Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1935

Letter ID: 1422

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

September 12, 1935

I’m thinking why it is so important to go on attending the hospital. When R asked, you replied, “If you feel the need”. Why a different decision for me? For my personal profit? For my sadhana or an impersonal play behind?

That was before circumstances took a certain shape. At that time the forces had not so arranged themselves as to make it important. Afterwards when things came to the necessary point, then Mother told R he must continue and it is for the same reason that she asks you to continue. When I say important I don’t mean that it is a big thing, but it is a small point in the game (play of forces) and small points, like pawns in chess, can be important – even very important.

It appears the Mother is turning towards manifestation viz. the Town Hall decoration, A.P. House, Art Exhibition in Paris, etc. I heartily like it, Sir. Many, many valuable years have passed by!

Why valuable years? Are some years valuable and others non-valuable? There is no question of Art Exhibition in Paris before 1937 which may be a valuable year but is still far off.

During the hospital work, I feel myself submerged in Inconscience. No remembrance of the Mother at all.

It does not matter. This is not the supramental manifestation – it is simply a little game on the way.

Do you work on those people also and can your Force be invoked in aid of that suffering populace?

What people? Which suffering populace? Mother is not taking up A.P.H. or decorating Town Hall for the sake of any suffering populace.

Apropos of that scorpion incident on the 8th, you explained Dr. B’s case, but avoided mentioning J; yet he was an important link. And if the incident could have manifested in so many ways, then surely the whole thing must have appeared before your vision as soon as it happened.

What is this logic? There is no connection between the premiss and the conclusion.

Finding J a receptive fellow, you acted through him. What do you say?

I was not speaking of any personal action but of the play of forces which happens everywhere, but is of course more marked here because of our presence and the work done.

Then it means that there is no such thing as accident, chance, or coincidence; all is predetermined – all is a play of forces. Sir C. V. Raman once lectured to us that all these scientific discoveries are games of chance.

I have not said that everything is rigidly predetermined. Play of Forces does not mean that. What I said was that behind visible events in the world there is always a mass of invisible forces at work unknown to the outward minds of men, and by Yoga, (by going inward and establishing a conscious connection with the cosmic Self and Force and forces) one can become conscious of these forces, intervene consciously in the play, to some extent at least determine things in the result of the play. All that has nothing to do with predetermination. On the contrary one watches how things develop and gives a push here and a push there when possible or when needed. There is nothing in all that to contradict the great Sir C.V. Raman. Only when he says these things are games of chance, he is merely saying that [...]¹ human beings don’t know how it works out. It is not a rigid predetermination, but it is not a blind inconscient Chance either. It is a play in which there is a working out of possibilities in Time.

From the falling down of the bottle – Simpson’s discovery of chloroform – to the Irish sweepstake, everything seems to be this blessed play of forces, but not Chance! The bottle had to fall for the great discovery!

Why shouldn’t it fall? Something had to happen so that human stupidity might be enlightened, so why not the agency of a bottle?

Your old colleague B says that if there were such a thing as “accident”, then one can no longer say that there is a perfectly uninterrupted order in this world. Order means a regular sequence. An accident can only happen by disturbing this sequence.

That’s nineteenth century mechanical determinism. It is not like that. Things can be changed without destroying the universe.

I suppose I am once again knocking my head against a cosmic problem?

Very much so, sir.

¹ One word illegible.

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