Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1936

Letter ID: 1522

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

January 14, 1936

Nishikanta has written a poem from a vision. He says that he is going to paint his vision of the violet stream and the golden cup; so he would like you to illumine him regarding its significance.

“Violet” is the colour of benevolence or compassion, but also more vividly of the Divine Grace – represented in the vision as flowing from the heights of the spiritual consciousness down on this earth. The golden cup is I suppose the Truth consciousness.

Almost all whom I know have come here solely for the Divine, while I have just glided in. I don’t know that I was actuated by the sole motive of drowning myself in the Divine...

The push to drown oneself in the Divine is very rare. It is usually a mental idea, a vital fumbling or some quite inadequate reason that starts the thing – or else no reason at all. The only reality is the occult psychic push behind of which the surface consciousness is not aware or else hardly aware.

I don’t see any vestige of a yogi in me. It will be three years in February, since I have come here, and I haven’t seen even three signs! It is your letters, Sir, that have bound me.

What the deuce is three years in Yoga? There are people who have to wait twice or three times or four times that time before they get the real sign. A child of nine might say Look here. I have been studying for 2 years and yet nobody has decided to propose me as the Vice Chancellor of the Calcutta University.

You have had signs that you can get Ananda, that a channel can be made through your physical brain (your poetry) for something that wasn’t there before. That’s sign enough.

I hear J jumped down from the train when it was leaving! He still seems uncertain. A problem indeed!

Everybody is a problem in his own way – the world itself is a problem and so are all the creatures in it.