On Himself

Development of Style by Yogic Force

Q: For an effective style, reading is very necessary. In order to manufacture your style, which is incomparable,

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your enormous reading must have helped a lot, I am sure.

A: Excuse me! I never manufactured my style; style with any life in it cannot be manufactured. It is born and grows like any other living thing. Of course, it was fed on my reading which was not enormous—I have read comparatively little—(there are people in India who have read fifty times or a hundred times as much as I have), only I have made much out of that little. For the rest it is Yoga that has developed my style by the development of consciousness, fineness and accuracy of thought and vision, increasing inspiration and an increasing intuitive discrimination (self-critical) of right thought, word-form, just image and figure.

29-10-1935

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Q: Me thinks you are making just a little too much of Yogic Force. Its potency as regards matters spiritual is undeniable, but for artistic or intellectual things one can't be so sure about its effectiveness. Take X's case; one could very well say: "Why give credit to the Force? Had he been as assiduous, sincere etc. elsewhere, he would have done just the same."

A: Will you explain to me how X who could not write a single good poem and had no power over rhythm and metre before he came here, suddenly, not after long "assiduous efforts" blossomed into a poet, rhythmist and metrist after he came here? Why was Tagore dumbfounded by a "lame man throwing away his crutches" and running freely and surely on the paths of rhythm? Why was it that I who never understood or cared for painting, suddenly in a single hour by an opening of vision got the eye to see and the mind of understanding about colour, line and design? How was it that I who was unable to understand and follow a metaphysical argument and whom a page of Kant or Hegel or Hume or even Berkeley left either dazed and uncomprehending and fatigued or totally uninterested because I could not fathom or

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follow, suddenly began writing pages of the stuff as soon as I started the Arya and am now reputed to be a great philosopher? How is it that at a time when I felt it difficult to produce more than a paragraph of prose from time to time and more than a mere poem, short and laboured, perhaps one in two months, suddenly after concentrating and practising prāṇāyāma daily began to write pages and pages in a single day and kept sufficient faculty to edit a big daily paper and afterwards to write 60 pages of philosophy every month? Kindly reflect a little and don't talk facile nonsense. Even if a thing can be done in a moment or a few days by Yoga which would ordinarily take a long, "assiduous, sincere and earnest" cultivation, that would of itself show the power of the Yoga-force. But a faculty that did not exist appears quickly and spontaneously or impotence changes into highest potency or an obstructed talent changes with equal rapidity into fluent and facile sovereignty. If you deny that evidence, no evidence will convince you because you are determined to think otherwise.

1-11-1935

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Q: So about your style too, it is difficult to understand how much the Force has contributed towards its perfection.

A: It may be difficult for you to understand, but it is not difficult for me, since I have followed my own evolution from stage to stage with a perfect vigilance and following up of the process. I have made no endeavour in writing. I have simply left the higher Power to work and when it did not work, I made no efforts at all. It was in the old intellectual days that I sometimes tried to force things and not after I started the development of poetry and prose by Yoga. Let me remind you also that when I was writing the Arya and also since whenever I write these letters or replies, I never think or seek for expressions or try to write in good style; it is out of a silent mind that I write whatever comes ready-shaped from above. Even when I correct, it is because the correction comes in the same way. Where then is the place for

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even a slight endeavour or any room at all for "my great endeavours"? Well?

By the way, please try to understand that the supra-intellectual (not the supramental only) is the field of a spontaneous automatic action. To get it or to get yourself open to it needs effort, but once it acts there is no effort. Your grey matter does not easily open; it closes up also too easily, so each time an effort has to be made, perhaps too much effort—if your grey matter would sensibly accommodate itself to the automatic flow there would not be the difficulty and the need of "assiduous, sincere and earnest endeavour" each time, methinks. Well?

I challenge your assertion that the Force is more easily potent to produce spiritual results than mental (literary) results. It seems to me the other way round. In my own case the first time I started Yoga, prāṇāyāma, etc., I laboured five hours a day for a long time and concentrated and struggled for five years without any least spiritual result, (when the spiritual experiences did come, they were as unaccountable and automatic as—as blazes), but poetry came like a river and prose like a flood and other things too that were mental, vital or physical, not spiritual richnesses or openings. I have seen in many cases an activity of the mind in various directions as the first or at least early result. Why? Because there is less resistance, more co-operation from the confounded lower members for these things than for a psychic or a spiritual change. That is easy to understand at least. Well?

1-11-1935

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

A: The capacity for it can come with the inner knowledge. E.g. I understood nothing about painting before I did Yoga. A moment's illumination in Alipore jail opened my vision and since then I have understood with the intuitive perception and vision. I do not know the technique, of course, but I can catch

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it at once if anybody with knowledge speaks of it. That would have been impossible to me before.

29-12-1934

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

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

29-12-1934

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Q: When one hears that you had to plod through a lot, one wonders whether the story of Valmiki's sudden opening of poetic faculties is true—whether such a miracle is really possible.

A: Plod about what? For some things I had to plod—other things came in a moment or in two or three days like Nirvana or the power to appreciate painting. The "latent" philosopher failed to come out at the first shot (when I was in Calcutta)—after some years of incubation (?) it burst out like a volcano as soon as I started writing the Arya. There is no damned single rule for these things. Valmiki's poetic faculty might open suddenly like a champagne bottle, but it does not follow that everybody's will do like that.

1-4-1935