help me, I will try my best not to complain henceforward and pray to believe that it is all for the best and that the Divine has not abandoned me – though the prospects portend that.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
Letter ID: 449
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
May 4, 1934
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(...) a bad headache – and can’t work much, which makes it sadder still with me. However, no more of that. If possible help me, I will try my best not to complain henceforward and pray to believe that it is all for the best and that the Divine has not abandoned me – though the prospects portend that.
Nishikanta has written a prārthanā [prayer] today which is very beautiful and I will send it to you tomorrow. He was asking me to remind you of him and to tell you that he somehow consoles himself with poetics and thus divert his growing melancholy. I let you know this as he prayed to me to do so.
I had put to you in my yesterday morning’s letter some questions on Vairāgya1 to which I had expected an answer. If you should have mislaid the letter it is thus:
Amal2 told me Vairagya was morbid and a friend of mine wrote to me in Yogic Sadhan you strongly disapproved of Vairagya. But I marvel how one could stick to spiritual life without an intense Vairagya. In my own case I find I have been favoured with not more than one concrete spiritual realisation: that is, Vairagya. But I believe it is this that has been my saviour, otherwise with my weak faith I would have run away like a shot. But it is this intense dislike of outside and the world that prevents. So how can I say it is undesirable – which is implied by Amal’s “morbid”?
As to Amal, a little bit of Vairagya on his part might have been very useful to him in getting rid of the vital bonds of K.D. Sethna which still cling around him and prevent his psychic being from occupying these fields of his nature. As to Yogic Sadhan, it is not my composition nor its contents the essence of my Yoga, whatever the publishers may persist in saying in their lying blush in spite of my protests.
I have objected in the past to Vairagya of the ascetic kind and the tamasic kind and by
the tamasic kind I mean that spirit which comes defeated from life, not because it is really disgusted with life, but because it could not cope with it or conquer its prizes; for it comes to Yoga as a kind of asylum for the maimed or weak and to the Divine as a consolation prize for the failed boys in the world-class. The Vairagya of one who has tasted the world’s gifts or prizes but found them insufficient or finally tasteless and turns away towards a higher and more beautiful ideal or the Vairagya of one who has done his part in life’s battles but seen that something greater is demanded of the soul, is perfectly helpful and a good gate to the Yoga. Also the sattwic Vairagya which has learned
what life is and turns to what is above and behind life. By the ascetic Vairagya I mean that which denies life and world altogether and wants to disappear into the Indefinite
– I
object to it for those who come to this Yoga because it is incompatible with my aim which is to bring the Divine into life. But if one is satisfied with life as it is, then there is no reason to seek to bring the Divine into life – so Vairagya in the sense of dissatisfaction with life as it is is perfectly admissible and even in a certain sense indispensable for my Yoga.
1 Vairāgya: disgust or distaste for the worldly life.
2 K.D. Sethna (1904), a Parsi poet and critic.
3 SABCL, volume 22: kind. By
4 SABCL, volume 22: learnt
5 SABCL, volume 22: Indefinable
6 CWSA, volume 29: and I
Current publication:
[A letter: ] Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo to Dilip / edited by Sujata Nahar, Shankar Bandyopadhyay.- 1st ed.- In 4 Volumes.- Volume 2. 1934 – 1935.- Pune: Heri Krishna Mandir Trust; Mysore: Mira Aditi, 2003.- 405 p.
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