Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1937
Why did you say “I was”? Have you stopped writing the Mahabharat, then?
Because I can make no time – Night after night have to write letters, letters, letters, not to speak of other things.
Everything seems to be queer in this world, Sir, especially in this yogic world! When a fellow [D.S.] works hard at French, medicine, trying to improve the Dispensary and himself, and thereby serve the Divine better, it is bad. Too much concentration and meditation is worse.
[Sri Aurobindo underlined “and himself”.]
There is where you miss the truth and he missed it also – he did not try to “improve himself”, at any rate in any Yogic way – he might try to aggrandise himself but that is another matter. Self-aggrandisement does not save from collapse.
When one follows the rule “eat, drink and be merry” it is the worst.
Well, I never heard that ‘to eat, drink and be merry’ was one of the paths of Yoga – unless Charvak’s way is one of Yoga.
I am coming to X’s view that your Yoga will always remain yours. Nobody will ever catch its head or tail, except a few perhaps. Let us pin our faith on the “Head” now. The tail has noosed many!
It is not my Yoga that is difficult to get the head or tail of – it is your and X’s and others’ views about Yoga that are weird and wonderful. If a fellow is brilliant in French and Sanskrit, you think he is a wonderful Yogi, but then it is the people who are first in the Calcutta B.A. who must be the greatest Yogis. If one objects to spending all the energy in tea and talk, you say “What queer gurus these are and what queer ideas”, as if sociability were the base of the Brahman – or on the contrary you think everybody 
must shut himself up in a dark room, see nobody, go mad with want of food and sleep – and when we object to that, you say “Who can understand this Yoga?” Have you never heard of Buddha’s maxim “No excess in any direction” – or of Krishna’s injunction “Don’t eat too much or abstain from eating, don’t drop sleep or sleep too much; don’t torture the soul with violent tapasya – practise Yoga steadily, without despondency. Don’t abstain from works and be inactive, but don’t think either that mere work will save you. Dedicate your works to the Divine, do it as a sacrifice, reach the point at which you feel that the works are not yours but done for you etc., etc. Through meditation, through dedicated works, through bhakti – all these together, arrive at the divine consciousness and live in it.” Buddha and Krishna are not considered to be unintelligible big Absurdities, yet when we lay [stress] on the same things, you all stare and say “What’s this new unheard-of stuff?” It is the result I suppose of having modern-minded disciples who know all about everything and can judge better than any Guru, but to whom the very elements of Yoga are something queer and cold and strange. Kismet!
Have you heard that Y is also tottering, or has tottered already? Couldn’t get over the shock of D.S.’s madness?
Y has written to us already. He wants to make a marriage and farewell to the world trip, somewhat like X’s... But he has been tottering, as you call it, ever since he was here, so that is nothing new...
Guru, Chand wants to know what will be the true spirit of surrender for him and how he ought to receive Mother’s flower “Surrender” which he has been getting often.
Why for him? Surrender is the same for everybody.
Any illumination?
None.
There is some law point here and reference to A.P. House1 
also. God knows who this B.K. is, who requires your permission to go into all this business. Well?
B.K. is a “disciple” and has been Manager of A.P.H. but is now to be relieved of his duties. He was at the head of some institution in Khulna – forgotten which. Don’t know what status he has for the purpose. Probably he is or was a lawyer – but not sure. Permission be hanged!