She tells me I can do her poem for her in 3 minutes. I have told her it would take half an hour or 20 minutes at the least – which is a fact as it is in a terrible mess.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1938
Letter ID: 2091
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
May 2, 1938
[Sri Aurobindo and the Mother]
“I have seen in thy white eyes
A spark unknown,...”
White eyes = eyes without pupils which would be rather terrifying.
By the way, yesterday while meditating, I saw clearly that you wrote “excellent” for yesterday’s poem1 – almost the same as “exceedingly fine”. This is the third or fourth time I had such a prevision. Some faculty growing, Sir? Or a coincidence?
“Coincidence” is a quack scientific word which like many such words states the fact that two things coincide (here your prevision and my opinion coincide) but does not explain the fact – If a man sees a snake in dream in the night and each time crosses one in the day, that would be a coincidence of dream and snake. But to say so leaves the real question untouched, viz. why the coincidence?
... Don’t know how J will react to your remark that you are too busy to see her poetry now. That is the Lord’s business.
It is rather her business.
She has given up Bengali poetry thinking that you haven’t much time to take it up. Perhaps English will be easy for you. Well?
She tells me I can do her poem for her in 3 minutes. I have told her it would take half an hour or 20 minutes at the least – which is a fact as it is in a terrible mess.
I asked her to take up some other work so long as poetry can’t be done. But her sadhana can only be done through her own line, i.e. literature, not through sweeping etc. Alas, alas! Even R and K [artists] have taken up some other work, she can’t!
Of course not – because she is not sincere about it. The idea of sadhana through her own line is a mere excuse – it is a vital satisfaction she is after.
What exactly is vital interchange?
Difficult to specify. There is always a drawing of vital forces from one to another in all human social mixture that takes place automatically. Love-making is one of the most powerful ways of each drawing up the other’s vital force, or of one drawing the other’s which also often happens in a one-sided way to the great detriment of the “other”. In the passage come many things good and bad, elation, feeling of strength, and support, infiltration of good or bad qualities, interchange of psychological moods, states and movements, depressions, exhaustion – the whole gamut. People don’t know it – which is a mercy of God upon them – but when one gets into a certain Yogic consciousness, one becomes very much aware and sensitive to all this interchange and action and reaction, but also one can build a wall against, reject etc., etc.
Dr. Rao thinks that it is better to isolate R. L. from public work. We shall have to see the blood result.
[Mother:] Let her be examined first.
The mischief is that she is very useful in the D.R. just now, but I shall see if I can have her replaced as, evidently, it would be better if she did not do public work.
1 “Seeking Thy Light....”, Sun-Blossoms, p. 60.