Sri Aurobindo:   I knew Satish Mukherji when he was organising the Bengal National College (1905–7), but afterwards I had no contact with him any longer. Even at that time we were not intimate and I knew nothing about his spiritual life or attainments — except that he was a disciple of Bijoy Goswami — as were also other political coworkers and leaders, like Bipin Pal and Manoranjan Guha. I knew Satish Mukherji only as a very able and active organiser in the ﬁeld of education — a mission prophetically assigned to him, I was told, by his guru, — nothing more.   Charu Dutt?


Sri Aurobindo: Yes, saw very little of him, for physically our way lay far apart, but that little was very intimate, one of the kind of men whom I used to appreciate most and felt as if they had been my friends and comrades and fellow-warriors in the battle of the ages and could be so for ages more. But curiously enough my physical contact with men of his type — there were two or three others — was always brief. Because I had something else to do this time, I suppose.  Probably they know nothing about it, as these things happened behind the veil. History very seldom records the things that were decisive but took place behind the veil; it records the show in front of the curtain.


Sri Aurobindo: Very few people know that it was I (without consulting Tilak) who gave the order that led to the breaking of the Congress and was responsible for the refusal to join the new-fangled Moderate Convention which were the two decisive happenings at Surat. Even my action in giving the movement in Bengal its militant turn or founding the revolutionary movement is very little known.  I may also say that I did not leave politics because I felt I could do nothing more there; such an idea was very far from me. I came away because I did not want anything to interfere with my Yoga and because I got a very distinct adesh in the matter. I have


Sri Aurobindo: cut connection entirely with politics, but before I did so I knew from within that the work I had begun there was destined to be carried forward, on lines I had foreseen, by others, and that the ultimate triumph of the movement I had initiated was sure without my personal action or presence. There was not the least motive of despair or sense of futility behind my withdrawal. For the rest, I have never known any will of mine for any major event in the conduct of the world affairs to fail in the end, although it may take a long time for the world-forces to fulﬁl it. As for the possibility of failure in my spiritual work, I shall deal with that another time. Difﬁculties there are, but I see no cause for pessimism or for the certiﬁcation of failure.


Sri Aurobindo: I have read the wonderful screed from London. Truly I am more marvellous than I thought, 35 languages and 500 books! As to the seven pilgrims, they must be men of the Gita’s type, , to be prepared to come all these thousands of miles for nothing.    Sri Aurobindo says that it is impossible for him to take up political action and enter the political ﬁeld which would involve a sacriﬁce of his spiritual work.


Sri Aurobindo: His spiritual help is given to the country and individually to all those who aspire for it. He is ready to continue this help and even to increase it if it is necessary. But he is convinced that written messages alone are not sufﬁcient to have a permanent effect or even a sufﬁciently wide effect.  Among the members of the Ashram he sees nobody whom he can send to represent him effectively.  I don’t think there was any mystery.


Sri Aurobindo: He came for political purposes and enquired of Naidu or perhaps from Shankar Chettiar in whose house I was living whether there was any Indian Guru here and my name was mentioned and they brought him to see me. He showed me some signs employed in Indian, Egyptian and other occultisms, some of which I had seen — they happened to be, he said, the Indian ones. That was all.  I have myself fasted ﬁrst 10 days and then 23 days just to see what it was like and how far one could live without food, and certain things like that. I found that it was no good.


Sri Aurobindo: To take with equanimity whatever comes (or does not come) seemed to me more the thing than any violent exercises like that.  The was decided on on the 1st June and it was agreed that it would start on the 15th August. The war intervened on the 4th. “Parallelism” of dates if you like, but it was not very close and certainly nothing came down at that time.  It may be “policeman’s disease” as the French call it, “maladie de sergent de ville”; I have forgotten the technical name for it, but it is supposed to come from too much standing.


Sri Aurobindo: I had it myself for something like a year because of walking or standing all day — that was when I used to meditate while walking. The Fr. medical dictionary says there is no remedy but rest. I myself got rid of it by application of force without any rest or any other remedy. But is not a policeman and she does not walk while she meditates — so how did she get it?  Mother does not at all remember the exact date.


