Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1934 — 1935

Letter ID: 530

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

December 23, 1934

I thought I had intimated that the sragdhara¹ was a great success – so why conclude that I did not appreciate it?

I do not understand also why you shall assume that I am displeased with the karma-questioning. I castigated or fustigated Nirod not from displeasure, not even “more in sorrow than in anger,” but for fun and also from a high sense of duty; for that erring mortal was bold enough to generalise from his very limited experience and impose it as a definite law of Yoga, discrediting in the process my own immortal philosophy. What then could I do but jump on him in a spirit of genial massacre?

I am afraid your letter does very much the same thing. In spite of your disclaimer you practically come to the conclusion that all my nonsense about integral Yoga and karma being as much a way to realisation as jnana and bhakti is either a gleaming chimera or practicable only by Avatars or else a sheer laborious superfluity – since one can bump straight into the Divine through the open door of Bhakti or sweep majestically in him by the easy high road of meditation; so why this scramble through the jungle of karma by which nobody ever reached anywhere? The old Yogas are true, are they not? Then why a newfangled more difficult Yoga with unheard talk about the supramental and god knows what else? There can be no answer to that; for I can only answer by a repetition of the statement of my own knowledge and experience – that is what I have done in today’s answer to Nirod – and that amounts only to a perverse obstinacy in riding my gleaming and dazzling chimera and forcing my nuisance of a superfluity on a world weary of itself and anxious to get a short easy cut to the Divine. Unfortunately, I don’t believe in short cuts – at any rate none ever led me where I wanted to go. However, let it rest there.

I have never disputed the truth of the old Yogas – I have myself had the experience of Vaishnava bhakti and of Nirvana. I recognise their truth in their own field and for their own purpose – the truth of their experience so far as it goes – though I am in no way bound to accept the truth of the mental philosophies founded on the experience. I similarly find that my Yoga is true in its own field – a larger field, as I think – and for its own purpose. The purpose of the old is to get away from life to the Divine – so, obviously, let us drop Karma. The purpose of the new is to reach the Divine and bring the fullness of what is gained into life – for that, Yoga by works is indispensable. It seems to me that there is no mystery about that or anything to perplex anybody – it is rational and inevitable. Only you say that the thing is impossible; but that is what is said about everything before it is done.

I may point out that Karmayoga is not a new but a very old Yoga: the Gita was not written yesterday and Karmayoga existed before the Gita. Your idea that the only justification in the Gita for works is that it is an unavoidable nuisance, so better make the best use of it, is rather summary and crude. If that were all, the Gita would be the production of an imbecile and I would hardly have been justified in writing two volumes on it or the world in [admiring?] it as one of the greatest scriptures, especially for its treatment of the problem of the place of works in spiritual endeavour. There is surely more in it than that. Anyhow your doubt whether works can lead to realisation or rather your flat and sweeping denial of the possibility contradicts the experience of those who have achieved this supposed impossibility. You say that work lowers the consciousness, brings you out of the inner into the outer – yes, if you consent to externalise yourself in it instead of doing works from within; but that is just what one has to learn not to do. Thought and feeling can also externalise one in the same way; but it is a question of linking thought, feeling and act firmly to the inner consciousness by living there and making the rest an instrument. Difficult? Even bhakti is not easy and Nirvana for most men more difficult than all.

You again try to floor me with Ramakrishna. But one thing puzzles me, as Shankara’s stupendous activity of karma puzzles me in the apostle of inaction – you see you are not the only puzzled person in the world. Ramakrishna also gave the image of the jar which ceased gurgling when it was full. Well, but Ramakrishna spent the last years of his life in talking about the Divine and receiving disciples – that was not action, not work? Did Ramakrishna become a half-full jar after being a full one or was he never full? Did he get far away from God and so began a work? Or had he reached a condition in which he was bound neither to rajasic work nor to mental prattling nor to inactivity and silence, but could do from the divine realisation the divine work and speak from the inner consciousness of the divine word? If the last, perhaps, in spite of his dictum, his example at least is rather in my favour.

I do not know why you drag in humanitarianism, Subhash’s activism, philanthropical sevā [service], etc. None of these are part of my Yoga or in harmony with my definition of works, so they don’t touch me. I never thought that Congress politics or feeding the poor or writing beautiful poems would lead straight to Vaikuntha or the Absolute. If it were so, Romesh Dutt on one side and Baudelaire on the other would be the first to attain the Highest and welcome us there. It is not the form of the work itself or mere activity but the consciousness and Godward will behind it that are the essence of Karmayoga; the work is only the necessary instrumentation for the union with the Master of works, the transit to the pure Will and power of Light from the will and power of the Ignorance.

Finally, why suppose that I am against meditation or bhakti? I have not the slightest objection to your taking either or both as the means of approach to the Divine. Only I saw no reason why anyone should fall foul of works and deny the truth of those who have reached, as the Gita says, through works perfect realisation and oneness of nature with the Divine, saṃsiddhim, sādharmyam, as did “Janaka and others”, simply because he himself cannot find or has not yet found their deeper secret – hence my defence of works.

¹ sragdharā: a type of Sanskrit chhanda.

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