his twelve month's detention in the Alipur Jail was spent entirely in the practice of Yoga, his inner spiritual life was pressing upon him for an exclusive concentration. So in April, 1910, he sailed for Pondicherry in French India. Sri Aurobindo had left Bengal with some intention of returning to the political field under more favourable circumstances ; but very soon the magnitude of the spiritual work he took up appeared to him and he saw that it would need the exclusive concentration of all his energies. Eventually he cut off connection with politics, refused repeatedly to accept the Presidentship of the National Congress and went into a complete retirement.
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Sri Aurobindo began his practice of Yoga in 1905. At first gathering into it the essential elements of spiritual experience that are gained by the paths of divine communion and spiritual realisation till now in India, he passed on in search of a more complete experience uniting and harmonising the two ends of existence, Spirit and Matter. Most ways of Yoga are paths to the Beyond leading to the Spirit and, in the end, away from life; Sri Aurobihdo's rises to the Spirit to re-descend with its gains bringing the light and power and bliss of the Spirit into life to transform it.
Man's present existence in the material world is in this view or vision of things a life in the Ignorance with the Inconscient at its base, but even in its darkness and nescience there are involved the presence and possibilities of the Divine. The created world is not a mistake or a vanity and illusion to be cast aside by the soul returning to heaven or Nirvana, but the scene of a spiritual evolution by which out of this material Incbnscience is to be manifested progressively the Divine Consciousness in things. Mind is the highest term yet reached in the evolution, but it is not the highest of which it is capable. There is above, it a Supermind or eternal truth consciousness which is in its nature the self-aware and self-determining light and power of a Divine Knowledge. Mind is in ignorance seeking after Truth, but this is a self-existent Knowledge harmoniously manifesting the play of its forms and forces. It is only by the descent of Supermind that the perfection dreamed of by all that is highest in humanity can come. It is possible by opening to a greater Divine Consciousness to rise to this power of light and bliss, discover one's true Self, remain in constant union with the Divine and bring down the supramental Force for the transformation of mind and life and body. To realise this possibility has been the dynamic aim of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga.
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Extracts from Sri Aurobindo's Message
You must keep the temple clean if you wish to instal there the living Presence.
***
The Divine has to put on humanity in order that the human being may rise to the Divine.
** *
It is the darkest nights that prepare the greatest dawns.
A few shall see what none yet understands God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep For Man shall not know the coming till its hour And belief shall be not till the work is done.
Adore and what you adore attempt to be.
For through the shocks of difficulty and death Man shall attain his godhead.
All sincere aspirations has its effect; if you are sincere you will grow into the divine life.
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The Mother was born in a wealthy family in Paris as Mira Alfasa on 21 February, 1878. Introspective by nature, she was in many ways an extraordinary child. She used to feel the descent of a great brilliant light while sitting silently in a chair at the age of four. At about the age of twelve, she became conscious of a great mission she had come to fulfil upon earth. "Between eleven and thirteen", she says, "a series of psychic and spiritual experiences revealed to me, not only the existence of God, but man's possibility of meeting with Him or revealing Him integrally in consciousness and action, of manifesting Him upon earth in a life divine. This along with a practical discipline for its fulfilment was given to me, during my body's sleep, by several teachers some of whom I met afterwards on the physical plane. Later on....the spiritual and psychic relation with one of these beings became more and more clear and pregnant...." The Mother called Him Krishna and made even a sketch of Him.
In 1914, her spiritual quest brought her to Pondicherry where she met Sri Aurobindo. She at once recognised him as the Krishna of her vision and felt that it was with him she was destined to live and work out her life's mission. Before this, she had already advanced far on the path of Yoga and realised the Divine at the age of twenty two. She had also practised the Gita's Karmayoga.
She came to India for good in 1920 and began to collaborate with Sri Aurobindo in his integral Yoga. When he went into seclusion after his great Siddhi in 1926, he gave the charge of the inmates in the Mother's hands. Thus the Ashram was founded and the Mother was accepted as the Divine Mother.
Since then, the Ashram began to expand rapidly and by 1950, it had become a large spiritual institution giving
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shelter to men and women and children of all ages and having its various establishments where to mould them into a new spiritual consciousness according to Sri Aurobindo's vision. When, after bringing down the Supramental Consciousness, he left his body in 1950, the Mother "continued to live in order to do his work which is : By serving Truth and enlightening mankind to hasten the rule of Divine's Love upon the earth."
She declared, "There is a Supreme Divine Consciousness. We want to manifest this Consciousness in the physical life."
In furtherance of the realisation of Sri Aurobindo's ideal of human unity, the Mother inaugurated 'Auroville' on 28 February, 1968, "which is meant to be an International City, a living embodiment of that unity built upon the Divine Consciousness. It will be the effective way of preventing World War."
In 1973 she left her body, after she had built up slowly, step by step, but firmly, the Ashram, her grand creation. She had said that even if she was not there, "these children of mine will be there to carry out my work."
Her work is going under her guiding Hand, for she is indeed present.
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Extracts from the Mother's Message
A smile acts upon difficulties as the sun upon the clouds—it disperses them.
To smile at an enemy is to disarm him.
The whole of our life should be a prayer offered to the Divine.
All sincere prayers are granted, every call is answered.
To work for the Divine is to pray with the body.
But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life.
You have no right to judge a man unless you are capable of doing what he does better than himself.
You are richer with the wealth you give than with the wealth you keep in your possession.
The greater the difficulties, the greater also our possibilities.
To know how to wait is to Time on your side.
To conquer a desire brings more joy than to satisfy it.
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A mantra of Sri Aurobindo translated by the Mother into English.
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Rishabhchand (1900-1970)
The essence of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga is the integral surrender at the feet of the Mother. Those who met and knew Rishabhchand testify that he was the living symbol of surrender at the feet of the Mother. He achieved complete detachment from all material objects. For Rishabhchand, Divine was everything.
Rishabhchand was bom at Jiaganj in West Bengal on the 3rd of December, 1900. He was the eldest son of Puranchand (1882—1967), an eminent scholar and writer mainly on Jain religion and philosophy in Bengali. After a brilliant academic career in Krishnanath College, Berhampur, and Presidency College, Calcutta, Rishabhchand plunged into the non-cooperation movement. Time was ripe for shaping a greater destiny for him by the Force. He was sent for a change to a hill station where in the solitude and magnificence of Nature's majesty, one day while reading a book on Sri Aurobindo, his mind suddenly opened to an experience which gave a decisive spiritual turn to his attitude. In this state of consciousness came the idea of starting a business of Swadeshi Silk. In 1926 he founded the renowned Indian Silk House in Calcutta to deal exclusively in the traditional Indian handwoven silks, like the Garad, Tassar, Matka, Murshidabad and Banaras silks. Friends and those who worked with Rishabhchand testify that the visionary businessman had conquered all attachment to money even when in business. He struggled hard and remained firm in his adherence to the principle of honesty and integrity. He regarded this principle as an expressive field in his growth in the Truth of the Spirit.
But nothing could bind Rishabhchand down as his soul sought communion with Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry. In 1931, he settled in the Ashram at
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Pondicherry and never returned to worldly life. During the second half of his Ashram life one of his missions was to write and express his experience in Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga and his appreciation of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. He has to his credit a number of books like, In the Mother's Light, The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo Part I & II, The Divine Collaborators etc. His book : Sri Aurobindo—His Life Unique was written as one inspired by the Mother and it was first serialised in the Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. Rishabhchand was the guide and inspiration on the Path of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga for many younger aspirants.
He left his body on 25th April 1970. In the words of The Mother—The Lord appeared Himself to take the soul of Rishabhchand. 'His body left, and he saw Him.'
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Excerpts from the letters written by Rishabhchand to his friend and Co-Sadhak Mr. Rutledge B. Tompkins in U. S. A.
between the period 13.5.1964 to 19.9.1968.
