Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1934 — 1935

Letter ID: 478

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

August 31, 1934

(Dilip received a letter from Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan of Andhra University asking Sri Aurobindo to write a statement for a book on “Contemporary British Philosophy.”)

My dear Dilip Kumar Roy,

I am sending the enclosed to Sri Arabindo Ghose. You can easily understand my anxiety to have a contribution from him. I hope he will be kind enough to oblige me by contributing a statement.

How are you getting on?

*

(Dilip’s note:) What to answer?

*

(Sri Aurobindo wrote the following on the front page of the letter:)

Great Scott!

(For the explanation of this agonized ejaculation see the back!)

(And on the back:)

Look here! Do these people expect me to turn myself again into a machine for producing articles? The times of the Bande Mataram and Arya are over, thank God! I have now only the Ashram correspondence and that is “overwhelming” enough in all conscience without starting philosophy for standard books and the rest of it.

And philosophy! Let me tell you in confidence that I never, never, never was a philosopher – although I have written philosophy which is another story altogether. I knew precious little about philosophy before I did the Yoga and came to Pondicherry – I was a poet and a politician, not a philosopher! How I managed to do it? First, because Richard proposed to me to co-operate in a philosophical review – and as my theory was that a Yogi ought to be able to turn his hand to anything, I could not very well refuse; and then he had to go to the war and left me in the lurch with sixty-four pages a month of philosophy all to write by my lonely self. Secondly, I had only to write down in the terms of the intellect all that I had observed and come to know in practising Yoga daily and the philosophy was there automatically. But that is not being a philosopher!

I don’t know how to excuse myself to Radhakrishna – for I can’t say all that to him. Perhaps you can find a formula for me? Perhaps: “So occupied, not a moment for any other work, can’t undertake because he might not be able to carry out his promise.” What do you say?