Sri Aurobindo: It may have been a few days after 15th August. She took up the work completely when I retired.  Bushy was the cat who introduced us to this house (Meditation) running before us and showing us all the rooms. That ought to ﬁnd a place in her autobiography.  But how is it that people can have such an idea?


Sri Aurobindo: There is no fund and there has never been a fund. All money has been given to myself or to the Mother. If there were a fund I suppose there would be trustees and a secretary and a treasurer and all the rest of it! The houses are ours, the money ours and it is to us in our houses that people come for learning the methods of Yoga. There is no association or public institution and nothing belonging to an association or institution.


Sri Aurobindo:   I have not wantonly stopped the books or free letter-writing nor have I become impatient with you or anyone. I am faced with a wanton and brutal attack on my life-work from outside and I need all my time and energy to meet it and do what is necessary to repel it during these days. I hope that I can count not only on the indulgence but on the support of those who have followed me and loved me, while I am thus occupied, much against my will.


Sri Aurobindo: I do hope you will not misunderstand me. I have not altered to you in the least and if I wrote laconically it was because I had no time to do otherwise.  My prohibition of long letters was of a general character and I had to issue it so that the stoppage of the books might not result in a ﬂood of long letters which would leave me no time for making the concentration and taking the steps I have to take.  I have said that you can send your poems and write too when you feel any urgent need — I had no feeling to the contrary at all.


Sri Aurobindo: I do not know that your going later to Bombay is at all necessary — since it is decided, it may be better to get it over quickly. It is too early to say whether the menace to the Asram is conquered or still hangs over it.     Of course, one must use these external means and there one must be careful so as to have as many factors as possible on one’s side and give as little handle as possible to adverse forces.


Sri Aurobindo: But no outward action can be for us sure of success unless behind it is the growing Yogic vision and Yogic power. We have had ourselves serious difﬁculties from the outside, petitions made against us to the Minister of Colonies in Paris and a report demanded from the Governor here which if acted on would have put the Asram in serious jeopardy. We used outward means of a very slight and simple character, i.e. getting the Mother’s brother (Governor in French Equatorial Africa) to intervene with the Ministry (and also an eminent writer in France, a disciple), but for the most part I used a strong inner Force to determine the action of the Colonial Ofﬁce, to get a favourable report from the Governor here, to turn the minds of some who were against us here and to nullify the enmity of others. In all these respects I succeeded and our position here is much stronger than before; especially a new and favourable Governor has come. Nevertheless we have to remain vigilant that the situation may not be again threatened.


Sri Aurobindo: Also one disadvantage has resulted, that we have been asked not to buy or rent more houses, but to build instead. This is difﬁcult without land near here and much money; so we are for the moment unable to expand. In certain respects however this is not a disadvantage, as I have been long wishing to put off farther expansion and consolidate the inward life of the Asram in a more completely spiritual sense. I give this as an example of how things have to be dealt with from the Yogic point of view.


Sri Aurobindo: You can write about the stories of the Asram that they are not true. The publication had no connection with Gandhi’s visit to Pondicherry. No “law” has been passed by the French Government, nor could be. The relations of the Asram with the French Government are very friendly. But there was a housing crisis in Pondicherry and some complaints from the ofﬁcials that they could not get houses to live in because the Asram had occupied so much of the better part of the town, so it was suggested to us that we might build houses in future rather than buy them.


Sri Aurobindo: There would be no gain from it and my retirement is necessary for the inner work.     That is a thing of which nothing can be said at present. My retirement had a purpose and that purpose must ﬁrst be fulﬁlled.


Sri Aurobindo:   The psychic is not responsible for my aloofness or retirement — it is the mass of opposition that I have to face which is responsible for that. It is only when I have overcome by the aid of the psychic and (excuse me!) your other, the supermind, that the retirement can cease.


Sri Aurobindo: Perhaps not. Vallabhbhai is not likely to understand more than others that a spiritual life can be led by me without a view to a comeback hereafter for the greatest good of the greatest India (or world). Tagore expected the latter and is much disappointed that I have not done it.


