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Philosophers, Intellectuals, Novelists and Musicians
Western Notions of the History of Philosophy
It is very strange that in books on philosophy by European writers, even in standard textbooks like Alfred Weber’s History of Philosophy,1 there is no mention of any of the Indian philosophies. To the Western writer philosophy means only European philosophy ―they begin with the Greek Thales and Anaximander, as if human thinking began with them.
That is the old style European mind. It used to be the same in Art and other matters. Now Chinese and Japanese art is recognised and to a less degree the art of India, Persia and the former Indian colonies in the Far-East, but in philosophy the old ideas still reign. “From Thales to Bergson” is their idea of the History of Philosophy. 2 May 1936
Plato
Plato says [according to Weber, p. 86]: “The world of sense is the copy of the world of Ideas, and conversely, the world of ideas resembles its image; it forms a hierarchy. . . . In our visible world there is a gradation of beings. . . . The same holds true of the intelligible realm or the pattern of the world; the Ideas are joined together by means of other Ideas of a higher order; . . . the Ideas constantly increase in generality and force, until we reach the top, the last, the highest, the most powerful Idea or the Good, which comprehends, contains or summarizes the entire system.” I think he is nearly on the verge of a mental understanding of the Overmind.
He was trying to express in a mental way the One containing the
1 Alfred Weber, History of Philosophy (London: Longmans, Green, 1904).
Page-519 multiplicity which is brought out (created) from the One ―that is the Overmind realisation. Plato had these ideas not as realisations but as intuitions which he expressed in his own mental form.
There are many such thoughts in Plato’s philosophy. Did he get them from Indian books?
Not from Indian books ―something of the philosophy of India got through by means of Pythagoras and others. But I think Plato got most of these things from intuition. 8 October 1933
*
Paul Brunton in his book A Search in Secret Egypt repeatedly speaks of Atlantis. I always thought that belief in Atlantis was only an imagination of the Theosophists. Is there any truth in the belief?
Atlantis is not an imagination. Plato heard of this submerged continent from Egyptian sources and geologists are also agreed that such a submersion was one of the great facts of earth history. 22 June 1936
*
In his book Plato, Taylor says that “the standing Academic definition of `man’ ” is “Soul using a body” and that “the soul is the man”.2 But it is not clear whether the soul is the mental being or something which uses the mind also.
The European mind, for the most part, has never been able to go beyond the formula of soul + body ―usually including mind in soul and everything except body in mind. Some occultists make a distinction between spirit, soul and body. At the same time there must be some vague feeling that soul and mind are not quite the same thing, for there is the phrase “this man has no soul”, or “he is a soul” meaning he has something in him beyond
2 A.E. Taylor, Plato, The Man and His Work (London: Methuen, 1926), p. 27. Taylor bases his discussion on passages from Plato’s Alcibiades I and Euthydemus. ―Ed.
Page-520 a mere mind and body. But all that is very vague. There is no clear distinction between mind and soul and none between mind and vital and often the vital is taken for the soul. 30 June 1936
*
Taylor [Plato, p. 27] writes: “The first condition of enjoying real good and making a real success of life is that a man’s soul should be in a good or healthy state”, that is, his soul should have the wisdom or knowledge “which ensures that a man shall make the right use of his body and of everything else which is his”. This clearly indicates that by “soul” he means the vital and the mental being. Otherwise how can the soul be not “in good or healthy state”? Can we even say that the mental Purusha is or is not “in good or healthy state”?
Of course not. It is obvious that they are thinking of the mental and vital Prakriti or that part of the being which is involved in Prakriti, not of the Purusha.
The idea that the soul has to get “knowledge” at all would seem to us to be without meaning unless we take it in the sense that one has to develop the intuition as an instrumental faculty.
Yes, all these phrases are loose. At most one could say that the soul must bring out or develop the inner knowledge ―that which is already there within or that the lower nature must receive the higher knowledge, ―but not that the soul must get knowledge. I believe Plato himself held that all knowledge already was there within, ―so even from that point of view this expression would be inaccurate. 2 July 1936
*
Plato’s book The Banquet is said to be about Love and Beauty. Is it a kind of philosophy?
Not much philosophy there, more poetry.
Shelley has translated The Banquet into English. Could I read it?
Page-521 If you want to read it as a piece of literature, it is all right. 2 January 1937
*
I did not find so much poetry in the book. Perhaps you have read it in the original Greek?
Even in a good translation the poetry ought to come out to some extent. Plato was a great writer as well as a philosopher ―no more perfect prose has been written by any man. In some of his books his prose carries in it the qualities of poetry and his thought has poetic vision. That is what I meant when I said it was poetry. 3 January 1937
*
How do you find Plato’s ideas about philosophy, about Nature, existence of the soul, etc.?
I don’t know what are his ideas about philosophy or Nature. He believes in the soul and immortality and that is of course true. 4 January 1937
Aristotle
I tried to read Aristotle but found him dry and abstract.
I always found him exceedingly dry. It is a purely mental philosophy, unlike Plato’s. 9 October 1933
Plotinus
I find Plotinus very interesting.
Yes. Plotinus was not a mere philosopher, ―his philosophy was founded on yogic experience and realisation. 11 October 1933
*
Plotinus says [according to Weber, p. 171]: “Intelligence is the first divine emanation. . . . Creation is a fall, a progressive degeneration of the divine. In the intelligence, the absolute
Page-522 unity of God splits up into intelligence proper . . . and the intelligible world.” Does he mean the separation that begins to take place at Overmind or the Para and Apara Prakriti?
He was speaking of the cosmic mind, I suppose. In these philosophies there is no distinction made between different grades of mind or between intellect and the consciousness beyond the intellectual.
Plotinus says [according to Weber, p. 173]: “The intelligence, too, is creative. . . . Its emanation or radiation is the soul. . . . The soul is not, like the intellect, endowed with immediate and complete intuition: it is restricted to the discursive thought, or analysis. . . . “It is subordinate to the intellect. . . . There is, at the bottom of all individual souls, but one single soul manifesting itself infinitely in different forms: the soul of the world.” What does Plotinus mean by soul and intelligence in this passage?
I think simply Plotinus in speaking of soul has made a jumble of vital (prāna), manas and soul ( 12 October 1933
Shankaracharya on the Bhagavad Gita
On this shloka in the second chapter of the Gita:
एषा ब्राह्मी स्थितिः पार्थ नैनां प्राप्य विमुह्यति |
स्थिवाऽस्यामन्तकालेऽपि ब्रह्मनिर्वाणमृच्छति || Shankara says:
सैषा ज्ञाननिष्ठा स्तूयते | यथोक्ता … ब्राह्मी
स्थितिः सर्वं कर्म संन्यस्य ब्रह्मरूपेणैवावस्थानमिति …
Where is there even in the preceding shlokas the idea of
सर्वं कर्म संन्यस्य?
