Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
Letter ID: 557
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
February 2, 1935
I have received Rs.240 rent for the other house (I don’t know why he insured for Rs.270). I deposit the same as well [as?] Rs.300 from the bank with Amrita.
The bank balance is low. And this tenant sends an estimate for Rs.570 for repairs! How to reduce it? If it can’t be reduced, well, it will be difficult to offer Rs.300 even 
next two months – which I hope Mother will excuse since it is not my “fault”. However let Mother see the estimate and suggest how to reduce it. This is a very good [several words missing] very honest and he offers to do the repairs as we order him to do it.
I don’t send you anymore translation now as I didn’t get any corrected from you this morning. If I get some back by tomorrow morning I will send a page more, if you want that is. Otherwise I will leave you in comparative peace – except asking you to send me some force: I was working hard – but in compunction I tried a lot of meditation for the past two days and slept so much that I feel a sinner. No more sins if you please. That is why I ask you to send me a little stimulant force – not soporific I pray, what I dislike most is sleep – though it is said the yogi’s sleep is as good as non-yogi’s wakefulness, yā niśā sarvabhūtānāṃ tasyām jāgarti saṃyamī, etc. [What is night to all beings there is awake the self-controlled (Gita 2.69)]. At least I don’t want my yogic days to be equal to the nights of the non-yogis. Truly, it is a great problem you know (joking apart!) how to meditate when it is so uninteresting and sleep-productive?
It is impossible to suggest anything about the repairs. It is only Chandulal1 who could do it, but he does not know, naturally, the price of materials, etc. in Calcutta or the exact nature of the repairs that are necessary – without which knowledge no alternative estimate is feasible.
I seem somehow to have forgotten to give the Mother the envelope containing the corrected typescripts this morning. I send it now.
The Yogic sleep is good only when it is Yogic enough to contain something, to be an inner consciousness or an experience of other planes. The jāgarti is important – to be conscious in the sleep, an inner waking. But when the mind is not accustomed, it tends to respond to the impulse towards this “going inside” into an inner consciousness caused by meditation by 
simply falling into the usual sleep to which it is accustomed. Nidrā [sleep] is one of the recognised difficulties of Yoga – nidrā refusing to turn into samādhi, whether svapna samādhi or suṣupti. So the force is necessary and I will try to send it. I only wish people would give me more time for this inner work both for myself and them! But that seems past hoping for.
1 Chandulal: the Ashram engineer.