Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Comments on Some Passages of Prose

Russell’s Introvert

We are all prone to the malady of the introvert, who, with the manifold spectacle of the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes only upon the emptiness {{0}}within.[[Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1943), p. 160.]]

I have not forgotten Russell, but I have neglected him, first, for want of time, second because for the moment I have mislaid your letter, third because of lack of understanding on my part. What is the meaning of taking interest in external things for their own sake? And what is an introvert? Both these problems baffle me.

The word introvert has come into existence only recently and sounds like a companion of pervert. Literally, it means one who is turned inwards. The Upanishad speaks of the doors of the senses that are turned outwards absorbing man in external things (for their own sake, I suppose) and of the rare man among a million who turns his vision inwards and sees the Self. Is that man an introvert? And is Russell’s ideal man, interested in externals for their own sake, Cheloo the day-labourer, for instance, or Joseph the chauffeur, homo externalis Russellius, an extrovert? Or is an introvert one who has an inner life stronger, more brilliant, more creative than his external life,— the poet, the musician, the artist? Was Beethoven in his deafness bringing out music from within him an introvert? Or does it mean one who measures external things by an inner standard and is interested in them not for their own sake but for their value to the soul’s self-development, its psychic, religious, ethical or other self-expression? Are Tolstoy and Gandhi examples of introverts? Or in another field Goethe? Or does it mean one who cares for external things only as they touch his own mind or else concern his own ego? But that I suppose would include 999,999 men out of every million.

What are external things? Russell is a mathematician. Are mathematical formulae external things — even though they exist here only in the World-Mind and the mind of Man? If not, is Russell as mathematician an introvert? Again, Yajnavalkya says that one loves the wife not for the sake of the wife, but for the self’s sake and so with other objects of interest or desire — whether the self be the inner self or the {{0}}ego.[[In Yoga it is the valuing of external things in the terms of the desire of the ego that is discouraged — their only value is their value in the manifestation of the Divine.]] Who desires external things for their own sake and not for some value to the conscious being? Even Cheloo is not interested in a two-anna piece for its own sake, but for some vital satisfaction it can bring him; even with the hoarding miser it is the same. It is his vital being’s passion for possession that he satisfies and that is something not external but internal, part of his inner make-up, the unseen personality that moves inside behind the veil of the body. What then is meant by Russell’s for their own sake? If you will enlighten me on these points, I may still make an effort to comment on the mahāvākya of your former guru.

More important is his wonderful phrase about the emptiness within — on that at least I hope to make a comment one day or another.

27 December 1930