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Guidance through Correspondence
Utility of Correspondence
It would be a great mistake for you to stop writing in the book;1 it is a means of direct and concrete contact with me and the help I can give you — apart from that which I always send you at all times. It is an adverse suggestion and influence which wants you to stop writing, because it wishes to cut the connection established through the book so that you might find it more difficult to feel my help coming to you. It is absurd to break off because you are for the time being unsuccessful in keeping up an uninterrupted progress; the interruptions come, they have to be passed through and then the progress begins again. The difficulties will be got rid of, but they cannot be got rid of in a moment. Keep the book and write in it whenever you can. 12 March 1932
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There is no reason why you should stop writing letters — it is only one kind of letter that is in question and that is not a very good means of contact; you yourself felt the reaction was not favourable. I asked you to write because your need of unburdening the perilous matter in you was very great at the time and, although it did not relieve you at once, it kept me exactly informed of the turns of the fight and helped me to put a certain pressure on the attacking forces at a critical moment. But I do not believe any of these necessities now exists. It is rather a discouragement from within yourself of the source of these movements that is now the need; putting them into words would rather, as I have said, give them more body and substance.
1 The notebook in which the correspondent recorded her activities and experiences and asked questions, which she submitted periodically to Sri Aurobindo. — Ed.
Page – 450 It is an undoubted fact proved by hundreds of instances that for many the exact statement of their difficulties to us is the best and often, though not always, an immediate, even an instantaneous means of release. This has often been seen by sadhaks not only here, but far away, and not only for inner difficulties, but for illness and outer pressure of unfavourable circumstances. But for that a certain attitude is necessary — either a strong faith in the mind and vital or a habit of reception and response in the inner being. Where this habit has been established, I have seen it to be almost unfailingly effective, even when the faith was uncertain or the outer expression in the mind vague, ignorant or in its form mistaken or inaccurate. Moreover, this method succeeds most when the writer can write as a witness of his own movements and state them with an exact and almost impartial precision as a phenomenon of his nature or the movement of a force affecting him from which he seeks release. On the other hand if in writing his vital gets seized by the thing he is writing of, and takes up the pen for him, — expressing and often supporting doubt, revolt, depression, despair, it becomes a very different matter. Even here sometimes the expression acts as a purge; but also the statement of the condition may lend energy to the attack at least for the moment and may seem to enhance and prolong it, exhausting it by its own violence perhaps for the time and so bringing in the end a relief, but at a heavy cost of upheaval and turmoil — and at the risk of the recurring decimal movement, because the release has come by temporary exhaustion of the attacking force, not by rejection and purification through the intervention of the Divine Force with the unquestioning assent and support of the sadhak. There has been a confused fight, an intervention in a hurly-burly, not a clear alignment of forces — and the intervention of the helping force is not felt in the confusion and the whirl. This is what used to happen in your crises; the vital in you was deeply affected and began supporting and expressing the reasonings of the attacking force — in place of a clear observation and expression of the difficulty by the vigilant mind laying the state of things in the light for the higher Light and Force to act upon it, there was a vehement statement of the case for the Opposition.
Page – 451 Many sadhaks (even “advanced”) had made a habit of this kind of expression of their difficulties and some still do it; they cannot even yet understand that it is not the way. At one time it was a sort of gospel in the Asram that this was the thing to be done, — I don’t know on what ground, for it was never part of my teaching about the Yoga, — but experience has shown that it does not work; it lands one in the recurring decimal notation, an unending round of struggle. It is quite different from the movement of self-opening that succeeds, (here too not in a moment, but still sensibly and progressively) and of which those are thinking who insist on everything being opened to the Guru so that the help may be more effectively there. 17 December 1932
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About the correspondence, I would be indeed a brainless fool if I made it the central aim of my life to con an absurd mountain of letters and leave all higher aims aside! If I have given importance to the correspondence, it is because it was an effective instrument towards my central purpose — there are a large number of sadhaks whom it has helped to awake from lethargy and begin to tread the way of spiritual experience, others whom it has carried from a small round of experience to a flood of realisations, some who have been absolutely hopeless for years who have undergone a conversion and entered from darkness into an opening of light. Others no doubt have not profited or profited only a little. Also there were some who wrote at random and wasted our time. But I think we can say that for the majority of those who wrote, there has been a real progress. No doubt also it was not the correspondence in itself but the Force that was increasing in its pressure on the physical nature which was able to do all this, but a canalisation was needed, and this served the purpose. There were many for whom it was not necessary, others for whom it was not suitable. If it had been a mere intellectual asking of questions it would have been useless, but the substantial part was about sadhana and experience and it was that that proved to be of great use. But as time went on the correspondence began to grow too
Page – 452 much and reached impossible proportions — yet it was difficult to stop the flood or to make distinctions which would not have been understood — so we have to seek a way out and as yet have only found palliatives. The easy way would be if those who have opened would now rely mainly on the inner communication with only a necessary word now and then — some have begun to do so. I suppose in the end we shall be able to reduce the thing to manageable proportions. 12 January 1933
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Sometimes I feel I should not write about my experiences, etc. to you because you know everything. But at times something in me insists on writing. What should I do? Does writing in detail about everything help? In what way?