It appears to me from your letter that some adverse mental suggestions have disturbed you. I hope by now you have got over the disturbance and recovered your equanimity. I may remind you of Sri Aurobindo's words in The Bases of Yoga; "To be calm, steady, fixed in the spirit, dhira sthira, this quietude of the mind, this separation of the inner Purusha from the outer Prakriti is very helpful, almost indispensable. So long as the being is subject to the whirl of thoughts or the turmoil of the vital movements one cannot be thus calm and fixed in the spirit. To detach yourself, to stand back from them, to feel them separate from oneself is indispensable."
You remember that when the Mother saw you once this time. She told you that "you have made some progress" by your stay. I too had felt the same thing and told you about it. But, as you know, whenever a definite progress is made in sadhana, there is invariably a sudden raid of adverse forces to oppose or obstruct it. In your case, it was your physical mind that got loose and began to judge and criticise the work done in the Ashram. I am sure you have seen enough of our Ashram life to realise that it is not the human mind, even at its best, that conducts the Ashram, but the Supermind to whose way of action the human mind has no clue.. It baffles the human mind. It allows things which the human mind passionately
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denounces. It builds up harmony out of a chaos, which is bewildering to the human mind. You know, it is the Mother's supramental Will and not any human will, that is directing and shaping from behind a veil the heterogeneous elements and forces Which compose our Ashram life. The Mother sees the glory of the end where we see only the welter of the intricate process of the present moment.
If I can give you a friendly, a brotherly advice, I should insist upon your putting a brake at once upon your physical mind, and revert to the joy and peace, the love and light of the psychic. Look upon your mind and treat its thoughts and ideas and logic and suggestions as something belonging to the universal nature. You are not the mind. Its thoughts and ideas must not be suffered to disturb or distract you. Stand back from them, recover your identity with your soul, and you will regain your true relation with the Mother, a relation of irrevocable selfoffering and selfless, passionate love. The Mother's love for you doesn't depend on what you do or say-it is causeless, eternal and infinite. Your psychic is Her true child in you. Live in that divine Love. Try to see Her radiant smile even in Her frowns and accept Her blows, if and when they come, as Her blessings. How can She transform our recalcitrant parts without dealing a few compassionate blows? Get beyond the mind, I repeat and I entreat you, and live in your psychic. You will then find yourself in the endless bliss of the Mother's liberating love!
Do write to the Mother as soon as possible—in detail and in absolute frankness and sincerity. She is yours, eternally yours, and you are Hers. Nothing in the world can annul that relation of pure love. Your destiny is the realisation of the integral Divine. The call upon you is to tread the path of the Integral Yoga, and no other ideal can ever satisfy your soul.
I am sure, you have read your own distracted thoughts
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and feelings into the words the Mother gave you at your parting. Get back into your psychic and you will feel again as Her loving child, eternally loved.
13.05.64
* * *
I am enclosing a letter from the Mother which, I am sure, will dispel the clouds that have gathered round you and bring out your psychic in all its native radiance. As your intimate friend who has nothing but your spiritual progress at heart, I insist upon your snubbing your mind into silence and living in the light and love of the psychic. Your mind is not your real self, it is but a temporary perishable construction of Nature, and its ideas and thoughts have no permanent value. They come from the universal Nature and lodge in us for a time. Sri Aurobindo wants us to be firm and uncompromising in our "rejection of the mind's ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind." (The Mother). There, again, in the same book he says, "But be on your guard and do not try to understand and judge the Divine Mother by your little earthly mind that loves to subject even the things that are beyond it to its own norms and standards, its narrows reasonings and erring impressions, its bottomless aggressive ignorance and its petty self-confident knowledge. The human mind shut in the prison of its half-lit obscurity cannot follow the many-sided freedom of the steps of the Divine Shakti.......Open rather your soul to her and be content to feel her with the psychic nature and see her with the psychic vision that alone can make a straight response to the Truth."
"Then the Mother herself will enlighten by their psychic elements your mind and heart and life and physical consciousness and reveal to them too her ways and her nature.....If you follow your mind, it will not recognise the
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Mother even when she is manifest before. Follow your soul and not your mind, your soul that answers to the Truth, not your mind that leaps at appearances........."
My dear friend, take these golden words to heart, and let the clouds lift, and the sun of your soul shine out in all its glory!
You belong to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and the yoga you have to follow is the Integral Yoga, and no other.
18.05.64
I am delighted to find that you have come out of the whirlpool of the mind and recovered your contact with your psychic. It must be quite easy now to feel your eternal relation of love and devotion with the Mother, who is the Life of your life, and the Soul of your soul.
I think you have already written to the Mother. If you haven't, I would press you to write the very day you receive this letter. Don't try to compose your thoughts before writing to Her. Write just what comes spontaneously to your pen, without the mind interfering in the process. Let Her have a true picture of the present state of your being. She knows it already, and has guided you out of the gloom, but your unfettered expression of what is passing within you will be an act of offering. And through this offering and openness Her Grace will be able to work all the more freely and powerfully to lead you. The Mother loves to hear the child's sincere prattle. She doesn't like him to talk to Her like a book. My dear friend, do write to Her at once. Open your whole being to Her—simply, sincerely, aspiringly, with all the intensity of love and devotion you can command, and you will stand basking in the Light of Her liberating Love!
I hope you will not grudge allowing me to draw your attention to what I consider a defect in the attitude of your physical mind towards the Mother. It seems to keep
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itself at a distance, deluding itself with the idea that the Mother knows everything, and that it is not necessary for it to refer to Her or seek Her permission or guidance in the ordinary affairs of life. It must give up this delusion. The question is not the Mother's knowing everything, but of its offering of each of its movements to Her—its ideas and thoughts, its desires and yearnings and its reactions to the impacts of outer life. This will be a detailed and dynamic surrender on the part of the physical mind and the vital-physical part. For instance, I am told that you had not asked the Mother to grant you an interview on the eve of your departure from here. Your physical mind drew back from this self-offering, thinking that the Mother would Herself grant it without its asking. Don't mind, please, if I say that it was the ego in the physical mind that misled you. Be like a child—ask Her for everything you need, refer to Her everything that troubles or disturbs you, pray to Her to give you Her direct guidance in the making of all your decisions. Your whole being and your whole life belong to Her ; watch vigilantly that they follow Her lead and fulfil Her Will. The ego's will and desires, however faultless or laudable they may appear, have to be totally surrendered. The ego must die.
2.06.64
I am sorry I was not quite as explicit as I 'should have been in my reference to detailed and dynamic surrender You have written: "I have been and am continuing in an increasing degree to offer each of the movements to Her in an inner sense." I know this full well. But, my friend, this is a surrender of the physical being through the mind; and I think this not enough in our Yoga. The surrender must be, not only in an inner sense, but direct by the physical being through an- outer action. This will be an outer action, or even the initiation of an outer action, in
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the form of a worship or prayer by the body itself. Let me make it clearer by an example. Supposing you are going to make a final decision in regard to the life you are going to settle down to. You can make an offering of this decision in an inner sense, but the Mother will have no hand in an outer sense—(She will, of course, accept and appreciate the inner offering)—in the making or shaping of your decision. The decision will be only yours, though taken in an inner sense of surrender. But, if you write to Her and ask Her to give you either a definite, verbal guidance in the shaping of your future or an inner inspiration, it will be an offering in an outer sense on your part. The Mother may reply by a letter or otherwise, just as She finds most necessary at that time and stage of your life. Or, She may not reply at all. That is Her concern, and should be left to Her. But the fact of your prayer to Her for a guidance in the forming of your decision will throw open the windows of your physical being and make it possible for Her Force to enter into it. Each time you refer something, even the most outward, to the Mother, not bothering about whether She has time to attend to it or not, you open your physical being to Her and let Her transform it. There is no question here of Her knowing everything and accepting every movement of inner offering. It is, rather, the question of opening every part, even every cell of your physical being to Her Light and Force and Love. If I feel like seeing Her, I write to Her. If I feel like asking Her whether I should do a particular thing or not, I write to Her. She may refuse me an interview ; She may not tell me outwardly whether I should do the particular thing. But the very fact of my referring to Her, the very movement of my asking Her is a physical offering, which inevitably brings its reward in the form of some release from the physical ego and a corresponding purification of the physical being. I suppose I have made my point clear now. Please don't hesitate to write to me if you find it still obscure.
