Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1937

Letter ID: 1884

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

March 21, 1937

I think my expressions were rather surrealistic, so you helled them.

What expressions?

Well, what I meant by “suggestions” was that I shall be led to think it was I, my great personal effort, that brought in the boldness of images, audacity, etc. Won’t that be egoism and personal effort business?

Do you mean that you don’t want your poetry to improve because that would make you egoistic? Very queer, sir.

What about the book, Sir?

What book?

[After I gave a brief interpretation of a poem of J’s, Sri Aurobindo gave a further explanation.]

... Very complicated operation. Kindly explain or translate or do something to remove my bewilderment. I am afraid your prose is becoming as surrealistic as your poetry – full of ellipses and suppressed concepts. Today it has bewildered me thrice (see your poetry book,) where I have had to ask “what expressions?” “what book?”

If these internal discharges can be stopped halfway by will, what happens to them? Do they go back to the vesicles or come out in the urine?

Don’t know – they don’t give any sign afterwards.

... But is it not usual to have losses without dreams in sleep?

Yes, but that is quite another matter.

I hear it is common in people who have misused their parts, and the fact of their getting them after sleep may be due to lack of voluntary nervous control.

In sleep.

Or if the prostates are enlarged, they may press on the vesicles more directly in the lying position, and thus cause the discharge.

Yes, constipation also produces discharge.

I can’t think of any other possibility. Does he unconsciously do involuntary movements in sleep, I wonder!

Not likely.