SRI AUROBINDO – Nirodbaran

Correspondence with
Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1936

Mother’s Comments on the Correspondence

In the Introduction to the first volume I made a brief reference to the Mother’s remarks on my correspondence with Sri Aurobindo. At the time I forgot to mention what she had said regarding the correspondence on a few other occasions, both to me and during conversations with another disciple. Since they are very interesting and significant, I am inserting them here. They should have appeared at the beginning of the first volume.

January 2, 1972

After I read out the portions on Karmayoga to the Mother, she asked me: “When are they appearing in the Bulletin?” “It will take time, Mother”, I answered. “Oh, if I had them by my side, I could ask people to read them. Sri Aurobindo has answered all the problems in your letters. C’est merveilleux.” I suggested, “We could give you typed copies, Mother.”

“That is of no use, I can’t read.”

“There is the book where all the important letters have come out – the book of correspondence.”

“Then it is all right.”

January 5, 1972

“Mother, this morning I had a dream: You were telling me that Sri Aurobindo had given me everything; you had nothing else to give.”

“It is true”, she replied.

“But I want a lot of things from you”, I rejoined. She smiled and, catching hold of my hands, said, “I mean that from the point of view of Yoga, he has said everything. It is marvellous! It is marvellous!”

She stroked my hands gently and looked into my eyes awhile, then closed her eyes and blessed me.

January 19, 1972

Here is what she said to the disciple:

Nirod is reading out to me his correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, and it contains all the things (it’s amusing), the things I said long, long afterwards, and I didn’t know that he had written them! – exactly the same thing. I was very much interested.

In this correspondence, he told Nirod in a letter¹ (he said it several times): “I may take a fancy to leave my body before the supramental realisation ...” He said that a few years before he died. He had felt it.

(Silence)

But he spoke of a transformation that would come before the advent of the first supramental being². And that was what he told me. He told me that his body was not capable of bearing this transformation, that mine was more capable – he repeated it.

But it is difficult. I told you so the other day.

Food, especially, is ... it has become a labour.

February 16, 1972

Have you read the whole “Correspondence with Nirod”?

I am translating it as I go along, so I haven’t read the whole thing.

There are extraordinary things in there. He seems to be joking all the time but... it’s extraordinary.

You see, I lived – how many years? Thirty years, I think, with Sri Aurobindo – thirty years from 1920 to 1950. I thought I knew him well, and then when I hear this, I realise that...

(Mother makes a gesture as if to indicate a breaking of bounds.)

April 26, 1972

According to what Nirod is reading out to me now of his correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, it seems to have been the same thing for Sri Aurobindo. Because, according to what he wrote (you will see when you read it), I am always the doer. He says: “Mother says, Mother does, Mother ...” You see, as far as the organisation of the Ashram is concerned (relations with people and all that), it would seem that, quite naturally, all the time, it is all done through me.

And you know, from the point of view of humour, I have never read anything more wonderful, oh! ... He had a way of looking at things... it’s incredible. Incredible. But it seems that for him, the outside world was something ... absurd, you know.

(...)

Oh! it’s very strange. It’s very strange. Since my childhood all my effort has been to (how can I put it?) achieve a total indifference – neither annoying nor pleasant. Since my childhood, I remember a consciousness which tried ... That was what Sri Aurobindo meant – an indifference. Oh! it’s strange. Now I realise why he said that I was the one who could attempt to effect the transition between the human and the supramental consciousness. He said so. He told me, and he says it, it is recorded in Nirod’s thing. And I understand why...

Ah! I understand.

Yes, I understand.

February 14, 1973

I am hearing – through Nirod – things that Sri Aurobindo said, and he himself says that he contradicted himself a considerable number of times ...(...) and that, of course, the two or three different ways are true³. So we can be as ... as wide as he!

In fact his understanding was very flexible – very flexible. While listening to the things he said, I felt that I had understood very little of what he meant. And now that I am more and more in touch with the supramental Consciousness, I can see that it is extremely flexible – flexible and complex – and that it is our narrow human consciousness that sees things ... (Mother draws little squares in the air) fixed and definite.

(...)

And I can see that when one goes above the mind, it becomes ... it is like waves on the sea.

June 2, 1936

I am feeling dry, dry, dry. But a mood of meditation creeps over the dryness.

Well, that’s all right isn’t it?

I find that my point of concentration usually goes between the eyebrows.

A quite useful place for concentration – O.K. so far.

Nothing happens though at times a feeling of স্তব্ধতা⁴

Better and better!

I suppose that is enough for you, but unfortunately I want a little more.

Quite enough for a beginning – only at times, is insufficient; स्तब्धता⁵ is quite the best ground for experiences and everything else.

Can you tell me why no experience is coming to me and why those that I had long, long ago, have stopped?

Too big a riot of mental activity and vital jumping.

If no joy is felt out of a creation after so much labour, what’s the use, can you say?

The use of having no joy? It is no use.

I am thinking – after all what am I to do then? But thinking has no end either.

Quite so. Stop thinking and become স্তব্ধ⁶

Que faire? I suppose this dryness is due to your unexpected progress. That is the only consolation.

Dryness, no! that is part of your own pilgrimage. The rest may be due to Add. Ab. Quite a number of people are trying to become স্তব্ধ, wide etc. without ever having intended it. I like to think my march may have something to do with it.

Addis Ababa – how far?

Can’t say. My rapidity slowed down much after D turned turtle and the correspondence avalanche restarted. However “nous progressāmes.”⁷

Will you cast a glance at J’s story – Russian Cat, which even Tagore liked?

I shall try my Herculean best – I can’t promise more.

Please give me some force for poetry now – without it I don’t know how to come out of this condition.

All right – shall try that also.

June 3, 1936

You mean to say – “I am in Heaven. Everything is all right in the best of all possible worlds – in Sri Aurobindo Asram and with Nirod”!

Quite so. All is well, if it ends well.

But how to make you realise that I welcome the stillness etc.... but it’s not always there.

I quite realise. Don’t make such Herculean efforts to explain it.

No joy, no energy, no cheerfulness. Don’t like to read or write – as if a dead man were walking about. Do you understand the position? Any personal experience?

I quite understand; often had it myself devastatingly. That’s why I always advise people who have it to cheer up and buck up.

I asked Kanai for my diagnosis – he says some sort of trouble in the “prān”⁸ positively; desire of ego. Just as a Kaviraj puts his finger on the pulse and diagnoses at once, so with this. What’s required is purification.

Diagnosis right – only should add an adjective disappointed pran and ego. No active vital row; vital and ego lying back flat and gloomy.

So, since I have to pass the time, how to do it? To bear the Cross gloomily, hoping for a resurrection?

To cheer up, buck up and the rest if you can, saying “Rome was not built in a day” – if you can’t, gloom it through till the sun rises and the little birds chirp and all is well.

Looks however as if you were going through a training in vairagya. Don’t much care for vairagya myself, always avoided the beastly thing, but had to go through it partly, till I hit on samata as a better trick. But samata is difficult, vairagya is easy, only damnably gloomy and uncomfortable.

June 4, 1936

Vairagya! Good Lord! What next? A fellow who has always detested it, loved life and company, now undergoing a training in vairagya!! Such is life, eh? Never dreamt of Yoga, and stumbled into it – vairagya now crowns it! Why D’s phantom on me? His drive towards vairagya, I understand, was due to his past life’s karma. But what past life’s karma in my case, please?

How do you know about your past life’s karma? But perhaps it is D’s karma which is afflicting you,– your karma being that of getting caught up in the swirl of his tempestuous course.

And when I look at D’s suffering due to this blessed vairagya, I shudder. I am only a small pot – then why this heavy burden on me?

Well, why did you get into the track of the big pot?

And what kind of vairagya is this? It is encouraged by almost all yogis. Kanai understands by it a positive detachment from things of this life and a luminous aspiration within towards a higher spiritual achievement.

Vairagya means a positive detachment from things of this life – but it does not immediately carry with it a luminous aspiration except for a few fortunate people. For the positive detachment is often a pulling away by the soul while the vital clings and is gloomy and reluctant.

I suppose you mean a different kind of vairagya in my case, suited to my nature?

Yes, tamasic vairagya.

June 6, 1936

B.N. reported yesterday: “A snake has come out of my belly!” So he is germinating snakes now! Shall I give him santonin or rely on the Force?

He is eating dirty food outside – so it is not surprising. But give him santonin.

June 7, 1936

A poem for you. I hope you will make out in it the fall of Adam (soul) from the garden of Eden. But what is it – symbolic, mystic or cystic?

Symbolic mystic without being cryptic-cystic. Anyhow, pure inspiration and very luminous. Something undeniably original, this time, what?

A good piece of news: I find now three mules – mules, mind you, not horses – are trying to draw me on: (1) meditation, (2) silence (not of the mind but of the buccal cavity), (3) poetry.

Well, mules are very useful animals. When Badoglio’s motor-lorries broke down, he bought 20,000 mules (I won’t swear to the exact number) and they did the trick. You have 3 mules and not 20,000 – but perhaps 3 will serve.

The buccal silence I can keep off from clashing with the other two. But the collision between meditation and poetry is inevitable unless I favour one of them.

There are three ways of meeting that situation – (1) say “Yes, yes” to both parties,– but that may create trouble afterwards, (2) Be cryptic-cystic in your answers, so that neither will be sure what you mean, (3) silence with an occasional profound “Ah, hum. Yes, eh!” “Ah hum” always sounds unfathomable depths – and if “Yes” is too positive, “eh” tones it down and corrects it. You have not enough worldly wisdom.

I shall try with all my nerves to concentrate as far as practicable – and I get also some not quite definitely pleasing sensation out of it.

Well, that is good – I hope the indefinite will soon define itself.

As poetry also has come, I wouldn’t like to give it up either. But how to harmonise?

No need to harmonise by any set arrangement – only keep up the concentration. One hour of packed concentration or even a few minutes can do as much as three hours less packed. Do you say yours is not packed? Well, striped, streaked, spotted, dotted or whatever it may be.

And do you “like to think” that it is all due to your march forward?

Of course I like and it may even be true.

By the way, my “tamasic vairagya” seems to be an epidemic. J also has the same symptoms.

That kind of vairagya is not new with J, so you need not take the credit of it.

She also added that Death would be a delivery from all these troubles and a renewal of this life.

What an idea! She would have the same things to face with less favourable conditions for overcoming them.

Please ask blessed Time to stand still behind you till your pen has run a 50 mile-gallop on this sheet.

Time can’t stand still, but I have tried to make the fellow trot slower instead of cantering – with no great result.

[Dilip sent my Bengali poem: ālor pākhi (The Bird of Light)⁹ to Sri Aurobindo, saying: O Guru, Nirod has written a fine poem – albeit in a rather sad vein. The word-music is beautiful, what? No change I found necessary. Last night’s result – the moonlight, voyez-vous?]

Nirod’s poem is exceedingly beautiful, full of the moonlight – he can’t say any longer after that that he is not a poet.

June 10, 1936

Herewith a bhatiyāli¹⁰ – I hope you know this animal, don’t you? I have used some native expressions... Of course, aristocratic expressions also abound, but that doesn’t matter, especially when this is a socialistic age.

Nothing original, but hope not absolutely aboriginal? How do you find the animal?

Admirable – No matter whether original, aboriginal or co-original – most good poetry is all three together. The animal is a fine animal and the plebeian spots on the aristocratic skin give it a very subtly attractive appearance.

June 11, 1936

T’s pain in the finger is worse due to constant work.

As she got nervous (pain and difficulty of doing her work) we sent her to R.

June 12, 1936

Your answer¹¹ gave me a feeling different from other times. It didn’t cheer me up; perhaps due to some atmosphere in the letter.

I don’t think there was any atmosphere in my answers.

June 14, 1936

... I have analysed and analysed myself, and have found that I have no real urge for the Divine. It seems more the unfavourable external circumstances that have brought me here. Had I been happy and in plenty there, would I have chosen this path?... Where is the sincerity in me?... So wouldn’t it be better for you to let me go instead of wasting so much of your time and labour on me?

Your analysis and reasonings are those of Grand’mère Depression which sees only what she allows to come to the surface for her purposes. There are other things that Madame suppresses because they don’t suit her. It does not greatly matter what brought you here – the important thing is to go on till the psychic truth behind all that becomes manifest. The inertia of your physical nature is only a thick crust on the surface which goes away slowly, but under the pressure it will give way. If you had some big object in the ordinary life and nothing to hope for here it might be different, but as things are it would be foolish to walk off under the instigation of this old Mother Gloom-Gloom. Stick on and you will get the soul’s reward hereafter.

June 15, 1936

... You say I could help Y. How can I do so avoiding everything personal? If I can help at all, it is in her literary work – surely not in Sadhana! But there again you doubt. Tell me precisely what I should do – not “if you want to do this, you can do” sort of thing. How is the help to be there?

I put it as something that could be done on certain conditions. These conditions do not exist at present, for neither is free with regard to the other. But the conditions can come into existence.

It is not at all necessary to break off all contact with her, and drastic methods are only necessary in extreme cases. Too much contact has to be avoided at present and it should be kept limited to surface things. The main point is to get yourself inwardly and vitally free – neither vital pull nor impatient repulsion. Understand that they have to be got rid of and quell them down and reject them when they come.

June 16, 1936

Now I find that I am only a bundle of sex and nothing else! This is yogic transformation!

Nobody can be only a bundle of sex. Even a cat or a Casanova can’t be that. It is the aboriginal coming up and figuring as if the whole man. But there are other bundles there even if this one is at the top for the moment.

The Mother kept quiet about B’s case and asked not to apply atropine.

Mother did not say not to treat her. She asked if it was not possible to treat her without the atropine.

June 18, 1936

But how to treat B? Her headache is due to error of refraction...

B told Mother she would never wear glasses. Has she said differently to you?

Do you suggest to try purgatives, aspirin, stopping needlework, etc. before going in for glasses?

All that does not seem very promising.

June 19, 1936

My friend J’s letter – he hears your voice, feels your Power acting, his mind and vital free from sex. Is it possible that one hasn’t to struggle much for purification? Force does everything?

It is quite possible if the psychic being takes the lead or is active – not so easy otherwise.

How was this conquest done so easily considering that he is a married man, having a wife not very spiritually inclined?

That is not the only “married man” instance.

While we who are here, in this atmosphere, find it so very difficult, though completely debarred from sex-life.

In his case, as it seems from what he writes, the mind decisively freed itself first. The difficulty with most is that the mind in parts lends itself to the vital under one colour or another.

He actually says that a personal effort is only a small or ineffective help!

Of course – personal effort without the supporting Force can do only a little, slowly, with much labour.

When I suffer, I don’t see any Force coming and fighting my battle. I am paralysed for a time with pain etc., then the suffering disappears. I believe your Force works it out, but I want to feel, know and see.

That is the difficulty. A full faith however can command the effects of the Force even without being conscious of the action of the Force.

Lastly, he has raised some points which invite your answers, if not tonight, some night.

I don’t know when, for his questions and subjects are of great amplitude.

P has two boils on a buttock which are stationary. She is constipated and feverish. I asked her to take enema or medicine, she will wait for permission, she says.

Mother has not only given permission but order – but she is not going to latrine, not taking enema, because she fears the pain caused by the boil in evacuation!

R wants Amal, Ambu, Romen – all three his patients – to be weighed from time to time. Will you take Ambu to the hospital tomorrow and arrange to have it done and also arrange for general permission so that whenever three or any of them go for the purpose, they may be allowed?

June 20, 1936

For S’s constipation – I shall try tomorrow enema-turpentine.

What’s this turpentine enema? drastic effect? or what gunas?

A has pain in the left arm. On palpation a nut-sized hard swelling was found. She says it’s increased latterly. It was caused by an injection in Africa. I don’t think it will be dissolved by medicines. Excision is the only way.

Operation will not leave any undesirable after-effects?

June 21, 1936

Last night S had the same trouble, dyspepsia, with no relief. Gave one alkaline powder containing Bismuth – no effect!

Bismuth is not constipative? I thought it was given for that effect. But if he is badly constipated already?

He can’t tolerate any liquid nourishment. Some solid dry protein food would be good. I thought of egg.

It can be tried – as it is not a liver case.

Pomegranate or orange juice would hardly be enough.

Pomegranate juice not astringent and constipative?

S says as soon as the Mother was informed, he felt better. Why then all this medication? Make him altogether well!

If he allows. L had acutely a similar illness and T in a milder form – they were cured without medicines. But S is such a pessimist and lamenter that I don’t know if his body will respond in the same way.

I am rather worried about the fellow. I have asked his mother to come and help him whenever she is free.

S has written (through Biren) asking for that on her behalf. But at the same time he writes that she doesn’t sleep, doesn’t eat, was weeping all night – If she does like that, how can she help him – she will only depress him farther. Otherwise it would be all right.

A’s operation [of the arm] is not likely to leave any after-effects. It has to be done in the hospital...

She jibs violently against operation.

Shall I remind you about the reply to Jatin’s letter?

You did, but with no effect.

June 22, 1936

Bismuth and pomegranate are astringents, no doubt, but the former is also an antacid and as the latter is nourishing too, S seems to tolerate it. Found another possibility of the cause of his disease: worms. He has suffered from it for the last 15 years!

Then of course pomegranate is the thing. But what kind of worms do you suspect? I suppose the ordinary small intestinal worm betrays its presence without microscope. What kind does he have?

By the way, if you think R had better treat him, I have no objection. Whatever is in my power, I am doing. If any danger is ahead, you may transfer him.

I don’t know whether it is possible. They are at daggers drawn for a long time past and S has written very bad things against him. Will he now accept him as doctor and obey all his directions? I suppose S will get all right; if once he can be made to take sufficient nourishment, the rest is at most a matter of time.

June 23, 1936

... One part in me has written about the difficulties and asks for help, another says and laments – You fool, you could have enjoyed yourself a little. Yoga, after all, is there before you – But meanwhile do you know what sandy deserts you have to cross?...

That is of course the whole difficulty – the division in the being. But even so the true being can and surely will prevail.

We’re giving S calomel and mag. sulph to stimulate the flow of bile and a purge also.

Purge quite safe for his weakness?

Please concentrate a little on his stomach.

Have been doing so – but the jaundice development (it must have been incubating from the first) is a nuisance.

Oh yes, giving also plenty of vichy water. Any comment?

Nothing much to say at present.

June 24, 1936

I would like to know if there are going to be any personal relations afterwards among sadhaks. To think that everybody will be equal to our eyes pains most of us.

Yes, it pains the outer vital, because that vital thinks it is a negative state of indifference and non-attachment, things that it hates because liking and disliking are its native atmosphere.

But with having psychic love for all, is there also going to be any pure divine love for a particular one?

But first you must realise what the “pure divine” love is!

Of course new friendships may come up and old ones break, but I am inclined to wonder whether such personal pure ties will be there or not.

But that is not the question your “inclination” asks – it is practically asking whether one can’t keep up one’s attachments and carry them into the higher atmosphere!

I gather from your reply to J that one will have the same deep psychic feelings for all.

Not the same psychic feelings for all, but different psychic feelings are possible.

We always think that all our relations will be impersonal. That is one of the reasons why we cling to our objects of love and desire.

That is not the reason – the reason lies in the clinging itself.

During meditation I had a vision of J lying dead in a room. Her death was accidental and not natural. Suddenly the door of the room opened and a hideous figure came in. It was so vivid that I still shudder to think of it. I was just sitting on a chair and looking at J’s corpse. Is it J’s mania of suicide from the subconscient?

It looks on the surface like a nightmare vision of the vital. It might refer to what you say – something shot up from a subconscient impression into form. Or, who knows, it may mean simply the old vital attachment by her lying dead and old vital Nature looking on in a horrified disapproval!

I don’t think it is much use writing about personal relations in the true spiritual life (which does not yet exist here). None would understand it except as a form of words. Only three points –

(1) Its very base would have to be spiritual and psychic and not vital. The vital would be there but as an instrument only.

(2) It would be a relation flowing from the higher Truth, not continued from the lower Ignorance.

(3) It would not be impersonal in the sense of being colourless, but whatever colours were there would not be the egoistic and muddy colours of the present relations.

It appears to me that women generally are not so disturbed because they deliberately eliminate from their mind any idea of physical sex contacts.

They don’t; but they don’t want to face the dangers or the consequences of the vital physical impulse which they have to bear for the most part.

Also their vitals are satisfied more easily by simple vital exchanges, e.g. walking, talking, at most holding hands.

That is true of many women.

June 25, 1936

I do believe that if one person loves another sincerely it will have an influence on the person some day.

It may have, very likely, but it isn’t a necessary consequence.

A tells me that 3 or 4 days ago he saw in a vision that I was jumping into the Mother’s lap. How miraculously you have saved me without any trying on my part.

You called sincerely for the help, so the help came.

Jatin sends you another letter and wants a reply. Two letters. Can you reply either or both?

This one is easier to answer. I keep it also.

May I have a cup of soup for S. for a few days, from Rajangam? D.R. soup is very watery.

You mean some of our soup? I don’t know how that can be arranged, but you can ask Champaklal if it is possible.

June 26, 1936

S – the pain and discomfort increased after 2 p.m. There is a tendency of salivation. Gave 2 doses of calomel.

You are giving calomel – but is there no salt in his egg or any other food? Soup has salt in it. I think calomel should be stopped.

If you ask me to cut off all medicines or some of them, and rely on the Force, I am willing to do so.

It seems a lot of medicine – but I doubt if in S’s case we can rely on Force alone.

He can’t digest milk, so I asked for the soup. It may be inconvenient to supply from your soup, so I can ask Dyuman to buy some soup vegetables and supply them. I think that would be best.

No, it would not be best. We are asking Rajangam to manage somehow to prepare some more soup for the purpose.

June 27, 1936

S is not tolerating the milk well. Cream or creamed milk would have been better.

Cream for jaundice? In France they actually took all cream out of the milk before allowing it!

Very little salt was given so far. I am adding a little now in the soup.

The Mother’s objection was to calomel + salt food. So long as calomel is not given, it is all right.

June 28, 1936

S tells others that he’s better, though to me he hesitates to admit the fact. He asked B to write to you that he wasn’t at all improving. When it was contradicted by facts he replied that his forbearance only has increased. I had a hearty laugh!

He or rather B wrote to me a tragic tale. I told him this kind of illness took time to cure and meanwhile he had better practise quietness and cheerfulness – it would help the Force.

N.P. has pain near the spine, at the top of the right sacroiliac joint for the last 2 weeks.

He has sent me a wail too about jerks and sleeplessness.

Please don’t forget my book; if no time let it incubate another night, provided it hatches out fully.

Had to. D took all my time with his woes and the opinions of Lawrence. It is the “Bases of Yoga” that has upset him!!! Moreover J’s two letters, three urgently needed replies to sadhaks who have been waiting hungrily for weeks or days etc., etc. So –

June 29, 1936

S – after taking eggs – had the sensation of vomiting and griping pain. Egg is responsible, I suppose.

Yes, better suppress egg for the present.

He looks better but some discomfort will continue so long as the complete flow of bile is not established.

Does it not always take long in these cases?

I propose to give some bitters with nux vomica etc.

You can try.

July 1, 1936

S is much better, feels happy. I forgot to write that jaundice usually takes 2-3 weeks.

So I understood, even a month.

N.P. is dying more of fear, and thinking if he does this or that the pain may come back!

That is why these things continue with him.

What about my private book or J’s letters? Can’t you send them?

Not as yet. Could not make up arrears.

Today X seemed quite sane. So you see. Sir, after all it is your help that pulled her up.

Of course as soon as you wrote I put the shower-bath on her.

[About J’s novel:] If you say that she’d better follow what Y says, she is willing to do so. Her Jury has toned down and she feels that after all there was nothing much to get upset about. The book belongs to the Mother.

Well, that is something.

I feel that Y would mind again if J did everything herself – and she won’t be able to do it well. After all, Y has spent so much for the book, and he is determined to see that it brings a good sale...

You are quite right. Since Y has done everything about this book till now, it is better to let him finish. In future she can keep clear of any obligation to him, but here it will only create confusion and more trouble.

Another point – Y doesn’t want J to send a copy of the book to Niren, for fear of criticism...

That is a point I cannot resolve.

July 3, 1936

For N – shall we try olive oil?

What for olive oil?

For his stomach-ache and constipation etc., yeast can be tried. It has been found very good in some cases.

Yeast ought to do him good, as he complains of weakness. You can have a try, before we plunge in R who is struggling with a difficult case just now. But I am afraid in N’s body there is something that does not want to cure, for it finds itself more miserably interesting with constipation, ache and sciatica than without it.

I send you Nishikanta’s version of my Bengali poem. He has tried to keep as far as possible my words, but even then it can hardly be called mine.

My God! he has pummelled you into pieces and thrown away all but a few shreds. No, you can’t call it yours. Perhaps you can label it, “Nirod after being devoured, assimilated and eliminated by Nishikanta.”

Nishikanta has written so much that you can’t do without tumbling into his influence.

Your own version, if it takes things from NK is still not NK but yourself.

July 4, 1936

Here is a poem – don’t know if it is the outcome of your “shall try” or you didn’t try at all?

Just gave a pressure or two, that’s all.

Opinion?

Very beautiful.

I hope you won’t disappoint me this week-end. I have waited long enough. One of J. B.’s letters must be answered. What?

Can’t say – so many people waiting for an answer.

A flower for Chand.

Take from Nolini.

July 5, 1936

S’s jaundice still seems to be the same. I propose to give him about half an ounce of mag. sulph. tomorrow.

Mother suggests that a small lavement (cold) should be given him daily until there is no bile. She doesn’t think purgatives are much use for jaundice.

Please try to give one or two more “pressures” for poetry.

Shall try.

One answer to Jatin managed. Rest swimming on the wide wide sea.

July 6, 1936

I propose to give S, mag. sulph. not as purgation but to stimulate the bile flow from the liver. Any objection? However, I will do as Mother says.

No, you can give the mag. sulph.

Mother was suggesting from her own experience, and the instructions of Doctors in France. But probably it differs with cases and people.

July 6, 1936 (Morning)

I have no peace, no joy, no push for anything, and am physically an absolute rag. I wonder, after all, whether you have committed a mistake by telling me all that [an unpublished letter]; pardon my audacity. I doubt because I don’t find any good result from it. Can you tell me why exactly you told me all that? Surely you must have had an end in view.

You asked for it yourself, nor was there anything much more than I had told you on a former occasion – only one actual case of the general proposition. If the old thing rose up so violently, as a result, it shows that it was there all the time in the subconscient coming secretly in the way of the progress and the continuity or return of such experiences as you had. It seems to me that it was as well that it should come up and you should deal with it consciously and directly. If you want the Divine and the inner life, the old vital moorings must be cut.

In short, I am thinking of going out somewhere for a month. I can only think of A at Bombay who may be willing to keep me.

That is D’s proposition all over again! I have to spend a large part of the night writing letters to him so that he may not start for Cape Comorin and the Himalayas – now if you pile Bombay and A on these two ends of India, I for my part shall have to head for the Pacific Ocean.

I am feeling that the intimate personal contact you allowed me before – which is one of the big attractions – you are withdrawing. Perhaps I have committed some grave faults, or the necessity doesn’t exist!

I don’t know where you got that rubbishy idea. I have told you that I am preoccupied with the old mass of correspondence – (now + D) + many important and pressing answers to people which in spite of their pressingness I can’t get written. That is why I have not sent you back your personal book, as I need a less occupied mind to discuss such intricate and difficult questions as you have put this time. There is no question of withdrawing anything or grave faults or cessation of any necessity. For heaven’s sake, don’t begin striking this other Dilipian chord!

July 6, 1936 (Evening)

... You say I should deal with it consciously and directly. But how?

I meant that you should fight it out.

... You say it is all D. In everything I do, you find D.

Because you say just the same things.

I didn’t know at all that he has got it afresh – this idea of going away – perhaps over J’s novel affair?

No, the reason he gives is just the same as yours...

But if you head for the Pacific, well, I suppose I have to be swayed and billowed into the Atlantic, at whatever cost! You write, “If you want the Divine...” That is the whole question. Do I really want the Divine? Have I come for Him?

I intended to write “If something in you wants the Divine,” but dropped into the shorter form. Something must have wanted it, otherwise the things you write or experienced formerly would be meaningless. Parts of the mind which are uppermost now may not want, but that is so with most people.

It is not so much the retention of my book that gave me that idea. From your short answers and from a wrong intuition perhaps.

Short answers were due to the same cause.

But if you want to keep me here, do save me from this condition – no peace, no strength to fight, etc. Unless you save ‘me unconditionally, I am doomed.

Quite ready.

Shivalingam has again had pain in the right ankle for the last 6 or 7 days. Thinking of trying Sod. Salicyl. injection; if that fails, then protein injection.

[No reply.]

Mahatma Gandhi says in an article: “... I hold that complete realisation is impossible in this embodied life. Nor is it necessary. A living immovable faith is all that is required for reaching the full spiritual height attainable by human beings...” Your opinion on the matter?