But the final stroke comes here: … … …
अन्ते वयस्यपि
…मोक्षमृच्छति …किमु वक्तव्यं ब्रह्मचर्यादेव संन्यस्य यावज्जीवं …ब्रह्मण्येवावतिष्ठे स
ब्रह्मनिर्वाणमृच्छति ||
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This is pure insinuation. Nowhere in the whole of the Gita can there be found the idea of
ब्रह्मचर्यादेव संन्यस्य !
How can a commentator do without insinuation? He has to
make the Gita (or the Upanishads) mean what he teaches; if it doesn’t actually say what he teaches, he has to explain that
it meant that all the same. If the Gita doesn’t teach what he teaches, it would be teaching something that is not the Truth,
and how can the Gita teach untruth?
In Krishna’s time were there any Sannyasis at all? Rishis there
were, but few, and not the sort to promote
ब्रह्मचर्यादेव संन्यस्य.
Perhaps at the time of Krishna there were no Sannyasis; but the Gita speaks of Sannyasa and Sannyasis, it even speaks of
कर्म सन्न्यस्य
but it says मयि कर्माणि सन्न्यस्य
and declares
फलत्याग
to be the true Sannyasa. Arjuna is supposed to remain in the
ब्रह्मी स्थिति
and fight, so that would be hardly consistent with the other kind of Sannyasa ―not to speak of enjoying
राज्य समृध्धम्
also. 25 March 1936
*
In Shankara’s Bhashya
on the Gita it seems he takes any opportunity to thrust in the ideas of
कर्मसन्यास
and ज्ञाननिष्टा. For example, in the famous shloka
कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते
, the Bhashya speaks of
ज्ञाननिष्टा
though it seems quite irrelevant. Of course. There is nothing about ज्ञाननिष्टा in the text, only in Shankara’s thrust.
Shankara considers all karma useful only as preparation for
jñāna. According to him even the object of the Gita is परं निःश्रेयस
संसारस्य अत्यन्तोपरमलक्षणम्.
The object of the Gita was to make Arjuna act, i.e. fight and it is only when he consented to do so that Krishna stopped the
discourse. If it had been as Shankara says he would not have stopped until he had got Arjuna well-started for a cave in the
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Himalayas far away from the noise of the battle.
26 March 1936
Intellectual Capacity of Mystics
A great scientist has written that mystics and spiritual men the world over have in general always been men of very average
intelligence, a handful of rare instances excepted.
As for your great scientist I wonder who he had in mind as spiritual men ―so far as I know history both in the East and the West there have been any number of spiritual men and mystics who
have had a great or fine intellectual capacity or were endowed with a great administrative and organising ability implying a
keen knowledge of men and much expenditure of brain-power. With a little looking up of the records of the past I think one
could collect some hundreds of names ―which would not include of course the still greater number not recorded in history
or the transmitted memory of the past.
Augustus Caesar and Leonardo da Vinci
Augustus Caesar organised the life of the Roman Empire and it was this that made the framework of the first transmission
of the Graeco-Roman civilisation to Europe ―he came for that work and the writings of Virgil and Horace and others helped
greatly towards the success of his mission. After the interlude of the Middle Ages, this civilisation was reborn in a new mould
in what is called the Renaissance, not in its life-aspects but in its intellectual aspects. It was therefore a supreme intellectual,
Leonardo da Vinci, who took up again the work and summarised in himself the seeds of modern Europe.
29 July 1937
Leonardo and Einstein
I do not know if by chance Einstein’s theory of relativity may also be found in one of the yet undeciphered books of
Leonardo.
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Not likely. The age of art and science which Leonardo set in motion was that which closed with the nineteenth century.
Relativity belongs to a new movement of knowledge.
11 December 1935
Rene Descartes
I have three letters of yours before me and all three require some elucidation. I think and think but can’t get anywhere.
Perhaps you will say, “Make the mind silent”! But Descartes says, “
Descartes was talking nonsense. There are plenty of things that don’t think but still are
―from the stone to the Yogi in samadhi.
If he had simply meant that the fact of his thinking showed that he wasn’t dead, that of course would have been quite right and
scientific. 9 September 1935
William James
James’ book [on psychology] is certainly a very interesting one.
I read it a long time ago and do not remember it very well except that it was very interesting and not at all an ordinary book in its
kind, but full of valuable suggestions. 1 July 1933
Henri Bergson
Bergson writes that the progress of Life is marked by tensions
succeeded by flowerings. What do you think of that, since the great philosopher too agrees with our way of marching to
Beatitude through struggles and sufferings?
Humph! Such a method is all very well, but one has so much
of it in life and in this Ashram that I rather yearn for some other unBergsonian evolution. Even if the Lord God and Bergson
planned it together, I move an amendment. 11 December 1935
*
In his latest book, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion,
Page-526 Bergson says that the imagelessness or blankness of mind is a
pure myth and an impossibility. As a Vedantist, I have always cherished the imagelessness of mind as the highest ideal. But I
must admit that I have not made any appreciable advance in this direction, even after many years’ practice.
European scientists and thinkers have no authority in the matter, as they are perfectly ignorant of even the rudiments of these
things. It is certainly impossible for any man to have experience of such a condition without practice of Yoga, or alternatively, a
state of Grace. But among Yogis it is a well-known state; they can attain to this state and keep it at will or if they allow any
external activity, it does not touch the inner silence and they can always have the complete silence at will. You [Sri Aurobindo’s
secretary] can refer him to the Bases of Yoga, but also say that it is best to prepare oneself first. Usually it does not come except
after a long discipline of self-purification etc. ―it can be called down, but that is not always safe, if the outer nature is not yet
ready. 6 March 1938
Sigmund Freud
You had once written that things rejected from the conscious
parts go down into the subconscient physical. Is Freud’s theory of suppression somewhat similar to this?
Freud has observed the fact, but he has built on it a number of theories that are either unsound or exaggerated.
2 August 1933
* It seems Freud’s discovery centres round this idea: ” . . . underlying the closeness of the bond between mother and child, there
exists in infancy on the part of the child . . . a wish . . . for re-entrance into the comfort and security of the mother’s womb”,
and this persists in maturity and adolescence till death.3 How does he know the wish of the child?
3 John M. Thorburn, Art and the Unconscious (London: Kegan Paul & Co., 1925),
p. 50.
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God knows. It seems a wild idea. For a psychologist to talk about the child remembering his stay in the womb
―surely, it
is an extravagance.
How does he know that there was comfort and security in the
womb?