Sri Aurobindo: That will be decided after the descent.     Write to him on my behalf that I regret I am unable to accept his invitation as I have adopted a rule of life which prevents me from appearing in public or taking any personal part in public activities. This rule is still valid for me and I am unable to depart from it.


Sri Aurobindo: Or perhaps you [] can type the answer as from me and I will sign it.   By the way, no one sees me daily and talks with me except the Mother and those who have been in attendance on me since the accident. Anything to the contrary you may have heard is incorrect.   My retirement is nothing new, even the cessation of contact by correspondence is nothing new, — it has been there now for a long time.


Sri Aurobindo: I had to establish the rule not out of personal preference or likes or dislikes, but because I found that the correspondence occupied the greater part of my time and my energies and there was a danger of my real work remaining neglected and undone if I did not change my course and devote myself to it, while the actual results of this outer activity were very small — it cannot be said that it resulted in the Asram making a great spiritual progress. Now in these times of world-crisis when I have had to be on guard and concentrated all the time to prevent irremediable catastrophes and have still to be so and when, besides, the major movement of the inner spiritual work needs an equal concentration and persistence, it is not possible for me to abandon my rule. (Moreover, even for the individual sadhak it is in his interest that this major spiritual work should be done, for its success would create conditions under which his difﬁculties could be much more easily overcome.) All the same I have broken my rule, and broken it for you alone; I do not see how that can be interpreted as a want of love and a hard granite indifference.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not possible to accept his suggestion about joining with those who are in personal attendance upon me. They were not admitted as a help to their sadhana but for practical reasons. In fact here also there is some misconception. Continual personal contact does not necessarily bring out the action of the Force.  Hriday had that personal contact with Ramakrishna and the opportunity of personal service to him, but he received nothing except on one occasion and then he could not contain the Force and the realisation which the Master put into him.


Sri Aurobindo: The feeling of losing himself which had was on the special occasions of the Darshan and the pranam to the Mother. That he had this response shows that he can answer to the Force, that he has the receptivity, as we say, and that is a great thing; all do not have it and those who have it are not always conscious of its cause but only of its result. But he should reason less and rather try to keep himself open as he was in those moments. The Force is not a matter for reasoning or theory but of experience. If I have written about the Force, it is because both the Mother and myself have had many thousand experiences in which it acted and produced results of every kind.


Sri Aurobindo: This idea of the Force has nothing to do with theory or reasoning but is felt constantly by every Yogin; it is part of his yogic consciousness and his constant spiritual activity.  It is quite impossible for me to do any literary work (original or revision) just now, if that is what he wants.     As to the book, I am afraid I have no time for such things.


Sri Aurobindo: The twenty-four hours are already too short for what I have to do.     Sri Aurobindo regrets his inability to accept the position offered to him in connection with the Indian Research Institute, with the objects of which he has every sympathy, as he would be unable to discharge the obligations however light attached to the position.  All his time and energies are occupied by his own work and he has made it a rule to abstain from all other activities in order to give to this his undivided attention.


Sri Aurobindo:  I hope that will be enough for you — for I have no time for more — certainly none for writing sonnets — my energy is too occupied in very urgent and pressing things (quite apart from correspondence) to “dally with the rhythmic line”.     Let the ﬂoods pass!


Sri Aurobindo: let the ﬂoods pass! I have four eight-twelvesixteen-page letters still unanswered, one in Bengali closely written, one in Gujarati (decently large letters), one in Hindi (closepacked) and one in English. How the belettered devil am I to deal with essays under such polypageous circumstances?    Good Lord!


Sri Aurobindo: what can one write in 1 or 1 hour? If I could only get that time for immortal productions every day! Why in another three years and and I don’t know how much more would be all written, ﬁnished, resplendently complete.    Well, he may have been rather wise in that and fortunate in the infrequency of correspondence in those days — but that did not save him.


