Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
Yes, you can include the letter [of 27 December 1930] on Russell’s external man and the two last paragraphs of that on Yogic powers. But do you not think that to speak of chef, chauffeur and day-labourer in this way might be taken as throwing a slur on three very estimable classes? After all, a chef, a chauffeur or a day-labourer may have an inner life and it would not do to appear to suggest otherwise. I don’t quite know what to put – for the names would suggest nothing to the general reader. Perhaps something like “Ramaswamy the chef or Joseph the chauffeur” and “Cheloo the day-labourer,” indicating a reference to individuals would half get us out of the difficulty.
Certainly, you can send for the Kaviraji oil. Rheumatism is not a thing to be encouraged and would not be even if it brought rapture. There was nothing wrong in your letter about the door-sill, nothing to which Chandulal or anybody could take exception1. Obviously Chandulal’s inspiration was not a happy one in this instance. Perhaps he measured things by his own head and forgot that there were in the Ashram and in the Trésor house higher heads on broader 
shoulders. Samatā [equanimity], I suppose, is a counsel of perfection, even when one breaks one’s head, but it cannot be expected from everyone in all circumstances only perhaps from those who are sitting on the “hill-top” – so that is not a “transgression”. As for divine rapture, a knock on head or foot or elsewhere can be received with the physical Ananda of pain or pain + Ananda or pure physical Ananda – for I have often, quite involuntarily, made the experiment myself and passed with honours. It began, by the way, as far back as in Alipur jail when I got bitten in my cell by some very red and ferocious-looking warrior ants and found to my surprise that pain and pleasure are conventions of our senses. But I do not expect that unusual reaction from others. And I suppose there are limits, e.g. the case of a picketer in Madras or Dr. Noel Paton. In any case, this way of having rapture is better off the list and the Lilliputian doorway was not a happy contrivance.
I am not surprised by what you2 tell me of the method of advertisement to which even great names have succumbed; it is the age of advertisement and America and this kind of thing is, I suppose, universal nowadays. But I agree with you that it is not pretty.