I have not the least idea. Perhaps it is his own “complex” from
which he generalises. Why, then, does man not seek only comfort and security in
life ―why does he make much attempt for other things?
He says he does seek. The wish to get back into that wonderful womb, he says, “persists in maturity and adolescence till death”. I suppose he would say that when man is attempting
other things, he is really though without quite knowing it trying to get back into his mother’s womb, e.g. Mussolini getting into
Abyssinia, it was a straight drive for his mother’s womb. The extreme of ridiculousness is reached when Freud analyses
Leonardo da Vinci to show how he was pathological, how he failed disastrously in his adaptation to life, how his artistic
imagination was an aberration and a maladaptation. All poets, all imaginative people, all genuises, all religious people were
to Freud the result of aberration and maladaptation.
Well, his own theory is very clearly that, the result of aberration
and maladaptation. 1 June 1936
Carl Gustav Jung
Jung [according to Thorburn, pp. 58 Â 59] accepts Freud’s
view, and considers religion as something to be escaped from. “The primal desire for re-entrance to the womb, never ex
pressing itself nakedly, but veiling itself as Freud had supposed under all kinds of symbolism, gives us in this very symbolism
what history has called religion.” This is what I should call “mental aberration and encephalitis” as a result of biological
psychology.
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It is part of the general “aberration” that has beset the modern world owing to the descent of the vital world into the physical
― cubist and surrealist painting, modernist poetry, Nazi politics, psycho-analysis
―the more extravagant the thing, the greater
its reputation and success.
1 June 1936
*
What is it that makes the intellectual world believe without
scrutinising ideas such as Freud’s? Is it a force which acts as a sort of “prestidigitation” on the brains even of great
men like Jung? There would be several objections to Freud’s idea about the child’s wish to re-enter the mother’s womb, yet
Jung accepts it as a premise and builds upon it his theories of religion and God and gods. According to Jung [as presented
by Thorburn, p. 59] : “The idea of God . . . or of the gods, is such a bondage in so far as it is supposed that God exists or
that there are gods.” It would, thus, be very ignominious to believe that God or the gods exist
―much more ignominious
than believing a hypothesis (and an absurdity) which has no historical or biological basis
―whereas the fact of God existing can be found in all the literature of the past and the present! It seems it is less the correctness of an idea than the
novelty and extravagance that appeals to the modern mind.
At present in the European world it is novelty and extravagance
in ideas that are run after. I don’t know anything first-hand about Jung but the two
extracts from him you have given do not encourage me to make acquaintance.4 Why on earth should the idea of God or gods be
a bondage? I suppose it is the Semitic idea (common in Europe) of God as a terrible gentleman upstairs, emperor, law-maker,
judge and policeman who sends you to Hell at his pleasure. To the Indian mind the gods are friends and helpers.
2 June 1936
4 The correspondent did not make it clear that the extracts he quoted were from
Thorburn’s book and not from the works of Jung and Freud. ―Ed.
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Lowes Dickinson
What would you say on the contrast between Lowes Dickinson’s Modern Symposium (1905) and his post-war dialogue, On the Discovery of Good?
The pre-war and the post-war Dickinson are indeed a contrast. This appreciation of human life is not without the force of a half
truth, but it is just the other half that he misses when he sweeps idealism out of the field. Man’s utopias may be the projection
of his hopes and desires, but he has to go on building them on pain of death, decline or collapse. As for the gospel of pleasure,
it has been tried before and always failed ―Life and Nature after a time weary of it and reject it, as if after a surfeit of cheap
sweets. Man has to rush from his pursuit of pleasure, with all its accompaniment of petrifying shallowness, cynicism, hardness,
frayed nerves, ennui, dissatisfaction and fatigue, to a new idealism or else sink towards a dull or catastrophic decadence. Even
if the Absolute Good were a high spiritual or ideal chimera, the pursuit of it is rooted in the very make of humanity and it is one
of the main sources of the perennial life of the race. And that it is so would seem to indicate that it is not a chimera
―something
still beyond man, no doubt, but into which or towards which he is called by Nature to grow.
Bertrand Russell
About Russell ―I have never disputed his abilities or his character, ―I am concerned only with his opinions and there too only with those opinions which touch upon my own province
―that of spiritual Truth. In all religions, the most narrow and stupid even, and in all non-religions also there are great minds,
great men, fine characters. I know little about Russell, but I never dreamed of disputing the greatness of Lenin, for instance,
merely because he was an atheist ―nobody would unless he was an imbecile. But the greatness of Lenin does not debar me
from refusing assent to the credal dogmas of Bolshevism, and the beauty of character of an atheist does not prove that spirituality
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is a lie of the imagination and that there is no Divine. I may
add that if you can find the utterances of famous Yogis childish when they talk about marriage or on other mental matters, I
cannot be blamed for finding the ideas of Russell about spiritual experience, of which he knows nothing, very much wanting in
light and substance. You have not named the Yogis in question, and till you do, I am afraid I shall cherish a suspicion about
either the height or the breadth of their spiritual experience.
1932
*
I have not yet found a moment’s time to go through Russell’s
book [Why I Am Not a Christian]; as soon as I can do so I will let you know if I have anything to say about him. I have already
said that I have no objection to anybody admiring Russell or Lowes Dickinson or any other atheist. Genius or fine qualities
are always admirable in whomever they are found; all that has nothing to do with the turn of a man’s opinions or the truth or
untruth of atheism or of spiritual experience. Neither for that matter is the fact that there are people who believe out of fear
or desire a valid argument against the existence of the Divine. I will read the book as soon as I can, but I do not expect to
find anything very much in it, as I am perfectly familiar with European atheism and it is for the most part a shallow and
rather childish reaction against a shallow and childish religionism ―that of orthodox exoteric Christianity as it was believed
and practised in Europe. Not much food on either side of the controversy either for the intellect or the spirit!
18 October 1932
*
I seized a few moments to run through Russell [Why I Am Not a Christian]; a few moments were enough. It is just as I
expected it to be. I have no doubt that Russell is a competent philosophic thinker, but this might have been written by an
ordinary tract-writer of the Rationalists Publications Society (I don’t remember the proper name any longer). The arguments of
Page-531
the ordinary Christian apologists to prove the existence of God are futile drivel and Russell in answering them has descended to
their level. He was appealing to the mass mind, I suppose, but that is enough to deprive the book of any real thought-value.
And yet the questions raised are interesting enough if treated with true philosophic insight or from the standpoint of true
spiritual experience. It is queer that the European mind, capable enough in other directions, should sink to so much puerility
when it begins to deal with religion and spiritual experience. All the same I shall see if there is anything that can be said in the
matter.
