Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
I am rather in a fix. Harin came twice to me. The first time at 12.30 when I was working at my novel. He didn’t knock finding my door locked. Then he came at 2.30. He said he had to run a house and this month Mrinalini1 would be sending him less than she did last month so he wants to eke out his income by contributing some poems to the Statesman whose editor Mr. Moore I know and who had once given him some Rs.40 he told me. I said I would gladly help him if I could, so he said he would give me six poems for Mr. Moore. There. But I feel a little uneasy now. If I understand rightly that he has your full consent, etc. in going to that house, I suppose I may help him in this way which costs me nothing. But then he doesn’t give the money to Mother this time, so? What should I do? Of course he may send the poems on his own, but I 
understood you were against his publishing poems at all just now. Is that true? If it is, then evidently I am in the wrong. But how to back out now? You see, I have always been willing to help all who came my way and so I blurted I would gladly send his poems to Press. It was an impulse born of a long-standing habit – vous comprenez [do you understand]? But Harin’s is I gather a somewhat peculiar case. He is in the Ashram spiritually, yet not in it. He accepts you as his guru yet runs a house after having lived in your house. He was complaining that he was prevented from publishing his poems, and yet now sends (forced to poor fellow, I feel for him, yet it is his own bed he has made and he must sleep there I suppose?) poems for money – to keep body and soul together. He sees all yet does not come to pranam. Is retired, yet goes to theatres. Is in hush yet speaks with Sita three hours and a half daily (he himself told me – from 12.30 to 3.30 daily, good Lord! even in my moony days I could hardly talk for more than an hour at a stretch on romance with qui que ce soit [whomsoever]! And he with his bird-of-paradise silence talks and talks like this after three months of slate-pencil – forgive my frivolity – give the old frivolous Dilip a little latitude at times since he is becoming a desperate reformer of himself – truly – lives like a true hermit now!). The other day he started singing at my place and simply would not stop when I hinted to him more than once to. Still in confidence my Master – must emulate you now in deep secrecy, you know, must make headway in every blessed direction supposed to be spiritual, what?
But levity apart. Tell me in confidence if you will, for I have now become secretive like a sepulchre, what should I do? O Lord – what a long letter on you long-suffering Divine. Such a letter on Statesmanian poems. Yet, que voulez-vous? Yoga is no laughing matter. Must look round if there are imps about ready to pounce through the Dilipian wrong movement anent Statesman-Harin affair. Really I would gladly obey whatever your commandment. Shall I 
tell Harin to shift for himself? But he may be offended now, I warn you, since I inadvertently agreed to help and since the poor Mother’s poet must live even apart from the Mother through poems on her. Anomaly. Mais que voulez-vous. “Anomaly, thy name is Human!”
I have today fifty letters each two thousand pages long – of course this is not a mathematically accurate statement, but it expresses the impression they make on me – so excuse brevity in my answer to your length. When Harin went to his outside house, it was understood that he was going to lead the “independent” life – also that he was going to try to earn his living by poetry, etc. and was free to publish. So as you have promised to help him statesmanly you need have no scruple in carrying out the promise. He has informed us about sending his A.E. poem to the Statesman. Our attitude in these matters is perfectly neutral and passive – we neither approve nor disapprove. As for Harin’s contradictions, well it was just to see what he could do with these contradictions that he went out; Mother approved his going because he had to find his way between his soul and his outer nature; it was impossible that he should go on swinging between the two in the impossibly extreme see-saw. Note that we have not rejected him nor he us – he is making an experiment and we let him do it because we consider it inevitable. Evanesce. But all this is frightfully confidential, if you please, and only to give you a central light on the matter.