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By the way, I can assure you that, whatever the burden of work the Mother has to cope with, she reads all letters which are addressed to Her from the standpoint of one's sadhana. Remember always that She has to manifest Herself in each one of us who have chosen to be Her disciples and instruments in Her divine work on earth.
Re. your second letter, I am glad that you are continuing your intensive study of the Synthesis of Yoga. But you will allow me to tell you that the highest, definitive and most powerfully dynamic experiences of the supermind came to Sri Aurobindo after he had long finished the Synthesis and stopped the publication of the Arya. He himself said that He had changed His views on many fundamental things, and strongly resented anybody flinging his old statements in His face. I suppose in consideration of this fact, we should try to imbibe knowledge and influence and inspiration from His other writings also, particularly His letters and the latter part of the Life Divine etc. Again, after Sri Aurobindo's passing, the Mother has said and written many times in the lights of Her later experiences that many things have changed, the conditions of the earth consciousness have been constantly under the direct action of the Supramental Force, and that new avenues of approach to the Supermind have been opened up. We have, therefore, to open all ourself— psychically, mentally, vitally and physically—to Her redeeming and transforming Force and let it lead us just as it would. Surrender, openness, receptivity and plasticity in all parts of our being—this is what is most helpful at the present moment.
Dear friend, cling on with all the intensity of your love and devotion to the Mother, and She will give you a new birth, a resurrected being.
17.06.64
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I am rather distressed to find that you are still hemmed in with the old mental vibrations, and don't seem to be aware of the trick of your mind, still justifying its standpoint and its reactions by quotations from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. And it is because of this whirl of mental vibrations that the psychic perception is clouded, and that the Mother's most revealing letter to you and all my earnest pleadings for a return to the psychic poise have fallen flat upon you. Once you can come out of this blinding whirl, you will get back your love and devotion for the Mother— for without Her Grace and guidance nothing can be achieved in this Yoga, as Sri Aurobindo insists time and again in all his books—and feel free in the serene silence of your luminous soul. As your friend and well-wisher, I plead to you again for a return to your psychic, your real, deathless being!
Why do you think even for a split second of the Ashram youngmen and how they are wasting the Mother's money and mismanaging Her work ? I, who am here and constantly seeing all that is taking place, don't give a moments thought to it. Why should I ? All my thoughts, all my feelings and all that I do must be a conscious and constant offering to the Mother alone. We have to love and worship Her in the sanctuary of our heart with a passion so intense, so concentrated, so profoundly calm amd absorbing that all outside vibrations should fall away from us.
What after all is this quivering speck of dust we call the earth in the immeasurable vastness of the universe? And what is the Ashram on this earth, but an almost imperceptible atom? And what are, again, a handful of sadhaks in the Ashram in the universal work of the Mother ? Let us try to live, above the mind and its confused associations and erring ideas, on a higher plane of consciousness in which infinity and immortality become a
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concrete experience to us, and no thought of the passing moment and its surface reaction can distract us.
Till we reach that state and are established in it, let us follow Sri Aurobindo's teaching, "Aspire to the Mother for this settled quietness and calm of the mind and this constant sense of the inner being in you standing back from the external nature and turned to the Light and Truth."
"The forces that stand in the way of sadhana are the forces of the lower mental, vital and physical nature. Behind them are adverse powers of the mental, vital and subtle physical worlds. These can be dealth with only after the mind and heart have become one-pointed and concentrated in the single aspiration to the Divine" Bases of Yoga. Drive away, my friend, from your mind and vital even the slightest reaction to what you have seen here and heard. The Mother is working constantly in her infallible and inscrutable way, and what the Divine has decreed no power on earth can foil or frustrate.
The best discipline in the beginning is to practice what the Mother says in "Words of the Mother"—page 39.
"This is how you have to do to carry out your general offering in detailed offerings. Live constantly in the presence of the Divine, live in the feeling that it is this presence which moves you and is doing everything you do. Offer all your movements to it, not only every mental action, every thought and feeling but even the most ordinary and external actions such as eating, when you eat you must feel that it is the Divine who is eating, through you. When you can thus gather all your movements into the One Life, then you have in you unity instead of division. No longer is one part of your nature given to the Divine, while the rest remains in its ordinary ways, engrossed in ordinary things, your entire life is taken up, an integral transformation is gradually realised in you."
15.07.64
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What has delighted me beyond measure is your repeated reference to the Love and Grace of the Mother. It is, indeed, in the Mother's Love and Grace that we exist and evolve towards our divine Nature. Her Love is our life. It is at once our Source and Goal. We love each other in Her Love. It cements our hearts and makes us one. My dear friend, let us cling on to Her with all the passionate, flaming intensity of our whole being, our deepest, boundless, self-denying love, without expecting anything, without withholding anything, without insisting on anything, so that all in us may belong to Her, and that She alone, may live and act in us! If we can be wholly Hers, She will be wholly ours. What infinite, unimaginable bliss in that absolute self-consecration ! What illimitable freedom and peace! What termless Heaven of thrilled immortality!
I was so much delighted to read and re-read your letter that I sent it to the mother. Can you imagine what She has written to me after reading it? Her words will give you the same joy that they have given me. I am giving below a free English rendering of Her French. "Yes, it is a very good letter, and he should be encouraged to stay on in his solitude in the beauty of nature. His thought often comes to me and I have noticed a true progress (in him). Send him my love & blessings—for him and for Ann."
I am glad also that your "mind is much quieter than it has ever been before." We have to pass through many experiences, but we must see that we gain by each experience. The way is long and rugged—very long and full of pitfalls, but the Mother is holding us by the hand, and there is no power on earth and in heaven that can balk us of our divine destiny.
9.09.64
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Nothing would have given me greater joy than your words "I am certainly feeling more peaceful and serene than at any previous time." I pray to the Mother that this peace may go on deepening till the eternal luminous peace of the Purusha is attained.
I have begun re-reading the Essays on the Gita and find it immensely rewarding. I think at your present stage of sadhana it will give you a lot of light and a definite guidance. For a knowledge of the foundation of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, one cannot go to a better book. It needs a very concentrated perusal, because it is somewhat more philosophical than psychological. It has the reputation of converting many people to Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. It converted Woodrow Wilson's daughter, it converted me, and a lot others.
Besides helping you in your sadhana, the Essays on the Gita will, I hope, give you a thorough grounding in the basic principles of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga.
On my birth-day, 3rd December, I went to the Mother. The thrill of joy and the tidal waves of love I felt in Her presence I can't describe. She told me that She had purposely put a few "victory" and a few "protection" flowers in the bouquet She gave me. "Victory" flowers were for the victory of my aspiration, and the "protection" flowers for my health. We mortals can't conceive what Her Love for Her children is—how boundless, how healing, liberating and transforming!
10.12.64
I am glad that you find the Essays on the Gita helpful. When I started reading it, I felt it might be of help to you at the present stage of your sadhana. It is one of the most illuminating books of the Master. Read it from cover to cover, and with the utmost concentration. You will get in
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it much that is there in the Letters, the Bases of Yoga, and the Synthesis. But the treatment is philosophical, so a deep study will be immensely rewarding.
The other day my grand-daughter, Munnu was reading the following from the Bases. It appealed to me so much and gave me so much joy that I thought I should share it with you.
".....giving up of yourself freely and simply into the hands of the Divine Mother........that is the only way to succeed in the supramental Yoga. To be a Yogi, Sannyasi, a Tapaswi is not the object here. The object is transformation, and the transformation can only be done by a force infinitely greater than your own; it can only be done by being truly like a child in the hands of the Divine Mother.
23.01.65
Regarding your questions, the Gita doesn't give the core of the integral Yoga. First of all, the central, dynamic principle of our Yoga is an integral, unreserved and co-operative surrender to the Mother, the Supreme Divine Shakti. There is no mention of the Mother in the Gita. It is the cardinal principle of Tantra, which dominated and directed Sri Ramkrishna's life, and was ultimately accepted by Sri Ramakrishna's Vedantic Guru, Totapuri. And it has been made the fulcrum of his integral Yoga by Sri Aurobindo. He has exemplified in his life how this surrender to the Mother is realised and practised in every tiny detail of one's life.