I do not know what Mahatma Gandhi means by complete realisation. If he means a realisation with nothing more to realise, no farther development possible, then I agree – I have myself spoken of farther divine progression, an infinite development. But the question is not that; the question is whether the Ignorance can be transcended, whether a complete essential realisation turning the consciousness from darkness to light, from an instrument of the Ignorance seeking for Knowledge into an instrument or rather a manifestation of Knowledge proceeding to greater Knowledge, Light enlarging, heightening into greater Light, is or is not possible. My view is that this conversion is not only possible, but inevitable in the spiritual evolution of the being here. The embodiment of life has nothing to do with it. This embodiment is not of life, but of consciousness and its energy of which life is only one phase or force. As life has developed mind, and the embodiment has modified itself to suit this development (mind is precisely the main instrument of ignorance seeking for knowledge); so mind can develop Supermind which is in its nature knowledge not seeking for itself, but manifesting itself by its own automatic power, and the embodiment can again modify itself or be modified from above so as to suit this development. Faith is a necessary means for arriving at realisation because we are ignorant and do not yet know that which we are seeking to realise; faith is indeed knowledge giving the ignorance an intimation of itself previous to its own manifestation, it is the gleam sent before by the yet unrisen Sun. When the Sun shall rise there will be no longer any need of the gleam. The supramental knowledge supports itself, it does not need to be supported by faith; it lives by its own certitude. You may say that farther progression, farther development will need faith. No, for the farther development will proceed on a basis of knowledge, not of Ignorance. We shall walk in the light of knowledge towards its own wider vistas of self-fulfilment.

July 8, 1936

No opinion about Shivalingam’s injections?

You can try. But I thought you wanted to try salicylating first.

July 10, 1936

I am stuck up at the end of a poem. Your last “pressure” [5.7.36] has failed. Give a little again please, so that I may complete the poem tonight.

When do you work at night?

July 11, 1936

The trouble is that I have no definite time for working at night, but usually it’s at 9 p.m. Suppose when I intend to write poetry, I inform you along with the report and wait for the Force from 9 o’clock, wouldn’t that be better?

I don’t know that it would. It might work like that if I were always free to concentrate on particular things at a particular time; but that does not happen.

Doesn’t your pressure work itself out or does it take a long time? Do you think if you put the Force at an exact time, say 9 p.m., it has a greater chance of immediate success?

One can’t make a rule like that. There is nothing more variable than the way the Force acts.

J was rather discouraged by a fall from her previous height and said there is no use then writing or labouring so much.

She can’t expect to succeed equally every time. No poet does. I have tried to explain that to her.

She says she also feels an urge for writing novels and does not know how to run two horses together. Is it possible to work part of the day on novel and part on poetry?

It is quite possible to do it if one accustoms oneself to do it. But I suppose she gets absorbed in the novel or concentrated in the effort of poetry and the energy refuses to divert itself or gets disturbed if it is.

July 12, 1936

“They drink the Light from Heaven’s golden cores...”

How many “cores” do you think Heaven has? Singular, sir, singular!

If the Force is so variable, why then did you ask about my working time at night? Surely you had hit upon some idea!

The exact knowledge of circumstances always helps the action, even if it does not follow a rule deduced from the circumstances.

S says Asram bread does not agree with him, responsible for heaviness, want of appetite etc., asks for bazaar bread. What does the doctor say?

July 13, 1936

I am obliged to keep N¹² for the usual reason. It is already beyond time and my work unfinished.

I don’t think Asram bread has anything to do with S’s “non-agreement”, for he takes only 1 or 2 slices in the morning. The real complaint is that he doesn’t like curries.

Is not I.K. cooking for him? He has sent me a letter asking for her to cook this or that dish he wants. This is beyond me. I am not a dietist – or whatever the proper word may be.

July 14, 1936

No, I.K. does not cook for S. He wants to stop soup, as it makes him heavy!

What an idiot!

He wants to try semolina in milk. So shall I get some from M?

You can ask M – I didn’t know he had semolina.

But don’t yield too much to S’s imaginations, he will become impossible.

Any time for NK’s poem?

Forgot it on my table.

July 15, 1936

Jaswant writes: “Deepest Love to Sri Aurobindo. Do convey it if Papa writes blessings, if Jaswant comes up in memory.”

Don’t understand. What is to be conveyed? And how do the two ifs relate together or with the “convey”?

I have begun two poems, one came on top of the other. A rush of ideas invading!

Very good.

Please try if you can, to circulate some Force at night – 9 p.m., and afternoon, just when you regain your curvilinear proportions – 2.30 p.m.

There is no such regularity about curvilineation. However I will circulate whenever possible.

S has sent me the accompanying letter. I absolutely refuse to ask the Mother or give orders upon his chits for food, so I refer it to you. I can’t rely on him – here he asks for oil, but you had written that you had said no to oil. It seems to me if he takes oil and spices and greasy things before the bile is entirely out of his blood, it will be there for good. S has neither self-restraint nor common sense. His খেয়াল¹³ is his guide. But are we to follow it?

... I am in sheer despair. I want to say – damn it all, damn it all. Let me –

Don’t damn, but lift up quietly.

July 16, 1936

Force, Force, please. I have begun four poems and none complete. Every day I get new lines at Pranam, but can’t complete a single poem!

Very well, let us try to bring them to completion.

Today S told me that he took a little rice, one potato, one brinjal-roast, one karela.

Karela is good, potato passable [খেয়াল?] – brinjal detestable, but I suppose less so roast than fried.

Today after a “storm” with X, everything is clear. And now I am completely out of the gloom, and am happy. How it came about – tomorrow perhaps.

Very good. However it came about, the result is gratifying.

July 17, 1936

... But is it really “gratifying”? It may be so as far as my gloominess is concerned. But the ultimate result?

The ultimate result is for the Ultimate to see – I was speaking in and of the immediate.

I am now determined to turn myself towards you as far as possible.

Very good.

Have X and I formed our old attachments in this garb?...

All that depends on the Ulterior (not the Ultimate). It is an advantage to have got to a friendly relation rather than a hard scraggy one which gave neither release nor quietude. The evolution from that basis depends on the future.

... A strong aspiration for more and more purity, sincerity, etc., is coming down. Contact with her gives me real joy. I see the vital receding... But are all these illusions? Will you explain?

No use explaining. If you keep to the understanding and to your aspiration, psychology will take care of itself.

Give both of us your blessings and help to keep our relation pure, harmonious and happy. Will you?

Yes.

Jatin says he can wait even for a year, for your reply. I hope it won’t be as bad as that. I’ll write that he need have no fear in these difficulties as your Force and protection are with him. Shall I?

Yes.

S says he feels hungry now, will be absolutely all right in 4 or 5 days. Three cheers!!

What about bile?

July 18, 1936

Madan Gopal suddenly got high fever... Seems to be malaria which he had before... I might give him an injection tomorrow for quick action. Sanction?

If it is the antimalarial injection given to Jyotin, yes.

I asked N.P. to keep a watch over him; so N.P. should not go for work in the afternoon. He wants your permission.

Yes.

July 19, 1936

I hope I don’t trouble you unnecessarily with detailed questions on poetry?

No.

D.L. has pain in the abdomen, fever, weakness, etc. She says whenever there is fever, there is this pain; I am inclined to think it is the other way round.

I should suppose so.

I’m afraid, her work, which is rather heavy, should be cut down.

The heavy part of the work is being done now by hired people. She is supposed only to supervise.

It seems to be ulcer. Some cases have been cured by just olive oil taken orally. I’ll try it with simple diet...

All right. It can be tried.

July 20, 1936

S is hardly better. We have to buy a few more pills. Sanction?

Yes.

The fellow is thinking only of eating and renewing his ordinary life – he can’t be allowed to chronicise his beastly jaundice.

July 23, 1936

V has had diarrhoea last 2 days. I wonder if it is due to cold in the stomach or the mangoes he had taken.

Probably latter. It was at least Mother’s first idea, though she knew nothing about the mangoes.

P’s boil squeezed out...

Mother gave a chit for one month yeast treatment; did you get it (from Tajdar)? With these boils always coming some blood purification is surely necessary.

July 24, 1936

D says: “If you want to publish your literary work, you must see that people understand it – not the public at large, but, as Virginia Woolf says, a select public. Otherwise don’t publish at all. The very idea of publication means an appreciation, and how can one appreciate an unintelligible thing?”

What is not understood or appreciated by one select circle may be understood or appreciated by another select circle or in the future like Blake’s poetry. Nobody appreciated Blake in his own time – now he ranks as a great poet – more poetic than Shakespeare, says Housman. Tagore wrote he could not appreciate D’s poetry because it is too “Yogic” for him. Is Tagore then unselect, one of the public at large?

D says that your case is different, because you don’t care for publication!

It is not for that reason.

Any light on the issue of the publication, and the public being the judge?

I don’t agree at all with not publishing because you won’t be understood. At that rate many great poets would have remained unpublished. What about the unintelligible Mallarmé who had such a great influence on later French poetry?

S still feels weak. His bile colour is improving. Shall I give him some iron and nux vomica?

Not iron as yet – let the bile go out first – Nux vomica yes.

July 25, 1936

One more poem completed.

Very beautiful.

I don’t know its exact meaning and I am feeling rather shy to send it lest you also should find no meaning at all.

Plenty of meaning, but not “exact”. Exact meaning is not the forte of this kind of poetry.

One suggestion please: can I use স্বপনিকা¹⁴ for a she-dreamer? I find in the Bengali dictionary the word স্বপ্নক¹⁵ meaning a sleepy person. If স্বপ্নক why not স্বপ্নিকা¹⁶ or স্বপনিকা¹⁷?

I have not met any স্বপ্নক in Sanskrit, but if there is one, his wife might very correctly be স্বপ্নিকা.

A question about Jatin’s room business. I have found a single small room – rent Rs. 7 per month, no furniture, no light.

Does not sound promising.

Another house for Rs. 20, but people below go on playing music almost all the time.

Don’t know Jatin’s financial capacities or his attitude towards badly played music.

There is another house in front of your room. Rs. 15 per month...

? Whose house?

You said nothing about J.

What to say? Cure the fellow anyhow. The old Dr. used to regard his sufferings as things of the nerves more than anything else.

D.L. still feels weak, shall I try arsenic and nux vomica?

No objection to Nux Vomica. Arsenic? Well, if you think it might be cautiously tried, but she is fatty already and may not be a lit arsenical subject.

S has been having fever for the last 15 days, especially in the afternoons. I asked her to come in the afternoon to show the fever. She came in my absence and said to Mulshankar that as she was feeling all right no medicine was necessary!

That was why we sent her to you that she might suddenly feel all right. She used to go to Dr. Banerji with “high fever” which proved to be not fever at all when he put the thermom.

July 26, 1936

I send you my poem with some changes made in the chhanda by Dilip and Nishikanta. I can’t quite see their point; but as they are masters in metre I have to consider. What does your ear say?

My opinion on metrical points is not of much value. I dare say you are right, but the alterations made sound better.

Nishikanta says “red tears” is not very appropriate, for tears are associated with transparency. Can one use “red tears of pain” in English?

Yes, in English one can, as poetical equivalent to the common phrase “tears of blood”.

The third house I spoke to you about, for Jatin, belongs to the fisherman who, I understand, wanted to catch you in his net!

[Sri Aurobindo underlined “catch you”.]

? Probably you are mistaking the identity. It was another member of the family.

Another poem by J! She seems to be flowering very rapidly.

Yes.

But I can’t pronounce upon the chhanda as I’m not a metrist. So I approach you.

Neither am I.

J says that when she was writing it, she thought she knew what it meant, but after it was finished, it seemed strange to herself!

It is strange, but admirable. More and more Blakish. One feels what it means, but mentally it is inexplicable. (I mean of course in the details; the general idea is clear.)

July 27, 1936

Today another poem by J. I’m staggered by her speed in writing. She says lines, chhanda, simply drop down, and she jots them down. She feels as if somebody is writing through her.

But that is how inspiration always comes when the way is clear and the mind sufficiently passive. Something drops or pours down; somebody writes through you.

I don’t know that by one’s mind one can write such things. What do you say?

Not possible. There would be something artificial or made up in them if it were the mind that did it.

How has she opened to the mystic plane? Something akin to her nature or one just opens?

It may be either.

Even when a thing drops down, isn’t it rather risky to accept it as it comes, specially the chhanda part of it?

If anything is defective, it can be only by a mistake in the transcription.

Does the chhanda also come down with inspiration or has one to change it afterwards?

Yes, it comes and is usually faultless – if the mind is passive and the source a high, deep or true one. Of course metre as the Supraphysical understand it!

I shall illustrate my point. J says she sometimes rejects lines because she doesn’t understand their meaning. But since they repeatedly throw themselves on her, she accepts them. When the poem is completed the meaning becomes clear.

The mind ought to be quiet till all is written. Afterwards one can look and see if there is anything to be altered.

All this is really funny. How has she got this Blakish opening without even reading him? Was she Blake or Mrs. Blake by any chance?

Not necessarily. She was certainly not Blake. What I meant was not that they were just like Blake’s or a reproduction of his, but simply that they have a kindred mystical stamp and come from a similar source of inspiration. The figures, the form, the general vision are quite different from Blake’s.

Lines come down in her meditation or she actually hears them!

Why not? It is quite common with many here.

How do you find the metre of this poem? It seems a bit jerky to me. And how do you like the word উল্লাসে¹⁸?

I don’t know really the law of Bengali metre in this respect. In an English stanza it would be quite natural to have these variations, especially if they go by pairs as here. But you should know better what is or is not admissible in Bengali. Of course Bengalically the last line may be dropped – but উল্লাসে spoils the symmetry of the sense a little, as it is intended to refrain the idea of the opening lines. However if necessary as metre, উল্লাসে will do very well.

You didn’t write anything about Jatin’s room business?

Forgot, by Jove!

July 28, 1936

You say you don’t know enough Bengali nor the metre, but all these discussions have revealed that your “don’t know” is much more than “we know”. Whether you know or don’t know, we will write and please just opine on it.

Very well, I will go on hazarding my perceptions of Form in the Formless. Metre and law can always take care of themselves.

My poetic fervour has volatilised away!

Well, it was a good spirit anyway.

J says that even a few beautiful lines in a poem give her a thrill.

Well, that is the natural effect on a poet.

You know I have always complained of the lack of any such happiness. I write because I have nothing else to do. I say to myself, “It is not this, not this, neti neti, that I want. I want something deep, great and wide filling my whole being with ananda, peace.”

And yet you say there is no strand of Yogic seeking in you anywhere?

Neti neti with this longing for something deep and great in the nature of Ananda filling the being and the vairagya for anything less (নাল্পে সুখমস্তি ভূমা সুখমস্তি¹⁹) is the very nature of the Yogic push and impulse, at least according to the Vedantic line²⁰.

I seek for Ananda, it eludes me – Love, Peace are nowhere. If poetry doesn’t give them, what’s the use?

Poetry does not give love and peace, it gives Ananda, intense but not wide or lasting.

You will say that it is my mind that obstructs by its struggle.

Your mind has obstructed the free flow of the poetry – but what it has obstructed more is the real peace and Ananda that is “deep, great and wide”. A quiet mind turned towards the ভূমা²¹ is what you need.

I have written poems without much obstruction, but they didn’t give me any joy except the last one: The Bird of Light²², which gave me Just a thrill.

Perhaps the beginning of Ananda of poetry, because it came from a deeper than mental source.

Isn’t it a fact that the best poetry, almost always, comes down without any resistance at all?

Usually the best poetry a poet writes, the things that make him immortal, come like that.

July 29, 1936

Yes, there is a longing no doubt, for something deep, and নেতি নেতি²³ also is there; but I don’t find vairagya for anything less as yet –

নেতি নেতি is itself vairagya – the true vairagya.

For I am thinking of past vital pleasures, sweet memories of happy peaceful moments in a happy sunny or moony atmosphere, and am thinking – ah, if I could get back those rare moments!

That is in another part of your vital – the lower.

So how shall I trust this নেতি as real or this “yogic strand”? All the time this blessed vital thought goes on! Yogic strand!

Your argument is that because the Yogic strand is not the whole of the nature, it cannot be real. This is rather illogical. The Yogic strand is always in the beginning a strand, a movement or impulsion from one part of the nature, however veiled or small. It grows afterwards, slowly or quickly, according to people and circumstances, on the rest.

In spite of everything, a deep urge is there but a dissatisfaction too because I can’t get it. Can this be a psychic sadness?

It is the feeling of the higher vital which has been affected by the psychic.

I doubt.

! That’s the mind at it.

Anyway I have realised that without “something” deeply and lastingly settled in me, I can’t do anything. I don’t know what is that something or how to get it, so I lament.

It is the wideness of the higher or spiritual consciousness with its vast peace, light, knowledge, force, Ananda.

You say my mind obstructs, whereas I thought it is the vital hankering that hinders.

Your mind obstructs with its perpetual “I doubt” (see above). The vital of course by its hankerings.

Of course the mind is always thinking, worrying, but isn’t it because the vital is restless?

Partly or mostly, but also because it is the nature of the mind to doubt, worry, eternally parliamentarise about things instead of getting them done.

J sends a poem. She doesn’t think much of it, as it was done so quickly. She says she heard the first few lines in sleep. After reading the whole poem, I have found it is impossible to write it simply from facility. It is an inspiration-poem.

Of course it is impossible. There must be inspiration. The value of the poem does not rise from the labour or difficulty felt in writing it. Shakespeare, it is said, wrote at full speed and never erased a line.

I don’t know about the fineness of the poem, but the chhanda and her originality in thought and expressions move me so much.

The poem is fine.

She says that while she was writing it, she felt some heavy pressure in the nape of the neck, then it came down and she was compelled to shut her eyes after which she felt all right and the poem came down quickly.

The pressure is the sign of a Yoga-force at work.

You said that Blake put down with fidelity whatever came down.

I didn’t mean that he never altered – I don’t know about that. I meant he did not let his mind disfigure what came by trying to make it intellectual. He transcribed what he saw and heard.

Will you circulate some Force towards me?

Yes.

July 30, 1936

Yesterday I had a very strange dream – not exactly a dream. 3 or 4 of us were listening to D singing with his teacher Majumdar (now dead) who was playing the harmonium. Majumdar joined D in the song. Then the harmonium stopped; Majumdar, carried away by the bhāva, made very fine rhythmic movements, uttering some lines now and then. Oh, the whole thing was exquisite. Then the funniest thing happened; Majumdar was turned into D, and I found it was D who was uttering the lines and making the movements with a bare upper body. Then the bust became luminous and he went on singing, dancing and gradually his luminous bust rose in the air and vanished away! Someone cried out – he is an avatar, avatar... The whole thing so influenced me that even after my sleep broke, I remained quiet, thinking of that very pleasant vision. It was 3.15 a.m. What’s this now?

A very queer dream in the vital plane – rather mixed with contributions from the subconscient. Possibly it was the element of Majumdar that D had absorbed which you saw in that figure, then it disappeared into D himself, the inner progress he had made through his music being figured in the bust being luminous. But the vanishing away and the avatar beat me.

I enclose a poem of J with the corrected version which is decidedly better than the original. She says formerly she used to aspire for things beautiful etc. instead of letting herself go. Now she remains passive – and this poem is the result. Any answer?

There is no incompatibility between aspiring and letting the thing come through. The aspiration gives the necessary intensity so that what comes has a better chance of being a true transcription. In this case probably the pain she felt in the neck etc. was a proof of some fatigue in the physical parts which spoiled the transmission...

I am afraid there is plenty of work for you tonight. You can keep my poem.

I am obliged to do so. I am issuing a notice for “Stop correspondence” but that need not deter you from sending your or J’s poems with comments.

July 31, 1936

Well, Sir, what about my epic?

Splendid. This is a full-blown poem.

I notice some queer things happening in the realm of poetry between Nishikanta and myself. I wrote a line: চলছে ভেসে চাঁদের তরী ওই সুনীলের সাগরে,²⁴ and did not follow it up. Two days later I find Nishikanta writing a poem wherein occurs the line কে ভাসালে চাঁদের তরী ²⁵ Some time back a similar thing happened. These are about expressions; similar things are happening about chhanda also. Strange, isn’t it?

Nothing queer about that. You dropped the inspiration and did not work it out; so it went off and prodded N who let it through. That often happens.

NK’s new poems strike me as if a new channel has opened up in him. The poems seem to become more simple and deep – psychic?

Yes – he has made a big jump forward. Formerly it was all vital; afterwards vital-mental (I am speaking of the transmitting agency, not the source of inspiration or its substance), now a new element has come in. Psychic? I don’t know – perhaps psycho-mental-vital. At any rate something wanting has been filled up – a missing chord has come in.

He himself admitted that J’s poems have helped him in this direction. I think this simple mystic-symbolic touch he got from J.

It is probable.

It seems I don’t get joy in writing because I haven’t yet got my own source and am writing only by the mind. If true, don’t mental works give joy?

The mental by itself gives a kind of aesthetic রস,²⁶ but not ভোগ²⁷ – ভোগ comes from the excited participation of the vital, আনন্দ²⁸ from above.

But there is such a thing as an aesthetic thrill. Why don’t I get it?

Probably the higher vital does not sufficiently participate.

D.L. has rashes. They are probably due to enema or salicylic acid.

It must be the salicylic.

August 1, 1936

Please tell me if metre is, after all, not a question of the ear.

Mainly of the ear, but “number” also has something to do with it.

Wasn’t the ear the first guide and then metre developed?

Yes, but in developing, metre modified the ear and created in it demands of a more complex kind.

What about Blake? Are his or other great poets’ metres, absolutely orthodox?

English is different; it has a freer movement, I suppose, than Bengali. English metre is sometimes strict, sometimes breaks into irregularities.

J says she still feels that terrible pressure when she sits down to write. Is it due to resistance?

I suppose – if it is on the neck – that is the place of the expressing physical or externalising mind. As yet probably there is a strong resistance there – perhaps the result of something there that still expects or desires to write mentally, not mystically.

She was lying in bed trying to concentrate when she saw something like a thin wire coming towards her, with a rapid serpentine movement. The wire seemed to change into a snake. She had a joy out of it. She fears it may presage a bad event.

No need to fear. The wire implies a connection with some source – the snake the energy of that which was coming from the source. A snake is a bad symbol only when it comes from the vital or other lower plane.

D.L. complains of constant stinging pain in the abdomen. It is either ulcer or worms. I am thinking of treating her with a milk diet in alkalies. If ulcer, then it is bound to produce results. On Monday I shall take her for X-ray.

Is it not better to ascertain first by X-ray or otherwise before trying this treatment, as milk diet only may make her weak with a depressed resistance?

I asked S to take Asram food; he agreed but came back saying – “Let me go on one week more with the special diet.” What’s to be done?

Go on for a week more, since the fellow insists. He may think himself into pains again otherwise.

August 2, 1936

I send you this magnificent poem of Dilip’s along with his after-corrections. My impression is that most of the changes have spoiled the beauty of the poem. Do you agree with me?

I have the same impression as you. It is always a little perilous to meddle afterwards with something that has come out in a full inspiration – “improvements” in such cases generally spoil the first spontaneous perfection.

I am again prosaic and gloomy. Everybody is changing here; no change for me.

Everybody is who? Give me the good news.

Must I go on crying and crying?

I hope not. Crying won’t hasten the change.

Please put, at least, the shower of poetry on as you did a few days ago. Or is it gone?

It can always come back.

What about my other book lying with you? Can you release it now?

I don’t know. Not immediately at least.

You said that if the wrong medicine is given, the Force has to counteract that also...

I only meant that it was so much obstacle to the Force which it has to overcome.

If the medical channel had opened in you like the painting vision, what a great help it would have been for you, and a boon for me!

My dear sir, in that case I should have to do all the doctoring. So I take care not to let the Medico open. Simple measure of prudence.

J says no trouble at all now... He is not willing to take any medicine. Cast him off?

Bile gone? If so can finish.

August 4, 1936

J had never any bile! He complained of pain and weakness.

Ah yes. I was under the impression it was S. I am always mixing them together.

You did not answer my question about the Force. What I asked you was that by the very fact of much obstacle, the Force or the giver of the Force knows that some mistake is being committed. Suppose you give a certain Force, but it fails to produce the desired result, then you say, “Oh that fellow has given wrong medicines – Swine!”

Not at all. The Force (I am out of the picture here) feels a greater obstacle, but need not know that it is due to a wrong medicine. Force and Knowledge are two different things and in the consciousness below Supermind may go together or may not.

Swine is inappropriate – it should be some other animal.

August 5, 1936

X, in his latest poem, has used one of my expressions. Suppose his were to be published and then mine – I would be misjudged as borrowing from him. How far is it justifiable for a poet to take the bhāva and expression from others and use them?

Great poets have borrowed from small ones and small poets from great ones, and it is difficult to lay down any law in the matter. But to lift things bodily like that from unpublished poems shown in confidence, is not delicate – nor, I think permissible.

Shall we be petty and mean if we don’t show our poems from such fear?

From the normal point of view it would be perfectly justified not to show your things – except of course for the fact that X and N have given you considerable help in forming yourselves as poets; but that is no reason why they should take things from your poems.

Please give the answer from the ordinary as well as the Yogic point of view.

From the Yogic point of view one ought to be indifferent and without sense of ownership or desire of fame or praise. But for that one must have arrived at the Yogic poise – such a detachment is not possible without it. I do not mind R’s lifting whole sentences and paragraphs from my writings at the World Conference as his own and getting credit for a new and quite original point of view.

But if I were eager to figure before the world as a philosopher, I would resent it. But even if one does not mind, one can see the impropriety of the action or take measures against its repetition, if one thinks it worth while.

You will see that it is really a problem that concerns all writers, for I am also tempted to take and use others’ expressions and bhāva but I don’t know if I should.

You should not – if for nothing else for the sake of the poetry and right development of your own inspiration.

A’s umbilical pain is gone, slight liver pain... She says she wrote to Mother at 3.30 p.m. and since then her pain has stopped. She has these attacks, so I would like to know whether the medicine has done her any good or the Force alone.

I suppose the medicine has done its part.

A worker in the hot water dept. had dysentery 3 weeks ago and was treated at home. Suddenly day before yesterday he had copious vomiting of dark blood. Came to us with chest pain...

Dark blood can’t be from the lungs? Not something wrong lower

down?

August 7, 1936

What about my poem? I hope it is mentally quite clear!

Very fine indeed, very. You have suddenly reached a remarkable maturity of the poetic power. Which seems to suggest that the periods of sterility were not so sterile after all or were rather an incubation period, a work of opening going on in the inner being behind the veil before it manifested in the outer. Let us hope the same is going on in the direct sadhana.

Today at Pranam I felt a somewhat “blocky” feeling, if you know what I mean?

Yes, thought at first I was afraid you meant you felt blockheaded or felt foolish! but remembered in time the “block” of descent.

Is it the descent of Force?

Usually the feeling comes from a mass of the higher consciousness coming down either as peace or as force.

Dr. Becharlal and I are again strongly suspecting D.L. of a double infection: hookworm with Trichomonas... We’ll make another stool examination...

By the way, I understand how hookworms get in, but how do these tropical Technomaniacs or whatever you call them, make their entry on the stage? Food? water? what?

S complains of hunger all the time. Five slices of bread are given in the morning, he wants one more! In spite of it, feels weak etc.

He must have bad assimilation due to liver, so always hungry and no profit from food.

August 8, 1936

If you have thought it is the apparent period of sterility etc. that has produced this “maturity”, I am afraid it is not quite so.

I still think so and think that it is quite so.

For, this poem upon which you have based your opinion, was actually started, and one and a half stanzas were completed, on the 25th of July or so, i.e. before “the period of sterility”. The rest only was done in these 2 or 3 days.

It is not confined to you or this case but a general psychological principle – the action behind the veil, even the psychologists who do not believe in Yoga have begun to recognise the large part this plays in Nature.

So I’m a little puzzled about the “going in”.

I do not remember having said anything about “going in”. I believe I spoke of something “going on” behind the veil during the time of apparent sterility in the outer being.

When you said “suddenly” did you mean that the maturity of power has come in fully in this poem?

When I said suddenly I meant as I said, that it appears in these two bigger poems and was not there before. A progress was there, but not this.

I thought that development in poetry has a connection with the development in Yoga as well. But you mention the two separately.

If poetic progress meant a progress in the whole range of Yoga, NK would be a great Yogi by this time. The opening in poetry or any other part helps to prepare the general opening when it is done under the pressure of Yoga, but it is at first something special, like the opening of the subtle vision or subtle senses. It is the opening of a special capacity in the inner being.

Though maturity has come in, the substance and depth are remarkably lacking – I think they’ve come in J’s poems.

There is a much greater ripeness in the thought-substance as well as the rest.

What is more visible and very vivid, it seems to me, is the word-beauty of the poem. It doesn’t make one think or stir deeply with the discovery of some hidden treasure.

I don’t know exactly what you mean by that – in yourself or in the reader? You say you have not the enthusiasm of creation, so your own feeling in the matter is not conclusive.

All this maturity etc. is all right, only it doesn’t thrill me or give me satisfaction... No interest in life or its creative activities, especially when I see that I am the same Man of Sorrows... Please don’t taunt me saying that it is all D!

No. D this time is making a valiant attempt to suppress the Man of Sorrows in him and seems so far to have succeeded. I hope you too will soon screw up your energy to the pitch of throwing off this encumbrance.

