Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1937

Letter ID: 1967

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

June 12, 1937

Guru, why won’t you perorate? Fear of publicity?

No, Sir. Subject too old and thin.

Do you think X’s affection for me is genuine? I hear that he has spoken very highly of me to others.

Perhaps he feels like that when he writes or when he gets a letter from you; perhaps something in him has got that feeling there always, expressed or latent in a corner. At the same time he used to write to me long lamentations in the desert saying he couldn’t stay here because he had no friends in the Asram.

Human affection is obviously unreliable because it is so much based upon selfishness and desire; it is a flame of the ego sometimes turbid and murky, sometimes more clear and brightly coloured – sometimes tamasic based on instinct and habit, sometimes rajasic and fed by passion or the cry for vital interchange, sometimes more sattwic and trying to be or look to itself disinterested. But fundamentally it depends on a personal need or a return of some kind inward or outward and when the need is not satisfied or the return ceases or is not given, it most often diminishes or dies or exists only as a tepid or troubled remnant of habit from the past or else turns for satisfaction elsewhere. The more intense it is, the more it is apt to be troubled by tumults, clashes, quarrels, egoistic disturbances of all kinds, selfishness, exactions, lapses even to rage and hatred, ruptures. It is not that these affections cannot last – tamasic instinctive affections last because of habit in spite of everything dividing the persons, e.g. certain family affections; rajasic affections can last sometimes in spite of all disturbances and incompatibilities and furious ruptures because one has a vital need of the other and clings because of that or because both have that need and are constantly separating to return and returning to separate or proceeding from quarrel to reconciliation and from reconciliation to quarrel; sattwic affections last very often from duty to the ideal or with some other support though they may lose their keenness, spontaneity or brightness. But the true reliability is there only when the psychic element in human affection becomes strong enough to colour or dominate the rest. For that reason friendship is usually or rather can oftenest be the most durable of the human affections because there there is less interference of the vital and, even though a flame of the ego, it can be a quiet and pure fire giving always its warmth and light. Nevertheless reliable friendship is almost always with a very few; to have a horde of loving, unselfishly faithful friends is a phenomenon so rare that it can be safely taken as an illusion – the enthusiasm of a triumphant return and his own habit of exaggeration, for he seems to take easily social kindness for friendship, is probably responsible for X’s; probably if he remained three years in Calcutta, he might change his tone in spite of his immense capacity for attracting people. In any case human affection whatever its value has its place, because through it the psychic being gets the emotional experiences it needs until it is ready to prefer the true to the apparent, the perfect to the imperfect, the divine to the human. As the consciousness has to rise to the higher level, so the activities of the heart also have to rise to that higher level and change their basis and character. Yoga is the founding of all the life and consciousness in the Divine, so also love and affection must be rooted in the Divine and a spiritual and psychic oneness in the Divine must be their foundation – to seek the Divine first leaving other things aside or to seek the Divine alone is the straight road towards that change. That means no attachment – it need not mean turning affection into disaffection or chill indifference. But X seems to want to take his vital emotions just as they are – tels quels – into the Divine – let him try and don’t bother him with criticisms and lectures; if it can’t be done, he will have to find it out himself. Or perhaps he wants to clap on the Divine to the rest as a crowning ornament – shikhara¹ – to his pyramid of loves and affections. In that case – Good Lord! I have perorated after all.

I wrote these three funny stanzas last night in a somnolent consciousness. I don’t find any head or tail anywhere.

There is not any head distinguishable, about tail I don’t know.

If the stars are of melody, why the deuce should one weep?

Stars of melody means opera singers, who can I suppose weep. Melodies can also be sorrowful. But if it is real stars you mean, I don’t see why they should weep.

Should it be stars of misery?

Certainly not, the phrase has no meaning.

The last stanza seems too surrealistic. What?

Well, well – there is a rather mystifying and alluring incoherence – Still –

Why the devil am I having so. much difficulty in writing? And so much sleep too? The English stream is drying up or the lyrical attempt bringing the pain of labour?

Probably. It is besides I think the melancholy Jacques in your imagination who is interfering. Perhaps the higher Inspiration wants to find a lyrical form and he cuts in with the sorrowful strains of the past – wrinkles on a smooth face, you know. So the stars can’t manage their melody.

¹ Summit, peak.

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