1932
Russell, Eddington, Jeans
I don’t understand why Amal expects me to bow to the criticism
of Bertrand Russell.5 (1.) Russell’s opinions are as much determined by his up
bringing, temperament etc. as those of Jeans or Eddington. He was born in the heyday of the most uncompromising materialism; he is unwilling to change the ideas which have got embedded in his nature. It is this that determines his view of
the result of the recent developments of science, it is not a clear infallible logic; logic can serve any turn proposed to it by the
mind’s preferences. Nor is it a dispassionate impersonal view of facts dictated by unbiassed reason as opposed to Eddington’s
personal outlook, imaginative fancies and idealistic prejudices. This idea of pure mental impersonality in the human reason is
an exploded superstition of the rationalist mind; psychology in its recent inquiries has shown that this supposed impersonal
observation of pure objective facts and impartial conclusion from them, an automatic writing of truth on the blank paper
of the pure mind is a myth; it has shown that the personal factor is inevitable; we think according to what we are.
(2.) Russell is not, I believe, a great scientist or preeminent in any field of science. Eddington is, I am told, one of the finest
5 This is an incomplete draft of a letter that was never sent. ―Ed.
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authorities in astrophysics. Jeans and Eddington, though not
great discoverers, are otherwise in the front rank. Russell ranks as a great mathematician, but there too Eddington has one superiority over him; he is supposed to be the only one, so say some, one of the only five, say others, who have a complete
understanding of Einstein’s mathematical formulation; Russell is not counted among them and that perhaps disables him from
understanding the full consequences of Relativity. Russell, however, is an eminent philosopher, though not one of the great
ones. I would count him rather as a strong and acute thinker on philosophy and science. Here he has an advantage, for Jeans
and Eddington are only amateur philosophers with a few general ideas for their stock in trade.
(3.) As for their general intellectual standing Russell is a clear and strong materialistic intellect with a wide and general
play of its own kind and range; the others are strong in their own field, trained in scientific knowledge and judgment, outside
that they do not count: Eddington’s mind is more intuitive and original in its limits but often shooting beyond the mark. Russell,
when he goes outside his limits, can flounder and blunder. Well, then where is there any foundation for exalting the authority
of Russell at the expense of the other two? I disagree with the conclusions of all three; I am neither a mentalist nor a vitalist
nor a materialist. Why then throw Russell at me? I am not likely to change my decision in the matter in deference to his
materialistic bias. And to what does his judgment or his argument amount to? He admits as against Amal that there has been
a “revolution” in science; he admits that the old materialistic philosophy has no longer even half a rotten leg to stand upon;
its dogmatic theory of Matter has been kicked out God knows where. But still, says Russell, Matter is there and everything in
this world obeys the laws of physical science. This is merely a personal opinion on a now very doubtful matter: he is fighting
a rearguard action against what he feels to be the advanced forces of the future; his gallant but tremulous asseveration is a
defensive parade not an aggressive blow; it lacks altogether the old assured self-confidence.
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As for Russell’s logic, a dry and strong or even austere logic is not a key to Truth; an enthusiastic vision often reaches it more
quickly. The business of logic is to give order to a thinker’s ideas, to establish firm relations between them and firm distinctions
from other people’s ideas, but when that is done, we are no nearer to indisputable truth than we were before. It is vision that
sees Truth, not logic ―the outer vision that sees facts but not their inner sense, the inner vision that sees inner facts and can see
the inner sense of them, the total vision (not belonging to mind) that sees the whole. A strong and clear and powerful intellect,
Russell, but nothing more ―not certainly an infallible authority whether in science or anything else. Jeans and Eddington have
their own logical reasoning; I do not accept it any more than I accept Russell’s.6
Let us, however, leave the flinging of authorities, often the same authority for opposing conclusions, Russell quoted against
Russell and Darwin against Darwin, and let us come to the point [incomplete]
Shaw
I do not think Harris’ attack on Shaw as you describe it can be
taken very seriously any more than can Wells’ jest about his pronunciation of English being the sole astonishing thing about him.
Wells, Chesterton, Shaw and others joust at each other like the kabiwālās of old Calcutta, though with more refined weapons, and you cannot take their humorous sparrings as considered
appreciations; if you do, you turn exquisite jests into solemn nonsense. Mark that their method in these sparrings, the turn
of phrase, the style of their wit is borrowed from Shaw himself with personal modifications; for this kind of humour, light as
air and sharp as a razor-blade, epigrammatic, paradoxical, often flavoured with burlesque seriousness and urbane hyperbole,
good-humoured and cutting at once, is not English in origin; it was brought in by two Irishmen, Shaw and Wilde. Harris’
6 This paragraph was written separately. It has been inserted here by the editors.
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stroke about the Rodin bust and Wells’ sally are entirely in the
Shavian turn and manner; they are showing their cleverness by spiking their guru in swordsmanship with his own rapier. Harris’
attack on Shaw’s literary reputation may have been serious, there was a sombre and violent brutality about him which makes it
possible; but his main motive was to prolong his own notoriety by a clever and vigorous assault on the mammoth of the hour.
Shaw himself supplied materials for his critic, knowing well what he would write, and edited this damaging assault on his own
fame,7 a typical Irish act at once of chivalry, shrewd calculation of effect and whimsical humour. I should not think Harris had
much understanding of Shaw the man as apart from the writer; the Anglo-Saxon is not usually capable of understanding either
Irish character or Irish humour, it is so different from his own. And Shaw was Irish through and through; there was nothing
English about him except the language he wrote and even that he changed into the Irish ease, flow, edge and clarity
―though
not bringing into it, as Wilde did, Irish poetry and colour. Shaw’s seriousness and his humour, real seriousness and
mock seriousness, run into each other in a baffling inextricable
7 Harris’s biography of Shaw, edited and published by Shaw himself after Harris’s
death. ―Ed.
536
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solemn pretence and prone, in order to avoid the appearance of them in himself, to cover himself with a jest at every step;
it is at once his mask and his defence. At bottom he has the possibility in him of a modern Curtius leaping into the yawning
pit for a cause, an Utopist or a Don Quixote, ―according to occasion a fighter for dreams, an idealistic pugilist, a knight
errant, a pugnacious rebel or a brilliant sharp-minded realist or a reckless but often shrewd and successful adventurer. Shaw
has all that in him, but with it is a cool intellectual clearness, also Irish, which dominates it all and tones it down, subdues
it into measure and balance, gives an even harmonising colour. There is as a result a brilliant tempered edge of flame, lam
bent, lighting up what it attacks and destroys, and destroying it by the light it throws upon it, not fiercely but trenchantly
― though with a trenchant playfulness ―aggressive and corrosive. An ostentation of humour and parade covers up the attack and
puts the opponent off his defence. That is why the English mind never understood Shaw and yet allowed itself to be captured by
him, and its old established ideas, “moral” positions, impenetrable armour of commercialised Puritanism and self-righteous
Victorian assurance to be ravaged and burned out of existence by Shaw and his allies. Anyone who knew Victorian England
and sees the difference now cannot but be struck by it and Shaw’s part in it, at least in preparing and making it possible,
is undeniable. That is why I call him devastating, ―not in any ostentatiously catastrophic sense, for there is a quietly trenchant
type of devastatingness, ―because he has helped to lay low all these things with his scythe of sarcastic mockery and lightly,
humorously penetrating seriousness ―effective, as you call it, but too deadly in its effects to be called merely effective.
