On Himself

Correspondence with Sadhaks

About the correspondence, I would be indeed a brainless fool if I made it the central aim of my life to con an absurd mountain of

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letters and leave all higher aims aside! If I have given importance to the correspondence, it is because it was an effective instrument towards my central purpose—there are a large number of Sadhaks whom it has helped to awaken from lethargy and begin to tread the way of spiritual experience, others whom it has carried from a small round of experience to a flood of realisations, some who have been absolutely hopeless for years who have undergone a conversion and entered from darkness into an opening of light. Others no doubt have not profited or profited only a little. Also there were some who wrote at random and wasted our time. But I think we can say that for the majority of those who wrote there has been a real progress. No doubt also it was not the correspondence in itself but the Force that was increasing in its pressure on the physical nature which was able to do all this, but a canalisation was needed, and this served the purpose. There were many for whom it was not necessary, others for whom it was not suitable. If it had been a mere intellectual asking of questions it would have been useless, but the substantial part was about Sadhana and experience and it is that that proved to be of great use.

But as time went on the correspondence began to grow too much and reached impossible proportions, yet it was difficult to stop the flood or to make distinctions which would not have been understood; so we have to seek a way out and as yet have only found palliatives. The easy way would be if those who have opened would now rely on the inner communication with only a necessary word now and then—some have begun to do so. I suppose in the end we shall be able to reduce the thing to manageable proportions.

12-1-1934

I do not understand your point about raising up a new race by my going on writing "trivial" letters ten hours a day. Of course not—nor by writing important letters either; even if I were to spend my time writing fine poems it would not build up a new race. Each activity is important in its own place—an electron or a molecule or a grain may be small things in themselves, but in

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their place they are indispensable to the building up of a world; it cannot be made up only of mountains and sunsets and streamings of the aurora borealis—though these have their place there. All depends on the force behind these things and the purpose in their action—and that is known to the Cosmic Spirit which is at work; and it works, I may add, not by the mind or according to human standards but by a greater consciousness which, starting from an electron, can build up a world and, using a tangle of ganglia, can make them the base here for the works of the Mind and Spirit in Matter, produce a Ramakrishna, or a Napoleon, or a Shakespeare. Is the life of a great poet either made up only of magnificent and important things? How many trivial things had to be dealt with and done before there could be produced a King Lear or a Hamlet? Again, according to your own reasoning, would not people be justified in mocking at your pother—so they would call it, I do not—about metre and scansion and how many ways a syllable can be read? Why, they might say, is he wasting his time in trivial prosaic things like this when he might have been spending it in producing a beautiful lyric or fine music? But the worker knows and respects the material with which he must work and he knows why he is busy with "trifles" and small details and what is their place in the fullness of his labour.

December, 1933

But I do not understand how all that can prevent me from answering mental questions. On my own showing, if it is necessary for the Divine purpose, it has to be done. Sri Ramakrishna himself answered thousands of questions, I believe. But the answers must be such as he gave and such as I try to give, answers from higher spiritual experience, from a deeper source of knowledge and not lucubrations of the logical intellect trying to co-ordinate its ignorance. Still less can there be a placing of the Divine Truth before the judgments of the intellect to be condemned or acquitted by that authority, for that authority has no sufficient jurisdiction or competence.

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Q: Is it not true that the letters we receive from you are full of power?

A: Yes, power is put into them.

Q: It seems as if those who are not writing to you daily are not worse off for it. What is that due to?

A: Either they have not that same push for the Sadhana or they feel less need to lay open their difficulties because they have some line of positive experience which they confidently follow.

24-9-1933

Q: Even for those who do not write to you often and confidently follow a line of positive experience, is there not the danger of wrong suggestions and constructions coming to them and also of an absence of variety or integrality of experience?

A: Yes, there are both these dangers. Those even who are not visited by serious difficulties, are exposed to the latter danger of remaining always in the same plane of experience. But again many do not write because they are not yet prepared for the pressure on them to progress rapidly which that would mean.

25-9-1933

Q: Is the asking of questions a help to Yoga?

A: Questions are meant for getting light on the things that are going on in one. It is the statement of what is going on that helps to surrender.

3-4-1934

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Q: Many times questions come to the mind like: "What is the Divine?" Is it not better to write them to you?

A: Provided you do not expect me to answer always. People write to me not for getting mental information or answering questions but to lay before me their experiences and difficulties and get my help. When it is necessary, I answer questions, but I cannot be doing it all the time.

I cannot undertake to be telling you all the time all that is hot perfectly Yogic in the details of your action from morning to night. These are things to see to yourself. It is the movements of your Sadhana that you place before me and it is this that I have to see whether they are the right things or not.

7-5-1936

When what you write is correct, I say nothing—when it is your physical mind that brings in wrong ideas, I correct.

10-5-1936

Q: Before reading Your answers to my letters I feel as if I would be unable to read or understand them. What is this activity in me?

A: A useless activity of the vital mind. You should keep it quiet and receive with a silent mind waiting for light. In the silent mind one can receive an answer even if I write nothing.

9-6-1933

Q: When I wrote that while reading your answers I experienced something coming out of my heart, you replied, "It depends on the nature of the movement. Something from the psychic?" Well, it was something

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from the psychic. But how did it get connected with the answers?

A: The psychic can be connected with anything that gives room for love or Bhakti.

It is the psychic contact with what is in or behind the answers—what comes out into them from myself.

26-6-1936

Q: When you make a fresh opening in me, is it not possible to inform me one day in advance, so that I may keep myself ready?

A: No. Certainly not. Such a mental method would be of no use whatever. The experience must come of itself.

9-5-1936