Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 3
I could not read your letter at all well this morning – too difficult. I have given it to Nolini to type it for me.
But I searched in it in vain for your reply to Vidya’s question of (1) a house in the Ashram for a few days, (2) whether her husband could come for pranam, he is very eager to, (3) whether in case an Ashram house is unavailable any other house could be arranged for her. Please answer these questions. I suppose you forgot what?
Yes, had three nights work in one night yesterday – so naturally forgot many things.
I fear the house affair will be rather difficult. We have nothing suitable for them in the Ashram and could not meet anything like their standards of life – for it is the husband and whole family that are to come. “Windows” upstairs by the way is kept for Sotuda and Mahendranath. But even Windows! Outside? Can a suitable house be got in Pondicherry? It would need to be furnished, too.... I could not gather from her letter for how many days it would be wanted. In Pondicherry people generally will not give for less than a month’s rent, but for them I suppose that would be no difficulty. Inquiries can be made, but it may be hard to find such a house.
Of course the husband can come for Pranam – no difficulty there at least.
I am rather seedy this morning with a headache and the 
past two days trying to meditate has, I fear, brought back the old reaction: a beginning of depression. I am very much afraid I am in for another bout. So I pray to you: if I am down with despondency again please grant me the strength not to complain and bear it all manfully. I am sick of my eternal complaining and feel like flying as I lose all self-respect when I complain of sorrow and suffering which is the stuff of life. Let me be a man at least like Jawaharlal who complains not as Dilip when he suffers agonies. What have I become? But there it is starting in another disguise. Cry halt! O thou Fiend Despond. It is going about now-a-days that black forces are in a great glee and victoriously pouring and that it will be worse and worse, death, madness, etc. being their signs and many will have to fly who won’t die or go mad. I fear I am included in this category as I haven’t the least feeling of impending death or madness: I simply pooh-pooh these two devils; but flying? Well, yes – that’s a Devil who does grip me. So please grant me, if possible, some protection as I am beginning to feel it rather hopeless again.
Naturally if they nourish that inability it is the best way of inviting these forces and it is not surprising that they should be gleeful!
P.S. But no wrong movements in the least / thank God. The old Adam doesn’t trouble me...
That is good. Let us hope the despondency will follow the same road.
It is very good news that you got rid of the attack and it was the japa that helped you to do it. This and past experience also shows that if you can overcome the old association of the japa with sterility and sorrow, it can do its natural function of creating the right consciousness – for that is what the japa is intended to do. It first changes the vibrations of the consciousness, brings into it the right state and the right responses and then brings in the power or the presence of the Deity. Several times before, you wrote to me that by doing japa you got rid of the old impulse and recovered calm and the right turn of the consciousness and now it has helped you to get rid of the invasion of sorrow and despondency. Let us hope that this last will also soon lose its strength when the impulse and calm and serenity begin to establish itself in the whole nature.
I don’t know whether your proposal about the Trésor is practicable, I hardly think so. But I had no time to put it before the Mother this night. I will do so in the morning and let you know afterwards.