That is Shaw as I have seen him and I don’t believe there is anything seriously wrong in my estimate. I don’t think we can
complain of his seriousness about pacifism, Socialism and the rest of it; it was simply the form in which he put his dream, the
dream he needed to fight for, needed by his Irish nature. Shaw’s bugbear was unreason and disorder, his dream was a humanity
delivered from vital illusions and deceptions, organising the life
Page-536
force in obedience to reason, casting out waste and folly as
much as possible. It is not likely to happen in the way he hoped; the reason has its own illusions and, though he strove against
imprisonment in his own rationalistic ideals, trying to escape from them by the issue of his mocking critical humour, he could
not help being their prisoner. As for his pose of self-praise, ―no doubt he valued himself,
―the public fighter like the man of
action needs to do so in order to act or to fight. Most, though not all, try to veil it under an affectation of modesty; Shaw on
the contrary took the course of raising it to a humorous pitch of burlesque and extravagance. It was at once part of his strategy in
commanding attention and a means of mocking at himself ―I was not speaking of analytical self-mockery, but of the whimsical
Irish kind ―so as to keep himself straight and at the same time mocking his audience. It is a peculiarly Irish kind of humour to
say extravagant things with a calm convinced tone as if announcing a perfectly serious proposition
―the Irish exaggeration of
the humour called by the French As to his position in literature, I have given my opinion; but, more precisely, I imagine that he will take some place but not
a very large place, once the drums have ceased beating and the fighting is over. He has given too much to the battles of the hour,
perhaps, to claim a large share of the future. I suppose some of his plays will survive for their wit and humour and cleverness
more than for any higher dramatic quality, like those of three other Irishmen, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Wilde. His prefaces
may
be saved by their style and force, but it is not sure. At any rate, as a personality he is not likely to be forgotten, even if his writings
fade. To compare him with [Anatole] France is futile ―they were minds too different and moving in too different domains
for comparison to be possible. 3 February 1932
*
Page-537
I would be obliged if you would tell me your opinion of the apostrophe of Caesar to the Sphinx in Shaw’s
Caesar and
Cleopatra. I find it very fine, but Dilip says he is not thrilled by it.
I am not thrilled by the speech either; it is a creation of the intellect, eloquent and on the surface. I do not see how you are
going to manufacture a mystic out of Shaw with these scanty materials: he has a very clear and incisive intelligence, independent and unconventional rather than original and creative, but beyond the intellect he does not go. The speculative imaginations
of which you speak and the feelings in the aesthetic vital which accompany them sometimes are common enough in men with
some reach of mind, but they do not constitute either a mystic feeling or a mystic experience.
6 May 1932
Was Shaw a Mystic?
It is, of course, difficult to manufacture a mystic out of Shaw in the Yogic sense of the word, but in the philosophic sense I think
it can be said that his conception of the universal life-force and his vision of man’s future are prompted by a keen sense of the
infinite, divine potencies of the human consciousness and of the secret urge towards godhead which is the motive power
behind all evolution. . . . What Shaw claims to be is an artist-philosopher ―that is to say, a man with a constructive as well
as critical vision of life, who is able to express that vision in a spirited and cogently attractive form by means of his
literary gift. So the real question is whether his vision is great enough, inspired enough, and he brings a sufficient power of
interpretation to render his insight compellingly intelligible and valuable.
Your reasoning seems to proceed by abolishing the necessary distinctions and running different things into each other.
1st equation. Philosopher (artist kind) = a man with a constructive as well as a critical vision of life = Shaw. I may add = all
poets, if Matthew Arnold’s equation about poetry and criticism of life is correct. Hundreds of others also can at this rate be
called philosophers.
Page-538 2nd equation. Mystic = mystic philosopher = philosopher who has notions about supraphysical entities or forces, e.g. Life
Force = Shaw. But a mystic is currently supposed to be one who has mystic experience, and a mystic philosopher is one who has
such experience and has formed a view of life in harmony with his experience. Merely to have metaphysical notions about the
Infinite and Godhead and underlying or overshadowing forces does not make a man a mystic. One would never think of applying such a term to Spinoza, Kant or Hegel: even Plato does not fit into the term though Pythagoras has a good claim to it.
Hegel and other transcendental or idealistic philosophers were great intellects, not mystics. Shaw is a keen and forceful intellect
(I cannot call him a great thinker8) but his ideas about the
Life-Force certainly do not make him a mystic. And do you really
call that a constructive vision of life ―a vague notion about a Life-Force pushing towards an evolutionary manifestation and
a brilliant May 1932
* I admit that in the real, experiential sense Shaw is not a mystic, though definitely religious at the core
―in an unconventional
way of his own. Nor does he belong to the company of the
8 An admirable many-sided intelligence and an acute critic discussing penetratingly
or discoursing acutely or constructively on many problems or presenting with force or point many aspects of life, he is not a creator or disseminator of the great illuminating
ideas that leave their mark on the centuries.
Page-539
giant abstractionists. He is a philosopher only in as much as his outlook on basic realities is, unlike as in poets, sufficiently
argued and interpreted by him in relation to general issues of philosophy and life, and a mystic philosopher only from the
western view-point.
At that rate anybody is a mystic or a philosopher and these two
words have no longer any value. I do not admit that Shaw has a reasoned theory about basic realities; the only realities he or his
characters have argued about are the things of the surface; even his Life-Force is only a thing of the surface or, at the most, just
under the surface. The right of Plato [to be considered a mystic] is regarded as
beyond question; Spinoza with his “amor intellectualis Dei” is, outside the Catholic Church, also hailed as such; and even
Kant I have found looked upon in the same light. In our own day it is common, I believe, to refer to Bergson or Bradley as
mystical.
Regarded, looked upon by whom? It was not so in my time at
least in Europe. Plato was never called a mystic then; Hegel was regarded as a transcendentalist but no mystic; if you had called
Kant or Spinoza mystics people would have stared. To believe in the Absolute or something metaphysical or supraphysical does
´ not make one a mystic philosopher, nor does belief in the élan
vital or a dry and geometric amor intellectualis Dei. The NeoPlatonists and the Neo-Hegelians stand on the border. If all these
are the Western view-point packed in one mystic box, it is a very new Western view-point, a new language of confusion in this age
of confusion, I suppose. It must be like the idea of spirituality in the minds of many people in the West in which mind and spirit
are the same thing and to have a fine feeling or an idealistic thought is the very height of spirituality.