You need not write every day but from time to time — first, that there may be a direct control on your experiences and, secondly, a more precise help from us not only in general but in particulars. 31 March 1933
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For some time I have been thinking about ceasing to write to you. Today I was overcome by vital problems. Finally at 4.30 I sent the letter I had written earlier. Why should the idea of not writing or not sending the letter cause so much difficulty?
It is because the idea came from a wrong source and was an attempt of the wrong forces to enter and disturb. It was not so much the idea in itself, but the idea as an expression of dissatisfaction and impatience. Immediately the hostiles took hold of it as a line of entry for all the old movements once associated with this kind of dissatisfaction and impatience. Moreover these letters of yours and my answers have been a strong means of canalising our help and making it habitually available to you and effective — not by the words themselves alone but by the forces behind them. 17 April 1933
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Is it not true that the letters we receive from you are full of power?
Yes, power is put into them. 8 June 1933
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Before reading your answers to my letters I feel as if I would never be able to read or understand them. What is this activity in me?
A useless activity of the vital mind. You should keep it quiet and receive with a silent mind waiting for light. In the silent mind one can receive an answer even if I write nothing. 9 June 1933
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I have the idea that since we can communicate everything to you by prayer, why do we need to write? Is there any fallacy in my reasoning?
It is always well to write what goes on in you — but it need not be done every day. The essential is to keep nothing concealed. 4 August 1933
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I have now made it a rule to write to you every evening. I will not, however, expect any replies — I will be quite satisfied with the writing, because I have experienced that the writing itself is sufficient to dissolve 95 percent of the struggle or the difficulty.
This I quite approve. You should certainly do so and stick to the rule. I shall answer at least once a day, twice whenever I find it necessary or an answer occurs to me. 8 September 1933
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Someone told me that those who write to you do not or are not able to receive more help than they would otherwise get, and that therefore there is not much use in writing. Do not such ideas hamper your work?
Of course they do. It is a useless activity of the mind always
Page – 454 trying to pass judgment on things because it does not understand them. If the sadhaks’ writing to me about their sadhana were useless would I spend half the day and more in reading and answering, putting aside much other work? — if it were useless I would ask them to stop, not encourage them to write. 12 September 1933
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It seems as if those who are not writing to you daily are not worse off for it. What is this due to?
Either they have not that same push for the sadhana or they feel less need to lay open their difficulties because they have some line of positive experience which they confidently follow. 24 September 1933
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Even for those who confidently follow a line of positive experience, and do not write to you often, is there not the danger of wrong suggestions and constructions coming to them and also of an absence of variety or integrality of experience?
Yes, there are both these dangers. Those even who are not visited by serious difficulties, are exposed to the latter danger of remaining always on the same plane of experience. But again many do not write because they are not yet prepared for the pressure on them to progress rapidly which that would mean. 25 September 1933
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I keep writing one and the same thing. Why? Because some part of me pushes me to do so. What is this part?
It may be the inner mental, it may be the psychic. 28 November 1933
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Writing is needed by some, it is not needed or only a little by others. On the whole those who write get a more steady incentive to progress than if they did not write — some could hardly go
Page – 455 on without this tangible support. It seems to me that writing is very necessary for you still. 31 January 1934
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Is the asking of questions a help to Yoga?
Questions are meant for getting light on the things that are going on in one. It is the statement of what is going on that helps to surrender. 3 April 1934
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No letter in the evening also, nor did Mother see you at the meditation. Whatever depression or other disturbing attack may come, do not absent yourself from pranam or evening meditation or stop writing. All attacks can be met and overcome, but it is by taking our help close and tangible that they can go quickly. I hope that you will not fail to write tomorrow (Sunday) and let us know all. 5 May 1934
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What is your purpose in encouraging the sadhaks to write to you? Why did you create this channel?
