Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
Letter ID: 243
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
June 16, 1932
□ Hide link-numbers of differed places
I have not read anything of Lawrence, but I have recently seen indications about him from many quarters; the impression 
given was that of a man of gifts who failed for want of vital balance – like so many others. The prose you have turned into verse – very well, as usual – has certainly quality, though there is not enough to form a definite judgment. A seeker who missed the issue, I should imagine – misled by the vitalistic stress to which the mind of today is a very harassed captive.
I have read your correspondence with Subhash Bose1. Your main point is of course quite the right thing to answer; all this insistence upon action is absurd if one has not the light by which to act. “Yoga must include life and not exclude it” does not mean that we are bound to accept life as it is with all its stumbling ignorance and misery and the obscure confusion of human will and reason and impulse and instinct which it expresses. The advocates of action think that by human intellect and energy making an always new rush, everything can be put right; the present state of the world after a development of the intellect and a stupendous output of energy for which there is no historical parallel is a signal proof of the emptiness
of the illusion under which they labour. Yoga takes the stand that it is only by a change of consciousness that the true basis of life can be discovered; from within outward is indeed the rule. But within does not mean some quarter inch behind the surface. One must go deep and find the soul, the self, the Divine Reality within us and only then can life become a true expression of what we can be instead of a blind and always repeated confused blur of the inadequate and imperfect thing we were. The choice is between remaining in the old jumble and groping about in the hope of stumbling on some discovery or standing back and seeking the Light within till we discover and can build the Godhead within and without us.
1 Subhash Chandra Bose (23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945), the well-known Nationalist leader. Dilip knew him from their student days in England. He was an admirer of Sri Aurobindo’s revolutionary action. Resigning from the I.C.S., Subhash Bose entered the freedom movement and joined the Congress soon after his return to India in 1921. He worked with Chittaranjan Das, was imprisoned many times, and tried to orient the Congress towards firm action. In 1939, he fell out with Gandhi and the Congress, escaped in 1941 from house arrest, fled to Europe and stayed for a while in Germany, trying to muster support for an attack on British India. In 1942, Subhash Bose, reached Japan, then Singapore, and developed the “Indian National Army,” which was to join Japan in its campaign against British India. In 1944, the I.N.A. launched its offensive from Burma, but could not proceed beyond Assam as the Japanese forces became increasingly engaged elsewhere. Subhash Bose disappeared in a plane accident in 1945.
2 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: illusion
Current publication:
[A letter: ] Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo to Dilip / edited by Sujata Nahar, Michel Danino, Shankar Bandopadhyay.- 1st ed.- In 4 Volumes.- Volume 1. 1929 – 1933.- Pune: Heri Krishna Mandir Trust; Mysore: Mira Aditi, 2003.- 384 p.
Other publications: