poetry but in speech to pretend to others that they were not there. That was because something in him was determined not to change.]]2Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
Letter ID: 625
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
September 20, 1935
Last evening I saw Harin off at the station for a few minutes. He looked very black in the face and gloomy too. I felt for the poor fellow who lost all through his own waywardness, etc. Still I felt a little sad as I came back alone. The question recurred to me again and again if Sri Krishna had truly meant it concretely or merely poetised when he had said na hi kalyāṇa-kṛt kaścid durgatiṃ tāta gacchati1?
You have forgotten the context. Arjuna asks what of a yogi who fails in this life because of his errors – does he fall from both the ordinary life and the spiritual and perish like a broken chord? Krishna says no. All who follow the Good get the reward of their effort and don’t perish as they get it first in the life beyond and afterwards in the next birth in which the Yogi who fails now may even resume his effort under the best conditions and arrive at Siddhi. Krishna never said that nobody ever in this life fails who attempts the Yoga.
For all of us have some failing or other – enough for any Divine to declare us unfit after even a superficial examination of our immeritoriousness. Harin’s demerit seems to have been – constantly thinking that he was too meritorious.
[[Was that his only difficulty? Egoism was indeed his first and main difficulty, but the others? He himself knew that they were there, but he chose not only to keep them out of his poetry but in speech to pretend to others that they were not there. That was because something in him was determined not to change.]]2
I remember when I was on bad terms with him, as I perused his poems of luscious self-approbation, I told myself constantly: “The fellow is living in a fool’s paradise – too unsceptic for Dilipian taste.”... Though even now I like beautiful poetry like Harm’s qua aesthetic poetry. But it is not what I was going to say. I was going to say that Harin’s collapse – he looked perfectly annihilated – made me think why should a seeker, like him, after spiritual life (for a seeker he was, was he not?) head so straight for disaster especially with you and Mother as his gurus?
And if a man refuses to listen to his gurus and claims to be wiser and more righteous than they are?
(...) This morning as I pranamed Mother, I felt a deep emotion with tears (which the Lightists disapprove)
The Light does not disapprove.
and this song was the result. As I was singing it I felt deeply stirred this morning.
This song is in the same metre (not altogether the same rhyme scheme all through) as my father’s famous and beautiful song on Nostalgia which I copy out side by side for your convenience. I used to sing this song to thousands in Bengal. Anilbaran, you may remember, had composed a year or two ago a song in the same metre and rhyme scheme which Sahana sang to Mother: Tui Mā āmār hiyār hiyā tui Mā āmār ānkhir ālo [Mother thou art the heart of my heart, thou art the light of my eyes] I will sing this song sometime to you and Mother – my own I mean, as it came out of a deep emotion and very spontaneously.
1 Pārtha naiveha nāmutra vināśas tasya vidyate na hi kalyāṇa-kṛt kaścid durgatiṃ tāta gacchati:
“O Son of Pṛthā (Arjuna)! Neither in this life nor hereafter is there destruction for him; know for certain that one who treads the path of virtue can never come to grief.”
(Gita, 6.40)
2 The double square brackets are Sri Aurobindo’s.