Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1936

Letter ID: 1594

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

April 6, 1936

“Remnants that throbbed once with sweet songs of life

Bespeak now tragic dooms and ghastly tales

Of travellers – still roam their wounded wails

Echoing in the desolate air and cliff.”

This is too tragic, ghastly and romantic. It sounds like the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe.

Yes, that wonderful programme was partly my ingenious discovery and partly contribution and speculation by others. Anyway, from what you first wrote and cancelled, I find that from 8.30 a.m. to 2.30 or 3 p.m. you do your real work – for earth-consciousness.

How do you find that? After 8.30 a.m. I have nothing to do with the earth-consciousness.

Hard, throbbing, painful boil. Slight fever, headache in the morning. Hot fomentation etc. Went to the miracle doctor, 4 powders! Added to these the Force! Does it budge? The game must be over tomorrow, Sir. Otherwise I have to lie flat!

All this for a poor little boil? What would it be if you were put to roast?

By the way, what do you mean by deceiving me about E in the Hyderabad fever chart? René wrote that E is the entry in the “Motions” column; it evidently means enema. Poetry indeed! sunset colours indeed! Enema, sir! Motions, sir! Compared with that ling bling is epically poetic.

[A reply to Jatin Bal’s letter discussed on March 19, 1936.]

I shall only comment briefly – I am obliged to be brief – on your friend Jatin’s experiences.

He is to be congratulated on the victory in the matter of sex – it is very important to have that when the intense definitive experiences are beginning. For if once the actual penetrative descent is felt, the less the higher consciousness is met by the sex force the better, for then a dangerous mixture may take place or else a struggle which is better avoided.

The description of the Power he feels – which is obviously the true thing – is very accurate – it is so, like rain or a fall of snow, that it often comes at first. I take it from his use of the word “around”, that it is an enveloping power that he feels. It does not begin for all in the same way – some only feel it above their heads occasionally descending on them and entering.

About the contact with the world and the hostile forces, that is of course always one of the sadhak’s chief difficulties, but to transform the world and the hostile powers is too big a task and the personal transformation cannot wait for it. What has to be done is to come to live in the Power that these things, these disturbing elements cannot penetrate, or, if they penetrate, cannot disturb, and to be so purified and strengthened by it that there is in oneself no response to anything hostile. If there is a protecting envelopment, an inner purifying descent and, as a result, a settling of the higher consciousness in the inner being and finally, its substitution even in the most external outwardly active parts in place of the old ignorant consciousness, then the world and the hostile forces will no longer matter – for one’s own soul at least; for there is a larger work not personal in which of course they will have to be dealt with; but that need not be a main preoccupation at the present stage.

I have already answered to you about his coming for darshan in August; so I need not repeat that here.