Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
The mistake was an old obstinate suggestion returning so as to bring about the old reactions which have to be got over. It is your old error of the greatness and “grimness” of God, Supramental, etc. which was used to bring back the wrong ideas and the gloom. All this talk about grimness and sternness is sheer rot – you will excuse me for the expression, but there is no other that is adequate. The only truth about it is that I am not demonstrative or expansive in public – but I never was. Nevinson seeing me presiding at the Surat Nationalist Conference – which was not a joke and other people were as serious as myself – spoke of me as that most politically dangerous of men, “the man who never smiles” which made people who knew me smile very much. You seem to have somewhere in you a Nevinson impression of me. Or perhaps you agree with Shanta1 who wrote demanding of me why I smiled only with the lips and complained that it was not a satisfactory smile like the Mother’s. All the same, whatever I may have said to Jyotirmayi or Jyotirmayi may have said to you, I have always given a large place to mirth and laughter and my letters in that style are only the natural outflow of my personality. I have never been “grim” in my life – that is the Stalin-Mussolini style, it is not mine; the only trait I share with the “grim” people is obstinacy in following out my aim in life but I do it quietly and simply and have always done. Don’t set upon me gloomy imaginations and take them for the real Aurobindo.
By the way, if you get such imaginations like the Narasimha Hiranyakashipu2 one, I shall begin to think that the Overmind has got hold of you also. I don’t know the gentleman (Narasimha) personally but only by hearsay; if he was there I certainly did not recognise him. I always thought of him as a symbol – or perhaps a divinised Neanderthal man who went for Hiranyakashipu (whoever H. was) and cut him open in the true Neanderthal way! For myself I was sitting there 
very quiet and as pacific as anybody at Geneva itself – more so in fact and receiving the stream of people with much inner amiability and outwardly, a frequent “lip-smile” – so where the deuce was room for Narasimha there? Besides it seems to me that I have long overpassed the man-beast stage of evolution – perhaps I flatter myself? – so again why Narasimha. At the most there may have been some Power behind me guarding against the stream of “grim” difficulties – really grim these – which had been cropping up down to the Darshan eve. If so, it was not part of myself nor was I identified with it. So exit Narasimha.
I hope the sex-thoughts will take their exit too. As for gestures, etc., I have told you repeatedly that I – and, I may add the Overmind – are not responsible for what any sadhak may do in that line. It is their own method or fancy or whatever you like to call it – any more than I am responsible for Meher Baba’s3 state or Mahatma Gandhi’s Monday silence. These are aids to silence which I do not use myself – if anybody wants to use them, why not, let him do so! Nobody is obliged to imitate. It is no result of the Overmind. The Mother has the Overmind as much as anybody – she has never been obliged by it to stop all speaking. In the overmental state one can speak or be silent at will – there is no such “grim” obligation as you fondly imagine. I assure you the Overmind can quite accommodate with speech and laughter.