It was created in order that they may have some direct connection and help. It depends on how they use their opportunity. 12 May 1934
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If I have to answer fully all the points in your long letter, I fear it will take me until Doomsday — though that, according to some calculations, is not far off. I will try to do it in a comparatively brief and unsatisfactory way, I have indeed written a good deal already. But as it may take me time to finish, I send an interim note. I do not know why you should be suddenly bewildered by what I wrote — it is nothing new and we have been saying it since a whole eternity. I wrote this short answer in reference to a question which supposed that certain “perfections” must be
Page – 456 demanded of the Divine Manifestation which seemed to me quite irrelevant to the reality. I put forward two propositions which appear to me indisputable unless we are to revise all spiritual knowledge in favour of modern European ideas about things. First, the Divine Manifestation even when it manifests in mental and human ways has behind it a consciousness greater than the mind and not bound by the petty mental and moral conventions of this very ignorant human race — so that to impose these standards on the Divine is to try to do what is irrational and impossible. Secondly, this Divine Consciousness behind the apparent personality is concerned with only two things in a fundamental way — the Truth above and here below the Lila and the purpose of the incarnation or manifestation and it does what is necessary for that in the way its greater than human consciousness sees to be the necessary and intended way. I shall try if I can develop that when I write about it — perhaps I shall take your remarks about Rama and Krishna as the starting-point — but that I shall see hereafter. But I do not understand how all that can prevent me from answering mental questions. On my own showing, if it is necessary for the divine purpose, it has to be done. Ramakrishna himself whom you quote for the futility of asking questions answered thousands of questions, I believe. But the answers must be such as Ramakrishna gave and such as I try to give, answers from a higher spiritual experience, from a deeper source of knowledge and not lucubrations of the logical intellect trying to coordinate its ignorance; still less can they be a placing of the Divine or the Divine Truth before the judgment of the intellect to be condemned or acquitted by that authority — for the authority here has no sufficient jurisdiction or competence. This also I shall try to explain — it is what I have started to do in a longer letter. 20 May 1934
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Someone asked me if it would be possible to have direct communication with you and dispense with writing letters to get your guidance. I replied that it would not be possible unless
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one had developed the power of telepathy and was able to receive your replies inwardly. But even then there would be the possibility of obscuration and distortion in reception, unless there was a complete psychisation of the consciousness. Even with complete psychisation it would not be possible to know all from within, for example about the experiences of higher stages like Overmind and Supermind, because the psychic has no instrumentality to know about them. Communication through letters would, therefore, still be necessary. But if a person had a perfect rapport with the Mother, he might be able to dispense with the need of communicating through letters. But would even a person who had realised the Overmind have such a perfect rapport?
I think it would need the Supermind itself to establish such a complete rapport. The psychic can do much in that direction but on condition it has a complete control. Overmind and Intuition could do it on their own plane, but here they have to descend into the physical consciousness and that interferes with its immense obscurity in addition to the distortions of mind and vital. 27 May 1934
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I am sorry I could not write to you all these days. The fact is that something prevented me from approaching you. I have not been able to make out what it was. Will you kindly enlighten me?
It may be some indolence in the physical consciousness. It is always best to write at least thrice a week, even if there is nothing very special to say, so as to maintain the physical as well as the inner contact. 19 June 1934
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Everyone thinks that as soon as you read our letters we get the necessary help. In my own case I get relief only after Mother’s touch at Pranam. Prayers are not heard then?
It depends on how far the inner being is awake — otherwise one needs a physical avalambana. There are some people who get
Page – 458 the relief only after we read a letter, others get it immediately they write or before it has reached us or after it has reached but before we have read. Others get it simply by referring the whole matter to us mentally. Idiosyncracies! 20 March 1935
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I cannot undertake to be telling you all the time all that is not perfectly Yogic in the details of your action from morning to night. These are things to see to yourself. It is the movements of your sadhana that you place before me and it is these that I have to see whether they are the right thing or not. 7 May 1936
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When I wrote that while reading your answers I experienced something coming out of my heart, you replied, “It depends on the nature of the movement. Something from the psychic?” I think it was something from the psychic. But how did it get connected with my reading your answers?
The psychic can be connected with anything that gives room for love or bhakti.
When I was reading these answers with love and joy, I felt some sort of psychic opening which was the most important part of my reaction. Could you explain this?
You have explained it yourself — it is the psychic contact with what is in or behind the answers — what comes out into them from myself. 26 June 1936
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No need to cut down your letters — I am a quick reader (at least of English, provided the handwriting is not on my own model) — it is only writing that takes time. So you must not mind short or at least comparatively short answers. It is quite the best to let the pen run and say everything. 26 June 1936
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Page – 459 I do not understand your point about raising up a new race by writing trivial letters. Of course not — nor by writing important letters either; even if I were to spend my time writing fine poems it would not build up a new race. Each activity is important in its own place — an electron or a molecule or a grain may be small things in themselves, but in their place they are indispensable to the building up of a world, — it cannot be made up only of mountains and sunsets and streamings of the aurora borealis — though these have their place there. All depends on the force behind these things and the purpose in their action — and that is known to the Cosmic Spirit which is at work, — and it works, I may add, not by the mind or according to human standards but by a greater consciousness which, starting from an electron, can build up a world and, using “a tangle of ganglia”, can make them the base here for the works of the Mind and Spirit in Matter, produce a Ramakrishna, or a Napoleon, or a Shakespeare. Is the life of a great poet, either, made up only of magnificent and important things? How many “trivial” things had to be dealt with and done before there could be produced a King Lear or a Hamlet! Again, according to your own reasoning, would not people be justified in mocking at your pother — so they would call it, I do not — about metre and scansion and how many ways a syllable can be read? Why, they might say, is X [the recipient of this letter] wasting his time in trivial prosaic things like this when he might have been spending it in producing a beautiful lyric or fine music? But the worker knows and respects the material with which he must work and he knows why he is busy with “trifles” and small details and what is their place in the fullness of his labour. December 1936
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You say certain things that human nature does not find so easy or natural.
