Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1934 — 1935

Letter ID: 622

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

September 14, 1935

The Mother smiled because she was looking at you – the inner you also of course with the inward look – and from what she saw it came again to her “Yes, you are faithful”. Which was just what you were being by resisting the suggestions of the insinuating adverse Force.

As for these emotions, I don’t think Krishnaprem would have at all objected to them – as I understood his letters – and we certainly do not and have never done. He would say, I think, that they – such feelings towards the Guru – are quite akin to and near to the Light – for the Light can express itself in the emotional being as well as through the self and mind. What you express in your letter is precisely what I mean by the growth or opening of the psychic being; the feelings you express are what I call the psychic emotions – fidelity, gratitude, self-offering, service, the love that cleaves to the Beloved whatever may happen – what else do I mean by self-offering, self-giving? It is when the whole being is recast in this spirit, when all is an expression of love, fidelity, service, self-offering that the psychic being is complete and surrender becomes possible. Strange! you gird at the psychic way and yet you write to me almost in the same breath one of the most psychic letters possible!

The fact is that your mind has got mixed up with all sorts of preconceived mental notions about these things and that is why you misunderstand or fail to understand what Krishnaprem or I write to you. There is such a misprision about the conquest of ego and the seeking of Krishna for Krishna’s own sake and the crumbs – which I want to set right in another letter; it would be too long for this Saturday night.

Anyhow I have no objection to your meditating or even to your giving a trial to asceticism – I object to it as a goal, but have no feeling against it as a passage, for I have been there myself and so has the Mother. I am bound to say that many in the Ashram would be better for a taste of it. Also I have never bound you down to crumbs; I have only pointed out that most seekers start with crumbs, proceed with slices and then get the whole loaf, and it is not good spiritual politics to be dissatisfied with what comes and jump into the slough of despond because you can’t get the whole loaf straight off. I have no objection to your getting the whole loaf at once – provided it does not give you indigestion as it or something that looked like it gave to X, Y and Z. But in their case also did I ever object to their swallowing that big production of the spiritual oven? Never! I even helped them to it at all risks to them and me. So!