Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1938

Letter ID: 2144

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

July 10, 1938

Guru, I am puzzled! Your additional stanza of yesterday’s poem is magnificent. But how can a “body” be born, either God’s or an animal’s, even if we admit God has a body?

[“From which the cosmic fire

Sprang rhythmic into Space

That God’s body might be born

And the Formless wear a face.” 9.7.38]

It is I who am awfully puzzled by your puzzlement. A body is not born? When the child comes out of the womb, it is not a body that comes out and the coming out is not birth? It has always been so called in English. You have never heard the expression “the birth and death of the body”? What is it then that dies after having been born? The soul doesn’t die, nor is it the soul that comes out of the womb! You think God cannot have a body? Brahmo idea? Then what of the incarnation – is it impossible? And how does the Divine appear in vision to the bhakta except by putting on a form = a body? But if you object to God having or getting a body, you must also object to the Formless wearing a face; so the whole significant stanza becomes nonsense. And therefore, I suppose, pure poetry. All the same one can understand a metaphysical (not a poetic) objection to God having a body if one believes that the Infinite cannot manifest the finite or as finite, but that an animal’s body is not born is new to me.