Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1935

Letter ID: 1302

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

April 5, 1935

I wonder why T has no sleep.

Lots of people are starting having no sleep. It seems to be the latest fashion.

You had Nirvana in three days. Still you say there was no spirituality in you!

None, before I took up Yoga.

You said that nothing comes in an “easy gallop”, that one has to plod on and develop faculties.

No, I did not say nothing comes in an easy gallop. Some things do. But one can’t count on that as a rule.

I would like to make a contact with this Intuition which, I am sure, will help me a great deal in my work. So kindly tell me how I should train myself – an essay on this subject should prove useful. Just to give you more time I shall stop now and write nothing more.

I must still say that I am too busy tonight. Things are altogether too strenuous just now for essays. You give time, but others take the given time. Just now I am fighting all day and all night – can’t stop fighting to write. One day I may give not an essay but a few compendious aphorisms on intuition and how to get it.

I had a talk with J which has rather puzzled me. He said that intuitions are of various kinds and come to us from different planes.

Quite true.

So the process would depend on what one wants. There is a silencing of the mind, a kind of rapid thinking, concentration, etc.

True also, but how do they work or how are they put together or how do they avoid getting in the way of each other? And above all how to keep them pure from mixture with the ordinary mind? If he knows that and can tell you rightly, he will save me the labour of an essay.

Finally, he said that I should not worry about these things – everything would be developed in me by the Mother. I said, “Surely that’s what I want; but Mother is unmother-like. Have to plod – it may or may not come! They seem to grudge our having anything for nothing because they didn’t have it; they had to pay the price!”

Well, if it is impossible to get anything for nothing, why say we grudge it?

It is Nature that grudges it. A price there always is. The price is sometimes labour and tapasya, sometimes it is faith, sincerity, simplicity, openness, surrender.