Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1936

Letter ID: 1692

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

August 1, 1936

Please tell me if metre is, after all, not a question of the ear.

Mainly of the ear, but “number” also has something to do with it.

Wasn’t the ear the first guide and then metre developed?

Yes, but in developing, metre modified the ear and created in it demands of a more complex kind.

What about Blake? Are his or other great poets’ metres, absolutely orthodox?

English is different; it has a freer movement, I suppose, than Bengali. English metre is sometimes strict, sometimes breaks into irregularities.

J says she still feels that terrible pressure when she sits down to write. Is it due to resistance?

I suppose – if it is on the neck – that is the place of the expressing physical or externalising mind. As yet probably there is a strong resistance there – perhaps the result of something there that still expects or desires to write mentally, not mystically.

She was lying in bed trying to concentrate when she saw something like a thin wire coming towards her, with a rapid serpentine movement. The wire seemed to change into a snake. She had a joy out of it. She fears it may presage a bad event.

No need to fear. The wire implies a connection with some source – the snake the energy of that which was coming from the source. A snake is a bad symbol only when it comes from the vital or other lower plane.

D.L. complains of constant stinging pain in the abdomen. It is either ulcer or worms. I am thinking of treating her with a milk diet in alkalies. If ulcer, then it is bound to produce results. On Monday I shall take her for X-ray.

Is it not better to ascertain first by X-ray or otherwise before trying this treatment, as milk diet only may make her weak with a depressed resistance?

I asked S to take Asram food; he agreed but came back saying – “Let me go on one week more with the special diet.” What’s to be done?

Go on for a week more, since the fellow insists. He may think himself into pains again otherwise.