SRI AUROBINDO

The Future Poetry

and Letters on Poetry, Literature and Art

Letters on Poetry, Literature and Art

Section Nine. Poetic Creation and Yoga – Utility of Literature, etc. in Sadhana

Reading and Poetic Creation and Yoga

   217   

A literary man is one who loves literature and literary activities for their own separate sake. A Yogi who writes is not a literary man for he writes only what the inner Will and Word wants him to express. He is a channel and instrument of something greater than his own literary personality. Of course the literary man and the intellectual love reading — books are their mind’s food. But writing is another matter. There are plenty of people who never write a word in the literary way but are enormous readers. One reads for ideas, for knowledge, for the stimulation of the mind by all that the world has thought or is thinking. I never read in order to create. As the Yoga increased, I read very little — for when all the ideas in the world come crowding in from within or from above, there is not much need for gathering mental food from outside sources; at most a utility for keeping oneself informed of what is happening in the world,— but not as material for building up one’s vision of the world and Truth and things. One becomes an independent mind in communion with the cosmic Thinker.

Poetry, even perhaps all perfect expression of whatever kind, comes by inspiration, not by reading. Reading helps only to acquire for the instrument the full possession of a language or to get the technique of literary expression. Afterwards one develops one’s own use of the language, one’s own style, one’s own technique. It is a decade or two that I have stopped all but the most casual reading but my power of poetic and perfect expression has increased tenfold. What I wrote with some difficulty, often with great difficulty, I now write with ease. I am supposed to be a philosopher, but I never studied philosophy — everything I wrote came from Yogic experience, knowledge and inspiration. So too my greater power over poetry and perfect expression was acquired in these last days not by reading and seeing how other people wrote, but from the heightening of my consciousness and the greater inspiration that came from the heightening.

Reading and painstaking labour are good for the literary man but even for him they are not the cause of his good writing, only an aid to it. The cause is within himself. As to “natural”, I don’t know. Sometimes when the talent is inborn, and ready for expression, they can call it natural. Sometimes it awakes from within afterwards from a till then hidden nature.

11.9.1934

Poetry and Sadhana

   218   

It is obvious that poetry cannot be a substitute for Sadhana; it can be an accompaniment only. If there is a feeling (of devotion, surrender etc.), it can express and confirm it; if there is an experience, it can express and strengthen the force of experience. As reading of books like the Upanishads or Gita or singing of devotional songs can help, especially at one stage or another, so this can help also. Also it opens a passage between the external consciousness and the inner mind or vital. But if one stops at that, then nothing much is gained. Sadhana must be the main thing and Sadhana means the purification of the nature, the consecration of the being, the opening of the psychic and the inner mind and vital, the contact and presence of the Divine, the realisation of the Divine in all things, surrender, devotion, the widening of the consciousness into the cosmic Consciousness, the Self one in all, the psychic and the spiritual transformation of the nature. If these things are neglected and only poetry and mental development and social contact occupy all the time, then that is not Sadhana. Also the poetry must be written in the true spirit, not for fame or self-satisfaction, but as a means of contact with the Divine through inspiration or of the expression of one’s own inner being as it was written formerly by those who left behind them so much devotional and spiritual poetry in India; it does not help if it is written only in the spirit of the Western artist or littérateur. Even works or meditation cannot succeed unless they are done in the right spirit of consecration and spiritual aspiration gathering up the whole being and dominating all else. It is lack of this gathering up of the whole life and nature and turning it towards the one aim, which is the defect in so many here that lowers the atmosphere and stands in the way of what is being done by myself and the Mother.

19.5.1938

   219   

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.

   220   

Every artist almost (there can be rare exceptions) has got something of the “public” man in him in his vital-physical parts, which makes him crave for the stimulus of an audience, social applause, satisfied vanity, appreciation, fame. That must go absolutely, if you want to be a Yogi,— your art must be a service not of your own ego, not of anyone or anything else but solely of the Divine.

   221   

There should be no “desire” to be a “great” writer. If there is a genuine inspiration or coming of power to write then it can be done, but to use it as a means of service for the Divine is the proper spirit.

14.5.1934

   222   

It is your aim to write from the Divine and for the Divine — you should then try to make all equally a pure transcription from the inner source and where the inspiration fails return upon your work so as to make the whole worthy of its origin and its object. All work done for the Divine, from poetry and art and music to carpentry or baking or sweeping a room, should be made perfect even in its smallest external detail as well as in the spirit in which it is done; for only then is it an altogether fit offering.

11.11.1931

Poetic Activity and Yoga

   223   

I have always told you that you ought not to stop your poetry and similar activities. It is a mistake to do so out of asceticism or tapasyā. One can stop these things when they drop of themselves because one is full of experience and so interested in one’s inner life that one has no energy to spare for the rest. Even then, there is no rule for giving up, for there is no reason why poetry, etc., should not be a part of Sadhana. The love of applause, of fame, the ego-feeling have to be given up, but that can be done without giving up the activity itself.