... I’m now trying to keep myself as busy as possible; it won’t allow the mind to feed on those poisons.

Well, that is right – at least it helps.

I don’t know whether the Goddess of Poetry will withdraw her boon because I don’t care much for it.

She doesn’t seem to be doing so.

Anyway, do you understand my psychology and, if you do, will you give some answers, not mystic but mental?

It is quite easy to understand if one realises that the natural being is not of one piece, but made up of parts or quantums or whatever one likes to call it. One part of your mind and vital has the need though not yet the push for the Divine and that need is becoming very prominent – ... Another doesn’t believe in, or hope for anything. One part of the mind resorts to poetry but cannot wake the vital enthusiasm, because the vital is besieged by the Man of Sorrows. Then there is the man of sorrows himself mixing in everything. Different parts of the mind take different sides and suggest opposite things according as they are pushed by one force or another. As yet no resolution of the central being to put all that into harmony, expel what is to be expelled, change what is to change. I don’t know whether you call that mystic or mental answers, but I can’t give you any other that would be true.

... Today D.L.’s stools were examined, again there were swarms.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined the word “swarms”.]

What’s this word? It looks like “swarms”! Swarms of what?

August 9, 1936

I am satisfied with the answers exposing brilliantly the symptoms and providing the diagnosis. Now the prognosis and the treatment.

That is more difficult. Panacea there is, but only one, which you have indicated in your today’s poem²⁹.

How should I develop the push, the harmony and resolution of the central being, and how should I wake up the vital enthusiasm for poetry? If there is one workable formula that will be a panacea, so much the better.

For the rest there are several formulas which are not panaceas. The first is to get into touch with your central being and get it into action. That central may be the psychic, it may be the Self above with the mental Purusha as its delegate. Either of these once in action does the harmonising etc.

The second way is to act with your mental will on these things, not allowing yourself to drift and not getting upset by difficulties and checks, calling on the Mother’s Force to assist and finally use your will. There are others, but I stop here.

I want urgently that part of the Divine which will help me keep my poise, calm, peace against any assault from the vital quarter...

It is what is trying to come down in the block condition.

D.L. has less pain. Starts normal meals. She asked if she could take oranges and grapes. I said – yes.

Grapes are safe? If she does not wash them in boiling water or a solution of permanganate?

By “swarms” I meant swarms of Trichomonas.

The medicine had no effect? But if the Trichomonas are there in quantity, why is it necessary to search for Hookworms?

August 10, 1936

In your yesterday’s answer you wrote that I have indicated the panacea in my poem. I thought I spoke of faith and surrender! Is that it?

You described very admirably the attitude of perfect nirbhar³⁰ which is the great secret of the most perfect kind of sadhana.

You have not said how to get into touch with the central being, and get it into action.

There is no how. One decides to do it and one does it.

My mental will itself is weak.

It can be made strong.

I can try to call down the Mother’s force, but faith and surrender would require a wonderful Yogic poise and power possible only in born Yogis, I think.

Not at all. A wonderful Yogic poise and power would usually bring self-reliance rather than faith and surrender. It is the simple people who do the latter most easily.

When you spoke of “poetic power” in my poetry, what did you mean? I asked D. He says “poetic power” means a dynamism, a vigorous living force which we find in Madhu-sudan... But we find in Shakespeare both power and beauty, while Swinburne has hardly power predominant.

No power in Swinburne?

Did you mean by “poetic power” a power or capacity of expression?

Of course that was what I meant. The other kind of power would not be prefaced by the epithet poetic. One would simply say “there is great power in his style” etc.

August 11, 1936

Dr. Manilal examined D.L... She’s extremely weak, he advises complete rest.

I suppose there is no call for her to work.

... Is it possible for R to take her up?

I am asking R. You will have to tell him all about the case.

August 13, 1936

Chand has sent money to buy garlands for you. You can bless him without garlands, can’t you?

Yes, of course – quite able.

Jatin has brought me a pair of dhotis. I shall feel highly gratified if you will kindly use one.

I have two drawers packed with dhotis already! Why not use both – your supplies being undoubtedly less?

Do you know what all these people say? That they feel peace, peace everywhere, which one never finds at any other place!

Of course!

Jatin has been saying that Peace is coming as if in waves! Satuda the same, and Dr. Becharlal runs close, if not more! You must be very glad indeed to hear this news.

It is not news! Numbers of people have said the same thing – even carry it to Europe and keep it there in the midst of the crush and confusion.

I wish I could get a little of this long-cherished and much-coveted basis of your Yoga.

It is because you people here, having no infernal shindy outside themselves, create one inside it. The vital can’t get on without a shindy – finds life dull otherwise.

August 16, 1936

NK sends you a poem on his Darshan impression.

Kept him.

August 17, 1936

J wants to know why or how the mind-fag has come in and by what attitude or process it can quickly pass off...

There is nothing serious in it. Very often when the mind has been doing something for a long time (I mean of course the physical mind), something which demands intensity of work or action, not what can be done as a routine, it finds itself unable to do it well any longer. That means that it is strained, needs rest so that the force may gather again. Rest or a variation. A little rest given to it or a variation of work should set it right again.

I thought that one or two hours’ work without undue effort might perhaps keep the channel open and at the same time produce no fatigue.

It is not a question of ordinary fatigue by overwork – but of a temporary inability to go on doing the same thing over and over any longer. That is what I mean by mind-fag. It is not the mere writing of poetry of any kind but the intensity necessary to bring down that kind of poetry that is in question. The channel in fact is not working because of the fag – it can work again only after rest, by not forcing oneself.

Dr. Manilal recommends arnica for Mulshankar’s pain, and massage.

Massage best. No homeopathy without R’s intervention is allowable.

S complains again of vague pains. Dr. Manilal says he must do only light work.

We gave him no work. It is his own spree.

A poem begun on the 6th and completed by Darshan... Well, any remark?

Sorry. Your poem got mixed up with Nolini’s papers and I saw it only now. Glanced through but will have to study more carefully. Will return with N’s.

Tomorrow, by the way, I am going to burst a little – Attention!

Eh what! Burst? Which way? If you explode, fizz only – don’t blow up the Asram.

August 18, 1936

The Asram is quite safe! My explosion will burst me alone, but I will see if the Divine can as well be exploded. I expected very much that your touch would relieve my burden, a little even, or would do something somewhere by which something at least would be tangible outwardly. Well, illusion it has been all...

Man alive (or of Sorrows or whatever may be the fact), how is it you fell on such a fell day for your burst? There has been an explosion, as D merrily calls it, beginning on the 14th but reaching now its epistolary climax and I have been writing sober letters to excited people for the last few hours. Solicit therefore your indulgence for a guru besieged by other people’s disturbances (and letters) until tonight. Send back the blessed burst and I will try to deal with it.

My problem is: I have been trying to call down Peace but none comes. I admit that at times a stabdhatā comes down in meditation, but afterwards no peace, not to speak of Ananda etc.

The stabdhata is still the condition which announces the attempt of peace to descend. It is a beginning.

This miserable condition is continuing so long! It drives me to make big efforts in concentration, to push and push, but it seems the vital refuses to cooperate in the sadhana and hence there is no joy.

It is of course that; the mind is pressing the vital by concentration and otherwise, but the vital is not yet prepared to accept peace or renounce agitation and desire.

Is it because the food has been taken away from the vital that it non-cooperates?

Partly that.

Or is it your Man of Sorrows who has besieged it?

The Man of Sorrows only takes advantage of the vital resistance and restlessness to bring in despondency etc. and make things worse.

Who is this Man of Sorrows, really? Is it a force or a being that has possessed me? I feel as if something is keeping me down forcibly.

Yes, it is so. But who it is, is a long story – He has not possessed, but is in control of part of your vital.

Whoever the devil he is, it seems to be impossible for me to dislodge him.

Difficult at present but not impossible.

If it is because of D’s company, I’ll cut it off from tomorrow.

No. D is less often upset and takes things in a more humorous way.

Or is it due to J’s company? But that can’t be cut off as the literary connection is there.

Well, I can’t say that has nothing to do with it – but cutting off may not make things better.

... I can’t even walk, where I want to run. Really I am losing all hope again...

That is the contribution of the Man of Sorrows.

You said “nirbhar is the great secret”, [10.8.36] but when one is besieged by so many things: mind restless, vital dead, what shall I do?

“Nirbhar” means reliance on the Divine whatever the condition or the difficulties. “Nirbhar” when all is going well, does not mean much. It is a poise one has to take and you can grow into it as D is growing into it.

Lastly, please ask Mother if I’ve been doing any wrong movement these 2 or 3 days. I feel some indication of that sort at the Pranam.

Not to her knowledge.

Is the poem done?

Yes. Very good, especially first half. But this flower and bee image has been buzzing about since ages before Kalidas; needs a little more polish to look entirely new.

August 19, 1936

I’m again passing through a period of মন থারাপ³¹ due to the same old vital trouble.

Ah that মন থারাপ! If you could only get rid of it – face the thing calmly and steadily as something to be eliminated which necessarily takes time but must and will be done!

... Now tell me how I should keep this nirbhar when the vital rises. Rejection? Detachment?

D first – R with D.

How shall I detach myself when a subtle strain of dissatisfaction runs within?

Detach from the dissatisfaction.

Shall I cry out – “Damn it all; don’t worry even if the lower vital bursts up. Everything will be all right”?

That is not nirbhar.

I fear all my answers³² are scrappy as well as illegible, but this has been also a fell day (one letter 36 pages vernacular, 2 others each 8 pages of foolscap, others less in size (4, 2, 1 etc.) but ample in number – and this is no-correspondence period!) I have had to race against the old man Time.

August 20, 1936

You simply say “the difficulty is there”! I wonder if anyone else here had to work under such a condition... To “detach” – isn’t it something Herculean for me?

Well, but it is not individual to you. Everyone has to do that with his difficulties. Detach means that the Witness in oneself has to stand back and refuse to look on the movement as his own (the soul’s own) and look on it as a habit of past nature or an invasion of general Nature. Then to deal with it as such. It may seem difficult, but it comes perfectly well by trying persistently.

If the mind goes on pressing and pressing, will the vital be prepared?

It does in the end.

Otherwise to take up the vital violently like D, doesn’t seem possible.

Violently? I don’t see how he did that.

To think that I will have to suffer like him for so many years before anything happens, freezes me!

That is not necessary.

If time permits, a comprehensive answer, please.

When time permits.

Mother would like you to go to the Hospital and ask the Doctor there what is really the matter with Swasti and how long they think he will have to stay there. Between doctor and doctor.

August 21, 1936

All your answers for the cure of my troubles have been too strong for me, for you have thrown everything on my great self: “If you could do this, if you could do that, etc!”

No, I have only made suggestions of what the great self could do to help the Force and make an orientation for the Force to work upon and carry out.

When I ask you how to do it, you reply – Oh one simply does it! If one could simply do it, why should I bother you?

One simply does it, means that one tries a certain psychological movement which is known by long experience to be effective and the Force enters into it and one day one finds it done.

Tell me, if I pray for Peace, Calm, Force, Strength, etc., will it be enough or not? After that, to be able to reject, detach, must be done by your Force. That’s all I can do, please understand that.

At any rate there must be the acceptance of the rejection or detachment for the Force to use – a kind of will to it. If you simply pray and then say “All right, now, damn it, I have done all that is necessary; I can now lament or indulge” – that makes things a trifle difficult.

On the whole, I feel better today. I could recall after some concentration the nebulous outlines of your face. Something is going to happen?

Yes, of course.

Is it true that a greater and a vaster Force descended this Darshan?

It is not a question of descent. We are nurturing the Force and it grows necessarily stronger and has more effect.

What about Jatin and his wife?

Both of them very well and growing weller since they were here.

I want to ask you a host of questions on the psychology of the affair of D and Y...

By the way, as you got better, D flopped down. Lost his incipient nirbhar and wants to walk off again.

Any time to circulate some Force for poetry?

Yes.

N.B. I send you the lucubrations of the S fellow for your information. I absolutely object to his living in and on the Mother’s force – he would be there like his own ball³³, neither melted, nor plastic nor disappeared. Any remarks? Please return the gem as I may have to answer it.

August 23, 1936

I have been longing to ask you the mystery behind J’s poetic flowering; but of late you have become awfully cryptic.

That is perhaps because I am becoming more and more supramental.

You know her previous works were sporadic and simple with long gaps in between.

That was because she was trying to write literature. That is often the first stage.

When she was asked to compose songs the other day, we found a sudden transformation. Even the first few songs were not very striking, but they seemed to have opened a door and she has entered into your mystic kingdom...

Opened the lyrical gift in her probably – began knocking for the spontaneous song in place of the mind-made article.

What she is writing seems to me exceedingly striking. We don’t meet any such original ideas and expressions in Bengali literature.

Of course not – she was not inspired this time by Bengali literature, but by the Faery International.

It is a great mystery to me. Comparing her original turn, expressions, speed, with her past work – what a miraculously rapid development!

But, my dear sir, it often happens like that. I believe you were not here when D’s poetry blossomed; but it was quite as sudden. Remember Tagore’s description of him as the cripple who suddenly threw away his crutches and began to run and his astonishment at the miracle. Nishikanta came out in much the same way, a sudden Brahmaputra of inspiration. The only peculiarity in J’s case is the source she struck – the pure mystic source.

I refuse to believe that it is she who has done it.

Of course she didn’t, nor D nor Nishikanta either. It is a way of speaking.

Has the inner mind opened up or what?

A passage opened through it.

Please shed some light on it. If you want it to be kept a secret, I shall keep it – but a few lines on it.

Well, if you think I knew how it’s done! I hammer about till I hit the right spot. It hits quick sometimes, that’s all.

Note however that there was always in J something that wanted or claimed to belong to another world. Perhaps by the pressure she got into contact with it.

How do you find the poem I am sending you? Does it deserve incineration?

Well, as poetry it is some good – but I can’t say it is distinguished or beautiful like the poems you have written since.

You needn’t incinerate, but bury it in a drawer somewhere for the moment. Read it again after ten years (Horace’s advice).

What about the refrain?

Refrain? Man alive, if all were like the refrain, I should say “Bury, bury – burn, burn.”

I have persistently forgotten to send you this letter. Can you give me any light on the subject? Do you know anything about these injections?

August 23, 1936 (Evening)

[Regarding the letter.] My knowledge of leprosy is practically nil, so I approached Dr. Manilal. He says that since the servant has come in close contact with the family, all the members must take the injections as proposed. Though the treatment is palliative it may produce a greater prophylactic effect, at least the psychological effect.

Good Lord – only that! Psychological effect needs injection?

Dr. Manilal says that servants working for 30 years in leper hospitals did not develop any leprosy. No intimacy in the contact?...

Perhaps unconcern also!

We have shed some light. Enough to illumine the supramental table?

Umph!

August 25, 1936

Jatin’s wife writes to her sister that she is extremely happy here... I can understand Jatin saying something like that, but she knowing nothing about spirituality likes the place so much – miraculous, what?

Why? Plenty of people have felt that. E.g. the Yuvarani comes here full of a secret sorrow for her lost son and goes back very happy.

Jatin had a dream of you as in the photograph, giving him instructions in his structural engineering work!!... It was Sri Aurobindo in his previous form, he says, why?

I suppose, the present Sri Aurobindo having left all engineering instructions to the Mother, the previous Sri Aurobindo had to come and do it in this case.

We see then that Sri Aurobindo has come out, the least hope of which we don’t entertain. For another thing, he has come out as an Engineer! Any possibility of the fruition of the dream?

Anyhow what has it to do with coming out? Any number of people meet me in dreams and get instructions or intimations about this or that. It is an activity of the vital plane where I am not in strict retirement – it has nothing to do with any future physical happening.

What’s this threat, Sir? You are cryptic because you are becoming more and more supramental! [21.8.36]. For the Supramental’s sake, don’t be that yet. I have many things to know...

Well, but haven’t I told you that the supramental can’t be understood by the intellect? So necessarily or at least logically, if I become supramental and speak supramentally, I must sound unintelligible to everybody. Q.E.D. It is not a threat, only the statement of a natural evolution.

A carpenter beaten by a rat...

Say, say! I never heard of a rat beating a man before! He ought to go to the criminal court instead of the hospital.

August 26, 1936

At last you have given me an occasion for a question; let it be an occasion for a big reply, what?

My dear sir, what is this extravagant ambition for bigness?

With fifty letters a day raining on me in a “non-correspondence” period, a supramental brevity is all of which I am capable.

You very often say “it is a meeting in the vital plane”. Yesterday you said “an activity of the vital plane” – what does it mean? Are all happenings there as true as on the physical plane?

Yes, except that sometimes the record is imperfect – but the happening is true.

Are they intimations of what would happen on the physical plane?

No – the vital plane has an independent life of its own; the physical also.

My being meets you or the Mother in dreams, and receives your blessings. Has it any concrete value – as concrete as the Pranam touch?

What do you mean by concrete? It is concrete there just as the Abyssinian or Spanish wars are concrete here.

Do you mean to say that people getting instructions from you in dreams is as real, effective and correct as if you had written them on paper?

Yes, if the record is correct.

If that be so, does Jatin’s meeting mean that his future work here will be engineering?

No, not necessarily.

Or does it mean that even there outside, he will be guided by the Mother?

He may be, if he develops the supraphysical contact.

I am apt to think somewhat slightingly of these vital plane meetings...

You are too physically matter of fact. Besides you are quite ignorant of occult things. The vital is part of what European psychologists sometimes call the subliminal, and the subliminal, as everybody ought to know, can do things the physical cannot do – e.g. solve a problem in a few minutes over which the physical has spent days in vain etc., etc.

When I dream that you are writing big answers or the Mother blessing me profusely, I see exactly the contrary in my book and at the Pranam. Any explanation?

What is the use of the same things happening on both planes? it would be superfluous and otiose. The vital plane is a field where things can be done which for some reason or other can’t be done now on the physical.

Please don’t write supramentally. If being supramental, you can’t write intelligibly, is there any earthly use of that?

Certainly. Your inner self will understand and rejoice while the outer stares and wobbles.

N.B. There are of course hundreds of varieties of things in the vital as it is a much richer and more plastic field of consciousness than the physical, and all are not of equal validity and value – I was speaking above of the things that are valid. By the way, without this vital plane there would be no art, poetry or literature – these things come through the vital before they can manifest here.

August 30, 1936

I had asked R long ago to get “Sudarshan” specially for A. He didn’t listen; at the last moment he said he would write to Madras, but wrote to Gujerat, hence the delay.

Very unbusinesslike and slipshod. Writing to Madras means that Mother will have to pay for inferior stuff while she can get free the best quality from Punamchand’s father whose speciality it is.

X has inflammation inside the ear, I wanted to apply medicine, but he requires permission.

You can. It was Mother who sent him to you for treatment.

S still complains of slight pain and discomfort. Thinking of trying enema on alternate days.

Yes. Mother thinks it very necessary.

August 31, 1936

Yes, X told me that Mother had sent him, but when I went to apply medicine, he said – ask Mother!

Nonsense! It is implied. Mother doesn’t send him to the Dispensary for a promenade or to dance.

It seems J’s irregularity of periods has been caused by excessive mental and physical strain due to poetry.

Good Lord! If poetry is to be the parent of irregular menses!

September 1, 1936

I am sending you a few snaps – some samples of your supramental yogis. Isn’t Dilipda splendid in a standing posture?

Superb!

What about his deep intellectual look in the sitting one?

Admirable!

And my noble self seems to be coming out of the grave or going there probably?

Asking where will be the end of this প্রনান্ত লীলা³⁴

My supramental forehead is merging with the Infinite, what?

Yes, dominating scornfully from there the pigmy universe.

Lastly, the Asram photos are very fine.

Very well done.

I give you a rare occasion for laughter. Please do laugh loud and share it with us!

No time to laugh! Can only smile.

As the cause of J’s irregular menses it is not poetry I said, but the physical and mental strain. Coming here running with the poem, going back to meditation, then copying hurriedly the poem, then meal, etc. Going on thus day after day. Not enough to cause strain? No, not parent, it has become the issue!

You relieve me! I was thinking if poetry could be the parent of i.m., what it would do to you and Dilip and Nishikanta.

September 2, 1936

A is “slightly better”. No fever, slight tenderness in the liver region.

Mother found him rather yellow at Pranam.? but if he has no fever, I suppose it is all right.

September 5, 1936

Again I have a blessed boil inside the left nostril – painful. I feel feverish. A dose of Force, please!

As the modernist poet says

O blessed blessed boil within the nostril,

How with pure pleasure dost thou make thy boss thrill!

He sings of thee with sobbing trill and cross trill,

O blessed, blessed boil within the nostril.

I hope this stotra³⁵ will propitiate the boil and make it disappear, satisfied.

Is that why you tend towards home-eating?

I asked R to return to us the duplicate key of the Dispensary. He has now practically no connection with the Dispensary. He has agreed, but puts a nonsensical suggestion that whenever I go out I should leave the key with the gatekeeper. He also says that if required, another key can be prepared by Manibhai!!

You ought to have shouted before. Now he has given order to Manibhai for another key.

September 6, 1936

G has signs of inflammation in the left lung. Better to take an X-ray tomorrow; sputum examination if necessary after that.

Better not X-ray etc. unless it is absolutely necessary. Feed him, tonic him, coddle with cod-liver oil and see how it works out before plunging into these soul-shaking measures.

Should be made a little civilised! He has hardly any bedding; no blanket, no mosquito net. He says there are not many mosquitoes.

A blanket, banyan, mattress have been given. Mother did not know about mosquito net – but if he is not accustomed to it, he may find it rather suffocating. But you can ask Amrita for one if you think it indispensable. Civilisation is good, but not at all points for everyone.

I can’t decide if he should be given any work, but if he sits all the time at home, that may act adversely.

It will certainly act adversely.

At any rate, his wandering work has to be stopped.

On the contrary, to move in the open is surely one of the best things for him – provided it is not under the rain. He has most probably not been eating enough and ought to be fed. Also cod-liver oil and tonic may be good for him. He must have got cold and neglected it.

What a powerfully effective “stotra”! the boil couldn’t but burst... I couldn’t make out one word. Is it “make thy bows thrill”?

I thought you’d boggle over it. “Boss” man “boss” = yourself as owner, proprietor, patron, capitalist of the boil.

[Because of some inconvenience I wanted meals at home.] But if you want, the “home-eating” tendency can be stopped.

D.R. says more and more people demanding home consumption – carrying capacity exhausted. Will have to double Dayabhai’s work if this goes on – he will spend the whole day tiffin-carrying – and finally what will be the damned use of the Dining Hall? Your name among the home-consumers – so gave you a jog. If we omit the visitors, 50 per cent of the Asram are taking home-meals and most of these all meals at home. All do not take by cart, but even so the cart has to carry more than its proper capacity.

September 7, 1936

G did not have good sleep at night...

Said bad sleep was due to the beastly blanket and mattress. Prefers a bedsheet to wrap himself according to former custom.

He has to be given a tonic injection “une tous les deux jours” – on alternate days?

Yes, if that is the direction.

His fever has to be brought down. Dr. Becharlal advises his native drug galoye...

If it does not clash with the injections.

We must also give cod-liver oil, but I fear to begin at once as he has fever and may not be able to digest. Still I will try from tomorrow one teaspoon a day.

You can wait till whenever it is suitable to give it. Perhaps the injections should be finished first.

“To move in the open” is surely the very thing, but don’t you think with running fever of 101.4°, weakness, etc. it would be a little too much?

That of course – The objection is to making him a permanently sedentary invalid – that is what so many are becoming.

Till his fever comes down and weakness disappears, I think you will agree that his daily work has to be cut short.

Mother has stopped his work.

Why not take A out of the doctors’ hands now by pumping a big dose?

Very refractory to big doses.

Dr. Becharlal prescribes butter for my amaigrissement and cod-liver oil by myself.

??

[Sri Aurobindo put 2 interrogation marks. ]

September 8, 1936

If any oranges can be spared for G, don’t you think it will do him good?

[Mother:] You can go to Champaklal, he will give two oranges daily.

Why two interrogations, Sir, against my using butter?

Butter and cod-liver oil – which is two.

Since the Force does not help, I have to seek fatness from butter and oil. Of course, Dr. Becharlal also added cheerfulness to the prescription.

Mother pours scorn on your idea that you are a jutting skeleton. She says that you are less shockingly plump than when you came, but that is all. But if you take butter and oil together, to say nothing of cheerfulness, what will you become? Remember Falstaff³⁶.

We understand that Mother asked Shanta not to take cod-liver oil with milk or water as it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Mother told her it might spoil her taste for milk – but did not forbid anything. Now Shanta says she can’t take it even in milk, so renounces its use.

So we advised her to take it as it is though it is slightly bitter. But still she wants us to ask Mother how to take it!

So what? Any substitute which she will not object to? She says she has pain in eyes and temples. Replaced fever?

September 9, 1936

This trouble of S’s has become really a nuissance! Nothing seems to hit him at the right place.

He has written me a furious letter denouncing you and all doctors and their wicked futile ways.

He is so much bent on having his diet increased in spite of our giving him quite a sufficient amount. His excessive hunger points towards some worm infection. Let us try Santonin, if you allow.

But how try without being sure? Liver also gives alternations of not-eating and bouts of excessive hunger.

About me, did you say “less shockingly plump”! Good gracious, was I ever plump? Mother has only to see my bare upper body and exclaim – Oh, doctor like that!

It’s your clothes that made you plump?

Please circulate Force from 2 or 2.30 p.m., will you?

Lord! my least forceful time or rather the fag-end of the same. Never mind.

September 10, 1936

What’s the matter with my poetry? I tried yesterday’s poem again for a long tinte, nothing doing! The channel has choked up or what?... Remedy – try and try? or rest and rest?

Both methods are possible and each has its advantages – or they might be combined “Rest and rest and try and try.”

I have been unusually happy after months!... Man of Sorrows was non-existent – kicked out? But unfortunately he is trying to poke his face again!

Twist his nose.

We hear your Supermind is very near – not 50 years, I hope! Time to push us up a little, Sir, so that we may give you a proper reception, what?

That’s what the Force seems to be trying to do.

Don’t forget to make us, at least, feel the Descent. 30 years’ sadhana, by Jove!...

30 years too little or too many? What would have satisfied your rational mind – 3 years? 3 months? 3 weeks? Considering that by ordinary evolution it could not have been done even at Nature’s express speed in less than 3000 years, and would ordinarily have taken anything from 30,000 to 300,000, the transit of 30 years is perhaps riot too slow.

In trying to solve the riddle of the Sphinx, Paul Brunton in his book, A Search in Secret Egypt, says, “That the Sphinx represents something divine or someone divine is suggested by the hieroglyph inscriptions on the walls of the Upper Egyptian temples, as at Edfu, where a god is pictured as changing himself into a lion with a human head in order to vanquish Set, the Egyptian Satan... If the force of a lion and the intelligence of man mingled their symbolisms in this crouching body, there was yet something neither bestial nor human in it, something beyond and above these, something divine!”³⁷ He says there was some supernatural element in this stone being.

Did the Egyptians or Atlanteans have the same conception or believe in the same evolutionary Avatarhood and hence the statue?

Maybe. But the Sphinx is rather the symbol of the whole evolution from subconscient to the superconscient Light.

He further asks whether the Pyramids are “vast and vain monuments” or are they reared merely to hold one Pharaoh’s mummified flesh?

It is usually supposed by occultists to be a symbolic-scientific monument in which were performed some secret Egyptian Mysteries.

Two doses of Santonin will have no harmful effect on S. But, I suppose, the necessity no longer exists as he is furious with us and may even quit us.

If he doesn’t quit and submits to Santonin we have no objection.

September 11, 1936

A says he feels heavy and sleepy and not refreshed. Is it the Force that does it?

Good Lord, no! It is forcelessness that does it.

September 12, 1936

D’s letter gives me an occasion to ask you about the suicide of X’s wife. You said something about Fate which is always a mysterious word.

Well, the determination of human life and events is a mysterious thing. Can’t help that, you know Fate is composed of many things – Cosmic Will + individual self-determination + play of forces + Karma + x + y + z + a + b + c ad infinitum.

Suicides and accidents are supposed to be due to hostile Forces.

Not Forces hostile to our work, but hostile to the suicide and to the accidented fellow.

She died because “she was hostile to the Divine”. So it can’t be the action of hostile Forces, for it would be in their interest to keep her alive, so that X may be hampered in his aspiration.

Was she hostile to the Divine? All I heard was that she was somewhat in the way of X’s sadhana – but so many wives and husbands are like that and they don’t get drowned.

And since X’s turn to the Divine was much quicker than he thought, can one conclude from this accident that the Divine perhaps wanted to remove the obstacle? Of course it is a very drastic method.

All that is simplificative reasoning – the truth is much more complex than that.

I was tempted to conclude so, because I heard you had said that X being a rare sattwic type, you wanted him sooner, or something like it.

No. We were not particular about the time.

Some say the Divine’s way would have been to try to turn the wife also this way or to help X to go through the ordeal – not this drastic step! A word or two please!

God only knows what God does and why he is doing it. And God is not in the habit of letting other people know – except when it suits him.

