Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1936

Letter ID: 1569

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

March 9, 1936

How is it you remained unresponsive to my petty offers? (because they were petty?) I deferred the purchase of the pad, because if you have one, another would be of no use. I hope you haven’t.

I am afraid I have.

But why should my depression coincide with D’s? Too much association? Well, there are A, N, who mix with him more than I and yet they don’t bring away the reward – and why do I?

Their separative individuality is more robustly precise. Besides they have not the Man of Sorrows temperament as part of their make-up.

You surely can’t hold off Krishna, Shiva or Brahma because X treats the Divine like that. That would be acting not like a Friend, though maybe like the Divine!

What do you mean? I am not holding off Krishna. It is Krishna who is holding off himself, as he generally does, except when he finds a likely person who will tolerate his ways.

As to X’s not doing what you ask him to, in a talk I raised the issue casually. He said: “What am I not doing? I tell Guru everything that I am doing.” I replied, “But to my mind our failure to get anything in Yoga is due perhaps to our terrible egoistic demands – I have done so much, where’s the result? This sort of thing prevents us from any success, as this is a Yoga of surrender and not of effort. Effort is necessary but without any demand...”

The real thing is that he had his own ideas of Yoga and never accepted mine. He raged against the Supermind, sneered at the psychic, stared with blank unintelligence at the idea of love and self-giving without demand etc. So how the deuce could he do what I told him? Outwardly he tried in an imperfect way, but it is only recently that he has been doing it in earnest – but inwardly? and inwardly is the most important thing. What I have to do all the time is to try to force the growth of the psychic in him without his knowing it and it is an uphill and precarious business.

Is effort without demand of result possible unless the psychic fellow comes to the front?

Perfectly possible, if you can once distinguish between the will of the Purusha and the demand of the vital. Of course, it is easiest and indeed plain sailing if the psychic comes in front, but even before that it is possible.

X said that Mother asked him to try to be conscious at every step, but it is “a very tiresome business”.

Exactly; there it is. He doesn’t want to do what he is told because it is tiresome or not according to his ideas.

It seems he hasn’t quite caught what you want him to do in spite of so many letters.

That’s the difficulty.

Now I come to my state of affairs. I find now, except during depression, that I don’t take the trouble of thinking of the Divine... Where is Yoga? Where is the aspiration, urge, etc.? An inner certitude that everything will be done by the Guru, what? Or a tamasic beatitude? I don’t see really how the “blue moon” is going to rise.

You rely too much on your own seeing as the standard of all truth – again like D.

You actually propose “Laugh and grow fat” though laughing never makes fat!

You oppose one of the most ancient traditions of humanity by this severe statement. But your statement is mistaken even according to Science. We are now told that it is the activity of certain glands that makes you thin or fat. If glands, then why not gladness?

Really I am now wondering at my own revelry and hilarity. No particular concern about yoga, yet I am happy. What kind of psychic attitude is this, Sir?

It is not a psychic attitude, but it is better than depression.

In what biological order will you put an egg – plant or animal?

European vegetarians regard it as a vegetable – others say that unimpregnated eggs can be eaten because there is no life in them – others say that as it is not destruction of conscious life it can be done.

I would like to have Mother’s opinion on taking eggs so that I may not commit a sacrilege, if it is one.

Mother allows eggs as a special provision for health in cases like R. Otherwise she does not approve.

D was given Codein Phos syrup, and he says it instantaneously stopped the cough. Very surprising, almost miraculous, more effective and definite than Yoga-Force – his opinion.

The fellow! After my strong intervention, he now says it is not God’s Force, but Codein Phos!

Very strange, Sir, that you don’t have a single intelligent chap in the species of your Supramental race-to-be! On what do you build your hopes, please?

Excuse me, you said intelligence and interest. You might find one of these separately, but how do you hope to get them combined together? Anyhow we can’t hunt for the kind of animal you want, you really should take up the chase.