If I said only things that human nature finds easy and natural, that would certainly be very comfortable for the disciples, but there would be no room for any spiritual aim or endeavour.
Page – 460 Spiritual aims and methods are not easy or natural (e.g. as quarrelling, sex-indulgence, greed, indolence, acquiescence in all imperfections are easy and natural) and if people become disciples, they are supposed to follow spiritual aims and endeavours, however hard and above ordinary nature, and not the things that are easy and natural. 3 May 1937
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Why do you lay so much stress on our writing everything to you? Can’t we pray to you and ask for help? Isn’t it as good as writing?
Not writing means trying to conceal. That is a suggestion of the vital. 2 August 1937
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The Mother is positively opposed to your suspending all correspondence with me, she thinks it is very dangerous at this stage and juncture of your sadhana. I am not, myself also, at ease about it. You have entered into a phase and adopted a method which may be very effective, — solitude, direct pressure for immediate realisation etc. but which can involve also serious risks. We consider it necessary at this time that you should keep me informed of what is going on in you and what you are doing. A general support and protection may not be sufficient at such a time or in such a passage. It is not indispensable to write every day, but some report of these things is necessary so that I may intervene at once if that is needed or give an immediate help or an indication or direction when that is advisable. Since you have turned to me as your guru, and that quite apart from the question of identity with the Divine, and since you acknowledge your inability to go to the end unaided — very few have been able to do that, — it would be illogical and perilous to attempt to take the kingdom of heaven by violence alone and in the dark. I am always after you with my force, even though you don’t feel it, but that may not be sufficient at this time.
Page – 461 Suitable Subjects for Correspondence
Is it possible for you to give a private reply to questions on political matters?
It depends on the circumstances. I have for a long time past eschewed politics entirely and I could not answer questions of a political character. Apart from that I avoid usually racial and religious questions, especially if they are controversial, confining myself to things of a spiritual or cultural character (literature, art etc.). There too I write almost entirely to disciples or seekers of the Yoga. 1 February 1936
Useful and Useless Letters
What is meant by vital nature?
These are questions that anybody in the Asram could answer. This and questions such as “what is meant by faithfulness”. It is much better if you get these things explained to you by someone in Gujarati so that you can understand and be able to apply your own understanding whenever needed. If I have to answer philosophically, it would take ten pages for each question and you would understand nothing. Otherwise I have to answer off hand and such an answer also will be of no use to you. You can ask practical questions about your own experiences and I will try to answer. 19 June 1933
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Would it be all right if I asked questions pertaining to the Arya?
It is not possible for me to write answers to such questions as they would have to be very long — the Arya was written so that people might get the answers there. I can’t write them all over again. 31 January 1934
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It is better to write what is in one’s mind. Some people simply write about their experiences (dreams, visions, descents of force),
Page – 462 but nothing precise about the movements of their mind and vital with the result that these remain pretty much as they were and there is no harmony between the inner and the outer being and as a result the inner also does not get its full or proper development. 17 June 1934
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I feel no interest in sadhana or even in the outer work. Whatever help or protection you send stops before it can enter me. What is the reason for all that?
The reason is quite clear from what you write in the next para. There is something in the consciousness that wanted the letters and answers not simply for help in sadhana but as a personal satisfaction with egoistic elements in it — pride, jealousy of others (X, Y), desire to be equal with them, demand for special consideration etc. Also it wanted nice, pleasing and elaborate answers. All that is the usual wrong attitude of the vital which is the stumbling-block for so many sadhaks and prevents true psychic love from developing, replacing it by the vital kind full of demand, ego, jealousy, revolt etc. — and it has been the ruin of some. All that you had thrown out of the higher parts, and quieted it elsewhere, but it remained sticking somewhere and when correspondence was suspended, the hostile forces took advantage of the fact that you were not allowed to write every day as before to raise up these feelings and you did not repel them with sufficient force to put an end to the attack. Hence they continue. 25 February 1935
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I find great difficulty in understanding what is the difference between the inner mind and the vital, physical and outer minds. Also I want to know what is the physical consciousness and what are the different places of these things. If these things have forms but are not material, how am I to get the idea of them?
An answer would mean writing several essays for which I have no time.
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You [Sri Aurobindo’s secretary] can tell him that it would be a waste of time to think of these things now — it is only when experience comes that it would be possible to distinguish the different parts. Quietness and calm cannot come all at once — always at the beginning thoughts come and the mind interferes with its activity. One has to persevere, to detach oneself from the mental activity till one feels oneself as separate from it. 29 July 1936
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You can write whatever is in your mind — but these are outward things and you should not allow outward things to interfere with your inner opening.