A has malaise; not refreshed after sleep...

I have been without light, so blank, blank, blank. Keeping everything in hope of better luck today. (This has nothing to do with A’s malaise, by the way. Only take advantage of bottom of page.)

September 13, 1936

Shall we put A on Sudarshan powder?

All right.

Try some Force please, A is getting disgusted, it seems!

Only getting? He is chronically disgusted, to my experience.

The hostile forces have made my life unbearable, sucking away every drop of blood gained after much pain and expense. Can’t sit outside, even for a minute, under the breezy, starry sky. Their breeding place is in the thick canna bushes Manubhai has planted. Can’t you direct him to strike them off and save my precious life? What will happen if the Asram doctor is to die of malaria?

My dear sir, Manubhai will have a fit and you will have to treat him and probably he will kill you into the bargain. You prefer a violent death to malaria? While there is life, there is hope, even if there are also mosquitos. Why not negotiate with Manubhai himself? If you plead with him in a sweet low pathetic voice, he may have mercy.

By the way, Shanta has consented to take the cod-liver oil after all,– so I have agreed to ask you for a whole bottle for her personal absorption. So send her a bottle of this divine but fishy nectar.

September 16, 1936

G says he feels “tous les bien”!

Good Lord! what’s that? French?

At times I think I am really useless as a doctor; I haven’t the gift for it – wrong choice of profession altogether, like that of your Yoga, Sir! Both of them forced down my throat! I often feel like asking Mother to take off this responsibility from me and give it to some fitter person.

To whom?

Those 5 years in Edinburgh weren’t just play. I have done some studies surely, which are not worth a candle, for people with much less knowledge, quacks even, seem to be more successful.

Book knowledge is necessary, but not much use by itself.

What are the elements then wanting in me? Lack of faith in the drugs given, lack of Faith in the Force?

Lack of experience, lack of decision, vacillating intuition, want of vision.

It is true that I haven’t much faith in our drugs, but with these very drugs doctors are becoming enormously successful.

They go ahead, don’t mind how many people they kill, but they go – human Motorcars.

It seems I don’t know yet the right way to call down the Force, or is it because the “canalisation” hasn’t been done yet?

Right – that’s it.

I am getting more and more disappointed in my doctorship, as in Yoga, since I hear that you are now trying more for transformation of nature than for experience.

Because without transformation of nature, the blessed experience is something like a gold crown on a pig’s head – won’t do. Picturesque perhaps, but –

... Please give me precise practical suggestions on the art of healing.

My God, man! I am not a doctor.

What to do? How to bring down the Force?

How? is there a how? You call, you open, it comes (after a time). Or, You don’t call, you open, it comes. Or, You call, you don’t open, it doesn’t come. Three possibilities. But how – ? Well, God he knows, or perhaps he doesn’t.

Seeing the miraculous effects of Homeopathy, Dr. Manilal asked me to study it with R. I don’t know if it’s any use – as study alone won’t do. One must have the gift. Have I?

Can’t say! Had you the poetic gift some years ago?

September 17, 1936

As I thought – no help but to wait for canalisation and in the meantime carry on. I suppose all “lacks” will be removed by the descent of Force?

Obviously, obviously!

You promised to write to me about Intuition, but like all your promises – !

I promised to do so in some future age when I had time. That promise stands – if a promise stands. What more can you ask of it?

God knows what you are busy with now, with the correspondence also reduced?

Who says it is reduced? For a few days, it was – now it has increased to half again its former size and every morning I have to race to get it done in time – and don’t get it done in time. Thousand things are accumulating; inner work delayed.

I didn’t mean by “practical suggestions”, any medical ones, Sir! I meant about the Force. R, I saw once, put his hand on a patient’s abdomen, and concentrated, God knows on what...

On the Mother and her Force for which he was calling.

I hear he actually feels the Force descending and the patients also get relief for the time being.

Yes, that has frequently happened.

Suppose I do the same, I know I won’t feel any Force descending, but without feeling it, it may descend and act?

Doubtful.

Regarding A, you said he was refractory to big doses. In that case, how will my calling help the canalisation of the hard granite?

Even to small doses. Sometimes I get in a little surreptitiously and, as it were, against his will. He is much more granite than you.

You can be less mysterious in these explanations, si vous voulez.

Not mysterious at all. Succinct and epigrammatic.

September 18, 1936

“Obviously, obviously”! What obviously, Sir? When will the blessed Force descend?

That is irrelevant. The time of its descent has nothing to do with its obviousness.

Have been working these 2 or 3 days on this small poem, can’t do it. Remarkable maturity of expression etc., etc. have all melted away!

Not at all. They are there, only feeling shy and sitting modestly behind the pardah.

A, though “much more granite” than I, seems to receive very well in poetry.

Ah, you think so! My dear sir, I have to do boring operations like digging an artesian well before I can get a few poems out of him – And afterwards it is one long wail “All gone! all gone! I am damned, doomed, dead, deteriorated, degenerated” for a whole day period. Sir, A is twice the Man of Sorrows you are.

If everything goes on so tremendously slow, isn’t it enough to make one despair and sit and lament? Because one doesn’t know how the devil one should proceed!

If you appeal to the devil, you can’t proceed.

Well, after the failure in poetry, I am thinking now of reading and writing any blessed thing that comes. But there’s no joy in it. Everything seems a waste of time. Meditation is hard, doesn’t bring any result, poetry won’t come – this is the state of affairs.

Present Discontents, what!

Fed up, fed up, damnably fed up! Work of the Spirit as complex as human nature!

Of course it must be, because it is in human nature that it works.

You call, you open, you don’t call, you open, you call, you don’t open – no profounder mystery can there be than these phrases of yours!

Not at all, plain as your nose. Excuses to the nose! I gave you three different cases,– don’t mix them up together.

I have called for poetry, I have actually sat up for 2 hours, has it come?

You called but did not open, so it did not come.

I am praying for A’s cure, is there a response?

You called, but A did not open, so it did not cure. Both instances establish my case. Q.E.D.

You said once that it is the spiritual consciousness that my being wants and that this need was becoming very prominent, but not the push yet. It seems now the need also has pushed back?

For the moment.

But if it is really the spiritual consciousness, how the dickens shall I get it by reading, say, Dickens, Lawrence or Nehru?

Probably not! Especially Dickens.

Is that why I think it a waste of time?

Possibly yes.

And yet I would like to read all the books. Have the attitude of nirbhar and do all these things?

Why not?

Really, really, your Yoga is a puzzle and I haven’t been able to catch the head or tail of it, shall never perhaps!

You needn’t catch either its head or its tail. It will be sufficient if you allow it to catch your head or your tail or both!

Cheerio! Tails forward!

G is now well. Shall we begin cod-liver oil now or after the last 2 injections? Ah, if all patients were like him!

Better finish injections first, then oil him.

September 19, 1936

Sri Aurobindo,

There you are, Sir, with your paradoxical, mysterious brevities! Dickens etc. won’t give the spiritual consciousness and it is a waste of time; again, they can be done with nirbhar! Then why should I do anything wasteful with nirbhar?

If you want to understand my supramental brevities, you must read carefully. You have absolutely ignored my pregnant “Possibly”. I never said that it must be a waste of time – but “possibly” yes or “possibly” not. Reading Dickens merely cannot give you the spiritual consciousness – that is obvious. It would be a miracle if it did. Reading the Oxford Dictionary might be more helpful in that direction. Unless of course a miracle took place; then even Dickens – But otherwise it may evidently be a waste of time. D got helped by Lawrence’s letters – even J gave him dream-meetings with J and his daughter. But most people would get little that is either occult or spiritual from either. But things done with nirbhar can help – not because of themselves, but because of the nirbhar.

To try to be a literary man and yet not to know what big literary people have contributed would be inexcusable...

Why is it inexcusable? I don’t know what the Japanese or the Soviet Russian writers have contributed, but I feel quite happy and moral in my ignorance. As for reading Dickens in order to be a literary man, that’s a strange idea. He was the most unliterary bloke that ever succeeded in literature and his style is a howling desert.

One may become, after hard studies of authors, a literary man, but the supramental will keep its tail high up. What has been the result? This is one great disharmonious problem I haven’t solved, neither have you helped me except by your supramentally brief jokes.

To be a literary man is not a spiritual aim; but to use literature as a means of spiritual expression is another matter. Even to make expression a vehicle of a superior power helps to open the consciousness. The harmonising rests on that principle.

Considering the capacity, worth and qualities I have been born with, my aspirations or ambitions are too great. In J’s words – “So much to be seen, so much to be done, so many fresh avenues to explore,” in spiritual as well as non-spiritual don tains. I haven’t got a clear vision of what to do, how to proceed, how to establish a harmony between the Spirit and the mundane and then to be fired with dynamism.

Ambitions of that kind are too vague to succeed. You have to limit your fields and concentrate in order to succeed in them. I don’t make any attempt to be a scientist or painter or general. I have seen certain things to do and have done them, so long as the Divine wanted; others have opened in me from above or within by Yoga; I have done as much of them as the Divine wanted. D has had dynamisms and followed them so long as they were there or as often as they were there. You mentalise, mentalise, discuss, discuss, hesitate, hesitate.

If by any chance I could throw away all troubles about progress in Yoga and push on with literature, that would be some solution.

There is no incompatibility between spirituality and creative activity – they can be united.

... At moments I have aspirations for being many-sided, then comes a voice – “Leave all those things, seek for something more precious, happy.” The eternal contradiction!

Fluctuating of course comes in the way of action and therefore of success. One can do one or other or one can do both, but not fluctuate eternally.

Can you now tell me something satisfactory, encouraging, hopeful, at the same time some practical suggestions – can’t plead now that you aren’t a doctor!

Give up the mentalising, hesitating, fluctuating habit. That is the one practical thing to do.

You say – I called, I didn’t open. Isn’t it mysterious when I called and sat up with paper and pencil for two hours and nothing came? Then all I can say is that opening is a mysterious business!

Who says it is not? Some people have the trick of always opening to a Force (e.g. Dilip, Nishikanta for creative literary activity), some have it sometimes, don’t have it sometimes (you, Arjava, myself). Why make it a case of kicks and despair?

September 21, 1936

I had been to the pier with J. We were quietly resting on a bench with our feet up, when a Tamilian came with a stick in hand and ordered us to put our feet down. I was rather bewildered and put my feet down; so did J; but she asked “Why?” I said, maybe he is the guard of the pier, and it may be against rules... Behind us Purani and others were sitting with their feet up also, but he didn’t tell them anything. This made J very excited and she said that he had insulted us. He was only a drunkard or a rogue. Then she accused me of cowardice for my abject submission; that it was not physical cowardice, but of the inner spirit. Because I didn’t want to face him, I obeyed. The first thing a woman respects and admires in a man is courage! etc., etc...

Obviously what you ought to have done was to go baldheaded for the Tamilian, bang up his eyes, smash his nose, extract some of his teeth, break his jaw and fling him into the sea. Afterwards if the police came to arrest you, disable half the Force and slaughter the Inspector. Then J would have come to you in jail and wept admiringly over the mighty hero – That’s what a “woman” expects of a “man” since the cave-days. It is also what a she-cat expects of a tomcat.

Kindly tell me frankly and openly what was my movement – was it cowardice? But this man was not at all strong, I could have fought him, besides Purani and they were there. Still why did I listen so meekly? Yet if he had come to attack J, I don’t think I would have drawn back. One of the things I hate is cowardice.

In this particular case if you thought it was against rules and the man was a guard (as a matter of fact benches are usually supposed to be sat upon with the feet down), there was no cowardice in complying. Rules ought to be respected – the haughty self-assertive disregard of civic rules is worthy only of savages.

Apart from that there is a passive quiet courage which becomes aggressive only at need and is not partial to shindies, and there is the aggressive courage. To show the latter on every occasion is Irish, but not indispensable. Cowardice comes in only when you do or abstain from doing out of a sense of fear. Were you afraid? If not, it is not cowardice.

I have seen many people physically weak, yet brave like lions, while there are strong fellows who are cowards.

Yes, of course.

Is it something connected with the inner vital? Please explain the situation and give a satisfactory reply on courage vs. cowardice and the remedy.

Fear is of course a vital and physical thing. Many people who have shown great courage, were not physically or even vitally brave; yet by force of need they pushed themselves into all sorts of battle and danger. Henry IV of France, a great fighter and victor, was an example. Just because his body consciousness was in a panic, he forced it to go where the danger was thickest.

On Saturday I had a dream that my complexion had become absolutely golden. Y cried, “Oh, how beautiful you have become!” Is it some inner beauty reflecting itself on the outer being?

If Y and her compliment had not been in the dream, we might say so. But – If we give it a symbolic sense, (leaving Y out of account as a contribution from the vital) then it is a beautiful vision not of the body but of the future change of the being. For gold is the colour of the Divine Truth. People who come down from the highest planes (when not white or blue) are usually golden in dreams and visions. Take your choice of explanations.

G’s temperature normal today. 6 injections finished. Start the oil? [18.9.36]

Yes.

Raghavan has eczema on right leg – not much benefit by mercury. Giving simple Zinc Oxide. Eczemas are beastly things. Wonder if we should give it up.

Give up having eczemas? Certainly. Boils too.

I have one more blessed boil! Dr. Becharlal says it is a good sign, for it means purification!! If so I shall bear thousands!!!

All that’s a discovery. The boil is then truly a blessed one?

September 22, 1936

... If you approve of my all-round literary aim, then isn’t it necessary that one should be acquainted with the best literatures of the world?

Not indispensable,– even by being steeped in one literature, one can arrive. But useful of course.

What do you say about my plans to read Meredith, Hardy, Shelley, Keats and the French and Russian writers?

Lord, Sir, I wish I had time to follow out a programme as massive as yours. I have none even to dilate upon yours.

You know I have hardly any experience of life and the world which helps in creation. That defect can, to a certain extent, be removed by the study of these works.

Is it so? There would be a danger of its being only derivative and bookish work. The great novelists like the great dramatists have been usually men who lived widely or intensely and brought a world out of the combination of their inner and their outer observation, vision, experience. Of course if you have a world in yourself, that is another matter.

...If I want to write poetry, I should read them side by side.

? [Sri Aurobindo underlined “them”.]

Now I am in a mood to read prose.

No objection.

... I shall also read your books for 2 hours which will help my sadhana, opening of consciousness.

Good.

My sex-trouble is also much less at present – my most heartfelt gratitude to Mother.

Delighted to hear. Great pother and nuisance – the sex.

About that cowardice, I have thought and thought... Why should I have been afraid? I could have fought him any moment!

Don’t suppose it was cowardice.

I don’t understand the first part of the explanation of my vision. Why Y and her compliment stand in the way of taking it as an inner purity? Because I want to look beautiful in her eyes?

Yes – it creates a suspicion that it was golden vanity that created the golden vision – at least a desire to be gold in Y’s eyes.

Rest of the explanation is also hazy but no matter.

Not hazy, only phosphorescent.

Who is this of France?

Henri Quatre, Henry IV of France – one of the most famous names in French history – what the deuce, Sir! never heard of him? Anyhow, he was a typical example of a great hero, victor in many battles who was yet physically a coward, but his mind and will prevailed over the fear in the body.

S has come back again! But I can’t get the head or tail of his symptoms. Now he says one thing, now another.

Mother stopped his hot water and tiffin-carrier. He lamented about fever, liver pains and what not (that’s his plea) for continuing them. I told him if he had such bad health, he must be under medical treatment, not rushing about everywhere and eating whatever he likes. He said doctor’s treatment no good. But I suppose he has gone back either in the hope of your restoring his hot water and carrier or just to prove that cold water and Aroumé³⁸ don’t agree with him.

Tomorrow, I think, we shall start Santonin, and watch.

Mother says why give santonine to a healthy fellow and spoil his health? She has a strong suspicion that S’s illness may now have become diplomatic ache and strategic fever.

September 23, 1936

I have started writing. Sir. Not exactly a story, for I have just let myself go... Should one have a rough outline of the plot or just begin somewhere and somehow?

It is done either way according to the author’s prakriti³⁹.

And about style – should one try to improve it consciously or let oneself flow on?

Same thing.

Good Lord, your writing is exceeding all limits, Sir!

Transformation of handwriting. The self exceeds all limits, the handwriting should do so also.

“Lord, Sir,...” – I don’t know what to make of it. [Letter of 22.9.36.]

You seem to have made it out all right.

By having a world in oneself you mean what the Yogis say, having brahmānḍa⁴⁰ within by the power of Yoga?

Or by the power of Nature.

Had a vision of a small pretty steam launch sailing at moderate speed in the sea. Meaning? Slow spiritual progress?

Yes.

About D’s gramophone record affair, rumours were that you refused him permission, but D insisted and brought the gramophone company people by special request. Well, D told us that they have come of their own accord with your permission.

All that not true. They offered themselves to come and D took our permission. I have seen the correspondence. Who is spreading all these inventions?

5 is running temperature 99°, morning and afternoon – “strategic”?

Perhaps it is the grief of his lost tiffin carrier that gives him that.

A says he can’t work more than he would like to – i.e. till 12.

What’s that? Why should he want to work more than he would like to? Do you mean “as much as” by any chance?

My boil has burst!!

Hurrah!

G’s afternoon temperature 99°.

Tell him not to work too much. He is rushing about too much. For some months he must do it only in small quantities. If the temperature comes back, you will have to give the remaining four injections – to be bought in town.

Shivalingam – Pain, swelling [leg] much less. Slight pain while walking. Shall I try protein injections? In such cases it gives good results at times, but might give febrile reaction.

You can try. He is solid and stolid.

Or shall I let him go on with slight pain and swelling till the Supramental descends?

No sir. Supramental does not want to have to deal with swelled things, either heads, legs or stomachs.

September 24, 1936

A is better today. I suppose he got a dose of Force at night!

Well, Thursday is the day he comes to Mother.

S was given Sudarshan yesterday – hasn’t turned up at alt today. Bitter has produced bitterness?

By George! but that’s a drastic remedy if he is malingering. He will say again “Trust not in doctors.”

September 25, 1936

Nishikanta’s leg is much better now.

What is actually the matter with N’s leg? what’s the cause of the thing? He proposes to give it rest for one year! So as to cure it entirely. But that seems to me the other extreme to straining it unnecessarily by overstrenuous walking. After the year of rest, it might want to rest all the life. What’s your idea?

September 26, 1936

In my poem, Amal says “dim” and “dream” are too common. He can’t get any alternative. I am sure you have one up your sleeve, what?

My sleeve is empty.

Please enjoy our poet H’s sarcasm against “Aurobindo and his best disciples” in Agragati [a Bengali journal].

It is rather in H’s silliest style.

And what about our Indian Hitler’s [S.T.] great mission to save young brains of India by sending all Asrams to perdition?

If he would save his own young brain first from the evident disposition towards softening his ambition betrays, it would be more useful. It is S.T. himself or a fellow sheep of the modernist flock?

September 26, 1936

[A note from the Mother:]

Nirod,

Devraj will wait for you to-morrow at 9 A.M. at the Canal side entrance of the Hospital.

It would be good if you could obtain that some care should be given to the case –

September 27, 1936

Good Lord! R said Devraj has no organic trouble!! X-ray shows definite and progressive T.B. – worse in the left lung.

Tomorrow I shall see Valle or André (supposed to be a specialist in T.B.) But how R could have missed the diagnosis gets past me – with all his big cures!

I think he did not take much interest in Devraj’s case and was inattentive. But he has been at far from his best recently. He used in outside cases to send me detailed reports of some examinations that were very helpful for action – but in D.L.’s case I knew nothing except that it was only her and it was critical until I got your letter.

“The sparkling surges of the sea

Roar and break...” – was the first version.

Can’t see how you got it in metrically. Besides the sea in poetry is always roaring and breaking. So why put it to that hard Sandow exercise once again?

“My consciousness flights from...” – metre?

It is not flighty metre, but a flighty use of language.

“Green trees” – no special significance?

If they were yellow or red trees, then there would be a significance. “Green” is objectionable, because trees manage to be green always without any special significance.

Suppose it was “... like those green trees

At evenfall”?

That would successfully get rid of any significance.

There you are or there am I... Please divinise the animal by your Supramental Inspiration.

Divinised! with quite fine results, though I say it. Turns out to be a fine beast after all.

September 30, 1936

[The first two medical reports were written by Dr. Becharlal.]

Yesterday noon S got temperature – 101.8 °...

What is the nature or cause of this fever?

... She wants to take curd thrice a day. I have asked her to take milk as long as the fever lasts – she says she doesn’t like milk and it gives a pain in the stomach. Hence without Mother’s approval, curd is not desirable in her present state.

I believe milk does not agree with her, she finds it difficult to digest. What then is she to eat? You must settle this and give word to D.R.

... By the way, please make a rule henceforth not to accept sadhaks before they pass a medical exam. don’t you realise, Sir, what potential troubles are ahead with so many invalids?

You are quite right with a million times a million rightness.

No time for comments on rest. Too many urgent calls from R.

October 1, 1936

I don’t know if you want a separate report from me of D.L., apart from what I sent you through Pavitra. R surely writes everything and Pavitra tells you all. I have said that R doesn’t agree with Valle’s diagnosis and writes in today’s report that it is “dyspeptic congestion of the colon”!! About Chlorodyne, Dr. Becharlal and I have given our opinion.

The report you speak of has not reached me, so I don’t know anything about the chlorodyne. There is a letter from R, but it gives only the general condition during the day (hyper-pyrexin and a crisis due to tympanitis), says that in spite of that there is some amelioration, I understand from Pavitra that Valle found some amelioration in the condition of the heart in the evening.

As to the diagnosis. Valle, you say assigns a gynaecological cause for the illness, so far that agrees with what was R’s insistence all along in his letters to me that there must be such a cause – he named some such specific causes also – but he could not be sure because no such cause was admitted at the time by the patient. That was when there were the epigastric pains and before there was the generalisation. It is now over the present development that there is dispute. But I gather from your report that, it being an advanced stage of peritonitis, there is no hope. In a day or some days – or according to R in some weeks, if it is peritonitis – she must go. But then it does not seem to matter what treatment is given,– the best can only give her some more days of suffering. Is this right? All are agreed at least on that matter?

The only hope then is that it might not be peritonitis or that it being peritonitis, R’s optimism aided by any force I can give, which cannot be much under the circumstances, will pull her through as it did the others in R’s cases whose lives were given up by the doctors. But for this last miracle the conditions are not very favourable. Perhaps if she lives through tonight and the next few days with an amelioration there may be a chance. I put this all down in order to have the situation clear in my mind. One thing only is a good sign that the Mother’s force + R’s medicines blessed by her pulled her out of the certain death which had come on her the other night; but on the other hand it did not prove as it would have been in another case, decisive.

October 3, 1936

[The first report was written by Dr. Becharlal, regarding S’s illness, treatment, diet and work, and all the arrangements to meet her complaints.]

Mother approves all your arrangements. If you think, she can do light work for an hour. Is it advisable for her to leave her room or go about? She has fancies about her room, disliking it, and thinks it is her room that makes her ill.

K vomited a small particle of bright red blood... Examined the lungs and found that the lesion has extended more than last time. Can you not consent again to an X-ray? [26.12.35]

Yes.

If the diagnosis is correct, the treatment has to be pursued actively and regularly. The best thing would be to send her away...

That’s all very well – but she was ill before she came and the family, X says, will do nothing for her treatment if she is sent back. What to do then?

She has gone down in health, feels easily tired. Her food is very, very scanty...

If so, how can she recover? In T.B. surely suralimentation is necessary.

It seems Mother strongly disapproved of D.L.’s taking up that rice-pounding work, but she insisted and Mother had to give way. The origin of her trouble or its recrudescence is traced to that heavy muscular work.

All that is rubbish. The trouble was due to something else not physical without which she could have gone on pounding another fifty years without injury to her body.

... I must say that R’s theories about diseases are absurd, however successful he may be as a homeopath-physician.

You may say what you like about the homeopathic theories, but I have seen R work them out detail by detail in cases where he had free and unhampered action and the confidence of the patients and their strict obedience and have seen the results correspond to his statements and his predictions based on them fulfilled not only to the very letter but according to the exact times fixed, not according to R’s reports but according to the daily long detailed and precise reports of the allopathic doctor in attendance. After that I refuse to believe, even if all the allopaths in the world shout it in unison, that homeopathic theory or R’s interpretation and application of it are mere rubbish and nonsense. As to mistakes, all doctors make mistakes and very bad ones and kill as well as cure – my grandfather and one of my cousins were patently killed by one of the biggest doctors in Bengal. One theory is as good as another and as bad according to the application made of it in any particular case. But it is something else behind that decides the issue.

Just hear what grave errors he has committed. He said to me that he brought about the profuse menstruation in D.L.’s case by his drug, in order to get rid of some mischief there which the patient would not admit. He asked me if this excessive flow should be stopped... He had no justification at all to cause that profuse bleeding, when every drop of blood was precious.

To bring out the latent illness and counteract it, is a recognised principle in homeopathy and is a principle in Nature itself. He misapplied it here because he was in ignorance of the full facts about the menstrual trouble.

As I understand from you, it was only from me that you came to know about her critical condition.

No. I said he had told me her condition was very critical; but he had given no details. I learned the details from you.

Even after her fainting, he took her walking to the pier. Good Lord, an extremely debilitated, anaemic patient to be moved about like that!

Never heard of the anaemia before or then. It was all a talk about stomach, worms or this or that stomachic ailment.

Chlorodyne contains morphia which, you know, is a sedative to the heart and respiration etc. Dr. Becharlal told R about its dangers, but R said, “I have given it already and the drugs to counteract its effects.” Counteracting would be tantamount to making it useless and ineffective.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined “tantamount to making it useless and ineffective”.]

Not according to homeopathic theory.

Valle said, after D.L.’s death, that he was positive about the cause of death. All symptoms and signs were of peritonitis.

May be or may not be. Neither Valle nor R are infallible. So often I have seen a diagnosis made on all the symptoms which turned out to be the wrong one. It is like a condemnation on circumstantial evidence.

I believe Mother’s Force had an effect on these medicines, but when R went out of those to this Chlorodyne, and didn’t let you know, the danger was signalled. Of course, in any case, the condition was hopeless, but who knows?

How can you believe that when everything is explained according to medical science? There is no place left there for Mother’s Force or any force except Valle-Force.

Valle said D.L. would have passed away two or three days ago, but glucose, oxygen and injections kept her up. Beating our drum?

Quite so.

Whatever was given to her: glucose etc., met with opposition from R.

Quite natural for a homeopath, just as your sneering at homeopathic theories and treatment is natural in an allopath.

It seems you were not very hopeful from the time I reported about her case.

No. As I say, he told me it was critical.

If he had informed you before, wouldn’t it have been better?

No, it would not have been better.

Why do you say that the conditions were not favourable?

They were unfavourable for working through R as we had worked in outside cases or as I have worked by myself in certain cases outside or inside.

Why didn’t your Force prove decisive in this case? About the Supermind and its failure over hostile forces, I give you a chance to bombard me or else I shall!

What has the Supermind to do here? Who told you that I was using the supramental Force? I have said all along that it was not the supramental Force that was acting. If you want the supramental Force, you had better go to Jogesh Mama of Chittagong. I hear from Chittagong that the supramental Force is descending in him.

I have put down a few comments to throw cold water on all this blazing hot allopathism. But all these furious disputes seem to me now of little use. I have seen the working of both systems and of others and I cannot believe in the sole truth of any. The ones damnable in the orthodox view, entirely contradicting it, have their own truth and succeed – also both the orthodox and heterodox fail. A theory is only a constructed idea-script which represents an imperfect human observation of a line of processes that Nature follows or can follow; another theory is a different idea-script of other processes that also she follows or can follow. Allopathy, homeopathy, naturopathy, osteopathy, kaviraji, hakimi have all caught hold of Nature and subjected her to certain processes; each has its successes and failures. Let each do its own work in its own way. I do not see any need for fights and recriminations. For me all are only outward means and what really works are unseen forces behind; as they act, the outer means succeed or fail – if one can make the process a right channel for the right force, then the process gets its full utility – that’s all.

October 5, 1936

K’s X-ray was taken. The previous lesion of the lung is healed. But a new one has appeared. For treatment, three things are necessary:

1) She mustn’t be always gloomy and depressed as she now seems to be.

What remedy for that? It’s her attachment to X that is the root – so long as she clings to that! But it’s quite true. Nothing more favourable to T.B. than this kind of depression.

2) She must take plenty of food. 3) Plenty of fresh air also.

Quite agree all points.

And cod-liver oil?

If she can stand it, yes.

Don’t know really what to do with S. Mother finds him quite healthy while he has 99° fever, pain in the abdomen, 4 or 5 motions a day!

Not nowadays!

I see no go except Santonin.

Heavens! Another?

Shivalingam has pain again! Given up the idea of injections hearing that “he is solid”.

Solidity was not stated as an objection.

M still passes 2 or 3 drops of blood in the urine. Feels a stone blocking the passage somewhere. I’m not quite sure whether it is a stone or a stricture from previous infections.

Well! Preliminary medical examination very necessary for admission⁴¹.

October 6, 1936

M’s urine was examined – contains pus; detailed report tomorrow. Now giving urotropine etc.

