Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1936

Letter ID: 1689

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

July 29, 1936

Yes, there is a longing no doubt, for something deep, and নেতি নেতি¹ also is there; but I don’t find vairagya for anything less as yet –

নেতি নেতি is itself vairagya – the true vairagya.

For I am thinking of past vital pleasures, sweet memories of happy peaceful moments in a happy sunny or moony atmosphere, and am thinking – ah, if I could get back those rare moments!

That is in another part of your vital – the lower.

So how shall I trust this নেতি as real or this “yogic strand”? All the time this blessed vital thought goes on! Yogic strand!

Your argument is that because the Yogic strand is not the whole of the nature, it cannot be real. This is rather illogical. The Yogic strand is always in the beginning a strand, a movement or impulsion from one part of the nature, however veiled or small. It grows afterwards, slowly or quickly, according to people and circumstances, on the rest.

In spite of everything, a deep urge is there but a dissatisfaction too because I can’t get it. Can this be a psychic sadness?

It is the feeling of the higher vital which has been affected by the psychic.

I doubt.

! That’s the mind at it.

Anyway I have realised that without “something” deeply and lastingly settled in me, I can’t do anything. I don’t know what is that something or how to get it, so I lament.

It is the wideness of the higher or spiritual consciousness with its vast peace, light, knowledge, force, Ananda.

You say my mind obstructs, whereas I thought it is the vital hankering that hinders.

Your mind obstructs with its perpetual “I doubt” (see above). The vital of course by its hankerings.

Of course the mind is always thinking, worrying, but isn’t it because the vital is restless?

Partly or mostly, but also because it is the nature of the mind to doubt, worry, eternally parliamentarise about things instead of getting them done.

J sends a poem. She doesn’t think much of it, as it was done so quickly. She says she heard the first few lines in sleep. After reading the whole poem, I have found it is impossible to write it simply from facility. It is an inspiration-poem.

Of course it is impossible. There must be inspiration. The value of the poem does not rise from the labour or difficulty felt in writing it. Shakespeare, it is said, wrote at full speed and never erased a line.

I don’t know about the fineness of the poem, but the chhanda and her originality in thought and expressions move me so much.

The poem is fine.

She says that while she was writing it, she felt some heavy pressure in the nape of the neck, then it came down and she was compelled to shut her eyes after which she felt all right and the poem came down quickly.

The pressure is the sign of a Yoga-force at work.

You said that Blake put down with fidelity whatever came down.

I didn’t mean that he never altered – I don’t know about that. I meant he did not let his mind disfigure what came by trying to make it intellectual. He transcribed what he saw and heard.

Will you circulate some Force towards me?

Yes.

¹ neti neti. It is not this, it is not this.

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