Not Always Possible to Answer
I answer letters whenever I consider it necessary; I cannot bind myself to answer every letter I receive. If I did, I would have to be writing all the 24 hours without time for rest or meals or anything else! 28 April 1932
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You can write whenever you like. But I told you at the beginning I cannot answer all letters — if I did that I would have to work all the 24 hours at nothing else. 15 April 1933
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Many times questions come to the mind like: “What is the Divine?” Is it not better to write them to you?
Provided you do not expect me to answer always. People write to me not for getting mental information or answering questions but to lay before me their experiences and difficulties and get my help. When it is necessary, I answer questions, but I cannot be doing it all the time. 26 June 1933
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Page – 464 Continue to write letters giving your experiences and your condition from time to time. Do not however expect an answer always. When it is needed, I will answer. 22 August 1933
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If an answer is very necessary, I give it even if there is no time. If there is time, I give an answer often even if it is not indispensable. 19 October 1933
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I told you at the beginning that I will not be able to answer everything you write. You are quite mistaken in thinking that I answer everything other people write in their books. Out of the fifty or more books I get and the sixty or more letters I pass over more than half without any answer and even so it takes me 11 hours to deal with all that correspondence. The other sadhaks do not stop writing on that account — they know that it brings help to them to write. 22 November 1933
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For the past six years I have not sent you any communications. I would now like to do so once or twice a week: sadhana, experiences, etc.
It is just the time when I am trying to diminish letters and books, so that the Mother has some time to rest at night and myself some time to do the real work instead of passing day and night in sending and answering correspondence. This is not the time to add fresh correspondence. Moreover it is not worthwhile sending experiences merely to ask whether they are true. The truth has to be found out by their effect in liberating the consciousness and changing the nature, ridding you of ego etc. Observe that in yourself and it will be sufficient. 5 December 1935
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When what you write is correct, I say nothing — when it is your
Page – 465 physical mind that brings in wrong ideas, I correct. 10 May 1936
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Sir, you say you keep no files, throw none of my regal documents into the waste paper basket; where then is the last dream-hewn epistle flown?
You do not make the necessary distinctions. I said I don’t have any file of your immortal poems, I said nothing about your more mortal epistles. 18 June 1938
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How is it, Lord, that even the mortal epistles have joyously returned without one blemish? I take it that there was nothing in them to comment upon?
Yes? I was under the impression that I had decorated them with my indecipherable lotus handwriting. 20 June 1938
Time and Correspondence
You do not realise that I have to spend 12 hours over the ordinary correspondence, numerous reports, etc. I work 3 hours in the afternoon and the whole night up to 6 in the morning over this. So if I get a long letter with many questions I may not be able to answer it all at once. To get into such a disturbance over it and want to throw off the Yoga is quite unreasonable. 17 June 1933
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It is true that the flow of notebooks and letters is becoming so heavy that time is insufficient to deal with them. Mother favoured the movement, but it is becoming excessive in proportions. The best thing would be for you to write briefly each thing you have to say — then you can write every day — otherwise it is better to write from time to time, say twice a week. But the first way would be best; if things are briefly and clearly said,
Page – 466 then there will be time. 25 June 1933
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The books and letters are not going to be discontinued — but I shall have to take one day off in the week (Sunday). The volume of the correspondence is becoming enormous and it takes me all the night and a good part of the day — apart from the work done separately by the Mother who has also to work the greater part of the night in addition to her day’s work. It is this that makes the pranam later and later, for we do not finish till 7.30 or after. Also much work falls in arrears and piles up and many things that have their importance have had to be discontinued. Some relief is necessary. If all the sadhaks were more discreet, it would be better. But this does not apply to you, for you keep always within the limits. 19 December 1933
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I have no time for anything just now — I have become a correspondence-reading and answering machine. I hope to make up when things are a little easier. 19 August 1934
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Absolutely no time tonight. I have been dealing with correspondence since 9.30 p.m. (to say nothing of the afternoon) and am likely to have to go on till 7.00 a.m. or longer. 5 January 1935
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Someone told me that X is translating Saratchandra’s novel into English, half of which is corrected by you. It amounts to this: that X is making you translate somebody’s novel instead of himself translating Arya, which would be more reasonable. What ordeals for you to pass through! Perhaps the person who remarked in a London paper that you had written five hundred books was not quite wrong; by this time your letters to sadhaks would make three or four books for each of them and if to these are added your poems, translations and other writings the total would not be less than five hundred.
Page – 467 The idea of X translating Arya makes the hair stand on end! It would be much easier for me to write 500 books. Perhaps I have done so — if all I have scribbled is to be taken into account against me. But as most of it will not see the light of day — at least of public day, I may still escape establishing the record in book-production. 3 February 1935
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About my essay, you could read the first two pages one day, another pair of pages the next, and so on — if you believe that reading it at a stretch would interfere with your daily work.
I have had to suppress all extra work for the last 2 or 3 days and there is a mountain of arrears awaiting me. If my eye is all right tomorrow, I shall see if anything can be done, but it is not very likely. 9 March 1935
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I am surprised and sad to hear that you can still be affected by these physical ailments!
