Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1935

Letter ID: 1371

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

July 8, 1935

Somehow it seems the atmosphere is very heavy nowadays. How I suffered without any apparent cause – as if something had gripped me by the throat.

You should not allow yourself to be gripped by the throat – grip the other fellow’s throat and fling him away.

It seems I am now the target of all depression. But why?

But why accept a depression which has no reason for its existence?

Is it, as our friend Jaswant says, the Ashram vital that affects me, or a personal one?

In Jaswant’s case it is personal – in yours it looks like surrender to the “Ashram” or rather to the “anti-Ashram” vital.

But I have suffered enough, enough, more than my share. One can’t go on, you know, with a spiritual dietary of 3 chief elements of food. Let me remind you that vitamins of experience are essential; otherwise nervous breakdown or deficiency disease is the result. You have a lot of things in your chaddar as you said in a book...

?

[Sri Aurobindo put a big question mark.]

They say that you are now handling the lower vital and so the general trouble. True?

Subconscient vital physical – the lower vital is irrational, but not so utterly “without reasons” as that.