Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
Letter ID: 591
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
May 1935 (?)
... be1 gladdest of all if he were – but I fail to see any signs of the genius yet in him. I say this humbly and open 
to correction – in fact I would be glad to learn that you and Mother considered him a [born?] painter, that is, a genius. But I want to know whether you really said so. I won’t blab about it – I have no fight left in me – it isn’t worthwhile besides. Still it is good to know – for personal guidance.
Another poem on agni – four in all – a sister (today’s) to yesterday’s. I fear the house itself will be on fire if I encourage so much fieriness? What? In these poems I feel a great power – Nishikanta, Nirod, Kanai and others too feel a great power of concentrated emotion.
Do write on back not here.
I am, by the way, a little too sensitive to power maybe – that is perhaps why I like Nishikanta’s poems (vital?) and painting. I find a familiar friend there – the power I mean. Intuition again of course. But should I distrust it as Leonard Woolf does?
No, Mother did not say that. She said something about what one [who?] has painting in his blood would do and it seems to have been applied to Anilkumar. Anilkumar is still learning; he is very clever and ingenious, loves painting and works hard at it and recently he has been making remarkable progress in technique.
Nishikanta has already his own developed technique and a certain originality of vision – two things which must be there before a man can take risk as a painter. There are on the other hand certain defects and limitations. Power he has but not as yet any consummate harmony.
These observations are of course private and for you only. Mother does not want to pass any public judgment. Let each grow in his own way and to his own possible stature – with as little rivalry or vainglory as may be.
As for intuition – well! One has to make a distinction – if one can – between a pure intuition and a mixed one. A pure intuition carries in it a truth, even if it is only a fragment or point of truth, and can be trusted. A mixed one carries in it some suggestion of truth which gets coated with mental 
matter – here one has to use discrimination and separate the true suggestion from the less reliable mental matter. Intuition and discrimination must always go together so long as one moves in the mental plane – and for some time after.
P.S. From tonight I have resolved (subject to your approval of course) of meditating, japaing, praying, etc. at night – that is not reading and writing at all at night – doing the work in day time and meditating etc. at night. I am a little cowed at the prospect of sufferings this will involve, but perhaps with your help the sufferings may be a little minimised. I am suffering anyhow. So what do you say? Will you help me a little here or would you rather I didn’t try this meditation which I both love and dread? I want to try once more as the Divine may take pity (though it is highly improbable, I grant) by way of a sort of accident, who knows? Life is queer, sadhana is still more so, in which unexpected things do occasionally happen.
I shall help you of course and I don’t say that the accident can’t happen. But you know why I was not anxious that you should go on with the meditation and japa – because of the background of struggle, wrestling for the result with a strong undercurrent of the expectation of failure that had got itself attached to this method. That was why I [wanted?] you to take the way of psychic preparation instead. But if that background were not there, there could be no objection to the continuance of the meditation.
1 The first part of the letter is missing.