Those are the hieroglyphics on the Valle paper? They are not Greek to me, but Amharic.

He had also syphilis! I consulted Valle, he advised serum injection...

Christ! And yet you attribute the sufferings of these people to the Supramental Force!

By the way, what is happening, pray? Supramental descending? P is going fut. Some passing blood, some vomiting blood, another died devoid of blood!

It appears that P has recognised that his Purushottamhood was indeed all fut! He says he felt some evil forces making him do and say these things, but he was so helpless that he was forced to obey them! That is a fall from Purushottama heights, but a return to sanity, if only temporary – (but let’s hope it will increase). For that is evidently what happened.

All thought that he was doing serious sadhana.

Serious? You mean not to sleep and all that sort of thing? Well, it is just that kind of seriousness which brings these attacks – Earnestness of this sort does call down that kind of Purushottama or rather call him in – for it is a horizontal not a vertical descent.

Purushottama descended in consequence of the earnest sadhana and hence he was calling Sri Aurobindo to come and bow to him! What next?

Next? Perhaps he will want you also to come and bow to him and pummel you if you don’t.

Makes me shake to the bones!

Only the bones?

Already I am feeling awfully pulled down, on top of that M⁴² sits; and the Purushottama crowns them all. I ask myself – whither, whither are you going, my friend, and what awaits you?

Perhaps the Paratpara Purusha beyond even the Purushottama.

But why this pulled downness? You are not pulling down Purushottama or any other gentleman from the upper storey, are you? It is strain and want of rest, I suppose. Sleep, sleep! read Mark Twain or write humorous stories. Then you will be quite chirpy and even M won’t feel heavy to you.

October 7, 1936

After M recovers, don’t you think he had better go to Madras for a thorough check-up?

Yes.

... We must know whether it is stone or tumour in the kidney or bladder – a thorough investigation is necessary. If you think that your Force will cure or R’s treatment, then it is all right.

Can’t say without being sure what it is.

Regarding D.L. – R says he hadn’t had her confidence from the beginning. Is that why you said that conditions were not favourable for working through R?

He had the contrary – a strong anger, distrust and antipathy. But that was only one part of it.

I am also rather eager to know what else was the trouble due to, if not physical, unless of course it is private.

It is private, at present at least. Mother says it is an affair between her and D.L.

You write – “... for me all are only outward means, and what really works are unseen forces...” [3.10.36]. Could you amplify it a little further? And also explain how one can make oneself a right channel for the right Force, Faith, Intuition?

Sir, do you think I have time for your interesting questions? I have had three nights’ work to do in a single night – and in that my table lamp gone. In other perhaps fre-a-er off times.

J’s poem held back.

October 8, 1936

Wretched, absolutely done for.

Feel like jumping into the sea,

Or hanging myself from a tree!

Why? Disburden yourself!

October 9, 1936

Disburden? You mean throw off the burden or place the burden at your door?

Both!

Please give me some Force for writing. But I wonder if you have time for circulating it.

Not as much as is necessary.

The atmosphere seems to be thick with doubt etc. A lull over the Asram.

Panic seems to be the order of the day as well as doubt.

Storm brewing?

The storm seems to have brewed. I am fighting it at present, having been obliged to give up my Abyssinian campaign and stop the march to Gore. However!

I have seen your letters to P.S. and Y. Comparing the latter’s with mine – the one you wrote after S’s death [25.3.35], I find that there is a lot of difference between them. Your views have changed immensely. In the letter to me, there was a very high optimistic, almost a certain tone about the conquest of death. Now it appears that you no longer hold that view, and say that death is possible because of the lack of solid mass of faith. It has to be conquered by Sadhana!

In what does this change of views consist? Did I say that nobody could die in the Asram? If so, I must have been intoxicated or passing through a temporary aberration.

As for the conquest of death, it is only one of the sequelae of supramentalisation – and I am not aware that I have forsworn my views about the supramental descent. But I never said or thought that the supramental descent would automatically make everybody immortal. The supramental descent can only make the best conditions for anybody who can open to it then or thereafter attaining to the supramental consciousness and its consequences. But it would not dispense with the necessity of sadhana. If it did, the logical consequence would be that the whole earth, men, dogs, and worms, would suddenly wake up to find themselves supramental. There would be no need of an Asram or of Yoga.

But my letters to Y and P had nothing to do with the conquest of death – they had to do with the conditions of the sadhana in the Asram. Surely I never wrote that death and illness could not happen in the Asram which was the point Y was refuting and on which I confirmed him.

A solid mass of faith? Surely that is a very heavy Himalayan condition you impose. For instance, do you expect old tottering N to have that solid mass in his liquid body?

N was not old and tottering when he came and if he had kept the living faith he would not have been tottering now.

Or do you either hope that by his sadhana he will have the conquest?

That depends on whether he is still alive and not quite liquified and able to open physically when the conditions change.

By that letter you have struck terror into many hearts, I am afraid, and henceforth we shall look upon death as quite a possibility, though not as common as it is outside.

The terror was there before. It came with the death of D.L. and the madness of P and not as the result of my letter. It was rushing at the Mother from most of the sadhaks at Pranam every day.

The physical condition of many sadhaks and sadhikas, is not cheering in the least –

Far from it.

You know best about the condition of their sadhana.

Very shaky, many of them.

However, it is my impression that you have changed your front.

It is not mine.

Formerly I thought you said – faith or no faith, sadhana or no sadhana, you were conquering death, disease, i.e. everything depended on your success; now it seems a lot depends on us poor folks, in this vital matter.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined “this vital matter”.]

Why vital? What is vital is the supramental change of consciousness – conquest of death, is something minor and, as I have always said, the last physical result of it, not the first result of all or the most important – a thing to be added to complete the whole, not the one thing needed and essential. To put it first is to reverse all spiritual values – it would mean that the seeker was actuated, not by any high spiritual aim but by a vital clinging to life or a selfish and timid seeking for the security of the body – such a spirit could not bring the supramental change.

Certainly, everything depends on my success. The only thing that could prevent it, so far as I can see, would be my own death or the Mother’s – But did you imagine that that success would mean the cessation of death on the planet, and that sadhana would cease to be necessary for anybody?

If increase of numbers stands in the way, if doctors and medicines shake the faith, well, it is very easy to solve the problem, isn’t it?

Increase of numbers brought in all sorts of influences that were not there in the smaller circle before. Doctors did not matter so long as faith was the main thing and a little treatment the help – But when faith went, illness increased and the doctor became not merely useful but indispensable. There was also the third cause, the descent of the sadhana into the physical consciousness with all its doubt, obscurity and resistance. To eliminate all that is no longer possible.

We have also an impression, considering the sudden wave of diseases, that it is due to some Force descending, so that wherever there is resistance there will be a rushing up.

What Force?

Since the action is to go on in the subconscient physical at present with the Supramental descending (hail Supramental!!), all sorts of physical troubles will be rampant now.

Rubbish! You repeat always this imbecile absurdity that the Supramental is descending into the sadhaks – as P thought it had descended into him! The sadhaks are miles away from the supramental. What I spoke of was not the descent of the Supramental into the sadhaks but into the earth-consciousness. If the Supramental had descended into the sadhaks, there would not be all sorts of troubles, but all sorts of helps and progress.

But you seem to sneer at the supposition and say things will happen that way if sadhaks believe like that.

Yes, certainly.

I find that everything seems to happen here ensemble: a general wave of doubt, depression, going away, etc.

Yes, general in the sense of many undergoing it – not all. There has been no time when everybody was depressed, everybody doubting, everybody taking the train homewards.

The rosy side also may be true – as you said a general stillness was felt.

In the atmosphere, it may be so. But what has that to do with the Supramental descent?

I asked M to start tomorrow for Madras. He says he has to go to Calcutta – written there and is waiting for a reply...

He is talking of starting on Sunday.

About S, the “coldish” feeling was absent. A lot of sweating at night, fever in the afternoon – 99.8°.

He has been sleeping with J who has developed occult terrors since P’s outbreak and contracting the terror himself and had [...]⁴³ etc. of a bloodcurdling character. We must allow for S’s vivid literary style. But I send you the document as you are in medical charge.

October 9, 1936

[A note from the Mother in the morning:]

Nirod

T is anxious about her health and wishes to be radiographed. Will you take her to the hospital for the purpose?

October 9, 1936 (Evening)

Got your note [regarding T], just a little too late! Now I am afraid we have to wait till Monday. But X-ray of what? Lungs? What symptoms? They will ask me. A recent victim of doubt?

Not lungs – she has never had any difficulty there. Stomach,– she will indicate the place. She has had violent pains there off and on for periods ever since the Flood. She had them I believe in Hyderabad. There is a history of medical means to stimulate the action of some gland to produce thinness and by God, it seems to have been successful – for thin she has been ever since. I don’t know if this had anything to do with it. Confidential informations, sir.

Doubt can’t be said to be recent – she has had it in big black doses every time she had a vital fit which was almost always, but there was always a sort of faith behind. Latterly the psychic part has been growing and the fits less bad and rarer and shorter; but the general disturbance in the Asram due to D.L.-P upset her and her stomach and produced a passionate thirst for keen radiographic knowledge. This is confidential also.

Mother tells me she is vacillating in her preference between ulcer, worms and cancer! But hush! don’t let her know I told you.

[The following 3 reports were written by Dr. Becharlal.]

For getting sleep, X should be quite free from mental worries – complete mental rest is necessary.

That she simply can’t do – unless when she is in a good inner condition. Of course it is the right thing if she can do it.

A cup of hot milk at bed-time. Hot bath or hot foot-bath with mustard oil massage; evening walk etc...

All these are very good; you must choose one that she will accept.

If my Mother approves to give her any other medical treatment, I propose to give her Hingwastak Churna, acid hydrochloride dil., etc...

Mother quite approves of all that. I have said that you will give her treatment and asked her to take it. So you can see to it.

October 10, 1936

L got hurt in the finger – a barrel fell on it day before yesterday!... Don’t you encourage immediate treatment for these things?

These things ought to be treated at once – but these women always hold back and don’t want to go.

[The following 3 reports were written by Dr. Becharlal.]

T passed blood in the urine... I pray my Mother, to grant Nirod and myself general sanction to treat T with every change of drug etc. and see the case.

You can certainly have full sanction to treat according to discretion and do all that is needful.

T says he needs 2 attendants: one in the daytime, and one at night. He proposes A and M.

I don’t think either A or M can keep up at night. I suppose in day-time M can come. For the night you might enquire if anyone can come – it must be someone who will have time to rest in the day.

As for the medical treatment, T leaves it for Mother to decide whether he should take medicines from the dispensary.

To what is the blood due? As for the treatment you will advise what is to be done.

October 11, 1936

From your answer I couldn’t very well make out whether I should go and see T, but I went once in the morning.

Yes, that was included in “all that was needful”.

What strikes me is that T is so terribly afraid, goodness knows why. I am dumbfounded to see him so! I had always a great admiration for the fellow’s bravery. D.L. has unmanned his manliness?

He was a very courageous man. Of course, even courageous men are not always courageous at every point and perhaps he was always robust and healthy so never tested at this point. But what I see is that it is part of the terror that has fallen on many others and has manifested in him in spite of his natural temperament because he absorbed something from D.L. during her illness – something that was the cause both of his malady and of his fear. Mysterious? Well, these occult things always are.

I feel somehow that you don’t want me to attend to the case. Anyway Dr. Becharlal comes and tells me and we consult things.

Whatever is “needful”.

5 p.m. Dr. B reports that T is better. By the way, the fear in T has to be executed mercilessly by your letters and advice.

Umph! He wanted his brother to come and receive his last will and testament. I told him I saw no pressing need for troubling the brother.

Since no poetry is on the horizon, what about my trying to write some prose, say, stories? Give me some Force please, in that direction, if you see any possibility.

As an experiment? All right.

I hope my defective style won’t come in as a hostile force, against future poetic development.

I suppose it won’t.

Nirod

I forward you two pages of a letter from M. Will you and Becharlal at once find somebody to replace M in the attendance on T? M is evidently not meant to be there. I don’t want him to see the ghost and the condition of his head is a thing I don’t like. Mother was thinking you might consult the Surgeon again to know if any precautionary measures were necessary. Anyhow please keep an eye on his head – for these accidents often produce their subtler results long after.

Sri Aurobindo

October 12, 1936

You wrote to A.K. that “there is an increasing pressure now for sadhaks who really intend to do sadhana, to stop feeling, living, acting according to the ordinary nature.” I don’t know if your “pressure” includes in its action my precious self. If it does, I would be glad; if it doesn’t, I would pray to be included. Even if I don’t feel the pressure, it matters little; let it act surreptitiously and my nature break, what?

The pressure is general, but necessarily it is felt or received without feeling it in accordance with the readiness of the sadhak. It includes everybody who can be included and aims at drawing in those who can’t.

Is it possible to sanction some tea? I am rather ashamed as almost immediately after intending to do sadhana, I want to live according to “ordinary nature”.

You can ask Champaklal, Mother is giving a chit.

As you know the stomach remains at the level of the umbilicus, but, in T’s case, it has descended into the pelvis and is sitting snugly there. It is called ptosis or atony of the stomach. As for the cause and treatment, we have to get the proper history...

Can it have anything to do with the fact that she was fat in Hyderabad, took a medicine for becoming thin and did become suddenly from fat very thin?

S says – “I have no hunger”, but when pressed he says, “Yes, I like food better now.” There is S!

He says the Mother has entered his stomach and is occupying it!! I say, confidential you know! Such secrets are precious.

M’s vomiting etc. is not a new thing, it was his companion long before the accident. I shall study his case, then take him to the Surgeon. So why are you worried, Sir?

Because it is accompanied by the ghost.

One thing – P says A is getting back his old ill health and “fears” a relapse – but A is not likely to acknowledge. Attributes it to T-strain and T-strain to D.L. gap. Rather clever? If you get a chance to send A without letting him know the indiscretion – P recommends rest – he is probably right.

Goodness knows what inspired you to pick up such a blessed place for your Asram! A most hopeless hospital with hardly any facilities! A heaven indeed for a Supramental colony! About M, we are wavering between cystitis and nephritis – which could have been settled in a second, in a well-equipped hospital.

Had no medical standards in view when I came to Pondicherry – nor any views about establishing an Asram. A supramental colony obviously ought to have a first-class hospital, but no such colony was then intended.

October 13, 1936

My eyes, was T ever fat? And from fatness she has come to this!

It was one of those newfangled glandular explosives. Based on the idea that some gland (Thyroid, no?) growing hyperactive makes thin (and apparently keeps you so in spite of eating well – T’s case). There is. another which keeps you fat even if you eat only once a day (Suvrata’s case).

I couldn’t make out one word in your long letter [9.10.36] about T. Is it “Menses”?

Nonsense, sir! The same thing – thinness.

Have you said anything to T? She was alarmed by the silence of the doctors, so the Mother told her, indicating that it was not dangerous, only certain precautions against trouble etc. If you speak, don’t be vivid and alarm her.

You have not said anything about remedies. French Medical Dictionary says “lie down one hour after meals” (Mother had recommended that long ago) – Some contrivance for support of the viscera (rather bandaging in this climate) – abdominal exercise for strengthening walls (parois) so as to support viscera. But if person thin, then “cure de lit” and fattening before any remedial course. T would kick at “cure de lit” I am afraid.

X says her right arm fails her often and becomes dead and useless for work. Would not massaging (perhaps with some effective ointment) be necessary?

October 14, 1936

I didn’t imagine death would cease on the planet by your Supramental descent, or that sadhana would be unnecessary. When did I say that the Supermind is descending into the sadhaks? [9.10.36]

It is implied if they are to get the conquest of death by the mere descent.

What I said or meant was that you have conquered death or gained a great mastery over it...

In what sense?

You had said that it is the Overmental Force that has been acting and has been effective enough to ward off death, except in two cases – and they were not sadhaks. Well, it doesn’t mean that it has the infallible victory, but it amounts to that, doesn’t it?

How is that? Holding off an enemy and infallible victory are not the same thing.

Once the Supermind descends into you or into the earth-consciousness, the question of faith or sadhana becomes irrelevant as regards death, for death is a Force and, when you have a control or conquest over it, it means that its supremacy is lost in this part of the world, whether I have faith or not, do sadhana or not.

Good Lord, man. What is this reasoning? Everything is a force – why should the supramental descent into me or earth assure complete and universal immediate conquest of this Force only or specially among so many?

... Even if one does sadhana, illness may come and snatch one away: then one’s chance of doing sadhana for the change of consciousness, and, if possible, supramentalisation is lost. I consider it a vital matter – not immortality – to be able to do that.

Well but that is simply warding off death. Perhaps the supramental will do that – (it can, if it wants) – but not for ever. I mean if a man wants 200 years to supramentalise himself, it can’t be promised that he will be kept alive till then.

If you say that so long as one is not Supramentalised, death is a possibility, then I have no grounds left except to do sadhana in a spirit of surrender... I don’t see then how faith can help one to avert death.

Faith does help and has helped. It is a fact.

You have also said that to prevent death sadhana is necessary.

To make the control of death absolute, not provisional and relative.

What I plainly ask is whether by your supramentalisation death would be impossible in the Asram, independent of our sadhana.

Not in the sense that anybody can seek refuge in the Supramentalised Asram against death and sit comfortably there without any intention of doing sadhana.

... The Supramental Force can create the best conditions which the Divine Force can’t?

Yes.

... But surely the action of the Supramental Force would be different from that of the Divine Force.

Yes.

... or would they be fundamentally the same, only different at points?

No.

No time to expatiate or divagate.

What’s this typescript? Extremely private matter, sir, for nobody’s perusal except the body addressed. I keep it for want of time.

If two oranges per day are not possible, can pamplemousse juice be given to T, as long as he is on liquid diet?

[Mother:] Champaklal will give you two oranges daily for T.

S’s stomach is no more “gloomy” – bright and cheerful today. I am tempted to dance in glee. Is it the Force or Pancrinol, or both?

You forget that the Mother occupied it. What’s this Pancrinol? All-hair⁴⁴? All-what? or has it to do with the Pancreas?

What the French Dictionary says is exactly the right treatment for T. Abdominal support would be very uncomfortable, as you say. If we can persuade her to “cure de lit” in the beginning, we can see later on.

I doubt her attitude to the cure de lit, but it is not likely to be enthusiastic. For the support she is willing. Mother wants you to make a sketch showing the places, measurements to be entered and the whole sent to the Bombay firm (address will be given) asking them if they can provide. What do you say?

In your letter of yesterday, on the “glandular explosives”, what’s this, Sir – “Based on the idea that some gland (They – ?)”? What a pity really, if one has to sacrifice even a single word!

It is (Thyroid – no?) to be taken as a parenthetical question after “gland”.

A is bleeding from piles. It has to be stopped. V seems to be very enthusiastic over him!

What’s that? Enthusiastic over his bleeding? V’s enthusings are generally catastrophic to the enthused over.

October 15, 1936

You have kept that type-script? I am finished then! I know it will have the same fate as the previous one [on Avatar-hood, 6.3.35]! However, I send the book in the off-chance of an expatiation or a divagation.

[Sri Aurobindo filled the gap I had left, with “expatiation”.]

None, none, none! I prefer to excavate instead.

By the way, after a long time I enjoyed two or three days’ true Nirodian, i.e. unyogic, jollity; but the yogic Nirodian gloom has restarted! Goodness knows why these glooms and blooms come and go!

Goodness doesn’t know why, nor does anybody else.

You have finished the prospective action of the Supramental Force by two “yes”s and one “no” [14.10.36]. Evidently you are shy about it, or time is shy?

Time and I both are shy, good reason why.

(Nishikanta says rhyme is quite common in Bengali prose, so why not in English also?)

I am afraid I don’t know about the practical aspect of the abdominal support for T. I have to consult books if they’ve given anything. Meanwhile she can surely lie on her right side for some time, if not “cure de lit”.

That of course. You told her about the “right side”. Mother gave only a general prescription for lying down for an hour or more if necessary after meals.

October 16, 1936

T is better; not yet started milk. There is still considerable albumin in the urine (albuminorrhea).

When there is albuminorrhea then is it considered safe to give salted food? On the other hand he seems to be asking for more food than the Doctors are prepared to give him.

October 17, 1936

T’s case – Salt is usually withheld when there is oedema or puffiness anywhere. Since there is neither, and the kidney is functioning well, we thought we could give it in a small quantity... Any food given him should have carbohydrates – fluids – till the albumin is reduced to a minimum... We can safely allow him to consume his surplus fat a couple of days more. No other go – unless you find something.

No. I find nothing – go ahead and minimise the albumin.

For U’s lipoma, Vijayanand suggested to try a mild mercury ointment. He claims to have cured a goitre by it. Glandular swellings do, at times, respond to mercury, especially if syphilitic. On lipoma, I don’t know. But it may irritate. Opinion?

It is for doctors to decide. The only question is whether any harm is possible by its use. As it is, the lipoma is, I believe, harmless though not ornamental. Mercury being irritant is it likely to make it less benign if there is failure? If not – well.

7.30 p.m.

M came in just now and said about her boil-medicine, “Mixture very bitter, may I take pan after it?” I said, “You may.” Now I hear she is telling people that I’ve advised her to take pān. Ladies in the Asram are really wonderful!!

My dear sir, such ladies are quite wonderful outside the Asram also. M didn’t need to come here to be marvellous in that way.

Reading about T, S, etc., confirms my disgust. You have made fine specimens of them.

Were they all reasonable and consistent in their former life?

You have made them believe that medicines and doctors are no good, but at the same time could not infuse into them sufficient faith in you. Result – they have fallen between two stools!

Well, T and S used both to get cured without need of medicines once on a time. The later development has evidently come for your advantage, so that you may have elementary exercises in samata⁴⁵. I have had a lot of schooling in that way and graduated M.A. Your turn now.

They come to the doctors only to be disgusted with the treatment; obviously they come without any faith...

If you had treated them in the pre-Asram period, do you think their comments if not at once cured would have been more filled with a holy awe and submission to the doctors?

Really, they are so touchy, so funny! The more one sees, the more one wants to see! Perhaps you will say – “Judge not lest ye be judged!”

Exactly – for these are poor little uneducated people. But are the big brains at bottom less unreasonable and inconsistent? All alike, sir, in one way or another. Man who is a reasoning animal no doubt, but not a reasonable one.

October 18, 1936

I am sending you an excerpt from a medical book regarding the abdominal support for T. An abdominal support should fit closely to the symphisis pubis and Poupart’s ligaments below; above, it should not extend higher than the umbilicus...

In the French dictionary they speak of a special thing for this ptosis of the stomach, in French of course. These things seem rather unconvincing. And if it is to fit closely to certain Latin things as well as to Poupart’s affairs, how can it be done without measuring?

T’s temperature shot up suddenly to 103.4°, and has remained so. Don’t know why. Maybe constipation.

? Merely with constipation this persistence of high fever?

His urinary symptoms are better.

How far? and in what way? No pain? no albumen? or very little?

Y says he felt a descent of Power producing an indescribable sensation in the head, and followed by numbness of the extremities, feeling like nausea, throbbing in the head, giddiness, etc. All these symptoms point towards a high blood-pressure which, he says, is normal... Can descent produce such a havoc?

A descent cannot possibly produce nausea and vomiting etc. There can, if one pulls down too much force, be produced a headache or giddiness; both of these go if one keeps quiet a little, ceases pulling and assimilates. A descent cannot produce blood pressure, madness or apoplexy or heart failure or any other illness.

What I gather from Y’s letter and D’s is that he felt great intensity of descent (much greater than he had before) and got into a panic (because of the indescribable sensation) and thought he might be going mad like P (P’s madness was not the result of a descent), so nervous that he upset his stomach and possibly his circulation also. That is the only possible explanation if it is not an attack of illness on which it is for the doctors to pronounce, not me.

October 19, 1936

[The first report was written by Dr. Becharlal.]

L came to the Dispensary and said she had fever, cough, cold for the last three days. She refused to take anything internally, without Mother’s permission.

She has full permission to take any medicine or treatment you think necessary.

About U’s lipoma – we don’t see the rationale of the treatment by mercury, so don’t know its effectiveness. We can try it in small quantities.

If it grows it will have to be cut. As to this treatment, well, I don’t know –

For T’s support – I don’t know whether the equipment will fit her thin structure. Even then the adjustable ones may do.

Can’t she measure herself, if she is shown the designs?

S is better now. All Pancrinol exhausted. Shall we buy more or wait and see?

“Wait and see” is always a very good formula.

Y’s trouble is much less, still a sort of nondescript sensation is there.

What the deuce is this nondescript? How is it he can’t describe it? There are sensations that are due to descent and not troublesome or dangerous at all, there are others that are physical. But the description is necessary in order to distinguish.

He says he can’t read or write. Lies down quietly for a time, but all on a sudden the thing descends and produces the sensation. Fears if something may happen at night.

The difficulty is that he has got the fear and the association in his mind of the descent with the disturbance.

You wrote to him at the end: “... before there can be a resumption of the sadhana.” Does it mean he should not go to pranam or meditation?

I meant by sadhana the positive side (descent etc.). What I indicated was that there was a part of the being which was afraid of the descent, didn’t want it and by its fear got this trouble. This must be found out and put right before calling any descent again.

I wasn’t thinking of pranam and meditation – he can go there; if he finds it all right to go, he can continue.

He had no vomiting, only nausea.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined “nausea”.]

Well, that’s a physical ailment, not a Yogic phenomenon. Can’t it be got rid of? Whatever the cause, there is evidently disturbance of the stomach.

From your replies I presume that it may have been the descent, but since he got into a panic, he got these nervous troubles. Or was it the result of pulling?

That seems most probable unless there was an illness already breeding there (digestion, circulation?). But you say you found none.

Y showed me a letter of yours where you have said that it is not due to pulling; it is the right tapasya. And he has been following the same practice since then and has now a control. It can’t be the effect of a dark Force.

Not through the descent, but through the fear a dark Force might strike in. That is what it is trying with many people.

If illness rises up by the descent of Force or a hereditary taint of madness manifested later on, it would be a very bad affair.

Illness does not rise up by the descent of the Force; nor hereditary taint nor madness. They come up of themselves, as in D.S.’s case who never had even the smallest grain of a descent or a Force anywhere. It is only after he went off his centre that we are putting Force (not as a descent, but as an agent) to keep him as straight and as sound as possible.

In this case, though the descent wouldn’t be the cause of these troubles, would it not indirectly flare up a latent focus?

No. I never found it doing that.

And in such an experience as Y’s, some amount of fear is inevitable, isn’t it?

What experience? Descent? Sensation in the head? Plenty of people have had that here and elsewhere but no one got into a panic or nervous upset.

N told me that Mother didn’t approve of Y’s staying at D’s place...

Up to that, it is correct.

... because adverse forces may act on D also and harm him.

This must be N’s own interpretation. The Mother said nothing to that effect. D had already got into a depression by J’s visit, next Y’s upset, finally something else and was preparing to head for Cape Comorin – so naturally Mother didn’t want visible food for that to be supplied him. She said nothing of all that to N.

Do you go by the description of one’s experience to decide whether it was an experience or the action of a dark force or the recrudescence of an illness?

Yes, certainly – just as you go by the symptoms of a case as seen by you and as related by the patient.

I thought that it is not possible for us to have spiritual experiences, especially major ones, without your previously knowing that so and so will have such and such experiences.

Previously? My God, we would have to spend all our time prevising the sadhaks’ experiences. Do you think Mother has nothing else to do? As for myself, I never previse anything, I only vise and revise. All that Mother prevised was that there was something not right in Y, some part of him at odds with his aspiration. That might lead to trouble. That is why, entre nous, I want him to find out what part of him didn’t want the descent.

October 20, 1936

S is much better in the morning nowadays, but troublesome in the afternoon. Getting cured by halves?

Let us hope so. Half by half is better than nothing.

T has given measurements, but wouldn’t it be better to enquire first from the Company if they have any supports for this trouble? If not, whether they can prepare according to measurements given. All this will take some time, but it is not very urgent, is it?

No. You are right, of course.

Dr. Sircar has a touch of cold! Please save me; no more patients, especially big and bulky ones!

Well, well, prevent the cold from becoming bulky.

7.30 p.m.

Y is all right except for a tense feeling on the left side of the neck.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined “tense feeling on the left side of the neck”.]

Not physical? Circulation?

M has been troubled by D.L.’s “ghost”. He told me he had a dream and heard a voice calling him and clasping him – voice unerringly of D.L.

Sorry, have to postpone M’s ghostly troubles till tonight. Terrible night the last! (No, no – wasn’t attacked by a pseudo-D.L., only by the demon of correspondence.) Have written, trying to cheer him up in the meanwhile.

Today his trouble began again. Any link?

Well, you said, did you not, that this headache was of long standing? If so, the link with D.L. must be later – or only a mental association.

Why should he have these dreams connected with D.L.?

Many people have been seeing or dreaming of the ghost of D.L.

I asked M to get rid of his fear. He has no hereditary taint of insanity. But seeing D.S.’s off-centre, is it possible?