Sri Aurobindo: There is a poignant chapter in the Mahabharat describing his miseries and bothers with his people in Dwarka which is very illuminating. Unfortunately I have forgotten where it is.  The calls don’t matter much, for putting the Force is a subjective thing which does not take time, except in cases when it is a daily or frequently recurring difﬁculty. As for Durvasa if he turned up, it would be met by an order to “Go and manage” or else an intimation to Durvasa not to be unreasonable.


Sri Aurobindo:   Lord, Sir, I wish I had time to follow out a programme as massive as yours. I have none even to dilate upon yours.  That is a rather excessive statement. I have learned my own philosophy from Adhar Das, for instance, and read something about Sunlight Treatment for the eyes, etc. etc.


Sri Aurobindo: I have not Boccaccio’s tales. I am afraid my library is mainly composed of my own and the sadhaks’ works and books presented to me by people as a personal offering which I can’t therefore send to the library — and some stray volumes, dictionaries etc. — that is all.  I may say that I see no reason for alarm or apprehension about my eyesight; it has happened before and I was able to recover, even getting a better reading eyesight than before. These things are for me a question of the working of the Yogic force. Many customary illnesses have passed away from me permanently after an intimation that they would occur no more.


Sri Aurobindo: In my last days in Calcutta that happened with regard to colds in the head, and when I was in the rue des Missions ´Etrang`eres with regard to fever. I had no cold or fever after that. So also with regard to things like the bad cough I had for many years; it was intimated some time ago that these things would fade out, and it has been so happening — only vestiges remain. So it will happen with what ailments remain, I expect.  As for my going far away, your feeling is based on my slackness in giving answers to your letters but this slackness had no such cause.


Sri Aurobindo: My love and affection have remained always the same and it is regrettable if by my slackness in answering your letters I have produced the impression that I was moving farther and farther away from you. I think your recent letters have been mostly about persons recommended for Darshan or applying for it or about accommodation, things which have to be settled by the Mother, and these were naturally most conveniently conveyed to you through’s oral answer. I suppose I must have unduly extended that method of answer to other matters. I must admit that for many reasons the impulse of letter writing and literary productivity generally have dwindled in me almost to zero and that must have been the real cause of my slackness. The ﬁrst reason is my inability to write with my own hand, owing to the failure of the sight and other temporary reasons; the sight is improving but the improvement is not so rapid as to make reading and writing likely in the immediate future.


Sri Aurobindo: Even is going slow, conﬁned mainly to revision of what has already been written, and I am as yet unable to take up the completion of Parts II and III which are not yet ﬁnally revised and for which a considerable amount of new matter has to be written. It is no use going into all the thousand and one reasons for this state of things, for that would explain and not justify the slackness. I know very well how much you depend on my writing in answer to your letters as the one physical contact left which helps you and I shall try in future to meet the need by writing as often as possible.    As to my silence, this does not arise from any change of feeling towards you or any coldness or indifference.


Sri Aurobindo: I have not concealed from you the difﬁculty I feel now that I cannot write my own letters or, generally, do my own writing but I do not think I have neglected anything you have asked for when you have written. There is the question of the interview which you want to publish, but this I have to consider carefully as to what parts can be published as soon as I have been able to go through it. At the moment I have been very much under pressure of work for the Press which needed immediate attention and could not be postponed, mostly correction of manuscripts and proofs; but I hope to make an arrangement which will rid me of most of this tedious and uninteresting work so that I can turn my time to better purposes. I am conscious all the same that my remissness in writing has been excessive and that you have just cause for your complaint; but I hope to remedy this remissness in future as it is not at all due to any indifference but to a visitation of indolence of the creative will which has extended even to the completion of the unﬁnished parts of. I hope soon to get rid of this inability, complete and satisfy your just demand for more alertness in my correspondence with you.


Sri Aurobindo:   You also seem to have misunderstood something I said to about pressure and difﬁculties as indicating some unwillingness on my part to write to you; nothing was farther from my mind, I said that only to explain my remissness in writing to you before.  I was not referring to the pressure caused by the necessity of hastening the publication of my yet unpublished books or those that need to be republished — there is much work of that kind pressing to be done and much else not pressing but still needing to be done while there is still time, such as or other works like the ﬁrst part of which has to be revised for early publication in book-form. All that could have nothing to do with it — I was referring only to personal difﬁculties of my own and the difﬁculties concerning the Ashram which I had to face and which owing to their gravity and even danger had too much preoccupied my mind.