Secondly, the Gita has left the goal as a supreme mystery, and not dwelt upon it. It doesn't speak of the supramental realisation which is the apex of our present endeavour. It doesn't envisage any integral tranformation, including the transformation of the physical. It holds up the ideal of living in the Divine, but not of manifesting the
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Divine in the material world. It has no collective divine fulfilment in view-it doesn't speak of the evolution of a supramental or divine race on earth, which is our main objective. There are other differences, but we shall discuss about them when we meet. When are you coming?
But it is supramental integral transformation and divine manifestation in Matter which are the dual aim of our sadhana, and it is impossible of achievement except by the Grace of the Divine Mother, the supreme Consciousness—Force, Chit-tapas, of Sachchidananda.
The Gita is a monumental synthesis of the various principles and aims of the Yogas current at that stage of human evolution. Mankind has moved on since, and many a new element has entered into Sri Aurobindo's synthesis which were not needed then, but without which modern man cannot fully satisfy his soul. Evolution is a progression in which to repeat the past is to stop dead on the way, or even to fall back to a lower level.
17.02.65
In your last letter you have referred to the "essential nature" of man. This essential nature or Svabhava is the nature of the psychic being which evolves by means of the inner mind, inner life and subtle or inner physical and seeks to express itself in the outer nature of the mind, life & body of man. It is not the nature of the ego. Arjun was not aware of his essential nature, he was being led by his sattwic rajasic nature the norms of which he knew as his dharma. This Dharma is the ethical dharma, an ensemble of ethical principles and rules by which a sattwic man seeks to regulate his life. When this ethical Dharma failed to lead him, and contrary ideals pressed forward to claim his allegiance, he was perplexed and bewildered. Taking advantage of this critical moment of Arjun's life. Sri Krishna led him, step by step, to a comprehension of the dharma
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or essential law of his soul, which is supra-ethical and spiritual. The word Dharma is used in both the senses. The one is Svadharma or the essential law of one's spiritual nature which is never affected by heredity, environment or any other external agency, and the other is the Dharma of the evolved mental being, a sort of crutch or prop for him to grow and develop in order to qualify for the spiritual life. Svabhava is one's essential nature & svadharma is the law of that nature. Later, when the psychic being experiences its universality and transcendence and becomes a divine child of the Divine Mother, it transcends the law of its individual nature, and lives and moves and acts, a free being, at once individual, universal and transcendent, in the Divine, unfettered by the limitations of his individuality.
22.02.65
Life in the world is, indeed, a Kurukshetra, a battle field where the forces of darkness are in constant war with the forces of Light. This is the perennial fight between the Gods and the Asuras, as described in the Veda. It is no use hiding our faces, ostritch-like, in the sand, and saying with Browning : "Gods in His heaven, and
All's right with world." All is not right. Things have gone awry, and human nature, in particular, has been perverted, brutalised and mechanised in its brutality. But this is no gospel of pessimism. All can be changed, radically transformed. If the power of darkness is immense, that of the Light is infinite. It is for man to side with the forces of Light and chase away the darkness of countless centuries. The crown of his earthly evolution is his divine birth in Sachchidananda.
Both The Integration of Human Knowledge and The City of Man are expensive books. The third book : A New Earth and a New Humanity may be interesting. At least
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its title intrigues me. But I have so often been disappointed by buying books without having some idea of their contents that I have become rather cautious. If the book is only a product of ethico-social thoughts of an advanced kind, like the goody-goody love and altruism of the Sorokin brand, I am afraid it won't interest me. But if it embodies any original idea about a rebirth of humanity and a new vision of an earthly apotheosis, I may buy the book. But how to know it? Such new visions are flashing across some American minds today, and I hail them as harbingers of a new humanity. Is the author of the book one of them ?
11.03.65
It appears you have plunged deep into the silence and passivity of the Purusha. In one of your previous letters you told me that you were feeling a renewed urge towards action, and that you would be writing to me more frequently than recently. But I am afraid you have sunk again into same kind of stillness and inaction. Withdrawal from the blind drive of the lower nature is indispensable for the liberation of the Purusha. It is, indeed, the very first decisive step in our Yoga ; but an exaggeration of this tendency to passivity may lead towards the traditional Nirvanic ideal and make one unfit for any dynamic spiritual realisation. That risk has to be avoided.
6.04.65
Nirod C. Choudhury's Autobiography I have not read, but I have read a number of extracts from it in the reviews which have appeared in the journals, English and Indian. I have also read some of his articles published in Indian periodicals. I have always found him superficial in his thought and given to running down Indian cultural values. He has a smart, slangy style which attracts many modern
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readers. His light hearted depreciation of Indian culture and way of life is an important factor in his easy appeal to Western readers. To me he appears shallow and perverse in his vision, and smart and frivolous in his mode of expression.
Pierre Teillard de Chardin's books have created a world-wide stir. He speaks of a new race of supermen, and he brings his enormous scientific knowledge to bear upon his theory. A French gentleman has sent me a copy of Teillard's book, "The Phenomenon of Man", I am trying to buy his book "The Future of Man" which he wrote after his best seller, The "Phenomenon of Man". He shows a pronounced Christian bias, but, apart from that, his books are an important contribution to the gospel of transhumanisation. I shall quote him and comment upon his contribution when I deal with Sri Aurobindo's gospel of the supramental race.
I was distressed to read of the terrific storm which has devastated a sizeable part of your country. The Mother says that Kali has begun her dance of destruction in order to sweep away whatever is obstructing the influx of the new Light. Many innocent lives will inevitably perish in this dreadful holocaust. She has to destroy in order to new-create. The Rudra's wrath precedes the benignant smile of Shiva.
26.04.65
There are parts and elements in our complex nature of which we are not normally conscious, and which may oppose a stubborn resistance to the decisions of our mind. The best course, I think, is to direct the Mother's Love-Light into every part of our nature, so that nothing may stand in the way of our total self-surrender. Patience, unflagging patience, and a confidence reliance on the Divine Grace are the only means to ensure and fortify the
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irrevocable step. Any precipitancy in forcing the inner change may be attended with undesirable reactions. Let us proceed steadily, with vigilant patience and uncompromising aspiration, depending for every step forward on the Divine Grace, and all will go well. Let us steadily knit all the divergent parts of the nature together and forge them into an organic unity round the psychic centre, fully respecting their autonomy and persuading, not forcing, them to consent to be transformed by the Mother's Light. It is an uphill work, but, uphill or easy, it is the only work appointed by our destiny.
9.05.65
Very glad to receive your letter, and to learn that you are going to write to the Mother. Do write to Her, opening out your heart, and pray for Her guidance. Let not your mind stand between Her and your soul. The mind is but a perishable instrument. It should be surrendered to Her in such a way that it may do Her Will without the least resistance in itself—obediently and faithfully, without entertaining any doubts or misgivings, and without any hesitation. As we slough off our bodies, so do we our minds—it is no essential part of our real being. It is only an ephemeral means of expression. It can shed its mortality only when it is organised round the soul and infused with the soul-substance and the soul's love and devotion and aspiration for the Divine. To surrender it completely to the Divine Mother is to ensure its divinisation and immortality.
29.05.65
First of all, your decision to write to the Mother soon is felt by me as an opening wide the doors of your mind for Her Light and Love to flood it. I have been eagerly waiting
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for this spontaneous opening and surrender. It is true that you have written to Her several times before this, but this time it will not be the simple writing of a letter, but something much more deeply important and significant, much more decisive.
Secondly, the lines of the closing paragraph of The Mother which you have quoted this time indicate, more clearly than any words could do, the new orientation and aspiration of your mental being. Not that this aspiration was absent, but it was, if I am not wrong, somewhat covered over by certain reactions. It has shone forth again in its original purity and intensity, and I hail it with great delight. My friend, we are nothing, we have nothing, we can do and become nothing without the Mother. We exist in Her and for Her. To quote St. Augustine : "Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee."