What I am surprised at is that I have any eye left at all after the last two or three years of half-day and all night work. The difficulty for resting is that the sadhaks have begun pouring paper again without waiting for the withdrawal of the notice — not all of course, but many. And there is a stack of outside correspondence still unanswered! I am persuading my eye, but it is still red and sulky and reproachful. Revolted, what? Thinks too much is imposed on it and no attention paid to its needs, desires, preferences etc. Will have to reason with it for a day or two longer.
How I wish, as a medical man, I mean, I could enforce absolute rest to the eyes and issue a bulletin.
[Underlining “absolute rest”:] It does not exist in this world — not even in the Himalayas — except of course for the inner being which can always be in absolute rest. 9 March 1935
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Page – 3 I have today fifty letters each 2000 pages long — of course this is not a mathematically accurate statement, but it expresses the impression they make on me — so excuse brevity in my answer to your length. 20 July 1935
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I couldn’t finish copying the poem I want to send to you. Perhaps I will send it tomorrow morning. Since you “sleep” up to 12 a.m., I hear, you will in any case see it after 3 p.m.
It depends on the time I go to sleep. If it is at 9 or 10 a.m. I may sleep beyond 12. As for poetry, I see it only at night. There is no time in the afternoon except for the letters. 31 August 1935
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No time, no time! It is going to be an eternal problem with you, it seems! After the reduction of correspondence — cutting of the evening mail — it leaves you absolutely free for other things. I suppose you are working at your Savitri.
Where is the reduction of correspondence? I have to be occupied with correspondence from 8.0 to 12 p.m. (minus one hour), again after bath and meal from 2.30 to 7 a.m. All that apart from afternoon work. And still much is left undone. And you think I can write Savitri? You evidently believe in miracles! 23 January 1936
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Do you really mean that till 7 a.m. your pen goes on at an aeroplanic speed? Then it must be due more to outside correspondence. I don’t see many books or envelopes now on the staircase. Is the supramental freedom from these things not in view?
Your not seeing unfortunately does not dematerialise them. Books are mainly for the Mother and there is sometimes a mountain, but letters galore. On some days only there is a lull and then I can do something. 24 January 1936
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What has happened to my typescript?2 Hibernating?
My dear sir, if you saw me nowadays with my nose to paper from afternoon to morning, deciphering, deciphering, writing, writing, writing, even the rocky heart of a disciple would be touched and you would not talk about typescripts and hibernation. I have given up (for the present at least) the attempt to minimise the cataract of correspondence; I accept my fate like Ramana Maharshi with the plague of Prasads and admirers, but at least don’t add anguish to annihilation by talking about typescripts! 11 March 1936
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But concentration on “real work”? Good Lord, you do that from 9 or 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. God alone knows what you do then.
What is this transcendental rubbish?
Perhaps you send Force to Germany, Abyssinia, etc., or make a leap to the Supramental?
That is not my real work. Who except the devil is going to give force to Germany? Do you think I am in league with Hitler and his howling tribe of Nazis?
We speculate and speculate. Next you concentrate from 6 p.m. to 11 or 12. Still not enough?
Who gave you this wonderful programme? Invented it all by your ingenious self? From 4 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. afternoon correspondence, meal, newspapers. Evening correspondence from 7 or 7.30 to 9. From 9 to 10 p.m. concentration. 10 to 12 correspondence, 12 to 2.30 bath, meal, rest. 2.30 to 5 or 6 a.m. correspondence unless I am lucky. Where is the sufficient time for concentration? 4 April 1936
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2 See page 416, footnote 6 and page 420, footnote 8. — Ed.
Page – 470 I fear my answers are scrappy as well as illegible, but this has been also a fell day (one letter 36 pages vernacular, 2 others each 8 pages of foolscap, others less in size (4, 2, 1 etc.) but ample in number — and this is no-correspondence period!) I have had to race against the old man Time. 19 August 1936
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I request you to clarify certain points in your letter if you have the time tonight. If not, I shall have to disturb your Sunday slumber.
Excuse me. I don’t sleep on Sundays; I climb mountains of outside letters which have accumulated for want of weekday time. 30 August 1936
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God knows what you are busy with now, with the correspondence also reduced.
Who says it is reduced? For a few days, it was — now it has increased to half again its former size and every morning I have to race to get it done in time — and don’t get it done in time. Thousand things are accumulating; inner work delayed. 17 September 1936
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I had to be careful to view this case from all aspects. A considerable drain on the mind might affect the cerebro-spinal system, besides affecting the secretions in consequence. And if one heats up the brain-box in order to reach the Creators or connect up with them, a certain amount of steam has to be let off.
