Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
Your letter is cheering to a great extent. It would have been fully cheering if I could have had the full conviction that it is not so worded to cheer a little. For I somehow feel that such words of good cheer had gone also to Harin and others who at last came to what they came to: all but shipwreck. The reason for this diffidence I could not drive home to you hitherto and that is why I am haunted often by the idea that our Guru is a marvellous superman but not human enough to understand why humans are so sorrowful and what causes them these besetting sorrows: the absence of some abiding peace and restfulness and sense of security in life – a power to be able to feel that the Divine does prop without their being aware of it. When such a sense of loneliness comes the evidence of a Somnath or another gives but scanty succour. But I won’t labour this hackneyed theme. If I revert to it still, it is only to let you know that though I did a lot of japa etc. today I feel again rather amorphous if not exactly sad. It is these ups and downs of the spiritual life – the fugitiveness of joys that cause me so much sadness so often. For one should have thought (which my experience hitherto contradicts) that the spiritual Light would be more abiding than the light of elation of worldly joys. But this I have not been able to impress upon you so far and you have (whenever I have alluded to this absence of concrete realisations which are somewhat enduring) resorted to Socratic dialectics to corner me and prove that nothing after all is concrete. Of course I can’t cope with you in penmanship – but still the fact doth remain O Guru, that the heart wants some abiding peace, some feeling of Divine guidance, some lifting of the veil which blinds, some enlargement of the vision which gives a sense of unity with and meaning to the world of senses, and above all a feeling of love outflowing within one. Instead of all that there is a continuous 
tussle with one’s doubts and shortcomings, etc. and a desolate conviction that one can’t merit the Divine joy, grace, etc. unless one is wholly blemishless. Even that would be somewhat supportable had one seen that it is so with all. But as I saw it is not so with many unfaulty people who come here for a short while and go back to the world. They have the feeling of Mother’s guidance and force and experiences to speak about with great exaltation which I do believe to be genuine, at least with some (though about Harin’s exaltations galore you will surely forgive me now if I beg to retain my old doubts – I had never believed he was truthful when he used to brag so right and left) and do envy these fortunate souls. Anyhow I won’t give vent to these anymore but try to dwell on the comforting fact that Mother and you at least have some love for me and that my loyalty to you, if not inner surrender, is genuine as I found yesterday for which I am indeed grateful to the Divine or Krishna or whoever it is that constantly lures but always eludes in a rather disheartening way to say the least. But I will try not to lament more, but aspire for faith and patience, since there is no other way. But I thank you for your kind and well-meaning assurance that I progress all the more gratefully because I see my difficulties remain and the heart finds only very short-lived feelings of rest and security as ever. Anyhow –
I write according to my knowledge of the processes of sadhana which being a thing spiritual works within and not only by surface means. If my knowledge is wrong or imperfect, so be it; but what I write is never a “well-meaning” insincerity or falsehood, that much I can state.
I hope that you will soon acquire the faith and patience for which you aspire and these oscillations cease. For me the path of Yoga has always been a battle as well as a journey, a thing of ups and downs, of light followed by darkness, followed by a greater light – but nobody is better pleased than myself when a disciple can arrive out of all that to the smooth and clear path which the human physical mind quite rightly yearns for!