Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

Letter ID: 223

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

April 6, 1932

Your poem is very fine in language and perfect in rhythm; it seems to me to rise more and more as it proceeds and ends in a very high strain. I find it also well planned. I take it that it shows first the descent of the Divine Krishna in the power of his light and the sweetness of love into the sorrowful and darkened world for a new manifestation and creation; then the storm and lightnings of his power sweeping away all that veils and obscures, troubles and oppresses, last the enthronement, in the heart, of love and the Lord of love; that is a very good architecture.

If you like you can use the passage about Rama and Krishna for your book; I have inserted one or two alterations to make my meaning more precise and clear.

Krishnaprem’s letter is as refreshing as its predecessors; he always takes things by the right end. And his way of putting them is delightfully pointed and downright, as is natural to one who has got to the root of the matter. But I find it difficult to take Jung and the psychologists very seriously [when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the flicker of their torch-lights]¹, though perhaps one ought to, for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. No doubt, they are very remarkable men in their own field, but this new psychology looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious underground super-ego together and imagining that their first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t = cat, t-r-e-e = tree) is the foundation of all knowledge. They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of things is above and not below, upari budhna eṣām [their foundation is above]. The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above. The self-chosen field of these psychologists is besides poor and dark and limited; you must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the province of the greater psychology awaiting its hour before which these poor gropings will disappear and come to nothing.

If Aruna’s voice is good, all the more reason why she should develop her potentialities first and not spoil them by a premature performance. The consciousness is too unripe at this age and she must not be pushed in front.

¹ The phrase within brackets was added later by Sri Aurobindo.

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