What you write is perfectly true, that all human greatness and fame and achievement are nothing before the greatness of the Infinite and the Eternal. There are two possible deductions from that: first that all human action has to be renounced and one should go into a cave; the other is that one should grow out of ego so that the activities of the nature may become one day consciously an action of the Infinite and Eternal. I myself never gave up poetry or other creative human activities out of tapasyā; they fell into a subordinate position because the inner life became stronger and stronger slowly: nor did I really drop them, only I had so heavy a work laid upon me that I could not find time to go on. But it took me years and years to get the ego out of them or the vital absorption, but I never heard anybody say nor did it ever occur to me that that was a proof that I was not born for Yoga. You say I had made the mistake of my life in pronouncing you to be a “born Yogi”? I had not. I very explicitly based my remark on the personality that showed itself in your earlier experiences in a very vivid way which no one accustomed to the things of the Yoga or having any knowledge about them could fail to recognise. But I did not mean that there was nothing in you which was foreign to a “born Yogi”. Everyone has many personalities in him and many of them are not Yogic at all in their propensities. But if one has the will to Yoga, the “born Yogi” prevails as soon as he gets a chance of manifesting himself through the crust of the mind and vital nature. Only, very often that takes time. One must be prepared to give the time.

Silence and Creative Activity

   224   

It would be a mistake to silence the poetic flow on principle; the creative habit is a tonic to the vital and keeps it in good condition and the practice of Sadhana needs a strong and widening vital for its support. There is no real incompatibility between the creative power and silence; for the real silence is something inward and it does not or at least need not cease when a strong activity or expression rises to the surface.

Creation by the Word

   225   

The word is a sound expression of the idea. In the supra-physical plane when an idea has to be realised, one can by repeating the word-expression of it, produce vibrations which prepare the mind for the realisation of the idea. That is the principle of the Mantras and of Japa. One repeats the name of the Divine and the vibrations created in the consciousness prepare the realisation of the Divine. It is the same idea that is expressed in the Bible: “God said, Let there be Light, and there was Light”. It is creation by the Word.

6.5.1933

Inner Self-Development and the Growth of Poetic Power

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I do not think you need be anxious about the poetry; the power is sure to re-express itself as soon as you are ready for a progress. It has probably stopped working temporarily because the pressure is now for the inner self-creation more than for the outer expression — I am speaking, of course, of your case in particular. The expression in poetry and other forms must be, for the Yogi, a flowing out from a growing self within and not merely a mental creation or an aesthetic pleasure. Like that the inner self grows and the poetic power will grow with it.

9.12.1931

   227   

It is not the question, for this is not a question of personal capacity but of the development of the receptivity and for that the sole thing necessary is an entire or at least a dominant will to receive. What you call your mind and your soul are only a small surface part of you, not your whole being. Personal capacity belongs to the temporary surface personality which you have put forward in this life and which is mutable, is already changing and can change much farther — e.g. the poems you are writing are certainly beyond what was your original capacity — they belong to a range of experience to the Word of which you have opened by a development beyond your old mental self — a farther development beyond not only your old mental self but also your old vital self is needed to get the concrete realisation of that range of experience.

What is standing in the way is something that is still attached to the limitations of the old personality and hesitates to take the plunge because by doing so it may lose these cherished limitations. It stands back in apprehension from the plunge because it is afraid of being taken out of its depths — but unless one is taken out of the very shallow depth of this small part of the self, how can one get into the Infinite at all? Furthermore, there is no real danger in finding oneself in the Infinite, it is a place of greater safety and greater riches, not less; but this something in you does not like the prospect because it has to merge itself into a larger self-existence. You asked the Mother to press on you the lighting of the fire within, and she has been doing so, but this is standing back with the feeling, “Oh Lord! what will become of me if this flame gets lit.” You must get rid of this clinging to the past self and life; then you can have a fire which will not be feeble. You have not fallen between two stools — you are hesitating between two consciousnesses, the old and the new, the small and the great; that is all.

As for the poetry, well — you have developed up to a point at which your work is of a very rare and unique quality in no way inferior to that of the others of whom you speak,— the difficulty of controlling production is nothing, for all feel that except X and Y who have no misgivings about their creative power. Yours rises probably from the fact that in order to have free command of the highest planes of poetry, you have to rise into them and not only open to the Word from them — it is therefore the same difficulty in another form. Otherwise if you had the old self-satisfaction of which you draw so glowing a picture, you would have found your present poetry marvellous and gone on writing it — only oscillating between the different planes achieved and content to do so. This is not a proof of incapacity but of the will to greater things. Only that will must not be in the mind only but take full hold of the vital also and must be a will that what you write of should be a part not only of thought but of life. Which comes back to what I have written above — get free from the obscure hesitation to open and let the fire do its work.

One must either do that if one wants a rapid change or go quietly and wait for the slower working from behind the veil to reduce and break the obstacle.

10.8.1937

Inner Change and Artistic Self-Expression

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It is absurd to say that you have narrowed or deteriorated because one no longer sings erotic songs. One is not narrowed if one loses taste for jazz and can hear with a rich pleasure only the great masters or music of a high or exquisite quality. It is not deterioration when one rises from a lower to a higher plane of thinking, feeling or artistic self-expression. Can one say of the man who has grown out of childishness and no longer plays with nursery toys that he has narrowed and deteriorated by the change?

