Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1938

Letter ID: 2156

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

July 24, 1938

There is some trouble now about Benoy’s glass eye that we ordered from the Company in Bombay. It does not suit him; he says we should return this one and he will ask friends in Calcutta to send one. I don’t think the Company will return us the money. We can only place an order for something else equivalent to its price – 1/8.

If you need things from the Company, there is no objection.

Our stock of Sudarshan is nearly over. Punamchand said it is ready, he would send it from Bombay, but no news from him. Many people are taking it now. So shall we get some from Madras for the present?

Can wait and see.

The other day I gave S a new drug, Incretone, as Haemogen was not giving sufficiently good results. That very night I had a dream that the medicine had a good effect: urinary and other troubles were much less. Today the very thing happened...

... R.B.’s pain has given place to burning... Shall we try Histidine injection subcutaneously, or wait?

Wait.

Guru, the same fate today! No poem! You ask me to do something useful or helpful. You mean some reading – poetry or philosophy?

But it seems to me that I have exhausted my source and nothing new will come till after some time, i.e. by some growth of consciousness. Occasionally I may write when even a sameness won’t matter much. But to be a “phenomenon” is impossible.

The sameness does not matter much. The use of your writing is to keep you in touch with the inner source of inspiration and intuition, so as to wear thin the crude external crust in the consciousness and encourage the growth of the inner being. The dream you speak of in your medical report shows that the inner being is beginning to awake somewhat, as a result, even in things not having to do with the literary inspiration. For this purpose the “sameness” does not much matter.

In spite of repetitions and sameness, if I persist, I might strike again a new source.

That is right.

Time seems to press very heavily. But to write poetry because of heaviness of time is an unyogic attitude probably. Well!

Neither Yogic nor unyogic.

Today Mother appeared to show some displeasure (or disapproval?) either to me or to the forces acting through me. Cause there must be: my outburst of temper against S, depression due to Naik’s departure and my doubt regarding my own fate, etc., etc. Don’t know which.

It is the usual false imagination. Perhaps you got it by thinking too much of Naik – for whenever his vital wanted to go wrong or was dissatisfied with itself or people, that was always its movement, to imagine the Mother displeased and then to revolt against her. In that way it succeeded in getting itself into a fit. The fit passed he realised his mistake – but did it again the next time.

It’s not important, but the effect is still worse. The blessed vital gets into a revolting attitude and plays mischief by wrong suggestions – the result being as you can expect: all aspiration is clogged up.

Naturally.

I ought to know by now that Mother has no likes or dislikes and whatever she does is absolutely for my own good. But the vital – does it listen? I consider it a dangerous spot in my sadhana. I must cut it out root and branch.

Cut what out root and branch? The habit of wrong imagination and revolted attitude? For that your mind must separate itself from the vital and be able to tell it when it goes wrong, that it is making a fool of itself and that the mind refuses to go with it even one step in that direction. It is always the mind allowing itself to be clouded by the vital that makes these recurrences possible.