psychic fires. See? But that is only a clue for the mind to follow – this significance can rather be felt than understood.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1938
Letter ID: 2133
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
June 22, 1938
[Sri Aurobindo and the Mother]
I fear it is a surrealistic business.1 I don’t, understand anything of it!
As Baron says, “Why do you want to understand?” It is very fine poetry – according to Housman “pure poetry”, for his view is that the more nonsense, the greater – or at least the purer – poetry. Of course it must be divine nonsense or let us say not “nonsense” but “non-sense”. So there you are. The last stanza is a masterpiece in that line – the clustered memories in the tree of night make also an exceedingly fine and quite original image. But the whole thing is perfect in its type. There is however nothing really unintelligible – only the transition (e.g. from day to the abyss and night and again to the heart and the caves) can be followed only on the lines of the logic of mystical experience – it is nonsense only to the intellect, to the inner feeling everything is quite clear. You have to look at it not from the brain but from the solar plexus! Anyhow the rise of light is a spiritual illumination to the silent day of the inner consciousness – the night and the abyss are the outer ignorance, its brief mortal existence, but even there it brings a momentary relief and an after-effect (trace on the clustered memories of the dark outer consciousness); within the heart there is the beginning of a trance, of change opening to the caves of the luminous deep of the psychic (hridaye guhāyām)2 with its psychic fires. See? But that is only a clue for the mind to follow – this significance can rather be felt than understood.
R.B. has no pain, but no appetite at all! Shall I try small doses of arsenic? It may give good effects.
[Mother:] You can try – with prudence.
Dr. André says that cooking for Benjamin is no longer necessary. I shall inform him tomorrow.
[Mother:] But it must be ascertained that he eats the asram food. It is by not taking it (he does not like it) that he got so bad –
For my piles, local injection or operation is the only remedy!
[Mother:] Beware of operation: it does not cure –
Purani showed me your reply. Since we are giving Iron to R.B., there is no objection to Purani’s preparation.
[Mother:] Then if she takes that preparation, it is better to postpone the arsenic –
1 “Silver Wonder”, Sun-Blossoms, p. 63.
2 In the cave of the heart.