Sri Aurobindo: That I have mentioned as an explanation of my earlier remissness and not as an excuse, — there could be no valid excuse. Certainly, that had nothing to do with your present trouble and the letter, — the present one, — which I had sent word through that I was starting to write yesterday.  But what strange ideas again — that I was born with a supramental temperament and had never any brain or mind or any acquaintance with human mentality — and that I know nothing of hard realities. Good God! my whole life has been a struggle with hard realities, from hardship and semi-starvation in England through the ﬁerce difﬁculties and perils of revolutionary leadership and organisation and activity in India to the far greater difﬁculties continually cropping up here in Pondicherry, internal and external.


Sri Aurobindo: My life has been a battle from its early years and is still a battle, — the fact that I wage it now from a room upstairs and by spiritual means as well as others that are external makes no difference to its character. But of course as we have not been shouting about these things, it is natural, I suppose, for the sadhaks to think I am living in an august, glamorous, lotus-eating dreamland where no hard facts of life or nature present themselves. But what an illusion, all the same!  It is perfectly possible to change one’s nature. I have proved that in my own case, for I have made myself exactly the opposite in character to what I was when I started life.


Sri Aurobindo: I have seen it done in many and I have helped myself to do it in many. But certain conditions are needed. At present in this Asram there is an obstinate resistance to the change of nature — not so much in the inner being, for there are a good number who accept change there, but in the outer man which repeats its customary movements like a machine and refuses to budge out of its groove.  ’s case does not matter — his vital has always wanted to be itself and follow its own way and his mental will cannot prevail over it. The difﬁculty is far more general than that.


Sri Aurobindo: That however would not matter — it would be only a question of a little more or less time, if the divine action were admitted whole-heartedly by the sadhaks. But the conditions laid down by them and the conditions laid down from above seem radically to differ. From above the urge is to lift everything above the human level, the demand of the sadhaks (not all, but so many) is to keep everything on the human level. But the human level means ignorance, disharmony, strife, suffering, death, disease — constant failure. I cannot see what solution there can be for such a contradiction — unless it be Nirvana.


Sri Aurobindo: But transformation is hardly more difﬁcult than Nirvana.    Of course they have gained their power to live in the mind by a past evolution. But the spiritual peace is something other and inﬁnitely more than the mental peace and its results are different, not merely clear thinking or some control or balance or a sattwic state. But its greater results can only be fully and permanently manifest when it lasts long enough in the system or when one feels spread out in it above the head and on every side stretching towards inﬁnity as well as penetrated by it down to the very cells.


Sri Aurobindo: Then it carries with it the deep and vast and solid tranquillity that nothing can shake — even if on the surface there is storm and battle. I was myself of the sattwic type you describe in my youth, but when the peace from above came down, that was quite different. disappeared into and negative into positive.  I suppose I am silent, ﬁrst, because I have no “free-will” and, secondly, because I have no Time.  Less metaphysically and more Yogically, there are periods when silence becomes imperative, because to throw oneself outward delays the “work that has to be done”.


Sri Aurobindo: I suppose someday I will write about Free Will, but for the moment there is no effective will, free or otherwise, to do it.   My own experience is limited to a radiant peace; I know very well what ecstasy and Ananda are from the Brahmananda down to the, and can experience them at any time.  But of these things I prefer to speak only when my work is done — for it is in a transformed consciousness here and not only above where the Ananda always exists that I seek their base of permanence.  It is only divine love which can bear the burden I have to bear, that all have to bear who have sacriﬁced everything else to the one aim of uplifting earth out of its darkness towards the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: The Gallio-like “Je m’en ﬁche”-ism (I do not care) would not carry me one step; it would certainly not be divine. It is quite another thing that enables me to walk unweeping and unlamenting towards the goal.  Zeal and enthusiasm are all right and very necessary but the spiritual condition combines calm with intensity. Psychic ﬁre is different — what you are speaking of here is the rajasic vital ﬁre of self-assertion, aggressive self-defence, exerting lawful rights etc.  I speak from my own experience.