Don’t know if there was any insanity in the family. D.S. is only insane at one point which can be touched at any time. But apart from that he is though narrow and extreme in all things, yet intellectually brilliant, an admirable linguist, reasoning and seeing with extraordinary acuteness and clearness when he chooses. He is more “intimate” with French than any Indian here – understands the spirit of the language, reproduces it in his writing. A clear and accurate observer too.

Why has D.L. such a special fascination for him, in coming to call him? Is it really possible that some part of D.L. is, after all, hovering over the Asram and trying to create some mental, vital or nervous havoc? Or some other force taking D.L.’s shape or voice trying to push in?

D.L. does not call him; it is not she at all. When she got ill something possessed her body and physical consciousness and turned everything against her recovery. When she died the Mother separated this from her – but still there was a strong earthly attachment left in her vital form – attachment to husband, food, comfort, relatives etc., etc. This part threatened to become a “ghost”, and Mother had to work hard to get rid of it. But it went and there is no ghost, that is no vital stuff walking about as a separate entity with the soul gone out of it. But the suggestion was left in the Asram atmosphere and some Force has got hold of it making all sorts of dreams and fears in the minds of those who admit them. But I think that too is fading out gradually. Sorry to inflict all this occultism on you...

I somewhat understand M’s involvement. You know he had an experience: hurried loud breathing, semi-conscious condition, etc., with one hand on D.L.’s abdomen, as if some Force had descended and possessed him. We looked admiringly at him and thought the Mother was working through him; unfortunately the fellow took it all wrong, as your letter showed.

M’s disturbance was due to his wrong movement at the time of D’s [D.L.’s] death. He had a propensity to become a big Yogi and a mighty instrument. At the time I was putting and so was the Mother a stupendous force to give D a last chance. M was trying to pull. Perhaps he felt and was shaken by the Force which was not intended for him at all – because he pulled it. He pretended to himself that he was doing it in an egoless fashion. Rubbish! Self-deception! He was delighted at being so great an instrument and at the admiration of others. I had to interfere because like that he might pull some wrong force on himself. It may be even that he did get something, not much I think, of the other dark Force that was there. This prepared the field for undesirable suggestions. My letter also bowled him over – but that was unavoidable. I suppose it will be all right, but for a moment he was shaky.

October 21, 1936

Jatin has sent snaps for your signature. Will you give it?

Yes.

Yesterday’s feeling I can’t locate – probably in the abdominal cavity. Today again something happened – but not any fear. It was an ingoing, perhaps, for I came out just as a fish comes out of water, with a sigh (?) or for taking air?

Don’t quite understand. Yesterday you wrote that there was no fear, but a feeling that something unpleasant might happen and you must get over it again. But if it was like a fish in water, that could not be unpleasant.

Your present description would be a going inside of the vital (abdominal cavity) into its deeper self, perhaps in search of the psychic which lies behind. If so, very useful movement.

There was no drowsiness – understandable?

[Sri Aurobindo underlined the word “drowsiness”, which was written rather badly. ]

Your writing is sometimes no more understandable than mine. It took me some time to understand whether this word was Bengali, Sanskrit or English with a mixture. But I suppose it is drowsiness?

Y has gone, but I understand, he wants to come back – to be fitted into his old place?

God knows. You must know that when he came back last time, he was only tolerated on trial owing to his own urgent insistence. Next time – well! He will have to be considerably changed before we say Yes.

He asked our opinion about his going to Calcutta for treatment. I said, “Why not ask Mother?” He replied, “I haven’t that much confidence in Sri Aurobindo and Mother, to tell you frankly.” That shows where the root of the trouble was. Was it deeper still?

According to what Mother was seeing all along, it was deeper still. A certain falsehood in his being which he refused to recognise, but kept cherished under a veil of justifying reasons, not intending to change. He never really recognised that he had been wrong at any time. Yet it was treachery to the Mother – with what she calls a strain of hypocrisy in it.

But then he was crying also because he had to go. Queer, isn’t it?

No, not queer. Very usual. A divided being. One black, one wanting to be white.

I saw your letter to him... You were almost suspecting there was some twist in his nature.

More than suspicion – a knowledge.

What could have been the cause of such a havoc? Vital desires? Attachments?

He had these; but that was not the chief difficulty.

Or was it lack of confidence and faith in the Mother?

There was that, of course – but lack of faith was not enough to produce such an upsetting. It was something in opposition and hiding itself, that got terrified when it saw its companion pulling down the Force. For after all he did pull. Mother felt him doing it even last time he came to Pranam.

I am afraid all of us have these things, to some degree. I am a little shaken because of your hint at the resistance or the lower nature’s unwillingness to change, for who hasn’t that?

That was a euphemism, as I wanted him to look at and acknowledge to himself (acknowledging to us would not be enough, as he might do it “with the end of his lips” only) and get rid of it.

Mere unwillingness to change is not enough. Everybody has that in part of his being – if it were enough to produce disaster, nobody could do Yoga.

Some light on M’s report of yesterday, please.

Obliged to postpone it again.

October 22, 1936

I had a dream last night: the Mother had become a little girl and was talking to a boy of her age, before a vast gathering. There was something very unusual about her. We were wondering whether it was really the Mother. How had she turned so young? and to this little girt we made pranam! What significance?

It was in the vital world, I suppose; there anything may happen. Can’t say that I catch any symbolic significance in it. Perhaps your vital was trying to find a ground for বাত্সল্য ভাব⁴⁶.

Had a dream of a death also in the Asram...

Well, if you go on dreaming like that!

What B.P. is doing is, you know, something criminal... Why not buy him a ticket?

Evidently! We have already tried to chuck him once, but failed,– because he had nowhere to go. I will have a try again, even if we have to buy him a ticket for Nowhere.

I don’t know why the boy D and his mother are here. Do you really think that they will be doing Yoga any day? If not, why this encumbrance?

Quite right, sir,– perspicaciously right. The original idea was that they would live separately – M.G. only being a Sadhika, but as usual once people are anywhere near they push in.

Your Force is acting, Sir, and many pots will break. Am I one, I wonder!

Need not be. Hope you have no inclinations that way.

Can you not give one or two concrete instances of falsehood and treachery of Y, that called in this catastrophe, simultaneously with the descent?

Concrete instances came before. It was he who indoctrinated M to leave the Asram and go back to her husband and gave her the suggestions of how to justify herself etc. The story is too long. But it was what I referred to as the reason why Mother did not permit him to come,– finally he came without permission. I hear he once encouraged D in his depression to go away from here. All that had not changed – he pretended under the pressure of D, S to repent, but in reality he always considered that he had done no wrong. This part of him was so false that it erected its falsehood into right. The Mother spoke always of his hypocrisy. See, he told D “There is no love lost between myself and Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, but I am sincere in my Yoga.” That means he was seeking after something not connected with us. Yet he wrote that when the Force came down which was at will, he felt the Mother’s presence in him and was happy. All that is what the Mother speaks of as hypocrisy. Then when the Force threatened to come in earnest, this part of him got terrified and shaken – for it had rejected the Mother’s protection and did not want her Force at all, but something that it could appropriate. It felt that it was “something not himself”, and got into a panic. There does not seem to have been any illness, for you would have found some sign. Coming Madness? I doubt. He was in clear possession of his wits. Then fear only. As soon as he knew he was going away, the fear went, this part became exultant and all went away. It seems to me on the data that this interpretation is the only possible one.

Please see if you can be “obliged” to reflect on M’s condition. Then I shall write my St. Augustine’s confessions!

Have written.

October 23, 1936

What? You are “sorry to inflict all this occultism” on me? [20.10.36] Please, try to percolate a little more of it through the thick sieve of your correspondence. I lost all hope, you know, and was depressed, dejected and downcast. It is so very interesting – this occultism!

All right. I can flood you when I have time and occasion.

I am preparing my confession! Perhaps tomorrow!

Very good. Shall await the revelation.

L seems to be damnably constipated.

Has been for years except for a brief period when R treated her, but before he had finished his treatment she got proud and said only the Force was good enough for her and stopped with a kick for him. After some time of halcyon openness of the bowels the whole thing came back. She complains of sleeplessness last three nights.

October 24, 1936

S all right or jogging along?

I should like to know about K. I have been given secret information (how far reliable, I don’t know) that she is vomiting blood but concealing it from the Doctors to avoid being sent away, also that she has dhatukshay which the Guj. dictionary translates as continuous gleet. What according to your knowledge is the state of things about her?

October 25, 1936

... S’s pain must be stopped. Fever is there but not so bad.

What a painful fellow!

May we get Pancrinol for him?

Very well.

K denies all symptoms: no cough, no bleeding, no fever. P says she is better; there is no more bleeding, cough is also intermittent. Has anybody seen the bleeding? But gleet one can’t see!

Confidentially I may say it was P who wrote – she says K herself told her and of the rest she has seen evidence and was troubled about possible contamination. Of course P like others and like K herself, is a liar, but –

October 26, 1936

You wrote to me that we should drop the mixing together and cooking. How to drop the mixing, Sir?

I did not write “mixing” – I wrote “messing” – food, sir, food; eating in common, sort of psycho-gastric communion forming a spiritual culinary joy. If you want occultism, you shall have it with a vengeance.

If one has a double attachment, would it not be an insincerity?

It depends on the ideal. If it were a matter of the union of two lives, it would be an insincerity, a faithlessness. But for the vital? Its character is to change, sometimes to multiply, to run here and there. Unless of course it is caught, glued to a single attraction or passion for a long period or for a lifetime. But in such gluings it is generally one of the two that is entangled, the other skirmishes around dragging his living appendage or else leaving it half-glued, half-dropped.

All my problems would have been solved if you hadn’t been sitting so tight on my notebook, Sir. All this psychology would have helped me in my story writing.

Sir, it is a melancholy subject I don’t like to go into just now. I would rather tell you when you can look back with a retrospective interest, than inflict it on you now.

By the way, what do you say to my asking Dr. Sircar to teach me The Life Divine?

Fire away.

A complains of slight bleeding per rectum. Beginning of piles?

Irritation somewhere in the intestine? No signs of dysenteric tendency. Or a passing accident. He only mentioned having it twice.

We have advised some fresh air after work and is it possible to alternate his sedentary work with some activity?

That is what we have advised him – although diminishing his sedentary work may make other sedentary people more sedentary. Don’t know exactly how it is to be done, but it must be.

What about giving him some mixtures containing Soda sulph., Ammon. chlor., etc.?

You can give if A is willing to take.

Here is M’s autobiography of headache and vomiting...

Queer history!

These days he is keeping well, it appears. Perhaps the “ghost” has been dissolved!

I hope so. I have done my best to that end.

October 27, 1936

What, Sir? No comment, not a line or a word or even a scratch!⁴⁷ Felt heavy the whole day thinking of this mystery! Will you cast a look back?

No mystery. Simply a case of adhyaropa of Shankaric illusion. Made mental answers and thought they were there physically inscribed on your blank page.

You surprise me by the revelations of D.S. What a pity that all his brilliances should have met with such a destiny!

But look here, his brilliances came after his madness. Before that he was earnest, industrious, eager for knowledge, ambitious, but nothing more. I don’t contend that his madness made him a genius, though it would agree with the immortal theory of Lombroso that genius is madness or at least always tied to abnormality and mental and physical unsoundness. It may have been the result of our constant pouring of force into him to keep his mind bright and coherent and clear.

His touchiness seems to have come from an inferiority complex, the cause of all his trouble.

Don’t believe much in complexes.

I am not very cheerful about his prognosis. The isolation, complete suspension of speech are abnormal states.

Why complete? He was talking to Amal at least.

Some believe that he is not only all right but much better. Their judgment is based on the Mother’s gracious smiles to him.

What queer logicians!

I doubt if he will ever take charge of the Dispensary.

Not likely.

Is his off-centre due to a possession?

A very partial one perhaps.

You have written about D.L. that something possessed her body. How? And did that something take her away against Mother’s and your Force? How could you allow it to possess her before your very eyes, especially in her weak moment?

What’s the row? If the mind and vital can be possessed, as happened to B and N and others, why can’t the body? As for allowing it, sir, if people have an inner revolt, they take the risk and, if they refuse to give up the possession, or call it back when it goes, they have none but themselves to blame.

If you knew that there was very little chance of saving her, what could be the meaning of sending a stupendous Force to her as a last resort?

Why not?

Did you even then hope that perhaps the scales might turn?

Of course, they might. It was a question of a battle of Forces.

Was that stupendous Force spoiled by the intervention of M?

Can’t say.

I understand that she was very sincere in her work, faithful to the Mother.

At the end, she got disgusted with it, critical of the Mother, attached to husband, relatives, food, all earth-desires. It was that that made the difficulty of her soul’s passage and the danger of the ghost. For it is these violent earth-attachments that keep the vital hovering about the place after death.

Another problem which puzzles me is that when you accepted her, did you think that she was likely to be cut off from the path?

Destiny is not an absolute, it is a relative. One can alter it for the better or the worse.

You say, “the suggestion was left in the Asram atmosphere.” [20.10.36] Suggestion by whom? Sadhaks or that vital form?

The suggestion that came from what possessed her “I will remain as a ghost”. The sadhaks simply received the ghost of the suggestion, and saw the ghost of a ghost.

Even a suggestion could be caught hold of by a Force? Where are we, eh?

What’s the idea? Forces are always making suggestions – why can’t they catch hold of one that is in the air and ease their labour?

Do you mean to say that the Force that Y was drawing at first, was not the Mother’s Force, but something different which he could control?

Who said that? It was a higher Force at least, even if not taken from the Mother, but drawn down by himself. But it was coming in small doses and he played happily with it. When it threatened to come in earnest and a great mass, he got frightened.

And when the Mother’s Force descended he got frightened feeling it “not itself” by these reactions? [22.10.36.]

“not himself”, separate from himself.

L has general weakness... How to treat her inordinate constipation?

Don’t know. R got it cured for a spell,– but she stopped his treatment. Surely there must be an allopathic way of curing her obstinacy?

I am sure if J’s poems were published, it would be like Blake’s state – a century later people would appreciate her...

What you predict is extremely probable – unless she writes hereafter something they can understand. Then they will say these were her mystic amusements by the way. A great poetess, but with a queer side to her.

October 28, 1936

Here is the photo of the two sisters J speaks of. Aruna, one of them, seems to have written to you. Both of them are keen on Yoga.

From Aruna’s letter I couldn’t say that they know very much about what Yoga is!

They seem to be quite healthy soldieresses... We want healthy people, Sir, not marasmics or plethorics!

Health is needed but health is “not enough”. Besides, trust not in appearances. Soldiers and soldieresses sometimes become pathological – nerves, shell-shock etc.

I woke up at 3 a.m. and tried to meditate. No sooner had I sat down than I felt a স্তব্ধতা⁴⁸, and the atmosphere around was so quiet that I felt or imagined some presences there. I thought – if at this hour some of these presences catch me, what shall I do? I got very frightened. Were there any presences?

What the deuce did you get afraid for? Supposing any were there, you could have waited at least to see whether they were good presences or bad. If good, no harm; if bad, you have only to tell them to skedaddle. But I expect it was only a feeling of yours. Generally the স্তব্ধতা is either empty of presences and formations or only one Presence is there, that of one’s self or that of the Divine.

Now I am wondering why really I was afraid – thereby losing a beautiful opportunity for gaining something.

Quite so. If one gets afraid, the experience can’t go on.

[After a long report of K’s medical case:] Have women a substance equivalent to men’s seminal fluid which is said to be the basis of physical energy? Our medical science is silent about it.

You really don’t want me to deliver to a doctor a lecture on physiology or genetics? Nonsense!

October 29, 1936

Guru, now I remember it was not exactly স্তব্ধতা. It is so difficult to express it – as though something was going to happen to me with which I was totally unfamiliar. I was going away somewhere, getting as quiet and still as the atmosphere around. Going to lose the consciousness of the surrounding things?

Well, that is the beginning of some kind of Samadhi.

And if some forces were to invade at that moment – this was my fear.

Why the hell should they? But if there is any chance of that, call the Mother’s protection around you.

But do you say that স্তব্ধতা is empty of other presences?

Certainly.

Isn’t it a fact that some adverse force may come and try to attack us in meditation?

In meditation it may, but not in স্তব্ধতা. All meditation is not

S told me that once while he was meditating at the dead of night, a force came and gripped his neck (?).

Well, that’s quite possible. If it does, one has only to kick it away and say, “Get off, you fool.” Or if you are not vigorous enough to do that, call the Mother’s force.

Anyway this fear must go.

Exactly.

People come in contact with so many planes, beings and forces in meditation, and if one gets afraid, there is a chance of madness.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined “a chance of madness”.]

Not necessarily madness. Plenty of people get afraid without getting mad. Madness is exceptional. What fear does is to stop the experience or else it exposes you to blows from the vital beings. If you don’t fear, they can’t hurt you.

J’s uncle was one.

[Sri Aurobindo drew a line indicating “one”.]

One what? Got mad with fear?

So fear must go.

Fear must not enter in Yoga. As Vivekananda said, the Yogi must be অভী⁴⁹.

The other day Dr. Sircar asked me what is the yogic process you adopt in curing people. I told him what you have said about the medical aspect – when the diagnosis is definitely clear you concentrate on that so that when the root is handled, symptoms disappear gradually...

Not always. Most often I deal with the symptoms also.

“It is a Science which he alone knows, to others it is a sealed book or a forbidden tree...”

Why he alone? What about the Mother? Plenty of people besides, have felt forces.

“We have tried to pluck the fruit, but he is very strict and does not allow.”

How’s that??

Any comments or light on this occult business? How far am I right in enunciating or enumerating your method?

All right, subject to the comments above.

By the way, if it is a question of forces, how or where the deuce do these millions of blessed bacilli and viruses come in? Has each Force a definite bacillus as its agent?

What is the difficulty? You are like the scientists who say or used to say there is no such thing as mind or thought independent of the physical brain. Mind and thought are only names for brain quiverings. Or that there is no such thing as vital Force because all the movements of life depend upon chemicals, glands and what not. These things and the germs also are only a minor physical instrumentation for something supraphysical.

Or do the Forces diminish the general resistance of the body in an occult way and germs according to their individual characteristics try to capture the body?

They first weaken or break through the nervous envelope, the aura. If that is strong and whole, a thousand million germs will not be able to do anything to you. The envelope pierced, they attack the subconscient mind in the body; sometimes also the vital mind or mind proper – prepare the illness by fear or thought of illness. The doctors themselves said that in influenza or cholera in the Far East 90 percent got ill through fear. Nothing to take away the resistance like fear. But still the subconscient is the main thing.

But diseases like cholera, plague etc. are supposed to outbreak by contamination.

If the contrary Force is strong in the body, one can move in the midst of plague and cholera and never get contaminated. Plague too, rats dying all around, people passing into Hades. I have seen that myself in Baroda.

You will say then that flies, bugs etc. that contaminate food, are sent to people by these forces and they were meant to be infected?

They were open to the Forces in some way.

Buddha, they say, died of dysentery due to pork-eating.

Modem scholars have cleared Buddha of that carnivorous calumny. They say it was a vegetable root called sukarakhanda which ignorant commentators have mistranslated “piece of a pig”.

Dysentery, as you know, is caused by a germ.

It isn’t. It is instrumentated by a germ.

And germs got into the pork by flies and flies were there at the instance of forces?

What about the vegetable root? Flies also. But why should not flies be instruments for illness just as you are an instrument for curing?

What about Ramakrishna’s cancer? You will perhaps chide me for bringing in these instances, but logically they have to be there. And if Buddha’s illness may not be believed, can Ramakrishna’s? “How does it invalidate the theory of forces, you fool?” you will thunder.

What did he himself say about it – that it was the sins of his disciples which constituted the cancer. There is a physical aspect to things and there is an occult supraphysical aspect – one need not get in the way of the other. All physical things are the expression of the supraphysical. The existence of a body with physical instruments and processes does not, as the 19th century vainly imagined, disprove the existence of a soul which uses the body even if it is also conditioned by it. Laws of Nature do not disprove the existence of God. The fact of a material world to which our instruments are accorded does not disprove the existence of less material worlds which certain subtler instruments can show to us.

But Ramakrishna was an Avatar, Sir! An Avatar to be attacked and given insufferable pains!

Why should he not? Why on earth limit the possibilities of an Avatar?

Last night L called Dr. Becharlal for tympanites. He saw there was no tympanites at all... She had also a good motion today.

That’s it! Constipation she has got but she bloodcurdles herself into any number of other things.

S asked for meals at home. Because of the rainy weather he says he feels unwell. How can I refuse when a healthy fellow like myself – ?!

What delicate people all are becoming! A feather will hunch them down. Can’t bear this, can’t stand that. Evidently they are approaching the heights of supramental Yoga!

[In the medical report, I wrote the name of the patient as Ambala instead of Ambalal.]

I say! this is the name of a town, not of a person.

November 1, 1936

[The following medical report was by Dr. Becharlal about Shanta who had pain in the back and chest. She had weak eyes and lungs, and did a lot of knitting, embroidery, etc.]

She should not work for more than an hour in bent position. She should try to sit straight.

That is all right. Mother had suggested that already in cases of fatigue of back from similar cause.

She should go for a walk in the open air every morning and evening.

She starts, then loses interest or feels tired or something and drops it.

She should take cod-liver oil for a longer period.

You must persuade her to do that.

She may be given such work as may not fatigue the eyes, press upon the chest – picking dry leaves, flowers, watering plants, etc.

She used to do some gardening before but dropped it.

J asks Mother whether bath salts get spoiled if a dozen bottles are bought at a time.

No, they don’t get spoiled.

Herewith Powell’s letter regarding T’s abdominal support It looks like an adjustable type.

[20.10.36]

It is a steel affair? I doubt whether T could stand that.

I hope she will be able to manage the measurements wanted.

Lying down? it may be difficult for her.

Guru, this is the month when your thrice-blessed disciple came into the physical world. Please see that the supraphysical projects some more of its invisible rays. But thinking again – what will the poor Guru do if the big disciple doesn’t fulfil the conditions? Is that so?

The one hope is then that he may last on to fulfil the conditions without his knowing that he is doing it! What do you think of that device?

November 2, 1936

What do I think of that “device”? What can I think, Sir? That is the only straw I am obliged to clutch at, but it may prove too weak for my burden. I am doubtful of the device because you must have tried it also in many other cases that have failed.

The cases that have tailed are those that have gone the wrong way – which is another kind of difficulty altogether.

Yes, T’s support is a steel affair. Otherwise it won’t be tight enough. But why can’t she stand it?

Because it is very painful when one is thin with no fat to protect one. So instead of relieving her pains, it would [cause] others.

Sir, how to solve her lying down problem, I don’t know.

Rack your brains and solve it.

Should I resume my hospital visits now? But cycles aren’t allowed to be taken out in rainy weather, so?

It is because the rider gets wet and the bicycle rusted. But if you can arrive at an understanding with Benjamin⁵⁰ –

There is an application for permanent residentship – X, son of B, husband of A. He had made himself something like a physical wreck in Africa, says he is all right now. Mother wants you to be very strict in your examination; also I have told him to give past history. First result of your suggestion for a preliminary examination of candidates!

November 3, 1936

By the way, R was also suggesting about the medical board, after D.L.’s death. Can’t he be included?

There would be much confusion. He would say something quite different from the rest of you.

November 4, 1936

We have brought one dozen packets of bath salts for Mother. Wouldn’t it be better to send them now?

Very well.

I have found a line which seems quite good, but no more!

Go ahead. Open the tap.

November 8, 1936

Guruji, I send you this incomplete masterpiece of mine. Such a one that I feel tempted to throw it head down, into – . Still, to be fair, the first 8 lines, I suppose, can stand on their feet. But the rest?

Yes. These are all right. Afterwards you seem to have haled down by the hair of the head some lines which don’t quite know where they are or what you are driving at. They have therefore not much life in them. Is there not a stop in the middle of the ninth line? If possible, after repairing the inspiration a little, you might start off from there again and produce a less abruptly evolved conclusion.

November 10, 1936

D.H. Lawrence says that one can only write creative stuff when it comes, otherwise it is not much good. In his own experience some sort of an urge – his daemon – has seized him, and he has created. Writing is a kind of passion to him – like kissing!

All statements are subject to qualification. What Lawrence states is true in principle but in practice most poets have to sustain the inspiration by industry. Milton in his later days used to write every day fifty lines; Virgil nine which he corrected and recorrected till it was within halfway of what he wanted. In other words he used to write under any other conditions and pull at his inspiration till it came.

Perhaps the best creations are those which come by sudden inspiration, either in poetry or in prose.

Yes. Usually the best lines, passages etc. come like that.

How to make writing a passion? Is one born with it?

Usually. But sometimes it comes gradually.

With me it is neither a passion nor an urge! You’ve seen in my latest poems how my power of expression has deteriorated and resistance increased.

I think you have been rather influenced by so much study of J’s poems and are trying to follow a similar inspiration and it is not quite assimilated.

If I can make you believe that I am able to write stories after all, I shall ask you for some Force.

I don’t see why you should not be able to write.

I have been furiously thinking what is the use of blessed literature after all, if the nature remains just the same?

Good heavens! where did you get this idea that literature can transform people? Literary people are often the most impossible on the face of the earth.

Is literature ever going to transform the nature?

I don’t suppose so. Never did it yet.

I have neither the strong will nor the sustained effort to transform my nature. The best way is to surrender – I am forced to do it – and keep quiet, quiet for years and years, which I am trying to do. But, Sir – !

According to the affirmation of people acquainted with the subject, the preliminary purification before getting any Yogic experiences worth the name may extend to 12 years. After that one may legitimately expect something. You are far from the limit yet – so no reason to despair.

November 11, 1936

What do you think of the beginning of this poem, and the possibility, if any?

An energetic beginning – many possibilities.

Yes, I think I have been influenced by “so much study” of J’s poems. But is it wrong to be thus influenced? Is it going to be an imitation?

No, but it is a transition from one inspiration to another – and a transition is often difficult.

A similar inspiration can have a different manifestation, can’t it?

Yes, of course.

Should I stick to my own domain? but what then is my own domain?

Can’t say very well; but it was distinctive enough.

I didn’t mean that literature can transform people. We may have progressed in literature, but the outer human nature remains almost the same.

Outer human nature can only change either by an intense psychic development or a strong and all-pervading influence from above. It is the inner being that has to change first – a change which is not always visible outside. That has nothing to do with the development of the faculties which is another side of the personality.

Wouldn’t it be wiser to use my effort and labour in the direction of sadhana?

That is another question altogether. But such sadhana means a slow laborious work of self-change in most cases (twelve years you know!), so why not sing on the way?

Literary people are hyper-sensitive, it seems. But why they alone? All artists, I am afraid, are like that.

Of course.

The bigger one is, the greater the ego and the greater the sensibility or sensitiveness. I believe that if the artists were not so sensitive, they wouldn’t be able to create!

Not quite that. Sensibility, yes – one must be able to feel things. Exaggerated sensitiveness not necessary. Men of genius have generally a big ego – can’t be helped, that.

Lawrence is terrible that way. He says he doesn’t write for “apes, dogs and asses”, and yet when these asses criticise him, he goes mad!

Of course – T weeps oceans if criticised, Lawrence goes red etc. It’s the mark of the tribe.

What about yourself in your pre-yogic days? I hear that James Cousins said about your poem “The Rishi” that it was not poetry at all, only spiritual philosophy. I wonder what your poetic reaction was!

James Cousins does not date from my preYogic days.

I never heard that. If I had, I would have noted that Cousins had no capacity for appreciating intellectual poetry. But that I knew already, just as he had no liking for epic poetry either, only for poetic “jewellery”. His criticism was of “In the Moonlight” which he condemned as brain-stuff only except the early stanzas for which he had high praise. That criticism was of great use to me – though I did not agree with it. But the positive part of it helped me to develop towards a supra-intellectual style. As “Love and Death” was poetry of the vital, so “Ahana”⁵¹ is mostly work of the poetic intelligence. Cousins’ criticism helped me to go a stage farther.

D said to us once that he spoke to Mother about his hyper-sensitiveness, and she replied that an artist has to be that – he must have finer, acuter feelings to be able to create his best.

He has to be “sensible” in the French sense of the word.

Only in Yoga one has to turn it towards the Divine. What do you say?

I prefer he should drop the hyper-sensitiveness and be hyper“sensible” (French sense, not English) only.

You have again hit me with the number of years in Yoga plus Virgil, Keats and Milton in poetry. I am preparing a hit-back!

There was no hit in that – I was only answering your question about writing only when the inspiration comes. I pointed out that these poets (Virgil, Milton) did not do that. They obliged the inspiration to come. Many not so great do the same. How does Keats come in? I don’t think I mentioned him.

I asks if A’s letter can be sent now.

Well, she can send. I will see at leisure.

November 13, 1936

Guru, what else could it be if not a “hit” or at least shutting my mouth? Every time I complain of a great difficulty, no inspiration, you quote the names of Virgil, Milton, etc. Same in Yoga – you say 10 years, 12 years, pooh!

I thought you were honestly asking for the truth about inspiration according to Lawrence and effort; and I answered to that. I didn’t know that it was connected purely with your personal reactions. You did not put it like that. You asked whether Lawrence’s ideas were correct and I was obliged to point out that they were subject to qualification since both great and second class and all kinds of poets have not waited for a fitful inspiration but tried to regularise it.

