Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1934 — 1935

Letter ID: 455

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

June 1934

It is gratifying that Anilkumar should rank me with Ramakrishna and Chaitanya, but however gratified I may be, I cannot help saying that his remark takes the first prize for absurdity and ignorance. As if thousands of Yogis, saints and mystics had not realised God and only three people had done it! Why do people go out of their way to make such silly pronouncements, I wonder! But perhaps it was merely a rhetorical flourish or rather a way of hinting that although Sri Aurobindo may have had some realisation (perhaps) of the Divine, he was unable to communicate anything of it to anybody else. I had thought differently, but that must have been an imagination of my ego – for Anilkumar surely must know – and also the Doctor.

Saurin’s omniscience, so far as it is true, announces nothing new – I suppose his omniscience simply amounts to the hearing of much gossip perhaps through the channel of the Doctor. The Doctor’s sexuality, domesticity, love of bourgeois comfort are as ancient as Methuselah – they took him away from here once in chase of these vital satisfactions, but he found them not so satisfactory after all and fled to some mountain, found the mountain also deficient and pleaded for several years to come back to this detestable and uncomfortable Ashram. The only new news in Saurin’s lot is that he proposes to go for good – his own version is that he is coming back in August as early as possible and is leaving his worldly goods here in the meantime. However Saurin may know his mind better, as they are intimate.

About the depressions, the first question is whether they are the temporary depressions which everyone almost has on the way or are they, as you seem to suggest, an increasing and in a way depletive thing, a good bye to hope and sadhana. It is quite possible that there is a wide-spread attempt to press depression on the sadhaks, for depression is the obstacle natural to this stage of the struggle with the subconscient Ignorance out of which the external human nature is a formation and the roots of its unwillingness to change are there. But you speak of the depression as if it were not only definitive and absolute but universal (“the other sadhaks”). If so, a retreat to Kashmir in the wake of Anilkumar would be imperative. Kashmir is a magnificent place, its rivers unforgettable and on one of its mountains with a shrine of Shankaracharya on it I got my second realisation of the Infinite (long before I started Yoga). But I seem to know that a few at least of the sadhaks are making a progress with which they are well satisfied, that some have what appears to them a concrete realisation and others have experiences which are leading them forward and do not complain because they have not yet the one definitive thing. And their number seems to me to increase rather than decrease. Even those who grumble, some of them, do not seem inclined to take their flight to other climes, but, after delivering their souls by a good grumble, return to the endeavour at Yoga. As long as it is so, I see no necessity for a débandade [headlong flight].

I am rather astonished at your finding Wordsworth’s realisation, however mental and incomplete, to be abstract and vague or dictated by emotional effervescence. Wordsworth was hardly an emotional or effervescent character. As for an abstract realisation, it sounds like a round square; I have never had one myself and find it difficult to believe in it. But certainly a realisation in its beginning can be vague and nebulous or it can be less or more vivid. Still, Wordsworth’s did not make that impression on me and to him it certainly came as something positive, powerful and determinative. He stayed there and went no farther, did not get to the source, because more was hardly possible in his time and surroundings, at least to a man of his mainly moral and intellectual temper.

In a more deep and spiritual sense a concrete realisation is that which makes the thing realised more real, dynamic, intimately present to the consciousness than any physical thing can be. Such a realisation of the personal Divine or of the impersonal Brahman or of the self does not usually come at the beginning of a sadhana or in the first years or for many years. It comes so to a very few; mine came fifteen years after my first pre-Yogic experience in London and in the fifth year after I started Yoga. That I consider extraordinary quick, an express train speed almost – though there may no doubt have been several quicker achievements. But to expect and demand it so soon and get fed up because it does not come and declare Yoga impossible except for two or three in the ages would betoken in the eyes of any experienced Yogi or sadhak a rather rash and abnormal impatience. Most would say that a slow development is the best one can hope for in the first years and only when the nature is ready and fully concentrated towards the Divine can the definitive experience come. To some rapid preparatory experiences can come at a comparatively early stage, but even they cannot escape the labour of the consciousness which will make these experiences culminate in the realisation that is enduring and complete. It is not a question of my liking or disliking your demand or attitude. It is a matter of fact and truth and experience, not of liking or disliking, two things which do not usually sway me. It is the fact that people who are grateful and cheerful and ready to go step by step, even by slow steps, if need be, do actually march faster and more surely than those who are impatient and in haste and at each step despair or [murmur?]. It is what I have always seen – there may be instances to the contrary and I have no objection to your being one – none at all. I only say that if you could maintain “hope and fervour and faith,” there could be a much bigger chance, that is all.

This is just a personal explanation – a long explanation but which seemed to be called for by your enhancement of my glory – and it is dictated by a hope that after all in the long run an accumulation of explanations may persuade you to prefer the sunny path to the grey one, the one thing wanted is that you should push through and arrive.