I should like to know whether, in your opinion, Shaw comes off badly in comparison with Wells or Chesterton or Russell as
a thinker. And do you mind expatiating on Shaw as a dramatist and a writer of prose?
Page-540
I refuse to accept the men you name, with the exception of
Russell, as serious thinkers. Wells is a super-journalist, super-pamphleteer and story-teller. I imagine that within a generation
of his death his speculations will cease to be read or remembered; his stories may endure longer. Chesterton is a brilliant
essayist who has written verse too of an appreciable brilliance and managed some good stories. Unlike Wells he has some gift
of style and he has caught the trick of wit and constant paradox which gives a fictitious semblance of enhanced value to his ideas.
These are men of contemporary fame; Shaw has more chance of lasting, but there is no certain certitude, because he has no
atom of constructive power. He has constructed nothing large, but he has criticised most things. At every page he shows the
dissolvent critical mind and it is a dissolvent of great power; beyond that, he has popularised the ideas of Fabian Socialism
and other constructive view-points caught up by him from the surrounding atmosphere, but with temperamental qualifications
and variations, for the inordinately critical character of his mind prevents him from entirely agreeing with anybody. Criticism is
also a great power and there are some purely critical minds that have become immortals, Voltaire for instance; Shaw on his
own level may survive ―only his thinking is more of a personal type and not classic and typical of a fundamental current of the
human intellect like Voltaire. His personality may help him, as Johnson was helped by his personality to live.
Shaw is not a dramatist; I don’t think he ever wrote a drama; Candida is perhaps the nearest he came to one. He is a first-class
play-writer, ―a brilliant conversationalist in stage dialogue and a manufacturer of speaking intellectualised puppets made to
develop and represent by their talk and carefully wire-pulled movements his ideas about men, life and things. He gives his
characters minds of various quality and they are expressing their minds all the time; sometimes he paints on them some striking
vital colour, but with a few exceptions they are not living beings like those of the great or even of the lesser dramatists. There
are, however, a few exceptions, such as the three characters in Candida, and as a supremely clever playwright with a strong
Page-541
intellectual force and some genius he may very well survive. He has a very striking and cogent and incisive style admirably fitted
for its work, and he sometimes tries his hand at eloquence, but “heights of passionate eloquence” is a very unreal phrase. I never
found that in Shaw anywhere; whatever mental ardours he may have, his mind as a whole is too cool, balanced, incisive to let
itself go in that manner.
May 1932
Shaw’s Personality and Place in Literature
The Shavian assertiveness is not offensive (as the Hugoesque
tends to be) because it is full also of a smiling self-mockery, an irony that out of a form of deliberate self-praise cuts at itself and
the world in one lump. It is curious that so many people seem to miss this character of Shaw’s self-assertiveness and self-praise,
its essential humour.
28 August 1932
*
I do not agree that Wells and others are more serious than Shaw
―if by seriousness is meant earnestness of belief in one’s ideals and sincerity in the intelligence. These can exist very well behind
a triple breast-plate of satire and humour. Shaw’s merits are surely greater than you seem disposed to admit in your letter.
The tide is turning against him after being strongly for him ―under compulsion from his own power and will, but nothing can
alter the fact that he was one of the keenest and most powerful minds of the age with an originality in his way of looking at
things which no one else could equal. If what was original in him has become the common stock of contemporary thought, it
was his power and forcefulness that made it so ―it is no more to be counted against him than the deplorable fact that
Hamlet
is only “a string of quotations” is damaging to Shakespeare! I do not share your exasperation against Shavianism
―I find in it a
delightful note and am thankful to Shaw for being so refreshingly different from other men that to read even an ordinary interview
with him in a newspaper is always an intellectual pleasure. As for his being one of the most
original personalities of the age, there
Page-542
can be no doubt of that. All that I deny to him is a constructive
and creative mind ―but his critical force, in certain fields at least, as a critic of man and life was very great and in that field
he can in a sense be called creative ―in the sense that he created a singularly effective and living form for his criticism of life. It
is not great tragic or comic drama, but it is something original and strong and altogether of its own kind
―so, up to that limit,
I qualify my statement that Shaw was no creator. As to the other writers about whom you ask for my judgment, I do not feel inclined to be drawn at present; I would have to say too much, if I started saying anything at all. Galsworthy
I have not read ―all I can say of the rest is that I do not share the contemporary idea about them
―so far as I have read their
work. Contemporary fame, contemporary opinion are creations of the hour and can die with the hour. I fail to see in many
of these much-praised writers of the time either the power of style or the power of critical mind or creative imagination
that ensures survival. There is plenty of effective writing or skilful workmanship, but that is not enough to make literary
immortals. 8 September 1932
*
Why do you want Shaw to be tied to some intellectual dogma
and square all his acts, views and sullies to it? He is too penetrating and sincere a mind to be a stiff partisan
―when he sees
something which qualifies the “ism” ―even that on whose side he is standing ―he says so; that need not weaken the ideal
behind, it is likely to make it more plastic and practicable. However, enough of Shaw; I have to answer Amal’s question
and that ought to finish with him. I will only add that whatever his manner, it does not appear to me that he writes merely to
shock but to expose in a vivid way the stupidity of the human mind in taking established things and ideas for granted. If he
does it in a striking and amusing way, why so much the livelier and the better!
9 September 1932
Page-543
Kipling
No use of success unless it is deserved. Can’t forget that Kipling
for whose poetry I have a Noble contempt (his prose has value, at least the Jungle Book
and some short stories) was illegitimately
Nobelised by this confounded prize. Contemporary “success” of fame is a deceit and a snare.
12 September 1938
Lawrence
I have not read anything of Lawrence, but I have recently seen indications about him from many quarters; the impression given
was that of a man of gifts who failed for want of vital balance ―like so many others. The prose you have turned into verse
― very well, as usual, ―has certainly quality, though there is not enough to form a definite judgment. A seeker who missed the
issue, I should imagine ―misled by the vitalistic stress to which the mind of today is a very harassed captive.
16 June 1932
*
As far as the photograph of which you speak can be taken as showing the man ―it is that of a nature of which the chief
character is intensity, but in a very narrow range. There is here no wide range of ideas or feelings; a few ruling ideas, a few
persistent and keenly acute feelings. The face of a man whose vital is also intense, but without strength and therefore over
sensitive. There may well be a strong idealistic tendency ―but there is not likely to be much power to carry out the ideals. This
is the character; as for the genius, if there is any, it will depend on other things which may not find positive expression in the
outward appearance; for the external man is often the medium of a Power that is beyond him.