Today, I shall make a confession to you. When I was introduced to you by Narendrasingh and we met in my room for the first time, what struck me most was the deep, spontaneous love for the Mother and the glad self abandon in surrender to Her which I perceived in you. It was, indeed, the spontaniety of a child's love for his Mother. I had not, till then, seen any foreign visitor evincing this depth and spontaniety of love for the Mother. It is easy to admire and revere, even to adore and love Sri Aurobindo. I have seen innumerable cases of it—His divine greatness is so crystal clear and patent! But it is only by the Grace of the Mother that one can love the Mother—Her personality is so mysteriously, unpredictably dynamic, so ineffably, inscrutably and variably manifold! And my heart leaped up for joy when I perceived that you had performed this feat of love and devotion and surrender at the very beginning of your spiritual life! Dilip Kumar Roy's is not a solitary case, I have seen many others of the same nature—sadhaks sincerely devoted to Sri Aurobindo but
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shrinking from a whole hearted acceptance of the Mother's divinity. Tommy that first, intense, spontaneous love for the Mother has gushed forth again in you, and I am so very glad of it! In our Yoga nothing can be achieved without Her Grace.
21.06.65
What Northrop is fervently preaching and some others are also advocating and propagating is only an idea, a pale and broken reflection in the mind of what is taking shape on the subtler planes of consciousness. A mental idea or ideal, however brilliant or beneficial, doesn't possess the power to realise itself fully in life, It can only give a new orientation to the thought of a few elect souls, but is constantly opposed by the dark forces of life. That's why all mental dreams and ideals have failed to change the basic stuff of human life on earth. What is needed is the sanction and imperative drive of the Spirit, the fiat of the Supreme. But it doesn't act according to the notions of the mind. It has its own inscrutable but irresistible way of working.
Those who think that the meeting of the East and West will be a mutual give and take, on the physical plane betray an ignorance of spiritual working. Discarding the two negations and taking over of what one lacks and giving of what one possesses as an individual achievement will be a sort of barter or exchange, if at all it takes place. It is the commonly cherished idea, but I should call it a mere illusion. Life's subconscient foundations will violently contradict and oppose it. It will never realise itself.
What is indispensable and inevitable is the realisation of the psychic and union with the Consciousness-Force, Chit-Shakti, of the Divine. An ascent to higher dimension of consciousness can alone bring down the Light and Force needed for the transformation of human life. Nothing else
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will avail. No mental theorising or preaching can ovecome the subconscious forces of life. No religion or moral veneering will effect anything substantial and abiding. Those who are aspiring to help the world and its evolutionary march must go beyond the ignorant mental consciousness. Yoga is the only remedy, and our Yoga, in particular, is the most difficult of all inasmuch as it has to effect a radical and integral transformation of earth consciousness. All collective work must be Yogic work initiated by the Divine. No mental planning has a place in it.
What I have said above about the meeting of the East and West holds good in regard to the idea of integration. Integration in education is a laudable ideal, but how to achieve it? Where, in man, is the integrating agency? It is the psychic. And it is impossible for one who has not realised the psychic to do anything truly creative in education. The integrative principle in us has to be realised and the dynamic divine union has to be attained before any real integration becomes possible in life and nature.
16.08.65
I have decided to drop the subject of the great evolutionary function of the mind and of the indispensability of human reason. I know pretty well that the development and perfection of the reason is the outcome of an advanced sattwic outflowering in man, without which he cannot rise beyond the three gunas. I know, too, that the meeting of the East and the West is inevitable, and that it is this meeting and union which will lead to the integral, dynamic spirituality of the tomorrow. But what I have written on these points to you was written as an appeal to one of my dearest friends who is a sadhaka and whose spiritual advancement is always uppermost in my mind. If I had
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addressed a layman, I would have certainly written what you have been writing to me with copious quotations from Sri Aurobindo on the subject of the collective action on the material plane and the marriage of spirituality and science etc. But, as I have said, I was appealing to you with all the sincerity of my heart to silence these mental thoughts and put aside these ideas, however valid and salutary they may be, and delve deep within you and realise the psychic, the naked, luminous soul which belongs to no country, no worldly culture, no age and time, but solely and entirely and eternally to the Divine. And with the psychic realised by you, I was praying that you might begin the long ascent to the Supermind, opening yourself at the same time to the transforming action of the descending supramental Force.
2.10.65
I am glad to be assured that you are "doing all" you can to eliminate "the deterrent effect of the mental ego in progress towards the higher consciousness". Indeed, my friend, we have embarked upon a very difficult adventure—the supramentalisation of the whole of our being down to the cells of our body. Liberation from the ego and transcendence of the lower nature, which is the summit of almost every other Yoga, is only our first, decisive step towards our goal. We must get beyond the mind as soon as we can, forget and reject our mental ideas and ideals, presuppositions and preferences, and, silencing the mind, plunge deep into the psychic, become and live in the psychic, as the Mother's child, and psychioise the whole nature and its movements. When that is done, we have to realise the universal Self or Spirit and spiritualise our nature by its vastness and peace and calm, and, last, as the crowning victory, ascend to the supermind and, bringing down its infinite, irresistible Light and Force,
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supramentalise or divinise the whole stuff and structure of our earthly existence! A very long way, and a steep and perilous way at that. But, we know, led by the Mother's Love, we are always safe and we flinch not from the great adventure. For a dynamic Divinity is our birth-right and we must take possession of it, cost whatever it may. We depend not on ourselves, but on the Supreme Divine Shakti, the Mother! We must dare all and achieve the highest.
I fully share your admiration for De Chardin. Whereas Paul Tillich, Northrop, Sorokin, Allport etc. have been striving to catch a glimpse of the new Light on the mental plane, this intrepid scientist has shot beyond the bounds of matter and mind and, by the help of his intuitive vision, looked into the future of man and been able to divine something of the glorious destiny of the human race.
Of all modern thinkers, he comes nearest to our Master. I shall go through the Future of Man when I receive it and let you know how I like it.
But, as you know, I always welcome and appreciate the futurist grain in the thoughts of all modem progressive intellectuals like Paul Tillich, Northrop, Allport, Ira Progoff etc.
18.10.65
As I have so often been repeating in my letters to you, we are born for the Mother, and to live and work for Her, and fulfil Her supramental Will in our earthly lives is our destiny.
She is the Creative Force and manifesting Will of the Divine, and we belong eternally to Her.
The future is becoming clearer as the days pass. Let us prepare ourselves to be the faithful and plastic instruments of the Mother's epochal Work!
2.11.65
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I am glad to learn that you have been deeply engaged for some time in an intensive study of the Life Divine and the Synthesis. It will give a philosophical and psychological basis to your conception of and faith in the epochal, creative work of the Master and the Mother. Mental enlightenment is essential to an all-round spiritual development.
Have you had any letter from the Mother ? I am not quite sure, but I think it likely that She will call you for Her work. The best advice I can give you as a devoted friend is to go on patiently preparing yourself for such a call. And the best preparation is to rid yourself of the ego from every part of your being. So long as the ego remains, we cannot become faithful instruements of the Divine Shakti. Not this petty, perishable, ignorant personality I call myself, O Mother, neither the ideas and thoughts and prepossessions of my dim mind, nor the feelings and emotions of my obscure heart, nor the will and desires of my unquiet, unstable vital, but Thy Light and Wisdom, Thy Love and Thy all-moving Will may lead me through my life's long pilgrimage!—this should be our constant and sincere prayer to the Divine Shakti. Let me die, this old Adam cease to exist, so that the Mother's eternal child, the luminous psychic, may be born and commence its work!
Indian politics are in a parlous state today. Ominous predictions are flying about. India-Pakistan peace is a mere day-dream, which is sure to be shattered before long. Peace cannot be built on suppressed enmity. But one thing is sure—the destiny of India! The great, glorious destiny, foreseen and prophesied by Sri Ramakrishna & Vivekananda, and many other recent Indian Yogis and prepared by the Mother and the Master—that is as sure as the breaking of a new dawn out of the darkness of the night. Nothing can prevent it.
