Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 3

Letter ID: 886

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

December 1936 (?)

(...) P.S. Forgive a little humour in sorrow: my father used to be renowned for it; one of his humour characters (Dileer Khan) said to Aurangzeb: “ache jānen jānhapanā Icanm hāsya bole ektā jinis?” [There is a thing called pathetic smile, do you know my Lord?]

This is karun hasya if you will: –

In Bengali there is a saying (homely adage): Aat debar bhātār nan, kil mārbār gossain

Your Yoga, O Supramental Representative, is like this lord, I felt smiling in sorrow: which translated in doggerel would be: (Please read it out to Mother dear, as Bengali humour is a wee bit similar to French)

“You can’t O husband give me rice ‘tis true

Yet can you not give blows till I am blue?”

Literally true, isn’t it? Your Yoga having no process, no way of approach, but an easy enough exit (in shipwreck) through storms of suffering arising from trivial stumbles but no reward for long abstinences or efforts to be gallant in dryness, what? It is supramental indeed – an inspiration – yours. Forgive a little wicked smile, won’t you? After a lot of virtuous [wry] face.

I have no objection to the karuṇa hāsya about my Yoga, because I know that when you get to the other side of it there is an ānandamaya hāsya it replace it. The bhāt is there, but it has to be cooked first and a vessel is needed to cook it. Raw rice would not be pleasant and even if people took a taste for it, it might be indigestible.

As for the blows, well, are they always given by the Yoga – is it not sometimes the sadhak of the Yoga who gives blows to himself? There are plenty of blows too in ordinary life, according to my experience. Blows are the order of existence, and of Yoga; our nature and the nature of things bring them upon us until we learn to present to them a back which they cannot touch.

In any case, glad of the smile. May it [turn] into a ray of the sun dispersing the clouds.