I shall keep the book for a few days
―if you don’t need it, ―just to glance through it; it is too big to read in detail. I know
nothing of Lawrence; I shall see if I can pick up something from here.
25 September 1932
*
Page-544
I must read Huxley’s preface [to
The Letters of D. H. Lawrence]
and glance at some letters before venturing on any comments ―like the reviewers who frisk about, a page here and a page
there, and then write an ample or devastating review. Anyhow it seems to me Lawrence must have been a difficult man to
live with, even for him it must have been difficult to live with himself. His photograph confirms that view. But a man at war
with himself can write excellent poetry ―if he is a poet; often better poetry than another, just as Shakespeare wrote his best
tragedies when he was in a state of chaotic upheaval; at least so his interpreters say. But one needs a higher and more calm
and poised inspiration to write poems of harmony and divine balance than any Lawrence ever had. I stick to my idea of the
evil influence of theories on a man of genius. If he had been contented to write things of beauty instead of bare rockies and
dry deserts, he might have done splendidly and ranked among the great poets.
3 July 1936
*
All great personalities have a strong ego of one kind or another ―for that matter it does not need to be a big personality to
be ego-centred; ego-centricity is the very nature of life in the Ignorance, ―even the sattwic man, the philanthropist, the altruist live for and round their ego. Society imposes an effort to restrain and when one cannot restrain at least to disguise
it. Morality’s highest business is to control or widen, refine or sublimate it so that it shall be able to exceed itself or use itself
in the service of things bigger than its own primary egoism. But none of these things enables one to escape from it. It is only by
finding something deep within or above ourselves and making laya (dissolution) of the ego in that that it is possible. It is what
Lawrence saw and it was his effort to do it that made him “other” than those who associated with him
―but he could not
find out the way. It was a strange mistake to seek it in sexuality; it was also a great mistake to seek it at the wrong end of the nature.
What you say about the discovery of the defects of human nature is no doubt true. Human nature is full of defects and can
Page-545
not be otherwise, but there are other elements and possibilities in it which, although never quite unmixed, have to be seen to
get a whole view. But the discovery of the truth about human beings need not lead to cynicism; it may lead to a calm aloofness
and irony which has nothing disappointed or bitter in it; or it may lead to a large psychic charity which recognises the truth
but makes all allowances and is ready to love and to help in spite of all. In the spiritual consciousness one is blind to nothing, but
sees also that which is within behind these coverings, the divine element not yet released, and is neither deceived nor repelled
and discouraged. That inner greater thing that was in Lawrence and which he sought for is in everybody: he may not have found
it and his defects of nature may have prevented its release, but it is there.
I do not know about the lovableness; what you say is partly true, but lovableness may exist in spite of ego and all kinds of
defects and people may feel it. 3 July 1936
*
Lawrence had the psychic push inside towards the Unseen and
Beyond at the same time as a push towards the vital life which came in its way. He was trying to find his way between the two
and mixed them up together till at the end he got his mental liberation from the tangle though not yet any clear knowledge
of the way ―for that I suppose he will have to be born nearer the East or in any case in surroundings which will enable him to
get at the Light. 9 July 1936
Sri Aurobindo and Criticism of Fiction
It is true I read through Aldous Huxley’s monster, but it took me
several months to finish it. This is not because I object to “light” literature, but because I had only an occasional quarter of an
hour in three or four days to glance at it. If Sarat Chatterji does not mind my treating his book to the same tortoise dharma,
I will undertake to read it; but I can make no promise as to time etc. Possibly it will take less time than the Round Table
Page-546
Conference. As to giving him a new turn, that, I fear, is beyond
me; besides, in this field I was once a voracious reader, but never a critic or creator.
8 June 1931
*
As to the novel, perhaps I simply meant that I was unwilling to exercise my critic’s scalpel on a living master of the art. In poetry
it is different because I am there both a critic and a creator. 22 June 1931
Great Novelists
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.
22 September 1936
Bankim Chandra Chatterji
Depreciation of Bankim is absurd; he is and will always rank as one of the great creators and his prose stands among the ten or
twelve best prose-styles in the world’s literature. December 1932
Great Prose Stylists
I stand rather aghast at your summons to stand and deliver
the names of the ten or twelve best prose styles in the world’s literature. I had no names in mind and I used the incautious
phrase only to indicate the high place I thought Bankim held among the great masters of language. To rank the poets on
different grades of the Hill of Poetry is a pastime which may be a little frivolous and unnecessary, but possible if not altogether
permissible. I would not venture to try the same game with the prose-writers who are multitudinous and do not present the
same marked and unmistakable differences of level and power.
Page-547
The prose field is a field, it is not a mountain. It has eminences, but its high tops are not so high, the drops not so low as in
poetical literature. Then again there are great writers in prose and great prose
writers and the two are by no means the same thing. Dickens and Balzac are great novelists, but their style or their frequent absence of style had better not be described; Scott attempts a style, but it is neither blameless nor has distinguishing merit. Other
novelists have an adequate style and a good one but their prose is not quoted as a model and they are remembered not for that but
as creators. You speak of Meredith, and if Meredith had always written with as pure a mastery as he did in
Richard Feverel he
might have figured as a pre-eminent master of language, but the creator and the thinker played many tricks on the stylist in the
bulk of his work. I was writing of prose styles and what was in my mind was those achievements in which language reached its
acme of perfection in one manner or other so that whatever the writer touched became a thing of beauty
―no matter what its
substance ―or a perfect form and memorable. Bankim seemed to me to have achieved that in his own way as Plato in his
or Cicero or Tacitus in theirs or in French literature, Voltaire, Flaubert or Anatole France. I could name others, especially in
French which is the greatest store-house of fine prose among the world’s languages
―there is no other to match it. Matthew
Arnold once wrote a line something like this: France great in all great arts, in none supreme,
to which someone very aptly replied, “And what then of the art of prose-writing? Is it not a great art and who can approach
France there? All prose of other languages seems beside its perfection, lucidity, measure almost clumsy.”
There are many remarkable prose-writers in English, but that perfection which is almost like a second nature to the
French writers is not so common. The great prose-writers in English seem to seize by the personality they express in their
styles, rather than by its perfection as an instrument ―it is true at least of the earliest and I think too of the later writers. Lamb
Page-548
whom you mention is a signal example of a writer who erected his
personality into a style and lives by that achievement ―Pater
and Wilde are other examples. As for Bengali we have had Bankim and have still Tagore
and Sarat Chatterji. That is sufficient achievement for a single century.