Good Lord! then we shall all “have to be very careful”. Myself for instance am putting a terrible drain on the mind by answering tons of correspondence which can’t be good for my spine or for the other things either. But it gives me a great idea — why shouldn’t I take a medical stop-work from you and declare a six months’ holiday? But I am afraid, if I did, I would misuse it
Page – 471 in writing poetry myself, not to speak of trying to connect up with the supramental creators for the benefit of an unprepared humanity. So it is no use. 21 October 1936
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Got your typescript, but so much overwhelmed by correspondence that no time to answer at any length — so kept. This only to remove any apprehension of disappearance on the stairs. Excuse semi-telegraphic style; when Time presses, verbs and pronouns disappear. 4 April 1937
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Have you stopped the correspondence because of your eye-trouble or for concentration? You will understand that I don’t write for the sake of writing, but for a support from you. Please give me a line in reply, after which I won’t bother you any more.
Apart from the eye-question, I have stopped because there are certain things I have positively to get done before I can take up any regular correspondence work again. If I start now, I shall probably have to stop again soon for a long long time. Better get things finished now — that’s the idea. You must hold on somehow for the present. 23 November 1937
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It is time to put up a notice stopping the sending in of correspondence up to the end of August. The Mother must be free during this time at least and, for myself, there is no least chance of a book for the A.P.H. [Arya Publishing House] if some measure of that kind is not taken. 29 July 1938
The Importance of Brevity
You have done well to write more briefly. When you wrote ten times over the same thing, it wasted your time in writing and mine in reading. I had to glance through hastily and try to catch the meaning. Now I can read carefully and see clearly what you
Page – 472 mean — it has much more force like that.
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In future when you have long letters to write, you should write not in pencil but in ink — as I find it difficult to read 10 or 12 pages so closely written in pencil in Gujarati; it has taken me 2 or 3 days to manage to read your letter. If it is only a short letter, then you can write in pencil, though ink is always the best. Also, you should write in separate letters about sadhana and about other ordinary matters to which you want an immediate answer — such as this question about X and your studies. You can read with X since he is willing. 11 December 1932
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I don’t mind your correspondence. It is a relief. But when people write four letters a day in small hand closely running to some 10 pages without a gap anywhere and one gets 20 letters in the afternoon and forty at night (of course not all like that, but still!) it becomes a little too too. 5 February 1935
Answers Not Meant Equally for All
I should like to say, in passing, that it is not always safe to apply practically to oneself what has been written for another. Each sadhak is a case by himself and one cannot always or often take a mental rule and apply it rigidly to all who are practising the Yoga. What I wrote to X was meant for X and fits his case; but supposing a sadhak with a different (coarse) vital nature unlike X‘s were in question, I might say to him something that might seem the very opposite, “Sit tight on your lower vital propensities, throw out your greed for food, — it is standing as a serious obstacle in your way: it would be better for you to be ascetic in your habits than vulgarly animal in this part as you are now.” To one who is not taking enough food or sleep and rest in the eagerness of his spirit, I might say “Eat more, sleep more, rest more; do not overstrain yourself or bring an ascetic spirit into your tapasya.” To another with the opposite excess I
Page – 473 might speak a contrary language. Each sadhak has a nature or turn of nature of his own and the movement of the Yoga of two sadhaks, even when there are some resemblances between them, is seldom exactly the same. Again in applying some truth that is laid down it is necessary to give it its precise meaning. It is quite true that “in our path the attitude is not one of forceful suppression, nigraha“; it is not coercion according to a mental rule or principle on an unpersuaded vital being. But that does not mean either that the vital has to go its own way and do according to its fancy. It is not coercion that is the way, but an inner change, in which the lower vital is led, enlightened and transformed by a higher consciousness which is detached from the objects of vital desire. But in order to let this grow an attitude has to be taken in which a decreasing importance has to be attached to the satisfaction of ˙ the claims of the lower vital, a certain mastery, samyama, being above any clamour of these things, limiting such things as food to their proper place. The lower vital has its place, it is not to be crushed or killed, but it has to be changed, “caught hold of by both ends”, at the upper end a mastery and control, at the lower end a right use. The main thing is to get rid of attachment and desire; it is then that an entirely right use becomes possible. By what actual steps, in what order, through what processus this mastery of the lower vital shall come depends on the nature, the stress of development, the actual movement of the Yoga. It is not the eating or the not eating of mohan bhoga that is the important point — (actually when I gave X what you call his permit, I was thinking of X and not of anybody else). What is important is how that or any of these food matters affects you, what is your inner condition and how any such indulgence, cooking or eating, stands or does not stand in the way of its progress and change, what is best for you as a Yogic discipline. One rule for you I can lay down, “Do not do, say or think anything which you would want to conceal from the Mother.” And that answers the objections that rose within you — from your vital, is it not? — against bringing “these petty things” to the Mother’s notice. Why should you think that the Mother
Page – 474 would be bothered by these things or regard them as petty? If all the life is to be Yoga, what is there that can be called petty or of no importance? Even if the Mother does not answer, to have brought any matter of your action and self-development before her in the right spirit means to have put it under her protection, in the light of the Truth, under the rays of the Power that is working for the transformation — for immediately those rays begin to play and to act on the thing brought to her notice. Anything within that advises you not to do it when the spirit in you moves you to do it, may very well be a device of the vital to avoid the ray of the Light and the working of the Force. It may also be observed that if you open yourself to the Mother by putting the movements of any part of you under her observation, that of itself creates a relation, a personal closeness with her other than that which her general, silent or not directly invited action maintains with all the sadhaks. All this, of course, if you feel ready for this openness, if the spirit moves you to lay what is in you bare before her. For it is then that it is fruitful — when it comes from within and is spontaneous and true. 18 May 1932
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It is not a fact that all I write is meant equally for everybody. That assumes that everybody is alike and there is no difference between sadhak and sadhak. If it were so everybody would advance alike and have the same experiences and take the same time to progress by the same steps and stages. It is not so at all. In this case the general rules were laid down for one who had made no progress — but everything depends on how the Yoga comes to each person. 26 July 1934
Showing Letters to Others
Occasionally I show a letter from you to some sympathetic friend. Perhaps there may be a little egoistic sense of display, so I want your order on this.
