Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
I did not answer that long letter of yours because I could not see that an answer would be at all helpful. I have more and more ceased to discuss things like this, for discussion only prolongs them and makes them worse: they belong to the vital plane and the vital does not follow reason in its movements but obliges reason to follow them and support them. The only way to get rid of them is to refuse always to indulge them in their play or to justify them by the reason – to refuse on the ground that, whether justified or not, they are wrong and not wanted by the higher Truth and Light and Love we are seeking after.
I suppose I have nothing much to learn about the outer being of this or that sadhak – even in the best it is faulty enough from the spiritual point of view. If insincerity means the unwillingness of some part of the being to live according to the highest light one has or to equate the outer with the inner man, this part is always insincere in all. I do not see any use in dwelling on that; the only way, according to my view of it, is to lay stress on the inner being and develop in it the psychic and spiritual consciousness till that comes down in it which pushes out the darkness in the outer man also.
I have never said that the vital is to have no part in the love of the Divine, only that it must purify and ennoble itself in the light of the true psychic feeling. The results of self-loving love between human beings are so poor and contrary in the end (that is what I mean by the ordinary vital love) that I want something purer and nobler and higher in the vital also for the movement towards the Divine.
I am keeping Krishnaprem still as I want to write something on it, not for circulation, but for my own use. As all my judgments about poetry (whether about yours or Harin’s or Arjava’s or Amal’s) are so much challenged by the contrary opinion of others, I would like to have before me in black and white my own view on the strictures made. It may be of use hereafter.
P.S. The Mother expects you on Monday as usual. I am sending you the completion of the four line sample I gave you for your Bengali metre.