Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1938

Letter ID: 2143

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

July 8, 1938

The “garde-manger” given to Z is rather small. Perhaps it will be better to have a special one prepared.

[Mother:] Yes, but it may take some time. Meanwhile ask Sahana if it is not possible to exchange this one for one in the room of an absentee.

Guru, I have seen how your little touches have “coged” the poem. Does it then show that if my transcription becomes perfect some day, the whole thing will drop perfectly O.K.?

Of course. At present the mind still interferes too much, catching at an expression which will somehow approximate to the thing meant instead of waiting for the one true word. This catching is of course involuntary and the mind does it passively without knowing what it is doing – a sort of instinctive haste to get the thing down. In so doing it gets an inferior layer of inspiration to comb for the words even when the substance is from a higher one.

Even if I revised it, do you think I could have made it better?

Not necessarily.

But how can I when I don’t understand at all what I am writing? How to correct? By inner feeling?

No; by getting into touch with the real source. The defects come from a non-contact or an interception by some inferior source as explained above.

If I try to understand the thing, every bit of it seems ridiculous.

Because you are trying to find a mental meaning and your mind is not familiar with the images, symbols, experiences that are peculiar to this realm. Each realm of experience has its own figures, its own language, its own vision and the physical mind not catching the link finds it all absurd. At the same time the main idea in yesterday’s poem is quite clear. The heart of day evolving from clay and night is obviously the upward luminous movement of the awakened spiritual consciousness covering the intermediate worlds (vital, mental, psychic) in its passage to the supreme Ananda (unknown ecstasy transparence wrought, the transparence being that well known to mystic experience of the pure spiritual consciousness and existence). In the light of the main idea the last four stanzas should surely be clear – the stars and the sun being well known symbols.

“Super-Blakish” you say? And what “remarkable source” please, inner or over? Looks something damnably mystic, but neither inner nor overhead.

Can’t specify – as these things have no name. Inner – over also in imagery, but not what I call the overhead planes. These belong to the inner mind or inner vital or to the intuitive mind or anywhere else that is mystic.