When hour after hour passes in barren silence bringing unspeakable misery, these examples of great poets – Miltons, Virgils – who cannot be compared with small ones are no consolation at all. (Keats you mentioned on another occasion.)

All that about great poets is absolute imbecile nonsense. There is no question of great or small. It is a question of fluency or absence of fluency. Great, small and mediocre are alike in that matter – some can write fast and easily, others can’t.

When you bring in the examples of Milton and Virgil in poetry and the number of years in Yoga, you forget that they had no Supramental Avatar as Guru to push them on, Sir!

Considering that the Supramental Avatar himself is quite incapable of doing what Nishikanta or Jyoti do, i.e. producing a poem or several poems a day, why do you bring him in? In England indeed I could write a lot every day but most of that has gone into the Waste Paper Basket.

If you mean seriously that I have to wait 12 years, you will drive me to commit suicide, I tell you. Things are bad enough, Sir, and “sing on the way” indeed!

The rule of 12 years is one enounced not by me, but many Sanyasis and people who know about Yoga. Of course they are “professionals”, so to speak, while this is an Asram of amateur Yogis who expect quick results and no labour – and if they don’t get it, talk about despair and suicide.

God knows when I shall be above all this vital desire, sex, etc. When I think of the first 2 years, I heave a sigh thinking of such a retrogression, a fall. You have said that falls and failures bring something better and richer; what have they brought for me?

There is nothing peculiar about retrogression. I was also noted in my earlier time before Yoga for the rareness of anger. At a certain period of the Yoga it rose in me like a volcano and I had to take a long time eliminating it. As for sex – well. You are always thinking that the things that are happening to you are unique and nobody else ever had such trials or downfalls or misery before.

I have no other way but to surrender to the Divine, leaving Him to lead me through fires or flowers as He decides best. Can I “sing”, honestly?

I don’t see why not? Dilip used to sing whenever he felt suicidal.

Amal says Cousins ignored your poem “The Rishi” while speaking of the others. Isn’t that far worse?

Neither worse nor better. What does Cousins’ bad opinion about the “Rishi” matter to me? I know the limitations of my poetry and also its qualities. I know also the qualities of Cousins as a critic and also his limitations. If Milton had written during the life of Cousins instead of having an established reputation for centuries, Cousins would have said of Paradise Lost and still more of Paradise Regained “This is not poetry, this is theology”. Note that I don’t mean to say that “Rishi” is anywhere near “Paradise Lost”, but it is poetry as well as spiritual philosophy.

November 14, 1936

You surprise me very much, Guru, by this “volcanic anger” of yours. People say that they never heard a single harsh, rude, angry word from your mouth here in Pondicherry. But how is it that this “volcano” flared up in Yoga when you were noted for its rareness in pre-Yoga? Subconscient surge?

I was speaking of a past phase. I don’t know about subconscient, must have come from universal Nature.

November 15, 1936

What do you mean by “feminine women”? as opposed to “masculine women”?

Feminine is not used in opposition to masculine here, but means only a wholly unrelievedly feminine woman – a capricious, fantastic, unreasonable, affectionate-quarrelsome-sensual-emotional, idealistic-vitalistic, incalculable, attractive-intolerable, never-knows-what-she-is-or-what-she-isn’t and everything else kind of creature. It is not really feminine, but is the woman as man has made her. By the way, if you like to add some hundred other epithets and double-epithets after searching the Oxford dictionary, you can freely do so. They can all be fitted in somehow.

I am tempted to ask you a delicate personal question about X. She seems to be in a good state of sadhana though I find that she spends much of her time in a very ordinary manner... Still she seems very happy and her sadhana must be very good, as she has no depression...

You forget that for a long time she was often keeping much more to herself, to Y’s great anger. During that time she built up an inner life and made some attempt to change certain things in her outer – not in the outward appearance but in the movements governing it. There is still an enormous amount to be done before the outward change can be outwardly visible, but still she is not insincere in her resolution. As for her not having any depression [it is] because she has established a fundamental calm which is only upset by clashes with Y; all the rest passes on the surface ruffling it perhaps, but not breaking the calm. She has also a day or two ago had the experience of the ascent above and of the wideness of peace and joy of the Infinite (free from the bodily sense and limitation) as also the descent down to the Muladhar. She does not know the names or technicalities of these things, but her description which was minute and full of details was unmistakable. There are three or four others who have had this experience recently so that we may suppose the working of the Force is not altogether in vain, as this experience is a very big affair and is supposed to be, if stabilised, the summit of the old Yogas – For us it is only a beginning of spiritual transformation. I have said this though it is personal so that you may understand that outside defects and obstacles in the nature or the appearance of unYogicness does not necessarily mean that a person can do or is doing no sadhana.

I want to know the secret of it. Is she all the time thinking of the Mother within? I think she has a great love for the Mother. Is that the secret?

Partly. She got hold of the sadhana by the right end in her mind and applied it – just the thing Y failed to do because of his doubts, pride of intellect and denial etc. – so in spite of serious defects of nature she has got on.

Is it enough for progress, if most of the time is passed in the way she does?

She passes her time so because she can now do it and yet keep within her inner condition and her sadhana. So she says at least. Possibly if she did it less she would go on faster.

Guru, day after tomorrow is my blessed birthday. The year has gone round and the prophecy that at the age of 32, my troubles will be over, has well – I [5.77.55]

Thirty-second year over? Perhaps in the “will be over” over has a different significance!

G says he doesn’t want to take any more cod-liver oil, as he is quite all right and doesn’t want to get fatter.

Perhaps he could be given a rest from the oil for a time. But if he thinks himself fat, that is an illusion.

November 16, 1936

M.G. says the doctor (M.B. only) at Calcutta didn’t advise quinine without blood exam.

[Sri Aurobindo put a question mark above “M.B. only”.]

What’s this algebra?

His case looks like malaria. Is it necessary to examine blood?

Examine blood for what? To see if it is malaria?

G has been taking half a cup of extra milk. He wants to give it up now. Should he cease?

No. He must continue – unless he prefers cod-liver oil.

I send you one of Z’s missives. The last para is private and nonmedical but apart from that you may perhaps convey to Becharlal the substance of this despatch – the horrible tale of the alarming Lila that is going on in her stomach.

Please return the epistle.

November 17, 1936

Guru, any impression of Mother’s on my birthday? I am afraid I wasn’t calm but the whole day I felt peaceful.

Mother’s verdict is “Not at all bad – I found him rather receptive.” So, sir, cherish your receptivity and don’t humbug about with doubt and despondency and then you will be peaceful for ever!

Quinine was given to M.G. But I suppose it is not any more necessary, as is evident. I know your views against quinine but what can we give instead?

Don’t know. If it is a necessary evil, it must be administered, I suppose.

I return Z’s “epistle”, with thanks. Dr. Becharlal will look after the “Lila”, but are these people living in an illusory world of their own or are we in a sceptical world of ours? She says every atom is merging peacefully and beautifully into the wideness of the Mother, and yet this alarming “Lila” of the stomach and the whole body! Is the Spirit separating itself from Matter and enjoying all this, while giving an impersonal account of material suffering?

Z is a humbug and I don’t believe in her atoms. She has had experiences but on the mental and vital plane. It is only a real descent of the higher consciousness from above that can give a peaceful and beautiful merging of the atoms (?) into the wideness of the Divine – that is to say one feels the very cells sharing in that peace and wideness. This is possible even if the material body is ill. In most cases it is the subtle body that feels like that, but as the subtle penetrates everywhere the gross physical, the physical body also feels like that. But then it does not feel disturbed by the pains or motions of the illness – they do not affect its peace or Ananda.

November 18, 1936

May I ask Ardhendu to play a little sitar here in the dispensary, at night? I shall invite just a few friends.

I suppose it can be done.

Chand has asked your advice and protection for going to Chittagong in January.

Protection is possible, advice not.

November 19, 1936

Guru, Mother said I was receptive? But how? I don’t know really.

How the devil can you know, when you are not conscious?

That is the whole trouble in your Yoga, Sir, that everything goes on in an unconscious stream.

It always does in the earlier stages.

All I know is that I tried to be calm and silent, forgetting by mind-effort that an outer world exists. That is receptivity?

Nonsense! It is only the proper condition for receptivity. Naturally, it is the proper thing to do if you want to be receptive or become conscious of inner things. So long as the mind is jumping about or rushing out to outside things, it is not possible to be inward, collected, conscious within.

The Mother said to me in the interview that my inner mind asked for vital stability and faith, which can be established by bringing the psychic to the front. How to do that? I consulted your books and found that by silence, self-offering and aspiration, it has to be done.

Yes, that is the proper way.

But aspiration for what?

Aspiration for the Divine or aspiration for faith and consciousness and the perfection of self-giving – aspiration for divine love, bhakti, anything that connects the soul with the Divine.

Does the psychic come to the front even if the vital is impure?

Well, it may; anything is possible; but if it does, it will certainly say “Fie, fie, what! all this dirt in the temple. Sweep me the temple clean.”

Or the emergence of the psychic purges the vital of its impurities?

Yes, provided you give your assent.

I find that so long as sex is strong, no ascent or descent is possible.

That is not true. It is possible but damnably unsafe.

But in spite of these things which you say are not mine alone, if I could get rid of these two devils – doubt and despondency!

They are not uniquely yours either.

J does not claim to know any sadhana but still to have an inner peace and joy. It must be true, for I find J very happy and cheerful.

Well, yes, many people are like that. Calm or peace or happiness or cheerfulness, so long as there is no cause for disturbance; but immediately there is, then boil, seethe, simmer, growl, howl, yowl. The calm which causes of disturbance cannot disturb is the thing.

You say the working of the Force is not altogether in vain in spite of serious defects in people’s nature. But surely they must have satisfied some essential conditions for gaining the experiences.

Yes, of course. But it varies with different people. It may be faith, it may be earnestness and persistence. It may be love for the Divine. There are many other things it may be. Like the Mahomedan with his tuft, you must give a handle somewhere for the Angel of the Lord to catch hold of you and lift you up.

Otherwise I could have those experiences as well, but I can’t, why?

Mind bubbling, vital disturbed and despondent, physical inert.

Or would you say that it has taken those people 7 or 8 years?

Yes, it has – what you would call damned slow progress – but, slow or not, they arrive.

It seems to me there must have been some difference between X and me, for instance, for which she had the experiences and I didn’t. She took sadhana by the “right end” you said, which means surely that she had no doubt or despondency?

No, sir, she had these in fits and very bad fits too like everybody else almost. But she preferred to believe, to be devoted, to fight against herself and conquer. She did not like Y take a pride in doubting and using the intellect for the purpose, was sensible enough to see that that wasn’t what she came here for. She didn’t want to question everything and be satisfied in her limited intellect before she took the way of spiritual self-giving and inner experience.

How did this “fundamental calm” get established in her?

It came of itself through the sincerity of her will to open and to live for the Divine – there was insincerity and ego on the surface but the psychic could make itself heard owing to this – so the inner being slowly grew.

November 20, 1936

I have a bad frontal headache, feeling feverish, hope no complication of left frontal sinus suppuration! Help, Guru!

[Sri Aurobindo drew an arrow from the word “suppuration”.]

What’s all this? Is this a time to start suppurating sinuses? Drop it, please.

November 21, 1936

Guru, O Guru,

My head, my head

And the damned fever!

I am half-dead!

With pain and pressure

But blessed liver

Functions quite well,

Please send the others

To hell, oh to hell!

Cheer up! Things might have been so much worse. Just think if you had been a Spaniard in Madrid or a German Communist in a concentration camp! Imagine that and then you will be quite cheerful with only a cold and headache. So

Throw off the cold,

Damn the fever.

Be sprightly and bold

And live for ever.

What’s to be done? How to drop it? Is it the blessed cold only or any Force to boot that is causing havoc in the head?

I don’t know of any Force. Do you think it is some pressure making the difficulty in the head ooze out of it? If so –

For it started, you know, on the very night I came from the Mother...

Receptivity?

Very funny that every time I make a resolution regarding poetry or sadhana, something happens and ties me down. Why?

Probably the adverse forces get frightened and put in an undercut or overcut to knock you out of tune.

I was proud that I was immune to illness! But a mere cold pulls me down, and that too at Darshan time! Again Fate, Sir! There is a proverb in Bengali which says that one who is unlucky, is unlucky everywhere; even in a নেমন্তন্ন⁵² he doesn’t get anything. I hope you remember the familiar word নেমন্তন্ন!

I do, though it belongs to the far-off past for me.

November 22, 1936

I am better today, Sir. But feverishness is there, which I hope will pass off tomorrow. But what about the lack of interest in everything?

Don’t understand. You want to get rid of the interest in everything or to get rid of the lack of interest?

Imagination of Madrid or the Concentration Camp will have a reverse effect!

What reverse effect? Increase of cold and headache?

By the Guru! Please don’t forget to give a supramental kick to my main impediments at Darshan; only no after-effects, please, what?

“By the Guru”! What kind of oath is this? But the object of the imagination was not to liberate your nose or forehead, but to liberate your soul.

Kicking is easy. As to the effects or after-effects, that has to be

November 25, 1936

Guru, I feel I must seriously write now – take the Muse by the forelock. Otherwise she is too high and proud; but your help is needed. You said afternoon is your fag-end, so every time I feel unsupported then. I will shift it to the lonely quiet night, to get your bright and energetic beginning. What? Approve?

Not objected to at least provided you don’t stay wrestling with the Muse till the small hours of the morning.

November 27, 1936

[The following report was written by Dr. Becharlal:]

S said last evening that she was much better. But today she has not come for the medicines.

She has written that she got worse with the medicine, so she stopped it. I have told her that she ought to report to you instead of doing that.

A perfect sonnet! (1) What do you think of the first line, Sir: “My clouded soul, do you know where you are?” Flat? and the clouded soul?

(1) Flat? by God, sir, abysmal! The soul can get as clouded as it likes but do you know where you are? In Pondicherry, sir, in Pondicherry – the most clouded soul can know that. You might just as well write “My friend, do you know that you are an ass?” and call it metre and poetry.

What about the thought, sequence, etc.? Please show the defects with your opinion and criticism. Is it a metaphysical or philosophic poem?

God knows! But the matter is that the metre of some of your lines is enough to make the hair of a prosodist stand on end in horror! I have marked all the quadrupeds you have created in situ – also put in the margin my five-footed emendations of them...

November 28, 1936

After reading your remarks on yesterday’s poem, oh what a joy I felt! In spite of your calling me an “ass”, Sir!

I only made you call somebody else one.

Let me whisper to you that after this Darshan something somehow has happened somewhere to make me cheerful and jolly, though you didn’t seem to have given me a very warm reception – because of my damn cold?

There was no absence of warmth – it may be your cold that made it seem so to you.

And though Mother now and then rolls her eyes, which makes me roll in misery for one or two hours...

Rubbish!

D also says he is very happy. So we both combine to give you this good news. You may congratulate yourself on some tremendous success you have achieved! What’s the secret, Sir? Supramental in view?

Supramental “in view” long ago. To reach is the thing.

Danger zone crossed?

Can’t say that, yet.

Ah, if this joy remains so! will it?

Let us hope so.

I forgot to narrate to you a funny experience I had on Darshan day. Just after darshan, I sat in the Asram for a while, then went home and lay down. From 10 to midday I slept heavily. But throughout those 2 hours, I had the feeling that I’d lose all that I had received at darshan. Suddenly I felt myself sleeping in Ardhendu’s room, listening to kirtan⁵³. But the funny part is that my body seemed to be lying on the bed and another part of me was up and listening to the kirtan. Was it the subtle body? What significance?

Why funny? Quite natural.

Why the deuce do all you people ask always what significance? If you walked out of your house in boots, leaving your slippers or sandals behind, that would be a fact, but with no significance except that you had boots. You went out in your subtle body and listened to the kirtan of the vital plane in Ardhendu’s room, leaving your body to snore (or not) in yours. Quite a common affair, only shows that you have become aware of the boots, i.e. of your subtle body and its exits.

November 29, 1936

Boil again inside the right nostril! But perhaps you will ask me to imagine being a Spaniard, German, Jew, the Japanese-German pact and the Russian inflammation against it etc., etc. All right, Sir, I will imagine all these if you will imagine giving me a dose of Force, what?

It is for you to do that. I can only send Force.

November 30, 1936

U has pain in the left elbow. Siju or Oriental Balm recommended by the Divine seems to have failed! We might try some other liniment.

Try.

R has a glandular swelling on the right side of the neck now.

What about other matters? Eruption on arm? Lice in hair?

Boil paining, what to do? Suffer with a smile?

Smile awhile.

Some years ago G hurt his scrotum; there was a swelling as a result, since then any time he has fever or pain in his knee, the swelling of the testis appears. Right testis somewhat enlarged due to the fluid – sign of orchitis.

? Not very coherent statement. Any connection between knee, fever any time and orchitis?

December 2, 1936

Mulshankar still complains of pain in the hip joint. There is a loud cracking sound in some positions. Dr. Becharlal says the dislocation hasn’t been set right, perhaps.

It may be only rheumatism settled there. Sometimes a fracture even if set right perfectly leads to that. But you can see again if you think there is any chance of its not having been put right.

Sonnet emended by Amal. He has changed the metrical errors, as well as lines which seemed to him un-English.

And what errors, my God! For heaven’s sake don’t try the irregular dodge yet. It doesn’t succeed with you.

In J’s poem, she says that by Nature’s or the Bride’s rhythm, roses live in hope? How? Why?

What do you know about roses and their response to rhythm?

December 3, 1936

No, I don’t know anything about the roses being opened by the rhythm of Nature or the Bride. Hence the question to know what you know.

What I know, is ineffable.

You seemed to have been in the worst of moods, due to heavy correspondence?

No, the best.

I hope you have had your fill of supramental glee by the merciless whipping on the inframental!

It was all done for your good with the most philanthropic motive.

But I don’t understand your point in spite of such whipping. Is poetry to be felt only, only to have an inner thrill, tremor and quiver?

What’s the use of saying poetry, with a universal sweep like that? It is a question of mystic poetry, not of all poetry.

Perhaps one must not use the intellect to understand what exactly or apparently is meant?

Mystic poetry does not mean anything exactly or apparently; it means things suggestively and reconditely,– things that are not known and classified by the intellect.

Or should one be satisfied only with the fineries, embroidery, ornamental decorations outside, and not see what it is that they are covering?

What you are asking is to reduce what is behind to intellectual terms, which is to make it something quite different from itself.

Must not one see if the body that these ornaments decorate is as beautiful and precious or more than these fineries?

It is not a question of the (intellectual) body, but of the mystic soul of the thing.

You want it intellectually beautiful and precious or mystically beautiful and precious?

The symbolic and spiritual images in your Bird of Fire, for instance, are so rich, high, poignant and poetic, but if one could follow the bhāva behind or through them, I believe the appreciation would become complete.

What do you mean by following the bhava behind? Putting a label on the bird and keeping it dried up in your intellectual museum, for Professors to describe to their pupils – “this is the species and that’s how it is constituted, these are the bones, feathers etc., etc. and now you know all about the bird. Or would you like me to dissect it farther?”

Suppose one said: “Why the devil do you want to know the meaning and not rest satisfied with the beauty of the expression?”

Why the deuce are you dwelling on the poetry of the expression as if that were all one feels in a mystic poem and unless one dissects and analyses it one can’t feel anything but words?

The little explanations you gave here and there of J’s mystic poems enhanced the rasa.

It didn’t to me – it simply intellectualised all the rasa out of it.

If the explanations are not necessary then Blake’s poems lose half the charm. People have perhaps appreciated the poetic qualities of his works, but now that they understand the significance also they consider him very great. Isn’t that so?

They understand the significance? in what way? By allegorising them?

Read the remarks of Housman on the magnificent poem of Blake he quotes in full and the attempts of people to explain it⁵⁴. I quite agree with him there though not in his too sweeping theory of poetry. To explain that poem is to murder it and dissect the corpse. One can’t explain it, one can only feel and live the truth behind it.

What I mean to say is that intellectual understanding is necessary to fully appreciate the beauty and worth of a poem, otherwise one feels only a subtle tremor or quiver of joy.

Rubbish!

Who is this “one”?

In symbolic or mystic poems one wants to know also the truths behind the symbols for proper appreciation.

Intellectual truths? Do you think that the intellectual truth of the Divine is its real truth? In that case there is no need of Yoga. Philosophy is enough.

For instance J has written “Crimson Rose”, and by crimson has suggested the painful feeling. Now if one could catch that instead of simply visualising a red rose, the rasa becomes more thick.

It would become much more thick if you felt the mystic red rose and all that it is in the subtle planes instead of merely visualising a red rose and thinking about pain.

I may farther say about J’s poem that I don’t care a damn who the woman is that is sitting there and I would rather not have a label put on her. It leaves me free to feel all the inner possible meaning of her waiting and what she is waiting for.

It is the same with the symbols in Yoga. One puts an intellectual label on the “White Light” and the mind is satisfied and says, “Now I know all about it; it is the pure divine Consciousness light,” and really it knows nothing. But if one allows the Divine White Light to manifest and pour through the being, then one comes to know it and get all its results. Even if there is no labelled knowledge, there is the luminous experience of all its significance –

December 4, 1936

All that whipping for my good? “With the most philanthropic motive”? Gracious! The only good was to stop me from asking questions about J’s poem. But really what’s the motive? You want the mind to be completely silent?

At least decently silent – not always asking for an intellectual definition of everything mystic.

I have brought Housman and shall read him. I would like to get this point cleared if it can be cleared. Your Future Poetry may also give some idea if I can pick out the right chapter.

Don’t know that there is one (right chapter).

I don’t get sufficient time at night, so I have been writing in the afternoon also.

That’s all right.

If that is your “fag-end” really, then can’t Mother give me some Force?

Very inappropriate time for her also. Besides, it is I who am directly running the Poetry Department. However I am now more sprightly from 2.30 to 4.30. After that, correspondence – no chance for poetry.

If you object to my intellectual dissection, please mark the striking lines as you did yesterday in my Bengali poem, because at times I can see their beauty only after you’ve marked them – as it happened yesterday.

Strange! for they are full of poetic power and feeling and what Matthew Arnold would call “in the grand style”.

December 5, 1936

Nishikanta says that taking my poetry as a whole, some command over expression and harmony is there, but the বক্তব্য⁵⁵ is not clearly expressed, either because I don’t know what I want to say or because the power of expression hasn’t yet developed.

I don’t know about that. The বক্তব্য is there, it seems to me, and expressed, but it does not come to so much as one would expect from the richness of the expression. I suppose he means that you have caught only a little of something that might be expressed – only a hair of the tail instead of the complete animal.

Perhaps it is true about the বক্তব্য, but the difficulty is that very often I don’t know what will follow. I get a line to begin with and let myself go.

That is not the case.

Very fine things can come in that way.

Can you give me your opinion? Is there no way to hasten the process?

No, it will come all right as you grow. You are only an infant, just now.

I wrote to you about my happiness, but the very next morning a nebulous cloak of depression fell on me and I am still under it! Well!

Tut, tut, tut! You really must get rid of this kind of thing, hang it all. Out of this kind of nebula no constellation can be made.

The funny thing is that S complains so much and says hunger also is less, but he looks none the worse.

Are you sure he is not a “malade imaginaire”? – at least to a large

December 7, 1936

Guru, yes, unfortunately I am “an infant”. But is infancy the reason, really? I thought it is a question of opening of some inner channel that is the secret. If that opens or is opened up, then the infant can grow old in a day.

Here you are illegitimately changing the metaphor. What has a channel to do with infancy and old age? You are doing in prose what you don’t want J to do in poetry.

J, you know, was no better than an infant and she ran equal with me in poetry, didn’t she? All of a sudden see where she is!

Because there are infants and infants. Some grow quick, others slowly.

She has not only caught the animal whole and alive, but most marvellously and rapidly, while I have not been able to catch even a hair of the tail!

My dear sir, she let the inspiration through and didn’t mind whether she understood it or not – or at least if she did mind, it didn’t stop her from following it.

She has written 4 sonnets today, and each one better than my single production of 2 or 3 days’ labour! Why haven’t I been able to do it?

Because of your mind which is active.

Next, what about D who couldn’t write a single line and flourished in so short a time?

That was his vital vigour and confidence. As for you, you refuse to enthuse.

Sir, the mystery is a little deeper, methinks. If you so wanted this instant, you could have made me an “old man” or at least more than an infant!

Have to work under the conditions you offer me.

I began this poem night before last, wrote 3 stanzas quickly, but had to stop, as it was rather late. Perhaps I should have finished it then somehow, as the flow was coming?

Yes, not good to stop the flow, unless you have got to the stage when you are sure of picking it up again.

By the way, I am thinking of reading some more English poems to be able to write better.

It should certainly be a helpful thing.

So shall I devote the afternoon to reading instead of writing?

Unless you feel a sudden inspiration. Then throw the book aside

December 8, 1936

It is really difficult for me to understand how the mind comes in the way, for I seem to think that whatever comes I jot down.

Well, but why doesn’t it come down like a cataract as in J’s case or as a flood in D’s?

Of course, I want to see also if any better things are possible.

See how? If better things come, it is all right; but if you try to find out better things, then that is mental activity.

But if you say whatever comes should be transcribed, I don’t know, for I have to wait and wait for an expression.

Waiting is all right.

Should one then keep absolutely silent and go on waiting and waiting for the things to drop?

What else then is to be done? To hunt about for them? If so, you are likely to put in any damned thing, imagining it is better.

If you say the mind is active, I should think D’s mind is no less.

He often says “This has flowed through me.” How could it if the mind were active? I suppose you mean by mind the transcribing agency? I don’t mean the receiving mind. The receiving mind must be passive.

Can you not elaborate that sentence: “you refuse to enthuse”?

Yes, you say you take no pleasure or joy in your poetry.

Lack of enthusiasm? All right, I shall work and work in whichever way you advise, sitting on depressions and despondency.

That is hot what I mean by enthusing. I mean by it the joy of the inspiration both as it is coming and afterwards.

If you think afternoon will be better for giving Force, I shall write then...

No importance. Force can come at any time.

I shall put plenty of vigour; about confidence I can’t promise yet for it is my conviction that I haven’t as much stuff as they have.

It is a psychological condition, attitude or whatever you like to call it that you must get into it,– still, compact, receptive, vibrant to the touch when it comes.

By the way, I had a talk with D regarding mystic poetry. He doesn’t seem to feel much in Blake’s poetry.

It simply means that he has not the mystic mind. It does not make any difference to the value or beauty of Blake’s poetry.

And mystic poetry as a whole appeals to him less than poems with concrete meaning.

Mystic poetry has a perfectly concrete meaning, much more than intellectual poetry which is much more abstract. The nature of the intellect is abstraction; spirituality and mysticism deal with the concrete by their very nature.

He says Tagore’s poem: “All the pooja [worship] accomplished in life...”⁵⁶ is vastly more appealing to him than “O Beauty, how far wilt Thou lead me?...”⁵⁷

How is this less concrete than the other?

Or “I have harvested lots of paddy

And while I was harvesting came down the rains.”⁵⁸

Again how is it less concrete?

Mystic poetry will ever remain for him misty and mysterious and occupy a second place.

That is another matter. It is a question of personal idiosyncrasy. There are people who thrill to Pope and find Keats and Shelley empty and misty. The clear precise intellectual meanings of Pope are to them the height of poetry – the emotional and romantic suggestions of the Skylark or the Ode to a Nightingale unsatisfactory. How the devil, they ask, can a skylark be a spirit, not a bird? What the hell has ‘a glow-worm golden in a dell of dew’ to do with the song of the skylark? They are unable to feel these things and say Pope would never have written in that incoherent inconsequential way. Of course he wouldn’t. But that simply means they like things that are intellectually clear and can’t appreciate the imaginative connections which reveal what is deeper than the surface. You can I suppose catch something of these, but when you are asked to go still deeper into the concrete of concretes, you lose your breath and say “Lord! what an unintelligible mess. Give me an allegorical clue for God’s sake, something superficial which I can mentally formulate.” Same attitude as the Popists’ – in essence.

I can’t deny that I got more joy from your explanation of J’s poem. Though I felt the rasa before, when it came to “illuminations of Truth”, it gave me more rasa. The feeling became concretised, so to say.

You mean, it became more intellectually abstract. A glorious concrete, an illumination of Truth is an abstraction, unless it is seen and felt.

There lies the whole difference. You read a poem – mystic or otherwise and feel all the beauty without understanding it, but when the significance also is flashed, the feeling is more.

Not only all the beauty, but all the life and truth of it.

What significance? allegorical significance?

How far can you say that your appreciation is a thing divorced from the flash of understanding that is revealed to you or your living behind the words?

The trouble with you is that you can understand nothing unless an intellectual label is put on it... You are like a person who could not love and enjoy the presence of a beautiful thing or person until you know the scientific category, class or botanical or other description in Latin.

A has written twice about some eruption she is having – she said you would write to us about it, but there is no eruption in this book. Please let me know what it is. An “eruption” may mean anything from prickly heat to –

December 9, 1936

S.B. had no sleep at all last night. No trouble and yet no sleep. Mystery! Any yogic reason?

