Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1936

Letter ID: 1727

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

September 18, 1936

“Obviously, obviously”! What obviously, Sir? When will the blessed Force descend?

That is irrelevant. The time of its descent has nothing to do with its obviousness.

Have been working these 2 or 3 days on this small poem, can’t do it. Remarkable maturity of expression etc., etc. have all melted away!

Not at all. They are there, only feeling shy and sitting modestly behind the pardah.

A, though “much more granite” than I, seems to receive very well in poetry.

Ah, you think so! My dear sir, I have to do boring operations like digging an artesian well before I can get a few poems out of him – And afterwards it is one long wail “All gone! all gone! I am damned, doomed, dead, deteriorated, degenerated” for a whole day period. Sir, A is twice the Man of Sorrows you are.

If everything goes on so tremendously slow, isn’t it enough to make one despair and sit and lament? Because one doesn’t know how the devil one should proceed!

If you appeal to the devil, you can’t proceed.

Well, after the failure in poetry, I am thinking now of reading and writing any blessed thing that comes. But there’s no joy in it. Everything seems a waste of time. Meditation is hard, doesn’t bring any result, poetry won’t come – this is the state of affairs.

Present Discontents, what!

Fed up, fed up, damnably fed up! Work of the Spirit as complex as human nature!

Of course it must be, because it is in human nature that it works.

You call, you open, you don’t call, you open, you call, you don’t open – no profounder mystery can there be than these phrases of yours!

Not at all, plain as your nose. Excuses to the nose! I gave you three different cases,– don’t mix them up together.

I have called for poetry, I have actually sat up for 2 hours, has it come?

You called but did not open, so it did not come.

I am praying for A’s cure, is there a response?

You called, but A did not open, so it did not cure. Both instances establish my case. Q.E.D.

You said once that it is the spiritual consciousness that my being wants and that this need was becoming very prominent, but not the push yet. It seems now the need also has pushed back?

For the moment.

But if it is really the spiritual consciousness, how the dickens shall I get it by reading, say, Dickens, Lawrence or Nehru?

Probably not! Especially Dickens.

Is that why I think it a waste of time?

Possibly yes.

And yet I would like to read all the books. Have the attitude of nirbhar and do all these things?

Why not?

Really, really, your Yoga is a puzzle and I haven’t been able to catch the head or tail of it, shall never perhaps!

You needn’t catch either its head or its tail. It will be sufficient if you allow it to catch your head or your tail or both!

Cheerio! Tails forward!

G is now well. Shall we begin cod-liver oil now or after the last 2 injections? Ah, if all patients were like him!

Better finish injections first, then oil him.