10.02.66
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I am sure, your intensive study of the Life Divine will do you a lot of good. Your stress on the personal effort in the beginning of the sadhana and for a longtime even afterwords, is a very sensible one. I can't say that many of those who are here are sincerely doing this sadhana. It is only a handful who are sincere and earnest, and defy all opposition and obstacles in order to press forward. Sadhana is not a bed of roses; it is like walking on the razor's edge, as the Upanishad puts it. It is only those in whom the psychic has awakened, or is awakening that respond to the call of the Divine. For them the night of ignorance, suffering and death is passing.
Of all Yogas, ours is the most difficult, because it passes through unexplored and uncharted regions of the Spirit, and holds up as its final achievement the very thing which no Yoga had ever even conceived as possible. We are all out to turn an apparent impossibility into a complete, concrete triumph—the transformation of the material being and consciousness! It is evident, then, that no half-hearted effort or lax and faltering will can avail in this Yoga. The Divine, and nothing but the Divine—unless this is the one overmastering urge and will in every fibre of our multiple being, it is futile to follow this path. It can be disastrous to dabblers.
I am very glad that you are carefully reading the Mother's "Notes on Way" in the Bulletin. What astounding experiences She has been recording! She is in the process of putting the most material elements of the earthly substance in contact with the Supramental Light-Force!! What Yogi ever thought before that it could be done!!! I know fully well that the Mother has been working powerfully in you and preparing you for your role in Her great Work.
25.02.66
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I had thought of chiding you for being so late in writing to me, but your letter has given me exceeding delight. Your study of the Synthesis and the Life Divine together must have been inspired by the Mother's Grace. It is a very wise combination—the Synthesis giving you the spiritual and psychological, and the Life Divine the philosophical illumination. And, you know, both are indispensable in our Integral Yoga. If the philosophical illumination is not there, there will be either no coherent expression in life or only a confused and cloudy one. The mind is the active formative, and organising agency of the Supermind, and it must be able to function properly in its allotted sphere. I wish you a greater and greater illumination from this combined study.
You are perfectly right in emphasising the evolutionary nature of our Yoga. No better proof of it can there be than the Mother's "Notes on the Way" in the Bulletin. She has been giving the go by even to some of the fundamental processes of the Yoga. She finds a new Vista opening before Her with possibility of greater conquests by fresh methods. She has been hewing out new paths just as Sri Aurobindo had been doing. There is a very glorious future before man.
21.03.66
I have been advised to stop all reading and writing, not to speak of typing, and take complete rest. My youngest daughter has come here with her husband, and they have clamped down upon me almost the immobility of the Akshara Brahma. They assure me that the greater the rest I take the sooner will be the recovery. However all this has, as you know, spiritual significance and one must not complain of any suffering that comes in the course of sadhana.
2.07.66
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Our path is very long and steep and rugged. It is indeed a virgin forest through which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have hewn a path for us. Experiences, however great and alluring, have only to be past by with only a smile; greater ones will follow and they have to be treated with the same detachment. For, no wayside experience must be suffered to hold a pilgrim of eternity.
The experience of the Purusa, a calm, passive witness, gives the initial release. It comes with an overwhelming power and light. But this too, we must not make too much of. It would be, indeed a terminal experience, if our aim were Mukti or Nirvana. But the psychic being has a double strand in it-one of the Purusa and other of the Mother, the Para-Prakriti. If we emphasize the Purusa aspect, we inevitably end in Mukti or Nirvana, the eternal, immobile Silence. But we have also to emphasize at the same time the aspect of the Para-Prakriti, the creative Divine Will and Force. This simultaneous development of the psychic ensures the best possible progress in our sadhana. Otherwise a lop sided progress in detachment and passivity may cripple us as an instrument of the Divine Will.
1.09.66
My approach to Sri Aurobindo has been from the very beginning of my sadhana through the Mother. Sri Ramakrishna used to say that the key of the kingdom of the Brahman is with the Mother, the Divine Shakti and until She opened the gate, none could enter that kingdom. That's why, even after the highest Vedantic, Tantric and Vaishnavic experiences, he remained, to the last day of his life, a most devoted and docile child of the Mother, moved by Her Will at every moment of his life.
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In Bengal I had bought a copy of Sri Aurobindo's "The Mother" and I found that it insisted on the same surrender—unquestioning and integral surrender to the Mother. On coming here, when I saw the Mother, I felt at once that She was my eternal Mother, my very own, my most beloved and most adored. Sri Aurobindo always confirmed me in this attitude of surrender to the Mother, and the concrete experiences that followed my coming here bore me fully out.
Sri Aurobindo has said that His Consciousness and the Mother's are one. He has said in one of His evening talks that before the Mother's coming, He was finding it difficult to use His Force for cosmic action. The Mother has also said very beautifully, "Without Him I cannot exist, without me He cannot manifest."
Since my coming here, I have had to pass through many ordeals. I have basked in Her all conquiring smile and shuddered and smarted under Her frown. Some times I thought that She had rejected me, withdrawn Her favours from me, cast me out. Some times I was accused of having said or done things I had never said or done. I wilted and winced, and passing doubts of the Mother's divinity cast their shadows upon my mind for brief spells. I even thought that the Mother was acting upon the representations made by those who saw Her daily. But these were moods of stupid incomprehension, all too human blindness and egoistic self-delusion. They were more truly, harrowing moments of my trial. I soon saw through the cheat of the senses and the specious reasonings of the mind.
And something within me obstinately refused to assent to these silly reactions. It held on to its faith, it brushed aside the mind's reasonings and the vital's grievances. And deeper still, there was something that clung all the more tenaciously to the Mother with a greater and greater outburst of pure love and devotion. For it to
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love Her and adore Her was the very breath of its existence. It loved, it prayed, it called, and the gloom faded away, sunlight and joy and peace returned. The Mother gave me transporting smiles, and the agony became a thing of the past. These are the nights and dawns every sadhaka has to pass through.
But the psychic attitude must be sustained through all these alternations of night and day. The psychic knows and loves only the Divine and the Divine Mother. It lies in the arms of the Mother, and whatever is its destiny, it is the Mother who fulfils it. The Mother carries it to its ultimate perfection and manifests the Divine through it in the material world. She is the sole redeemer and the supreme Force of transformation. Sri Aurobindo says "The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Divine—or, it may be said, She is the Divine in its consciousness— force. The Ishwara as Lord of the Cosmos does come out of the Mother who takes her place beside him as the Cosmic Shakti—The cosmic Ishwara is one aspect of the Divine".
He says again "Her embodiment is a chance for the consciousness to receive the Supramental into it and to undergo first the transformation necessary for that to be possible........."
Sri Aurobindo once wrote to a disciple that it was no use surrendering to Him and not surrendering to the Mother. It is the Mother who is doing the sadhana in us, and none can be supramentalised, none can unite dynamically with the Supreme Divine except by Her Grace.
I have seen several cases of sadhakas turning their backs upon the Mother and leaving the Ashram. Their love and devotion for Sri Aurobindo were sincere no doubt, but sincere with a fatal reservation. They professed to adore Sri Aurobindo, but disregarded his fundamental teachings in practice. It is like worshipping the sun and turning one's back upon its life-giving light. Such cases are tragic, indeed.
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What these sadhakas should have done was to kick the reasoning mind with its array of sense-evidences into complete silence, and, taking the true psychic attitude, plunge headlong into the Mother's lap, saying, "Mother, make me or mar, I am eternally Thine. I love Thee, I cannot exist without Thee. I want nothing else, I want only to love Thee".
The psychic love makes no demands. It takes the Mother's smiles and frowns with perfect equality ; it regards Her blows as Her transforming blessings. This is the attitude of the child. It does not reason, it does not impose its conditions—it stamps upon the ego and rejoices in its surrender to its Mother, delights in its love for the Mother.
