Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1936

Letter ID: 1744

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

October 9, 1936

Disburden? You mean throw off the burden or place the burden at your door?

Both!

Please give me some Force for writing. But I wonder if you have time for circulating it.

Not as much as is necessary.

The atmosphere seems to be thick with doubt etc. A lull over the Asram.

Panic seems to be the order of the day as well as doubt.

Storm brewing?

The storm seems to have brewed. I am fighting it at present, having been obliged to give up my Abyssinian campaign and stop the march to Gore. However!

I have seen your letters to P.S. and Y. Comparing the latter’s with mine – the one you wrote after S’s death [25.3.35], I find that there is a lot of difference between them. Your views have changed immensely. In the letter to me, there was a very high optimistic, almost a certain tone about the conquest of death. Now it appears that you no longer hold that view, and say that death is possible because of the lack of solid mass of faith. It has to be conquered by Sadhana!

In what does this change of views consist? Did I say that nobody could die in the Asram? If so, I must have been intoxicated or passing through a temporary aberration.

As for the conquest of death, it is only one of the sequelae of supramentalisation – and I am not aware that I have forsworn my views about the supramental descent. But I never said or thought that the supramental descent would automatically make everybody immortal. The supramental descent can only make the best conditions for anybody who can open to it then or thereafter attaining to the supramental consciousness and its consequences. But it would not dispense with the necessity of sadhana. If it did, the logical consequence would be that the whole earth, men, dogs, and worms, would suddenly wake up to find themselves supramental. There would be no need of an Asram or of Yoga.

But my letters to Y and P had nothing to do with the conquest of death – they had to do with the conditions of the sadhana in the Asram. Surely I never wrote that death and illness could not happen in the Asram which was the point Y was refuting and on which I confirmed him.

A solid mass of faith? Surely that is a very heavy Himalayan condition you impose. For instance, do you expect old tottering N to have that solid mass in his liquid body?

N was not old and tottering when he came and if he had kept the living faith he would not have been tottering now.

Or do you either hope that by his sadhana he will have the conquest?

That depends on whether he is still alive and not quite liquified and able to open physically when the conditions change.

By that letter you have struck terror into many hearts, I am afraid, and henceforth we shall look upon death as quite a possibility, though not as common as it is outside.

The terror was there before. It came with the death of D.L. and the madness of P and not as the result of my letter. It was rushing at the Mother from most of the sadhaks at Pranam every day.

The physical condition of many sadhaks and sadhikas, is not cheering in the least –

Far from it.

You know best about the condition of their sadhana.

Very shaky, many of them.

However, it is my impression that you have changed your front.

It is not mine.

Formerly I thought you said – faith or no faith, sadhana or no sadhana, you were conquering death, disease, i.e. everything depended on your success; now it seems a lot depends on us poor folks, in this vital matter.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined “this vital matter”.]

Why vital? What is vital is the supramental change of consciousness – conquest of death, is something minor and, as I have always said, the last physical result of it, not the first result of all or the most important – a thing to be added to complete the whole, not the one thing needed and essential. To put it first is to reverse all spiritual values – it would mean that the seeker was actuated, not by any high spiritual aim but by a vital clinging to life or a selfish and timid seeking for the security of the body – such a spirit could not bring the supramental change.

Certainly, everything depends on my success. The only thing that could prevent it, so far as I can see, would be my own death or the Mother’s – But did you imagine that that success would mean the cessation of death on the planet, and that sadhana would cease to be necessary for anybody?

If increase of numbers stands in the way, if doctors and medicines shake the faith, well, it is very easy to solve the problem, isn’t it?

Increase of numbers brought in all sorts of influences that were not there in the smaller circle before. Doctors did not matter so long as faith was the main thing and a little treatment the help – But when faith went, illness increased and the doctor became not merely useful but indispensable. There was also the third cause, the descent of the sadhana into the physical consciousness with all its doubt, obscurity and resistance. To eliminate all that is no longer possible.

We have also an impression, considering the sudden wave of diseases, that it is due to some Force descending, so that wherever there is resistance there will be a rushing up.

What Force?

Since the action is to go on in the subconscient physical at present with the Supramental descending (hail Supramental!!), all sorts of physical troubles will be rampant now.

Rubbish! You repeat always this imbecile absurdity that the Supramental is descending into the sadhaks – as P thought it had descended into him! The sadhaks are miles away from the supramental. What I spoke of was not the descent of the Supramental into the sadhaks but into the earth-consciousness. If the Supramental had descended into the sadhaks, there would not be all sorts of troubles, but all sorts of helps and progress.

But you seem to sneer at the supposition and say things will happen that way if sadhaks believe like that.

Yes, certainly.

I find that everything seems to happen here ensemble: a general wave of doubt, depression, going away, etc.

Yes, general in the sense of many undergoing it – not all. There has been no time when everybody was depressed, everybody doubting, everybody taking the train homewards.

The rosy side also may be true – as you said a general stillness was felt.

In the atmosphere, it may be so. But what has that to do with the Supramental descent?

I asked M to start tomorrow for Madras. He says he has to go to Calcutta – written there and is waiting for a reply...

He is talking of starting on Sunday.

About S, the “coldish” feeling was absent. A lot of sweating at night, fever in the afternoon – 99.8°.

He has been sleeping with J who has developed occult terrors since P’s outbreak and contracting the terror himself and had [...]¹ etc. of a bloodcurdling character. We must allow for S’s vivid literary style. But I send you the document as you are in medical charge.

¹ One word illegible

Back