It is the new fashion with the Asram Yogis – not to sleep.

I send you a letter from S which will speak eloquently for itself. Please return after communicating the contents to Dr. B. I see she has horse-disease অশ্বরোগ⁵⁹ – I presume she means piles (?). Is the blood in her stools due to piles or something else?

December 10, 1936

Here is Jatin’s letter. Why is he seeing visions of engineering, with the Super-engineer at his side? What significance, if any, of the dream? To be fulfilled here or there? He wants to be a yogi; don’t you see?

He was moving in the vital plane which is not bound by the mental will or by the physical realities. There a certain capacity in him was being turned to the Divine Work and the building was symbolic of that, also the power of undertaking my suggestions without speech.

Why then all these un-yogic engineering dreams and visions, when he is concentrating all his efforts with the view to become a super-yogi?

You must dismiss these mental limitations if you want to understand the occult worlds. The vital world has its own law of working, system of events and symbols – it is not bound by the waking mind.

Please give him a satisfactory reply, and what about his letter remaining with you for eternity!

Which letter? there is more than one, I believe.

Mark that he gets tremendous peace by thinking of you.

Naturally, as he meets in me the source of Peace.

December 11, 1936

Nishikanta [conjunctivitis of both the eyes] is better than he was yesterday.

Mother is not satisfied with the condition of his eyes. Why the increase? Too strong medicines?

December 12, 1936

Guru, I don’t know why the Mother looked at me like that during Pranam. Was I anywhere in the wrong?

Mother knows nothing about it.

I went over the whole incident [personal] and didn’t find anywhere that I have misrepresented facts.

No.

Or is it because I was bothering myself and you over a trifle?

No.

It was not an illusion. Some meaning was there.

Yes? But then it must have been a meaning in your mind, not the Mother’s. So only you, its mother, can find it out.

Today Nishikanta is better.

Slightly.

And mercury? Its strength is only 1% and used like anything in the hospitals and recommended in books.

Maybe, but many people suffer much from it. Probably the method is to irritate Nature until she reacts? If so,– well!

The D.R. servant seems to have sciatica. Can he be treated with Salicylates?

Try whatever you think best.

Or should he go to the hospital?

I think not.

December 13, 1936

J’s poems are getting beyond me. Give me either the feeling and consciousness or the mental notes.

She seems to be passing from Blake towards Mallarmé, though she has not quite got there yet. Sorry for you. The poem is fine but enigmatic.

December 14, 1936

Do you mean to say that because I have no joy in writing poetry, it is taking so long for the channel to open? But I don’t see why joy should be a necessary condition for writing poetry.

Art is a thing of beauty and beauty and Ananda are closely connected – they go together. If the Ananda is there, then the beauty comes out more easily – if not, it has to struggle out painfully and slowly. That is quite natural.

I will put in any amount of labour and that should be enough for things to pour down.

Labour is not enough for the things to pour down. What is done with labour only, is done with difficulty, not with a downpour. The joy in the labour must be there for a free outflow. You have very queer psychological ideas, I must say.

How can I have any joy when what I write seems such poor stuff and delivered with much perspiration?

That is your confounded nature. How can the man of sorrows feel joy in anything or any self-confidence? His strain is “O how miserable am I! O how dark am I! Oh how worthless is all that I do,” etc., etc.

But apart from the M of S, you seem to suffer from a mania of self-depreciatory criticism. Many artists and poets have that; as soon as they look at their work they find it awfully poor and bad. (I had that myself often varied with the opposite feeling, Arjava also has it); but to have it while writing is its most excruciating degree of intensity. Better get rid of it if you want to write freely.

But I get a lot of joy reading J’s poetry – I can’t describe it...

I suppose it is because it is what Housman calls pure poetry – stirs with joy the solar plexus.

Where you marked so many fine lines in my last poem, I had hardly felt the thrill while writing them.

That’s the pity of it.

Please give some Force to complete the incomplete poem I have been at. I fear to touch it lest the coming lines should fail in their quality.

Well, it’s that kind of thing that stands in the way.

The first portion I wrote quickly and almost dosing. God knows why dosing?

[Sri Aurobindo wrote z above the s of “dosing”.]

This is a medical spelling.

Probably in order that your waking mind might not interfere. Dozing is often a form of semi-samadhi in which the waking mind retires and the subliminal self comes bobbing up.

Have you finished with Jatin’s long letter regarding dreams, sleep-walking etc.? The reply is overdue, Sir!

I have often tried to begin that, but it is a long affair and before putting pen to paper my courage wilted away.

Guru, sorry? Really? I am very glad, you can be sorry, for then you will do something for me... Why do you say “She seems to be passing etc., etc.”? That simply infuriated J, “... I am writing all this hard stuff which nobody understands, not even Sri Aurobindo! ... I shall stop writing then. And now I am passing from one funny poet to another (Mallarmé).”

Well, if she thinks it derogatory to be compared to such great poets as Blake and Mallarmé! Blake is Europe’s greatest mystic poet and Mallarmé turned the whole current of French poetry (one might almost say, of all modernist poetry) into a channel of which his poems were the opening.

“Mallarmé’s works are, in one word, ‘unintelligible’. Why on earth should I write such things?”

Then why did they have so much influence on the finest French writers and why is modernist poetry trying to burrow into the subliminal in order to catch something even one quarter as fine as his language, images and mystic suggestions?

We told her that she is only an instrument of the Force, and she must surrender to it. “But how can I be sure that it is the Force and not my own making? If Sri Aurobindo assures me of it, I shall be satisfied.”

If it were her own making, she would have written something different. Its very character shows that her mind has not made it.

Is it really true that Mallarmé used to write with a set determination to make his works unintelligible? Can one really do it in that way?

Certainly not. The French language was too clear and limited to express mystic truth, so he had to wrestle with it and turn it this way and that to arrive at a mystic speech. Also he refused to be satisfied with anything that was a merely intellectual or even at all intellectual rendering of his vision. That is why the surface understanding finds it difficult to follow him. But he is so great that it has laboured to follow him all the same.

... J doubts that her poems have enough poetry.

The doubt is absurd – they are poetry sheer and pure.

Our saying and feeling don’t matter much, you see. Sri Aurobindo, Tagore, etc., etc. must acclaim.

I can’t answer for Tagore – ...

Please acclaim, acclaim!

Clamo, clamavi, clamabo⁶⁰.

December 15, 1936

[This medical report was written by Dr. Becharlal.]

P complains of indigestion.

In her letter to me today she complains of headache, giddiness – also of vomiting every third day. She says when she takes medicines it stops, afterwards she is as before.

December 16, 1936

Guru, please read pages 19-21 of this book⁶¹. There Kastner seems to say about Mallarmé just what I have said, though he speaks of him as being an acknowledged master, and of his great influence on contemporary poetry.

He can’t deny such an obvious fact, I suppose – but he would like to.

He says, “A purely intellectual artist, convinced that sentiment was an inferior element of art, Mallarmé never evokes emotion, but only thought about thought; and the thoughts called fort h in his mind by the symbol are generally so subtle and elliptical that they find no echo in the mind of the ordinary mortal.”⁶² Do you agree with all that he says about Mallarmé?

Certainly not – this man is a mere pedant; his remarks are unintelligent, commonplace, often perfectly imbecile.

He continues: “Obscurity was part of his doctrine and he wrote for the select few only and exclusively...”⁶³

Rubbish! His doctrine is perfectly tenable and intelligible. It is true that the finest things in art and poetry are appreciated only by the few and he chose therefore not to sacrifice the truth of his mystic (impressionist, symbolist) expression in order to be easily understood by the multitude, including this professor.

“Another cause of his obscurity is that he chose his words and phrases for their evocative value alone, and here again the verbal sonorities suggested by the tortuous trend of his mind make no appeal except to the initiated.”⁶⁴ (I suppose here he means what you meant about the limitedness of the French language?)

Not only that – his will to arrive at a true and deep, instead of a superficial and intellectual language. I gave two reasons for Mallarmé’s unusual style and not this one of the limitedness of the French language only.

“His life-long endeavour to achieve an impossible ideal accounts for his sterility (he has left some sixty poems only, most of them quite short) and the darkness of his later work, though he did write, before he had fallen a victim to his own theories, a few poems of great beauty and perfectly intelligible.”⁶⁵

60 poems, if they have beauty, are as good as 600. It is not the mass of the poet’s work that determines his greatness. Gray and Catullus wrote little; we have only 7 plays of Sophocles and seven of Aeschylus (though they wrote more), but these seven put them still in the front rank of poets.

He says that “Mallarmé’s verse is acquired and intricate” i.e. a thing not of spontaneity, but of intellectualisation. Saying that Verlaine is an inspired poet, he seems to mean the contrary about Mallarmé.

If these two magnificent sonnets (the last two)⁶⁶ are not inspired, then there is no such thing as inspiration. It is rubbish to say of a man who refused to limit himself by intellectual expression, that he was an intellectual artist. Symbolism, impressionism go beyond intellect to pure sight – and Mallarmé was the creator of symbolism.

I don’t say that this author is an authority, but I found this reference interesting and send it to you for your opinion...

I don’t find it interesting – it is abysmally stupid.

... X also seems to have the same view as the writer’s.

I hope not.

In fact it was X who said about Mallarmé’s set determination to make his works unintelligible [14.12.36]. He writes in an article: Hopkins, in seeking for the secret of sound which is the soul of poetry, has done such rigorous Hathayogic sadhana with rhythm that it strikes us as an astonishing feat. (For instance he has turned the expression “through the other” into “throughter” [“throughther”?].)

That is a question of language – how far one can do violence to the form of a language. It is a different question altogether.

He says that Mallarmé adopted the path of arduous tapasyā with language because the French language is too simple, clear and transparent etc., etc. And then he remarks that just as in spirituality simple (sahaj) sadhana leads to truth, so also in poetry simplicity leads to beauty.

Would it mean then, that due to Mallarmé’s acrobatics with words, his poems are not beautiful and won’t lead you to beauty – if written in that way?

Only X can say what he meant, but to refuse beauty to Mallarmé’s poetry would be itself an acrobacy of the intellect. For what then is beauty? Simplicity and beauty are not convertible terms. There can be a difficult beauty. What about Aeschylus then? or Blake?

I tried to break that nut of his (no. 199)⁶⁷ – an exposition of it is also attached. But, pardi! It was a hard nut, Guru. Really what a tortuous trend and how he has turned the images!

[“... Va-t-il nous déchirer avec un coup d’aile ivre

Ce lac dur oublié que hante sous le givre

Le transparent glacier des vols qui n’ont pas fui!”]

“The transparent glacier of flights haunting the hard lake under the frost”! The frost or snow has become the glacier (icefield) and the icefield composes the lake – that’s what I imaged.

How does hoar-frost or rime become the glacier? “Givre” is not the same as “glace” – it is not ice, but a covering of hoar-frost such as you see on the trees etc., the congealed moisture of the air – that is the “blanche agonie” which has come down from the insulted Space on the swan and on the lake. He can shake off that but the glacier holds him; he can no more rise to the skies, caught in the frozen cold mass of the failures of the soul that refused to fly upward and escape.

I tried hard to understand the construction, can’t say I have it!

You haven’t.

What do you think of this sonnet [Le cygne]?

One of the finest sonnets I have ever read.

Magnificent line, by the way, “le transparent glacier des vols qui n’ont pas fui!” This idea of the denied flights (imprisoned powers) of the soul that have frozen into a glacier seems to me as powerful as it is violent. Of course in French such expressions were quite new – in some other languages they were already possible. You will find lots of kindred things in the most modern poetry which specialises in violent revelatory (or at least would-be revelatory) images. You disapprove? Well, one may do so,– classical taste does; but I find myself obliged here to admire.

What’s this “evocative value” of words and phrases? Suggestiveness? Taking away imagination beyond the expressions or words? “According to Mallarmé’s own definition, the poet’s mission is either ‘to evoke gradually an object in order to suggest a mood, or, inversely, to choose an object as a symbol and disengage from it a mood by a series of decipherments’.”⁶⁸

It is a very good description of the impressionist method in literature. Verlaine and others do the same, even if they do not hold the theory.

I don’t understand what he means, but it seems to be something different from what Housemann means.

[Sri Aurobindo put a question mark above “Housemann”.]

What’s this spelling? He is not a German.

Housman is not a symbolist or impressionist in theory – V⁶⁹

He [Housman] says a poet’s mission is to “transfuse emotion” which Mallarmé had not!

Indeed? because the professor says so? How easily you are impressed by anybody’s opinion and take it as final!

Some reply please – I have left a whole page blank.

I do not know what you mean by emotion. If you mean the surface vital joy and grief of outer life, these poems of Mallarmé do not contain it. But if emotion can include also the deeper spiritual or inner feeling which does not weep or shout, then they are here in these two sonnets⁷⁰. The Swan is to my understanding not merely the poet who has not sung in the higher spaces of the consciousness, which is already a fine idea, but the soul that has not risen there and found its higher expression, the said poet being, if Mallarmé thought of that specially, only a signal instance of this spiritual frustration. There can be no more powerful, moving and formidable expression of this spiritual frustration, this chilled and sterile greatness than the image of the frozen lake and the imprisoned Swan as developed by Mallarmé.

I do not say that the spiritual or occult cannot be given an easier expression or that if one can arrive at that without minimising the inner significance, it is not perhaps the greatest achievement. (That is, I suppose, X’s contention.) But there is room for more than one kind of spiritual or mystic poetry. One has to avoid mere mistiness or vagueness, one has to be true, vivid, profound in one’s images; but, that given, I am free to write either as in Nirvana or Transformation, giving a clear mental indication along with the image or I can suppress the mental indication and give the image only with the content suggested in the language – but not expressed so that even those can superficially understand who are unable to read behind the mental idea – that is what I have done in the “Bird of Fire”. It seems to me that both methods are legitimate.

December 17, 1936

[This medical report was written by Dr. Becharlal.]

S has been asking for white bread instead of our Asram bread. We are not in favour of it.

It would not be good for him.

J asked me to concentrate on the Mother, before writing poetry. Concentrate on the Mother: her eyes, feet, hands etc., etc., then keep quiet for a moment, and jot down whatever comes. As I tried the method, I went somewhere very deep within and heard some lines (which however I couldn’t catch), on waking I wrote down those very lines!

I suppose, having concentrated on the Mother, you were taken by her to the world of art and poetry and heard something there.

December 18, 1936

Mother thinks that the health of S needs special care. She is not eating well and is becoming thin and anaemic. At this period of her growth that would be disastrous and might affect her whole physical future. Mother thinks she should have some dépuratif for the blood and at the same time something strengthening and tonic – it has to be seen what will suit her. Mother would like you to look into the matter and speak also to P.S. about it.

What about I.K.? She has written to me today that she is not well, nausea, inability to eat etc.

[In the reply of the 18th there was a word I had underlined in red, for Sri Aurobindo to decipher.⁷¹]

Man, you can’t expect me to read my own writing after so long a time!

It looks like sideless, but can’t be.

December 19, 1936

Enquired about S. She does not seem to take enough food and says she doesn’t feel hungry. I think she should take lots of vitamins – do you believe in them?

Certainly.

She should take oranges, apples, butter, raw tomato if available...

Tomato not available just now.

I consulted P.S. He says he is not in favour of medicines. In Calcutta too, doctors were rarely called. I told him that home-conditions were lacking here, regarding food. Then he said, “Whatever Mother says must be done.”

It is not medicines that Mother wanted to give; but on the one side fortifying foodstuff (like cod-liver oil, but all cannot stand cod-liver oil) and on the other something for purifying the blood (e.g. in France they give chicory tisane for that). All that will not be necessary if she takes sufficient food. If you can see to that, these other things will not be necessary. What Mother wants is that she should not be allowed to be weak and underfed at this age which is important for the growth.

I have to admit now that poetry can be taken as sadhana – for whatever makes you think of the Mother, is sadhana, isn’t it?

Yes.

And I have some hope in poetry, after all, what?

A great deal of hope.

December 20, 1936

P.S. consents to give her a new preparation with ergosterd, a vitamin. It is a concentrated product, only 4 to 6 drops to be taken a day.

Mother doubts. Better have vitamins in the ordinary way.

I don’t know if chicory is available here.

No; besides, she would not take it. It is too bitter.

You kept silent about butter.

Quite agree to butter.

What about prunes, dates, raisins?

[Sri Aurobindo underlined “prunes, dates, raisins”.]

Also.

Nolini has given me an article (sent by the Mother) on The Effects of Pān-Supāri⁷². As far as I know, in India people believe that pān helps the digestion, and choon (calcium?) is good for health.

Even if it stimulated momentarily, that would not prevent from wearing it out in the end. But the idea is probably a superstition.

... Some believe that chewing supāri is a good exercise for the teeth, especially here where we don’t take any meat!

Lord! I have known people who lost all their teeth at an early age by the habit.

Meat is good for the teeth? Always heard the contrary – Besides millions who don’t take meat have as good teeth as anybody in the world and don’t need pan supari either.

A European eye specialist of Calcutta said that many eye diseases are due to pān-supāri, and he was a dead enemy of them.

Very probably – Teeth and eyes are closely connected.

But what should I do with this typed copy given by Nolini? To enforce on patients? Or others also? A was repeatedly told but – !

That’s like one of my uncles who preferred taking his pan betel to keeping his teeth.

But, Guru, you must admit that pān has a sweet taste, or perhaps you are an utter stranger to it?

Have taken it – can’t say I found it very attractive or enticing. ভিন্ন রুচির্হি লোকঃ⁷³

December 21, 1936

J’s finger was incised on suspicion of pus, but there was hardly any. He says now there’s much burning and throbbing pain.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined “incised” ]

Premature incision not safe, I believe, in this kind of thing.

December 22, 1936

Your belief is right, Guru! I didn’t feel happy yesterday. However, nothing untoward has happened; almost no pain, but the swelling persists, asked to foment.

Mother suggests hot water 1 part peroxide, 3 parts water and dipping the finger for 15 minutes. Some of these things are cured by that – it ought really to be done immediately, but even now it may be effective.

You wrote about “two sonnets” [16.12.36] of Mallarmé (last two). The other on Edgar Poe? I thought you meant “Les Fleurs”, but it is not a sonnet.

Sonnets was a mistake – I meant the last two poems including the Swan sonnet.

December 23, 1936

Why, that is almost exactly what we have advised J to do from the very start, only peroxide was not given.

You are taking daily almost exactly the same thing as Anglo-Indians take in their clubs i.e. a peg. Only brandy and soda are not there – but the water is.

Amidst the wonderful silence of the trees, the blue vast sea and sky, what a queer poem I wrote. Gracious Lord! I went there to enjoy myself and this discordant poem was the result; making me sad throughout the day. I was so sad, till suddenly I thought, the poem may be the cause.

Maybe. You may have made an unconscious excursion to somewhere undesirable.

Have you ever heard such a story of any poet?

Why not? Poets are always queer cattle.

Did I make an excursion to an occult plane, or did the occult precipitate itself into the poem?

May be either.

Very funny, really, if this is the reason of the sadness; even if not, why such a bizarre poem should come out in a beautiful place?

Quite usual. The better things are, the more melancholy one can become. Luxury of contradiction proper to the vital nature. Funny for the intelligence, quite natural according to vital logic.

... Guru, I am not at all satisfied with my poems. I’ll have to stop writing.

Are you ever satisfied? That’s not a reason for stopping.

Shall I give up sonnet writing?

No.

Good God, I didn’t ask you about that word [18.12.36] at all, for I read it the very next day. But that is no reason why you shouldn’t recognise your own writing, Sir!

A marker was on that page, so I thought you were returning⁷⁴ my writing by imposing on me the impossible task of reading it after many days!

December 25, 1936

I am floored today by my own poem; mystic, I think. Written yesterday. Opinion?

Why floored? It is as easy as a nursery rhyme.

December 26, 1936

Dr. Manilal says there is nothing wrong with S...

[Sri Aurobindo underlined “nothing wrong”.]

It looks like it. Malade very imaginaire.

B says she feels giddy at times with so much quinine and in spite of it her 99° is still going on – so she wishes to drop quinine for a time and be given “some other medicine as may be proper.” Well?

December 27, 1936

For A, Dr. Manilal advises only one emetine injection and try its effect since she had so many attacks of dysentery. Well?

She writes that Manilal has told her to live on milk and take no other food (except lemon water when she is thirsty). I am searching in your reports but find nothing. What’s the row? Is it a fact? Most of these women, I believe, are cooking and eating food of their own fancy and going wrong in the stomach.

I’m trying hard to get rid of J’s influence in poetry, but I can’t succeed. I don’t know how to do it.

Persevere and call for something new, then it will come.

Can you not send me one or two of your mystic sonnets?

Which sonnets? I have written the two sonnets of spiritual realisation⁷⁵ which were circulated. I don’t remember any others; except poems of a more philosophical cast – these I did not circulate.

December 28, 1936

I heard that X has a deep, very deep respect for you, if nothing else. He has followed closely your development, always... Hasn’t he said after the interview with you – “You have the Word and we are waiting to accept it from you...”?

That was a long time ago. He is disappointed that I have not come out and started giving lectures in America and saving humanity. Sorry, but I have no intention of doing these things.

Though he seems to have criticised some principles enunciated by you, I think he has a genuine belief in your mission, and a faith that a new creation will start from you as the fountain-head. Am I wrong, Guru, though you make us wait and wait for years and years?

You want me to start going about and giving lectures? Sorry again, but quite out of the question.

His prose-poems are not good, if you have seen any. Is it because his grey matter has become greyer by age?

It is quite natural – he is fagged out. It is true Sophocles wrote one of his grandest dramas when he was – well, was it 70 or 80 years old?

Or is it because you don’t support him any longer with your force?

?

[Sri Aurobindo put a question mark.]

But look at his prose. It seems to be becoming more and more brilliant. Why this difference?

Prose is a different matter. One can always write prose.

You kept silent about the sonnet. If your pen can’t gallop, you can ask it to trot?

Very little chance of it. The only time I tried, a surrealist poem came out⁷⁶ – so I have dropped the attempt.

My poetic judgment seems to be very poor, Guru, or is it because my own poem is now in question?

Nobody can really form a proper judgment of his own poetry – or at least only one poet here and there can perform that miracle.

Really, I don’t know what to do now – how to strike a new path? Already the difficulty in writing is great, and then to avoid J’s influence! I don’t know if I shall be able to write at all. My head is threatening to break!

As usual, anticipating trouble and misery! Your position is always “That’s got to be done. Oh what a bother. I shall never do it” – while it should be “Ah, that’s to be done? All right then, it’s going to be done.”

I have lost all my distinctiveness – can’t find a new one. And yet you say “Are you ever satisfied?” Sadhana sluggish, poetry bosh, joy and peace vaporised!

Poetry is not bosh – and joy, peace need not vaporise unless you pump them out of yourself instead of into yourself.

Why, Sir, dissatisfaction itself is a sign of a greater seeking, isn’t it?

It is generally a twisting round and round in the same place round the centre of one’s own dissatisfaction.

I don’t know that you are satisfied with my condition either.

I am not depressed by it at any rate.

You promised to send me a sonnet to show how a “direct prayer” can be made strong in the couplet – don’t you remember?

That was not a sonnet.

But now I ask you for either that or to compose a mystic poem with the lines I have suggested. It won’t take you more than 5 minutes.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined “5” and put a question mark against it.]

Nonsense, I am not such a galloper.

By the way, please have a glance at page 12 of The Hindu, regarding K’s opinion of Guruship. We thought him a sensible fellow, especially after his big sacrifice – giving up all the huge estates that were given to him.

He seems to be a well-intentioned fellow but rather a bit of an empty sort of goose. The twaddle he talks is simply awful.

J is puzzled by her poems... If she is puzzled, hardly necessary to speak about myself.

Will see whether I can wrestle with it tomorrow.

December 30, 1936

I understand that the curry given on Thursday evening is the residue of the soup, with some potatoes added. It has not much nutritional value since boiling for a long time takes all the stuff out, except a dead residue of cellulose. I propose humbly to the Mother to change this meal.

We don’t know anything of the kind. According to chemical analysis in France, half of the nutritive elements goes into the soup, half remains in the vegetables and these are eaten in France so as to have the full value of the food used.

I am afraid it is not good for the stomach either.

Why are you afraid? This soup affair on Thursday is done on the principle of the French national dish called pot-au-feu (as much the national dish as beefsteak is for England) in which the food is boiled in the soup and then the soup and the vegetables etc. cooked in it are taken. If it is so bad for the health, how is it that the French are not a nation of dyspeptics with bad stomachs and livers?

I have answered from the scientific and health point of view above. But since there is this prejudice and auto-suggestion as well probably as a strong dislike for it, Mother has stopped the whole soup affair. It is a very costly business and there is no use in spending so much if there is a dislike for the arrangement.

¹ March 30, 1935, p. 196.

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² April 17. 1935, pp. 218-20; October 9, 1936, p. 704.

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³ December 22, 1934, p. 83.

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⁴ stabdhatā: stillness.

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⁵ stabdhatā: stillness.

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⁶ stabdha: still

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⁷ We have advanced.

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⁸ prān: vital.

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⁹ Swapnadīp, p. 17.

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¹⁰ A boatman’s song.

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¹¹ Unpublished.

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¹² Nishikanta’s poetry notebook.

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¹³ kheyāl: whim.

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¹⁴ svapanikā.

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¹⁵ svapnak.

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¹⁶ svapnikā.

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¹⁷ svapanikā

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¹⁸ ullāse: in exultation.

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¹⁹ nālpe sukhamasti, bhūmā sukhamasti

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²⁰ nālpe sukhamasti, bhūmaiva sukham: there is no delight in the small, the vast itself is the happiness. (Chhāndogya Upanishad VII.23.1)

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²¹ bhūmā: vastness.

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²² A Bengali poem, “Alor Pākhi”, in Swapnadīp, pp. 17-18.

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²³ neti neti. It is not this, it is not this.

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²⁴ calache bhese cāṁder tarī oi sunīrer sāgare. The moon-boat is sailing on the ocean of the blue sky.

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²⁵ ke bhāsāle cāṁder tarī. Who made it sail, the moon-boat?

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²⁶ rasa: taste.

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²⁷ bhog: enjoyment.

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²⁸ ānanda: delight.

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²⁹ A Bengali poem, “Nirbhar”, published in Swapnadīp, p. 19.

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³⁰ Reliance.

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³¹ man khārāp: bad mood.

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³² Not published.

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³³ The word “ball” was used by the patient to describe an accumulation of gas in the intestines.

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³⁴ pranānta līlā: unending play.

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³⁵ A hymn of praise.

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³⁶ A fat, witty, good-humoured old knight in Shakespeare’s play, Henry IV.

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³⁷ Pp. 33-35.

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³⁸ The name of the Ashram Dining Room.

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³⁹ Nature.

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⁴⁰ Creation – literally “egg of Brahman”.

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⁴¹ See correspondence of September 30, 1936.

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⁴² A difficult medical case.

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⁴³ One word illegible

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⁴⁴ pan (Greek) = all: crinis (Latin) = hair.

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⁴⁵ Equanimity.

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⁴⁶ vālsalya bhāva: parental affection.

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⁴⁷ It refers to the correspondence of the 26th in my private notebook where Sri Aurobindo didn’t write anything at first. After this remark of mine he wrote the first 4 responses.

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⁴⁸ slabdhatā: stillness.

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⁴⁹ abhī: fearless.

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⁵⁰ A sadhak in charge of the cycles.

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⁵¹ The reference is to the early version, not the one revised and considerably rewritten later.

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⁵² nemantanna: an invitation for a feast.

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⁵³ A particular style of devotional song.

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⁵⁴ “My spectre around me night and day...”, The Name and Nature of Poetry by A.E. Housman. pp. 43-44.

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⁵⁵ vaktavya: theme.

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⁵⁶ Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore.

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⁵⁷ Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore.

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⁵⁸ Shonār Tari by Rabindranath Tagore.

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⁵⁹ aṣwarog; arśarog: piles.

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⁶⁰ In Latin; I acclaim, I have acclaimed, I shall acclaim.

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⁶¹ A Book of French Verse – From Marot to Mallarmé, selected by Prof. L. E. Kastner.

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⁶² ibid., pp. 19-20.

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⁶³ ibid., p. 20.

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⁶⁴ ibid., p. 20.

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⁶⁵ ibid., p. 20.

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⁶⁶ “Le cygne” and “Les fleurs” (ibid., pp. 314-16): Les fleurs is in fact not a sonnet.

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⁶⁷ ibid., pp. 315-316, “Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui.” (Le Cygne)

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⁶⁸ ibid., p. 19.

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⁶⁹ Incomplete in MS.

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⁷⁰ See the last paragraph of 22.12.36, p. 786.

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⁷¹ See the last paragraph of 23.12.36, p. 788.

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⁷² Betel leaf-betel nut.

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⁷³ bhinna ruchirhi lokaḥ: people have different tastes.

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⁷⁴ Doubtful reading.

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⁷⁵ “Transformation” and “Nirvana”, SABCL, vol. 5 (Collected Poems), p. 161.

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⁷⁶ “Surrealist”, SABCL, vol.5 (Collected Poems), p. 113.

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