I know, what untold treasures the Mother can pour upon our being, what infinite ecstasy She can shower from Her Love—what love, what peace, what Light! I can confess to you that if I don't love Her and feel Her Presence even for a day, I shall cease to exist. The psychic love, the psychic attitude, the psychic self-giving, the psychic faithfulness and obedience—this is the only path to the Divine Life on earth. This is what Sri Aurobindo calls the sun-lit path. And it is the Mother's Grace alone that can lead us through this path to our Divine fulfilment. The Mother is Sri Aurobindo, and Sri Aurobindo is the Mother.
2.10.66
I am glad you are diving deeper and deeper into Sri Aurobindo's teachings. I am also reading the Essays on the Gita, The Life Divine, and the Synthesis of Yoga. The Essays will be finished in about a week, and the other two I have started from the very beginning. Each reading of the Master's books is a fresh revelation, a fresh inspiration and stimulus.
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Vivekananda's Rajayoga is a famous book. No wonder you find it so illuminating. Most of his utterances are like that—full of light and aglow with his soul's fire. I read almost all his books in Bengal, and have read over again some of them here.
I am reading the Savitri also everyday. I hope you are reading the Prayers & Meditations. Both these books have an inner affinity, as if they pulse with the same life of Light.
7.11.66
I consider the Synthesis to be a greater book than the Life Divine for those who follow the path of the Integral Yoga. It is a pity the Master couldn't add his later supreme experiences of the Supermind and complete the book. Like "Secret of the Veda" and the Savitri, it remains incomplete. But for our purposes, it is complete even as it is, and gives a definite guidance to the summits of our seeking.
9.12.66
I don't remember to have ever come across any statement of Sri Aurobindo in which He speaks of the Gita as "written at the level of the ordinary (physical) mentality. So far as I can see it was neither written from nor for the physical mind. It is a message of the Divine, sprung from the Divine consciousness, and addressed to the intelligence of Arjuna. No spiritual gospel has ever come from the physical mind, nor has it ever been addressed to the physical mind of man. Arjun was a highly developed Sattwa-rajasic man with great possibilities of opening to the higher spiritual planes beyond the action of the three gunas. Though at the very sight of the formidable array of his enemies on the battlefield, tamas assailed him and unnerved his rajasic Kshatriya temperament for a moment, his Divine Teacher
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rent asunder the sattwic mask of tamas, and fired his Kshatriya elements and raised his consciousness to the truth and reality of his soul and the truth and reality of the Divine. His infatuation soon disappeared and he rose, led by his Divine Friend, to the heights of his being. Endowed with the spiritual vision by his Teacher, he visualised the Cosmic Person in Him and realised that he was only an instrument in the stupendous battle of life. The physical mind is that part of the mind which busies itself with and takes delight in physical things. Though not actually cast in the philosophic mould, Arjun's mind possessed a developed intelligence, and it was using that intelligence as a grappling hook that Sri Krishna lifted him into the radiant vastnesses of the Self.
15.01.67
1 have read with great interest and attention the points you have raised in the last three of your letters, and I shall try my best to be clear and frank in my answers to them.
Re. the "Common Way" I suppose all that Sri Aurobindo means is that there are certain things in the Integral Yoga that apply to all those who follow it. Aspiration, rejection, surrender, sincerity, openness etc.— well, these are no doubt, general things which all have to develop in them. But it is equally true that each has to follow his particular way, according to his swabhava and the elements he has to deal within his own nature. Sri Aurobindo is very explicit on this point ; "The tendency to take what I lay down for one and apply it without discrimination to another is responsible for much misunderstanding. A general statement too, true in itself, cannot be applied to everyone alike". Again he says, "Each sadhak has a nature or turn of nature of his own and the movement of the Yoga of two sadhaks, even where there are some resemblances between them is seldom exactly
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the same." And again "Each sadhak is a case by himself." The Master clinches the point by saying, "The sadhana is done by the Mother according to the Truth and necessity of each nature and each plane of Nature. It is not one fixed process." If, indeed, there were a common way which all could follow, there would be no need for Guru at all. The bed-rock truth of our sadhana is, "The Mother's power and not any human endeavour and tapasya can alone rend the lid and tear the covering and shape the vessel and bring down into this world of obscurity and falsehood and death and suffering Truth and Light and Life Divine and the immortal's Ananda." (The first three quotations are from the letters of Sri Aurobindo 4th series, and the last from The Mother). I fully believe—and my experience bears me out-that "It is only those who are capable by aspiration and meditation on the Mother to open and receive her action and working within that can succeed in this Yoga." (Sri Aurobindo on the Mother p. 478.)
As to the other side of the question :
Dear friend, you know pretty well that except for some minor fundamentals, there is very little parallelism between Sri Aurobindo's Yoga and the other Yogas. The goal of the Integral Yoga is integral union with the integral Divine and the manifestation of the Divine in Matter. So far as I know, no Yoga, Eastern and Western, ancient and modern, has ever had this goal in view. Transformation of the physical nature of man; integral, dynamic union with the Divine in earthly life ; creation of a new humanity and the establishment of the Life Divine are some of the new revolutionary realisations, hardly ever conceived and striven for before. The Supermind, the pivot of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, an ascent into its Truth Consciousness and its descent into Matter ; the transmutation of the very cells of the material body of man, and the illumination of his subconscient and inconscient parts; the rapture of the Divine embrace flooding the active life of the Yogi and all
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his movements; the transfiguration of the lower nature into the Higher, the Para-Prakriti and its selfdeployment here—where, in which yoga, in which seer, in which mystic shall we find these glorious truths held up before mankind ? That is why Sri Aurobindo says that He had to hew his path through a virgin forest. He had to pass through all spiritual experiences in order to realise the ultimate synthesis of them all in an integral Divine fulfilment of man on earth—a Divine Life in a divine body.
5.02.67
Regarding Vivekananda, I have read almost all his writings, speeches and talks. What a great man, what a harmonious life, and how irresistibly lovable a nature! But he was, in the very grain of his being, a Mayavadin, regarding the world as Sankar regarded it-a real-unreal creation of Maya, from which a retreat into the Brahman was the only aim of life. His lecture on Maya, delivered in England, was the best of all his lectures. After his first experience of Samadhi, he came running to Sri Ramakrishna and begged him to let him remain in that state of ecstatic release for ever. But Sri Ramakrishna was not at all a Mayavadin, and he came down upon him with a bang : "Fie on you, you want personal salvation! Here, I lock the door of samadhi; you have come down to do the Mother's work and till that is done, you won't have samadhi any more." And so the great Master moulded his great disciple, and the disciple worked like a giant, a hero of action, and shook the world with his mighty genius. Some time before his passing away, Sri Ramakrishna poured all his power into Vivekananda and said to him, "I have empteed myself of all force. It is this force that will make you work for the world."
But Vivekananda could not reconcile the two contradictory urges in him—the inherent urge to passivity and meditative silence, and the overmastering urge of his
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Master's force in him to action. Even towards the end of his life, he wrote to one of his American disciples, Miss Macleod, that action was a superimposition upon him. He would often say to his brother disciples that the world was like a dog's tail; straighten it as much as you will, but the moment you let go of your hold, it curls up again. He worked in spite of himself. So, his path and our path does not run on parallel lines. Of course, as we know, Vivekananda's outlook underwent a great change after his death. For fifteen days he spoke to Sri Aurobindo in the Alipore Jail on "a restricted but very important" part of his sadhana. He didn't point him to the Supermind, but to certain higher planes leading to it. Sri Aurobindo has hewn his path through a virgin forest. He has done what nobody before him ever conceived of. As the Mother says, "Sri Aurobindo does not belong to History ; he is outside and beyond History." He is the creator of the future, the glorious future of the Divine Life on earth. We take our hats off to all great leaders and prophets and Avataras, but we follow none but Sri Aurobindo! He is our Guru, our guide and our goal.