I have not answered your question
―but I have explained my phrase and I think that is all you can expect from me.
15 September 1933
Saratchandra Chatterji
What is stamped on Saratchandra’s work everywhere is a large intelligence, an acute and accurate observation of men and things
and a heart full of sympathy for sorrow and suffering. Too sensitive to be quite at ease with the world and also perhaps too
clear-sighted. Much fineness of mind and refinement of the vital nature.
March 1935
*
Novels deal with the vital life of men, so necessarily they bring that atmosphere. Saratchandra is a highly emotional writer with
a great power of presenting the feelings and movements of the human vital.
13 March 1936
Alexander Dumas
Dumas’ “history” is all slap and dash adventure ―amusing, rather than solidly interesting. But it is all the history known to
many people in France ―just as many in England gather their history from Shakespeare’s plays.
2 December 1934
Victor Hugo
When I said to Pavitra that
Les Misérables
was one of the
great works of art he replied “Faugh! What a shallow thing.” But I believe I heard from Amrita that you used to regard it as
one of the world’s great novels.
Page-549
It is not one of the masterpieces of “art”, but I regard it as the work of a powerful genius and certainly one of the great novels.
It is certainly not philosophically or psychologically deep, but it is exceedingly vivid and powerful.
25 April 1937
*
People have different tastes ―some regard Hugo as a childish writer, a rhetorician without depth
―others regard him as a
great poet and novelist. One has to form one’s own judgment and leave others to hold theirs.
26 April 1937
* I should like to know whether, in criticising novels, one has a right to depreciate a work because it is not very deep.
That is again a matter of opinion. There is the position that plot and character-presentation are sufficient and for the rest a large
or great theme ―one of the well-recognised human situations or a picture of life largely dealt with
―and no more is necessary.
Most famous English novels of the past are like that. There is another position that subtle psychology, deep and true presentation
(not merely imaginative or idealistic) of the profounder problems or secrets of life and nature are needed. Hugo’s characters and
situations are thought by many to be melodramatic or superficial and untrue. His novels like his dramas are “romantic” and the
present trend is against the romantic treatment of life as superficial, childishly over-coloured and false. The disparagement of
what was formerly considered great is common on that ground. “Faugh!” expresses the feeling.
27 April 1937
Dickens and Balzac
For literary creation and effective expression, who will deny that style has a great force?
Of course; without style there is no literature ―except in fiction, where a man with bad style like Dickens or Balzac can make up
by vigour and the power of his substance. 29 October 1933
*
Page-550 Charles Dickens says, that is, makes a character speak (seriously): “My eyes stood staring above his head”!
Dickens is the most slipshod of all English writers
―his English
style is not worth a cuss. This sentence is the proof. The character’s “eyes stood above somebody else’s head staring” no doubt
at their own position in astonishment at his English. His merit lies in his stories and characters (some of them)
not in his language which is bad. The same may be said of Balzac who is the greatest of French novelists but the worst of French
writers. 13 June 1938
Romain Rolland
Somnath was drawn to the spiritual life through reading novels
like Jean Christophe.
I have not read Jean Christophe, but Rolland is an idealist who
takes interest in spiritual mysticism ―not himself a man of spiritual experience. It is quite natural that such a man’s writings
should produce an effect on an intellectual man more easily than a religious or spiritual work. Somnath was not religious-minded,
so a religious work would not move him because it would be too far from his own way of thinking and turn of seeing. A spiritual
book would not reach him, for he would not understand or feel the spiritual experiences or knowledge contained in it, they being
quite foreign to his then consciousness. On the other hand a book by an intellectual idealist with an intellectual turn towards
spirituality would suit his own temperament and outlook and draw his thoughts that way.
26 October 1935
French “Psychic” Romances
If and when chemistry advances and enters the supraphysical regions it will try to bring down peace in a vacuum bottle and
analyse and synthetise it in some way.
If you read the French romances about “psychic” matters you
will find that their highest imagination is machinery, ―machines
Page-551
for registering peoples’ thoughts, machines for storing up the psychic energy of “a living Buddha” (a Buddha, by the way, with
some hundred concubines) into which he puts his will-force so that when it is turned on millions of soldiers will march in a
hypnotised trance to battle performing manoeuvres according to silent orders from the machine, etc. etc. So your suppositions
are not unlikely. One of the reasons why many Americans want Yoga is that it may make them successful in all they undertake,
professors, businessmen etc.
29 April 1935
Contemporary Detective Stories
The detective stories of today are much better than those of the
Sherlock Holmes time. This kind of writing has been taken up by men with imagination and literary talent who would not have
touched it before.
30 September 1935
On Some Musicians
As to Sahana’s question, I am unable to say much ―I have no
special competence in this sphere of music and do not know on what aesthetic ground she stands in this matter. These things
are mysterious in their origin and so it is said “De gustibus non est disputandum”
―”There can be no disputing about tastes.”
Some connoisseurs of music exalt Wagner as a god or a Titan, others speak of him with depreciation and celebrate the godhead
of Verdi who is disclaimed by their opponents. Yet I suppose the genius of neither can be disputed. So far as I can make out
from her statement, Sahana does not dispute your genius or the aesthetic quality of your music, but something in her does
not respond ―if so, it is either a matter of temperament or it is that she is looking for something else, some other vibration
than that given by your music. If it is only conservatism and an unwillingness to admit new forms or new laws of creation, that
is obviously a mental limitation and can disappear only with more plasticity of mind or a change of the angle of vision
―I
don’t know that I can say anything more ―or more definite.
Page-552
As for Sahana’s singing, she seems to succeed when she can
forget herself in her singing and to fail when she has to think of her audience or of success and failure. That would mean that she
is in a certain stage of inner development where the inner state makes all the difference. I would hazard the conclusion that her
future as a singer on the old psychological lines hardly exists, but she has to find fully her soul, her inner self and with it the
inner singer. 8 September 1937
Beethoven
There can be no doubt that Beethoven’s music was often from
another world; so it is quite possible for it to give the key to an inwardly sensitive hearer or to one who is seeking or ready for
the connection to be made. But I think it is very few who get beyond being aesthetically moved by a sense of greater things;
to lay the hand on the key and use it is rare.
Bhatkhande
Yes, I have read your article on Bhatkhande. Very interesting: the character came home to me as a sublimation of a type I was very
familiar with when in Baroda. Very amusing his encounters with the pundits ―especially the Socratic way of self-depreciation
heightened almost to the Japanese pitch. His photograph you sent me shows a keen and powerful face full of genius and
character. February 1937
Page-553 |
) ―while by intelligence he means buddhi (cosmic), but endows the buddhi
with the
qualities proper to the Intuition and Overmind.