Sri Aurobindo: I have solid strength, but I have not much of the ﬁre that blazes out against anybody who does not give me lawful rights. Yet I do not ﬁnd myself weak or a dead man. I have always made it a rule not to be restless in any way, to throw away restlessness — yet I have been able to use my solid strength whenever necessary. You speak as if rajasic force and vehemence were the only strength and all else is deadness and weakness. It is not so — the calm spiritual strength is a hundred times stronger; it does not blaze up and sink again — but is steady and unshakable and perpetually dynamic.


Sri Aurobindo: I have dropped using the Rudra power — its effects used to be too catastrophic and now from a long disuse the inclination to use it has become rusty. Not that I am a convert to Satyagraha and Ahimsa, — but Himsa too has its inconvenience. So the ﬁres sleep.  I have no special liking for the ideal of Shiva, though something of the Shiva temperament must necessarily be present. I have never had any turn for rejection of the money power nor any attachment to it; one has to rise above these things as your Guru did but it is precisely when one has risen above that one can more easily command them.


Sri Aurobindo:   It depends on what is meant by asceticism. I have no desires but I don’t lead outwardly an ascetic life, only a secluded one.  According to the Gita,, the inner freedom from desire and attachment, is the true asceticism.  O rubbish!


Sri Aurobindo: I am austere and grand, grim and stern! every blasted thing that I never was! I groan in an unAurobindian despair when I hear such things. What has happened to the common sense of all of you people? In order to reach the Overmind it is not at all necessary to take leave of this simple but useful quality.


Sri Aurobindo: Common sense by the way is not logic (which is the least commonsense-like thing in the world), it is simply looking at things as they are without inﬂation or deﬂation — not imagining wild imaginations — or for that matter despairing “I know not why” despairs.    The mistake was an old obstinate suggestion returning so as to bring about the old reactions which have to be got over. It is your old error of the greatness and “grimness” of God, Supramental etc. which was used to bring back the wrong ideas and the gloom. All this talk about grimness and sternness is sheer rot — you will excuse me for the expression, but there is no other that is adequate.


Sri Aurobindo: The only truth about it is that I am not demonstrative or expansive in public — but I never was. Nevinson seeing me presiding at the Surat Nationalist Conference — which was not a joke and others were as serious as myself — spoke of me as that most politically dangerous of men — “the man who never smiles” which made people who knew me smile very much. You seem to have somewhere in you a Nevinson impression of me.  Or perhaps you agree with who wrote demanding of me why I smiled only with the lips and complained that it was not a satisfactory smile like the Mother’s. All the same, whatever I may have said to or may have said to you, I have always given a large place to mirth and laughter and my letters in that style are only the natural outﬂow of my personality.


Sri Aurobindo: I have never been “grim” in my life — that is the Stalin-Mussolini style, it is not mine; the only trait I share with the “grim” people is obstinacy in following out my aim in life, but I do it quietly and simply and have always done. Don’t set up some gloomy imaginations and take them for the real Aurobindo.  By the way, if you get such imaginations like the Nrisinha Hiranyakashipu one, I shall begin to think that the Overmind has got hold of you also. I don’t know the gentleman (Nrisinha) personally, but only by hearsay; if he was there I certainly did not recognise him. I always thought of him as a symbol — or perhaps a divinised Neanderthal man who sent for Hiranyakashipu (whoever H. was) and cut him open in the true Neanderthal way!


Sri Aurobindo: For myself I was sitting there very quiet and as paciﬁc as anybody at Geneva itself — more so in fact and receiving the stream of people with much inner amiability and, outwardly, a frequent “lip-smile” — so where the deuce was room for Nrisinha there?  Besides it seems to me that I have long overpassed the manbeast stage of evolution — perhaps I ﬂatter myself? — so again why Nrisinha. At the most there may have been some Power behind me guarding against the stream of “grim” difﬁculties — really grim these — which had been cropping up down to the Darshan eve. If so, it was not part of myself nor was I identiﬁed with it. So exit Nrisinha.


