Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1936

Letter ID: 1776

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

November 15, 1936

What do you mean by “feminine women”? as opposed to “masculine women”?

Feminine is not used in opposition to masculine here, but means only a wholly unrelievedly feminine woman – a capricious, fantastic, unreasonable, affectionate-quarrelsome-sensual-emotional, idealistic-vitalistic, incalculable, attractive-intolerable, never-knows-what-she-is-or-what-she-isn’t and everything else kind of creature. It is not really feminine, but is the woman as man has made her. By the way, if you like to add some hundred other epithets and double-epithets after searching the Oxford dictionary, you can freely do so. They can all be fitted in somehow.

I am tempted to ask you a delicate personal question about X. She seems to be in a good state of sadhana though I find that she spends much of her time in a very ordinary manner... Still she seems very happy and her sadhana must be very good, as she has no depression...

You forget that for a long time she was often keeping much more to herself, to Y’s great anger. During that time she built up an inner life and made some attempt to change certain things in her outer – not in the outward appearance but in the movements governing it. There is still an enormous amount to be done before the outward change can be outwardly visible, but still she is not insincere in her resolution. As for her not having any depression [it is] because she has established a fundamental calm which is only upset by clashes with Y; all the rest passes on the surface ruffling it perhaps, but not breaking the calm. She has also a day or two ago had the experience of the ascent above and of the wideness of peace and joy of the Infinite (free from the bodily sense and limitation) as also the descent down to the Muladhar. She does not know the names or technicalities of these things, but her description which was minute and full of details was unmistakable. There are three or four others who have had this experience recently so that we may suppose the working of the Force is not altogether in vain, as this experience is a very big affair and is supposed to be, if stabilised, the summit of the old Yogas – For us it is only a beginning of spiritual transformation. I have said this though it is personal so that you may understand that outside defects and obstacles in the nature or the appearance of unYogicness does not necessarily mean that a person can do or is doing no sadhana.

I want to know the secret of it. Is she all the time thinking of the Mother within? I think she has a great love for the Mother. Is that the secret?

Partly. She got hold of the sadhana by the right end in her mind and applied it – just the thing Y failed to do because of his doubts, pride of intellect and denial etc. – so in spite of serious defects of nature she has got on.

Is it enough for progress, if most of the time is passed in the way she does?

She passes her time so because she can now do it and yet keep within her inner condition and her sadhana. So she says at least. Possibly if she did it less she would go on faster.

Guru, day after tomorrow is my blessed birthday. The year has gone round and the prophecy that at the age of 32, my troubles will be over, has well – I [5.77.55]

Thirty-second year over? Perhaps in the “will be over” over has a different significance!

G says he doesn’t want to take any more cod-liver oil, as he is quite all right and doesn’t want to get fatter.

Perhaps he could be given a rest from the oil for a time. But if he thinks himself fat, that is an illusion.