11.04.67
Regarding Vivekananda's instructions to Sri Aurobindo in Alipore Jail, it was not the Vivekananda whom we know from his writings and speeches, but a Vivekananda who had acquired new and considerable knowledge of the higher planes after his death. The Vivekananda we know was a combination of two disparate tendencies—one, derived from Sri Ramakrishna which drove him to action, "The Mother's work", as Ramakrishna called it, and the other, innate in him, which drew him to the peace and silence of inaction, the passive calm of meditation. Ram Krishna knew of this double strain in his disciple. To him he said, "Here, I keep the key of samadhi, you won't have
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that experience again till the Mother's work for which you have come down is done." And to others he said, "The day Naren comes to know who he is, he will give up his body". Ramakrishna's influence supplanted for a time, or rather from time to time, but could never eliminate the quietistic tendency, the tendency to ascetic world-renunciation in Vivekananda. That is why after Ramakrishna's passing away, Vivekananda built up the Mission on the model of monasteries with this difference that a strong leaven of humanitarianism was introduced into it. Spiritually the members of the Ramakrishna Mission might as well have been members of a Shankarite monastery. All the commentaries and translations published by the Mission faithfully follow Shankar, though Ramakrishna had declared more than once that he was not a Vedantin—he was a Vaishnav, a Tantric, and many things more. When a Vedantin (Shankar's Advaita Vedantin) says that God is both the efficeient and the material cause of the Universe, the Creator and the created, he doesn't mean that it is the Brahman who is that. His "God" is an inferior aspect and status of the Brahman, yoked to Maya. The Vedantin aspires to go beyond God and realise the Brahman. I won't go into these philosophical subtleties now. But, I can say, that the Vedantin's Advaita is altogether different from our Advaita and his God is not our God, the supreme Person, the Purushottama of the Gita. That's why Sri Aurobindo called his advaita "Purnadvaita." I can tell you that I have studied and reflected upon Vivekananda's life and teachings as well as his Guru's for well over forty years. What I wrote to you in my last letter is my considered view of him. But, of course I may be mistaken, and am always open to correction. In this connection, I refer you to these two chapters of the Life Divine. "The Cosmic Illusion" and "Reality and the Cosmic Illusion."
The ascent to and the descent of the Supermind for
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the transformation of the earth-consciousness is a factor of incalculable importance in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga and philosophy. All traditions have been swept away. A virgin forest has been cleared and a new path carved, a new trail blazed. The descent of the Supermind has made all the difference. Our Yoga is geared to the Supermind. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother stand for supramental manifestation, of which the last few chapters of the Life Divine give some intellectual idea.
24.05.67
I suppose I am clearer now in my mind about the "Common Way" then ever before. The "Common way" a may mean two things. It may mean a common spiritual way which modern man may follow, if he is so disposed. It may include various elements culled from different schools of Yoga and fused into a homogeneous whole. One may take something from the Gita, something from Bible, something from Sri Ramakrishna, something from the Vedanta and even something from T. Chardin.
But there may be and must needs be a common way in the Integral Yoga itself. Here the broad and catholic eclecticism of the former way is not admissible, for we have to reckon with certain new, original factors which impose new conditions, new lines of advance and a more exacting self-discipline. The goal of the Integral Yoga is also more synthetic and vastly wider—it, too, is integral, dynamically and creatively integral. But as you rightly insist, it has a "Common way", which all who are so inclined have to follow. If it had not, it would not be a collective Yoga, but one which each individual might follow in his own way; and the goal, too, would not be the manifestation of the Divine in earth consciousness and the birth of a new race of supramental men, but the realisation of the Divine by the individual in his own being,
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more or less on old lines. It is true that each sadhaka has to follow his own swabhava and swadharma in the Integral Yoga. The line of his evolution, his past preparation, and the active elements of his present nature have to be fully taken into account. But all this must conform to the demands of the collective Yoga and adapt itself to its developing rhythm and englobing action. The "Common way" does exist in the Integral Yoga, and without it the Integral Yoga would cease to be integral.
12.08.67
Regarding the "broad principles" of the Integral Yoga, I am fully at one with you. If there were no broad principles to enunciate, no broad lines of general advance to lay down, why did Sri Aurobindo take so much pains to write such bulky volumes—Synthesis, and Life Divine and the innumerable letters ? He could have given specific instructions to individual sadhakas like the Gurus of the ancient times, and guided them individually in their spiritual life. If His Yoga has no broad principles, then it is not meant for humanity, its object cannot be the birth of a new race. All his books bear ample witness to the fact, which only a blind fanatic can deny, that His Yoga is for all humanity, and that He has lighted the path for all those who aspire for an integral divine fulfilment in life and a supramental manifestation of God on earth.
The realistic, dynamic Advaita of which Sri Aurobindo speaks is not the Advaita of Sankar and Vivekananda. To distinguish it from the other brands, He calls it Purnadvaita or the integral, perfect Advaita. He sometimes refers to it as the Advaita of the Vedas and the Upanishads. Vivekananda's Advaita is not realistic and dynamic—it is quietistic. It is difficult for the general run of men to understand, because it speaks of the Brahman being the sole Reality and in the same breath speaks of Maya as the
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eternal creatrix of the phenomenal world. It speaks of God as a lower formulation of the Brahman which is yoked to Maya. The Advaita of the Upanishads is simple enough, but the Advaita of Sankar, which Vivekananada accepted, is full of confusing contradictions. That Vivekananda was a hero of action was due to his Masters's force working in him ; for his Master never subscribed to Sankar's Advaita, because it is not Advaita.
14.11.67
I fully share your views on equality and spiritual evolution as enunciated by Sri Aurobindo. In fact, evolution is the pivot of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy. What the Western philosophers and scientists, including Teilhard de Chardin, have missed is the fact of the involution. Whatever is involved can only evolve. Alexander's Deity, Teilhard's Omega point, Paul Tillich's New Being represent the crown of the evolutionary process. But the why, and also, to a great extent, the how of this process remain unknown, because the problem of involution has not been studied. When Sri Aurobindo says, on the contrary, that the Supermind will evolve and the supramental man, the Divine Man will walk the earth, he shows at the same time that the Supermind is involved here and its evolution is, therefore, inevitable. In the Veda (in the Purusha Sukta) it is stated that the Supreme Purusha has taken the plunge into nescience—the Superconscient is submerged in the Inconscient. And that it is from the Inconscient that the evolution must necessarily start and reach its apex in the full emergence of the Supreme Purusha.
6.03.68
I was shocked and distressed to hear about Kennedy's assassination. What things are coming to! It is the wolf
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and the tiger and the serpent in man that have broken loose and are running amuck. No humanity is left in man. And yet, we know, he has to become Divine. He has to become a vehicle of God's Love and Light, Peace and Harmony on earth. May the dark night pass and the promised Dawn break at last! May the Mother's Grace shower upon Her stricken children!
7.06.68
It is the hour of God. The world is in Sri Aurobindo's grip. The elite of humanity are turning to Him, knowingly or unknowingly. You will find many aspiring souls flocking to your Centre for the Light. The spiritual progress you make and the experience you gain will be the measure of your success in your ministrations to these aspiring souls.
Sri Aurobindo's idea of the "grand synthesis" was born with him. It was not derived from the Veda and the Upanishads, or the Gita. In fact, he read the Veda only at Pondicherry and not before, and found in the mystic verses of the Rig-veda an illuminating confirmation of his own experiences and realisations. The Kathopanishad was translated in Bengal and also Isha, Kena and Mundaka. The rest were probably done in Pondicherry. Isha and Kena he revised and elaborated in the Arya, so far as I can see. In the Arya he started with the Life Divine, the Synthesis of Yoga, and the Secret of the Veda. Then he added The hymns to the Atris, the Ideal of Human unity etc. The Essays on the Gita was added much later in the Arya.
Once in reply to Dilip's question whether the descent of the Supermind was his main work, he said, "Yes, I have come for that" This leaves no doubt as to the mission of his life and his being all along conscious of it. When Dilip referred to Sri Krishna, he said that he had realised complete identity with him. We know that he has enlarged the synthesis of the Gita and crowned it with the supramental Epiphany. The Supermind is his great gift to humanity. In fact, it is his supreme contribution to the earthly evolution.
19.09.68
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