Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 3

Letter ID: 816

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

September 6, 1936

Most rollicking! I got your comments typed and all laughed above the mental. Yes Dr. Radhakumud will preside with a glad sadness. C’est devenu son métier [It has become his profession] – que voulez-vous?

As for me I am in the vortex of great energy – (no wrong impulse being there, I suppose, what?) and am working like a – what, shall we say a volcano of penmanship. After, e.g., a strenuous day last evening I sat down to write a long essay on music at the request of the voluminous Puja special of Anandabazar and wrote from 8 p.m. till ‘12.30 a.m. at one sitting and finished. Went to bed at 1 a.m. and got up at 4 to do japa. Qu’en dites-vous?

Umph! Such abbreviated sleep is contrary to Yogic discipline. The rule for sleep is the same as for food, not too much, not too little, but proper! However, so long as you don’t get discoloured.

Have had a short nap today. Colour is there alright.

Only tell me why this inordinate energy? Is it the result of your force as I darkly suspect? If not, why not? Or rather how comes it? And how to tackle it? Of course I am trying all the time to offer, etc. Help me please to that end.

I suppose it is the result of the Force. I have noticed it takes that form often even when I do not exactly intend to put it for that purpose. No harm though.

Have dreamed again of Sotuda. The accident somehow affected me a little I fear. But the musings are on the wane thereanent.

Do I understand rightly in taking you wanted to send regular force? If so, then do I infer rightly that this Force is at the root of this sudden bout of tireless energy? If not whence and wherefore comes it with such gush? And then tell me if I am not vitiating it by too much writing. I take a rasa even in dry work now! Is that right?

Perfectly right.

Well. No more to write – or rather no more use in taking your time for work I can till doomsday with none becoming on earth a bit the wiser for my lucubrations, what?

No, unfortunately. After you have spat all your wisdom on them, the human race remains as stupid as when they hanged by their tails to trees – only m a different way.

Au revoir, guru. Really I am glad for Sotuda from every point of view. His coming will be a dire blow to the heart of Dame Self-complacency. A veritable havoc it is. You know how all are against Pondicherry, strange? Sotuda was telling me constantly how none liked his coming here not even his wife. Tell me apropos, is that a reason why she died so suddenly?

Obviously, but it is rather a drastic way of removing a difficulty. But Fate has her own notions about things.

Also Vidya was telling me how at her place all said to her father-in-law, “Let her go anywhere except Pondicherry, never allow her to visit Pondicherry.” How strange! Tagore wrote to Sahana lately that the very name of Pondicherry has become a nightmare with many in Bengal. Qu’en dites-vous?

Why on earth a nightmare? Do they think they will themselves be drawn willy-nilly into this awful whirlpool? Or is it a philanthropic fear for others? However it proves that Pondicherry (of course not the Ashram, not the Dupleix statue, and the Catholic Museum) has become a thing alive and a power, for it [is] only a living Power that can create such fear and opposition. I suppose it is a fear of the Unknown + a fear of the disturbance of their safe comfortable bourgeois life. As if anything were safe now in the world today. But it is a persistent phenomenon of human nature to fear anything out of the ordinary – absurd, then, but perhaps not strange.