To
the Advance Distributing Company [2]1Sri Aurobindo
Autobiographical Notes
and Other Writings of Historical Interest
Part Two. Letters of Historical Interest
2.Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life 1911–1928
To People in America, 1926–1927
To
the Advance Distributing Company [2]1
The ARYA Office
Pondicherry French India
July 2. 26
To
The ADVANCE DISTRIBUTING Co.
Pittsburgh. Pa.
I am in receipt of your letter dated May 2d 1926 and the sum of Rs 500 and over sent by you for the complete set of the “ARYA”. The complete set will be kept here in the office according to your suggestion; if needed at any time, it will be at your disposal. As to the missing numbers of Vol. VII – Nos 3 and 6 – as I understand,– I am writing to the A.P.H. where I have kept all the unsold numbers, and if these two are with them, as is most probable, they will be sent to you. I shall inform you if I find anyone here who needs the two superfluous numbers.
Next, as [to] the conditions of publication in America. I shall be glad to entrust the work to you and I leave it to you whether to keep your present name or take that of the Arya Publishing Company, if you so desire. I do not know whether a rigorous self-limitation to the “Arya” material would be the best course; perhaps it would be better to make it the nucleus while other literature could be added which would be supplementary or consonant with the general idea and purpose.
I believe you are right in your suggestion regarding standardisation; conditions in India are different and the system here would not be advantageous or suitable, but I can understand that in America this system would be the best. I agree also that a limited edition in first-class style would be the best from the point of view of the financial return. In India we are obliged to suit the form and price of our publications to the purse of the average educated middle class who are the mass of the still very limited reading public.
The conditions I have made with the A.P.H. are of a
special character and cannot be repeated in your case. I understand from 
what you have written that in America any profit from the sale of
literature like the “Arya” publications is not at all probable unless and until
a larger demand has been created than is likely for some time to come. A
percentage on the sales would bring in only small sums while it might hamper the
development of the work. Now small returns would be of very little use to me
except for financing petty incidents and details of my work which can be
otherwise met. The method and scope I have fixed for the future work to be done
is of the large-scale kind and would need even from the beginning sums more like
those raised by Swami Yogananda as described by you in your letter. I would
prefer therefore that you should concentrate at present on the development of
the publications and on getting them known as soon as possible and use the
proceeds of the sale of the books for that purpose. If at any time a great
demand arose and resulted in considerable profits, the question of a percentage
of the sales to be remitted to me or any other arrangement in the matter could
then be brought up again for consideration.
In regard to the order of issue I think you are right
in selecting “War and Self-Determination” as a preliminary publication. The
“Essays on the Gita” seems to me preeminently fitted to take the lead in a
standardised series, but it would be necessary to await the publication of the
“Second Series” by the A.P.H. The “First Series” covering the first six chapters
of the Gita is being reprinted with only one necessary correction and should be
out in a few days. But I have had to make extensive additions, alterations and
corrections and to remould to some extent the language of the Second Series now
to be published in book form for the first time. I have sent the M.S. to the
A.P.H and I hope that it will be out in two or three months at the outside, when
it will be sent to you. At present I am preparing a revised edition of the
“Ideal of Human Unity”, already published in Madras but now out of print, and
the “Psychology of Social Development”, not yet published in book form, which I
propose to bring out under another title, “The Human Cycle”. The “Synthesis of
Yoga” is too large a work to be included in a single book; I propose to publish
it in India in four parts, each devoted to one 
of the four Yogas,– Works, Knowledge, Devotion and Self-Perfection,– but this
would involve a slight recasting here and there so as to make each volume in
itself sufficiently complete. There remain, apart from some uncompleted works,
the “Life Divine” and “The Future Poetry” which could be published, subject to
the writing of a Preface, almost as they are and the smaller books or booklets
already published some of which might be put together as you suggest so as to
form part of the standardised volumes. That is the situation as regards the
“Arya” writings. I gather that, having view to the conditions in America you
propose to print “War and Self-Determination” first as a booklet, to start the
standardised series with “Essays on the Gita” and to follow with the “Life
Divine”. I would have no objection to such an order of issue.
I have received the copy of the “East-West” magazine
and the gift-book. It is not at all surprising that Swami Yogananda should have
been so successful in America. His propaganda is admirably suited to the
practical mentality of a western and especially of an American public and his
statement of ideas on subjects like Karma to its present capacity of
understanding in these matters. I cannot gather from the magazine what is the
nature of the practice or discipline which he calls Yogoda. The name “Satsanga”
is that of a religious sect with a special kind of Bhakti Yoga which is now
achieving considerable success in Bengal, but the practice here if one can judge
from the style and manner of its announcement seems to be very different. I do
not think it would have much success in India where there is a long tradition
and in spite of much imperfection and error the standards of spiritual life are
of a subtler kind. The difficulties we experience here are due rather to a
wide-spread inability to go freely beyond ancient ideas and forms. Plenty of
money can be had in India for orthodox religious purposes and also, although not
on the American scale, for Asramas or other spiritual institutions which take
the ascetic form or repeat established and well-understood formulas. But the
general mind has not yet advanced far enough from the old moorings to form even
an inadequate conception of what I am doing here and it is easily disconcerted
by the departure from old forms, a willed
absence of the customary paraphernalia and the breaking of traditional barriers
and limits.
That is one considerable advantage of America; there is evidently a sufficiently widespread eagerness and openness of mind to new things. We have to see whether this will be sufficient to open the mind also to deep and true things. The spiritual future of America is not yet decided; it is in the balance. There is a great possibility before her, but it depends on Americans themselves whether she will make good and realise it. Otherwise she will follow the disastrous curve of other western peoples. India and America stand prominent at the two poles that have to meet and become one, the spiritual and the material life; one has shown a preeminent capacity of realisation on the spiritual, the other on the material plane. America must be able to receive freely India’s riches and to give freely in return from her own for the material organisation of a higher life on the physical plane; this is at once a condition and her chance. At present it is only a possibility; let us see whether it can be made an achieved and perfected symbol.
The book “Some I.L.O.F. Correspondence” has reached me: I await the promised letter of the writer.
1 Reply to a letter from the same company dated 2 May 1926, in which the writer spoke of practical matters relating to the publication of Sri Aurobindo’s books in the United States, and the nature of spiritual seeking in that country. The book Some I-L-O-F Letters had been sent to Sri Aurobindo by Mr. C. E. Lefebvre of Glenfield, Pennsylvania, earlier in the year.