27.8.1933

Spiritual Value of Poetry

   229   

It won’t do to put excessive and sweeping constructions on what I write, otherwise it is easy to misunderstand its real significance. I said there was no reason why poetry of a spiritual character (not any poetry like Verlaine’s or Swinburne’s or Baudelaire’s) should bring no realisation at all. This did not mean that poetry is a major means of realisation of the Divine. I did not say that it would lead us to the Divine or that anyone had achieved the Divine through poetry or that poetry by itself can lead us straight into the sanctuary. Obviously, if such exaggerations are put into my words, they become absurd and untenable.

My statement is perfectly clear and there is nothing in it against reason or common sense. The Word has power — even the ordinary written word has a power. If it is an inspired word it has still more power. What kind of power or power for what depends on the nature of the inspiration and the theme and the part of the being it touches. If it is the Word itself,— as in certain utterances of the great Scriptures, Veda, Upanishads, Gita, it may well have a power to awaken a spiritual and uplifting impulse, even certain kinds of realisation. To say that it cannot contradicts spiritual experience.

The Vedic poets regarded their poetry as Mantras, they were the vehicles of their own realisations and could become vehicles of realisation for others. Naturally, these mostly would be illuminations, not the settled and permanent realisation that is the goal of Yoga — but they could be steps on the way or at least lights on the way. I have had in former times many illuminations, even initial realisations while meditating on verses of the Upanishads or the Gita. Anything that carries the Word, the Light in it, spoken or written, can light this fire within, open a sky, as it were, bring the effective vision of which the Word is the body. You yourself know that some of your poems deeply moved people who had the tendency towards spiritual things. Many have got openings into realisation while reading passages of the Arya — which are not poetry, have not the power of spiritual poetry — but it shows all the more that the word is not without power even for the things of the spirit. In all ages spiritual seekers have expressed their aspirations or their experiences in poetry or inspired language and it has helped them and others. Therefore there is nothing absurd in my assigning to such poetry a spiritual or psychic value and effectiveness of a psychic or spiritual character.

   230   

If poetic progress meant a progress in the whole range of Yoga, X 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.

8.8.1936

Utility of Literature, etc. in Yoga

   231   

Literature like anything else can be made an instrumentation for the Divine Life. It can be made of some spiritual importance if it is taken up with that aim and, even so, it cannot have that importance for everybody. In ordinary life no particular pursuit or study can be imposed as necessary for everybody; it cannot be positively necessary for everybody to have a mastery of English literature or to be a reader of poetry or a scientist or acquainted with all the sciences (or encyclopaedia of knowledge). What is important is to have an instrument of knowledge that will apply itself accurately, calmly, perfectly to all that it has to handle.

   232   

Literature, poetry, science and other studies can be a preparation of the consciousness for life. When one does Yoga they can become part of the Sadhana only if done for the Divine or taken up by the divine Force, but then one should not want to be a poet for the sake of being a poet only, or for fame, applause, etc.

April, 1935

   233   

This poetry, even if it does not lead to any realisation,— though there is no reason why it should not, since it is not mundane,— is yet a link with the inner being and expresses its ideal. That is its value for the Sadhana.

28.12.1934

   234   

The use of your writing is to keep you in touch with the inner source of inspiration and intuition so as to wear thin the crude external crust in the consciousness and encourage the growth of the inner being.

24.7.1938

   235   

No present value spiritually — it [writing work] may have a mental value. It is the same with the work — it has a value of moral training, discipline, obedience, acceptance of work for the Mother. The spiritual value and result come afterwards when the consciousness in the vital opens upward. So with the mental work. It is a preparation. If you cannot yet do it with the true spiritual consciousness, it, the work as well as the mental occupation, must be done with the right mental or vital will in it.

14.5.1934

Literature and Change of Nature

   236   

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.... 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. That is another question altogether. But such Sadhana means a slow laborious work of self-change in most cases, so why not sing on the way?

Development of Mind and Sadhana

   237   

The development of the mind is a useful preliminary for the Sadhak; it can also be pursued along with the Sadhana on condition that it is not given too big a place and does not interfere with the one important thing, the Sadhana itself.

1933

Reading and Real Knowledge

   238   

Yes, the real knowledge comes of itself from within by the touch of the Divine. Reading can be only a momentary help to prepare the mind. But the real knowledge does not come by reading. Some preparation for the inner knowledge may be helpful — but the mind should not be too superficially active or seek to know only for curiosity’s sake.

Novel-Reading in Sadhana

   239   

Reading novels is always distracting if you are deep in Sadhana. It is better to avoid it now.

1933

   240   

If novels touch the lower vital or raise it, they ought not to be read by the Sadhak. One can read them only if one can look at them from the literary point of view as a picture of human life and nature which one can observe, as the Yogi looks at life itself, without being involved in it or having any reaction.

28.3.1936