It is better not to show. Apart from the possibility of display
Page – 475 it dissipates the force of the thing and brings in other currents from outside. 13 February 1933
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It is always a mistake to let another know what we have written privately to you on personal things, for it is likely, as you see, for it to be misinterpreted. It is because we have had so much experience of that that we prefer that personal things should be kept private. Formerly we used to allow people to show if they wanted to, but we found that even the simplest and clearest things were liable to mental constructions and misconceptions, so we have become more prudent. But of course what you quote from what I said was in itself quite harmless. 9 November 1935
Circulation of Letters
It does not at all concern the sadhaks to know to whom the messages are addressed,3 and it is inadmissible to base upon them reflections against the character of the addressee or to assume that he has gone wrong in his sadhana. I write often to confirm and encourage and not only to correct or reprove. In fact, I do not quite know why these communications should be called “messages”; for they are answers to questions or to letters, and only so much is circulated as is considered apposite or of general interest or use from the point of view of sadhana. Obviously, curiosity and gossip and wrong imaginations cannot be “helpful to sadhana”. The messages are not meant as food for gossip, but to give the sadhaks indications that can be of use to them in their sadhana. If they misuse them in this way, it is their own loss. 8 March 1932
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I would like to have your permission to give the typed copy of your messages that I got from X to a binder in the town.
3 Before Sri Aurobindo’s letters began to be published, typed copies of some of them were circulated among members of the Ashram. These were sometimes referred to as “messages”. — Ed.
Page – 476 As for the typed copy, I must defer sanction till I have gone through a copy of the same which is with me. I may say at once, however, that such copies ought first to be verified by comparison with the original in Nolini’s possession, for I find that the one with me is full of gross errors. 19 September 1932
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We are asked to take our files of “Communications of Sri Aurobindo” to the library for revision. Should we also take letters that are personal?
You are not asked to take any letters written to you. It is the collections that were asked for of messages etc. — as it is found that things unauthorised, inaccurate, not mine are often included and afterwards they get copied and end by being circulated even outside the Asram. Also things that are quite private or are not intended to circulate leak out in this way, since some people are unscrupulous in copying (like X who took things he was asked not to take). A control and sifting is necessary therefore, so that we may know what there is in these collections. 9 March 1933
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[Sri Aurobindo’s secretary:] Many have the “Bhowanipore File” — letters written to people connected with the Bhowanipore circle.4 Is it to be withdrawn? There are also collections of letters before 1925 — genuine, but with names and other things of a personal character — though containing useful instructions on Yoga. It would be safe, I think, to withdraw them — one cannot guarantee the correctness of the copies.
It is not necessary to withdraw anything. But those who want to keep these things must keep for themselves and not lend to visitors or newcomers — except by special permission for the messages not exportable. There will be three categories:
4 See Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest, volume 36 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO, pp. 332 81.
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(1) Letters prior to 1927 and personal letters (not circulated as messages) of any date. (2) Messages authorised for circulation here or outside. (These can be freely shown to all newcomers or visitors with a proviso that permission must be given for copying or possession of copies to outsiders interested in this Yoga. Copies cannot be given to outsiders not interested in this Yoga.) (3) Messages not authorised for circulation outside. (These can be shown or lent to all resident sadhaks but to visitors only with permission. Copies cannot be issued to outsiders.) Therefore all who want to have permission to lend their copies must keep separate files for these categories. 11 March 1933
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Can “messages authorised for circulation here or outside”5 be shown to people living outside the Asram?
Only disciples — those practising Yoga. 10 August 1933
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A visitor writes on behalf of a professor living outside, who requests permission to see a copy of the messages that outsiders are allowed to see. The professor is known to X.
I do not quite understand — we do not supply copies of messages. If people want to take copies of the messages that are allowed to be sent outside, they ask for permission. Is it that X has to take the copy for which we gave permission? If so, you might speak to him about it. 27 August 1935
5 See the preceding letter, point (2). — Ed.
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