Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 4
I had thought of writing something more than what I wrote in my letter to you so as to meet any difficulties on your part that I might not have sufficiently cleared up and that might stand in your way, but after reading your two last letters to the Mother I find little more to be said; I feel as if the air was now quite clear. As to your prayer not to give you up, you must now feel sure that that could never happen in any circumstances. You will of course decide for yourself what is the best to do with regard to Calcutta and connected matters. As to Janak, I hope that she will get out of that place and overcome the difficulty created by her still existing attachment; to get out of that place and pernicious atmosphere seems to me the first necessary step, and I hope she will take it as soon as it becomes possible.
Perhaps I might say a word about Ramakrishna’s attitude with regard to the body. He seems always to have regarded it as a misuse of spiritual force to utilise it for preserving the body or curing its ailments or taking care of it. Other Yogis – I do not speak of those who think it justifiable to develop Yogic siddhis, but of those who think that that should be avoided – have not had this complete disregard of the body: they have taken care to maintain it in good health and condition as an instrument or a physical basis for their development in Yoga. I have always been in agreement with this view: moreover, I have never had any hesitation in the use of a spiritual force for all legitimate purposes including the maintenance of health and physical life in myself and in others – that is indeed why the Mother has given flowers, not only as a blessing but as a help in illness. I put a value on the body first as an instrument, dharmasadhana or, more fully as a centre of manifested personality in action, a basis of spiritual life and activity as of all life and activity upon the earth, but also because for me the body as well as the mind and life is a part of the divine whole, a form of the spirit and therefore not to be disregarded or despised as something incurably gross and incapable of spiritual realisation or of spiritual use. Matter itself is secretly a form of the Spirit and has to reveal itself as that, can be made to wake to consciousness and evolve and realise the Spirit, the Divine within it.
In my view the body as well as the mind and life have to be spiritualised or, one may say, divinised so as to be fit instrument and receptacle for the realisation and manifestation of the Divine. It has its part in the divine lila, even, according to the Vaishnava sadhana, in the joy and beauty of Divine Love. That does not mean that the body has to be valued for its own separate sake or that the creation of a divine body in a future evolution of the whole being has to be contemplated as an end and not a means – that would be a serious error which would not be admissible. In any case, my speculations about an extreme form of divinisation are something in a far distance and are no part of the preoccupations of the spiritual life in the near future.
If there is any difficulty left or any question you wish to put, do not hesitate to write to me about it and I shall answer.