Sri Aurobindo:   I do not know that I can say anything in defence of my unlovable marbleness — which is also unintentional, for I feel nothing like marble within me. But obviously I can lay no claims to the expansive charm and grace and lovability of a Gandhi or Tagore.  For one thing I have never been able to establish a cheerful hail-fellow contact with the multitude, even when I was a public leader; I have been always reserved and silent except with the few with whom I was intimate or whom I could meet in private. But my reference to Nevinson and the Conference was only casual; I did not mean that I regard the Darshan as I would a political meeting or a public function.


Sri Aurobindo: But all the same it is not in the nature of a private interview; I feel it is an occasion on which I am less a social person than a receptacle of a certain Power receiving those who come to me. I receive the sadhaks (not or others) with a smile however unsatisfactory or invisible to you — but I suppose it becomes naturally a smile of the silence rather than a radiant substitute for cordial and bubbling laughter.   I am not Gandhi or Tagore.  All that I really wanted to say was that the inwardness and silence which you feel at the time of Darshan and dislike is not anything grim, stern, ferocious (Nrisinha) or even marble. It is absurd to describe it as such when there is nothing in me that has any correspondence with these epithets.


Sri Aurobindo: What is there is a great quietude, wideness, light and universal or all-containing oneness. To speak of these things as if they were grim, stern, ﬁerce and repellent or stiff and hard is to present not the fact of my nature but a caricature. I never heard before that peace was something grim, wideness repellent, light stern or ﬁerce or oneness hard and stiff like marble. People have come from outside and felt these things, but they have felt not repelled but attracted. Even those who went out giddy with the onrush of light or fainted like, had no other wish but to come back and they did not ﬂy away in terror.


Sri Aurobindo: Even casual visitors have sometimes felt a great peace and quiet in the atmosphere and wished that they could stay here. So even if the sadhaks feel only a terrifying grimness, I am entitled to suppose that my awareness of myself is not an isolated illusion of mine and to question whether grimness is my real character and a hard and cold greatness my fundamental nature.  I suppose people get a sense of calm and immobility from my appearance. But what is there terrifying in that? Up till now it used to be supposed that this was the usual Yogic poise and that it could soothe and tranquillise.


Sri Aurobindo: Am I to understand that I have turned it into something ﬁerce and Asuric which terriﬁes and is ﬁerce, grim and repellent? I ﬁnd it rather difﬁcult to believe.  Or is it that I live too much within and have too much that is unknown and incomprehensible? I have always lived within, and what else could be expected of me? There is something to be manifested and it is only within that it can be found — there is a world struggling to be born and it is only from within that one can ﬁnd and release it.


Sri Aurobindo:   All this insistence on grandeur and majesty makes me remember Shakespeare’s remarks — the greatness that is thrust on one. I am unaware, as of grimness, so of any stiff majesty or pompous grandeur — the state of peace, wideness, universality I feel is perfectly easy, simple, natural,, more like a robe of ease than any imperial purple. Between’s palpitating testimony to my grandeur and your melancholy testimony to my majesty — it appears I sit like the Himalayas and am as remote as the stratosphere — I begin to wonder whether it is so and how the devil I manage to do the trick. Unconscious hypnotism?


Sri Aurobindo: No, for I begin to feel not like the juggler but like the little boy who has to climb his rope and perch there in a perilous and uncomfortable elevation — and it seems to be rather a self-hypnotism by the spectators of the show. All the same it was a relief to ﬁnd someone writing of a beautiful and “loving” darshan and others who describe it in a similar tone. From which I conclude that the quality of the object lies in the eye of the seer — .  The Divine may be difﬁcult, but his difﬁculties can be overcome if one keeps at Him. Even my smilelessness was overcome which Nevinson had remarked with horror more than twenty years before — “the most dangerous man in India”, Aurobindo Ghose “the man who never smiles”.


Sri Aurobindo: He ought to have added, “but who always jokes”; but he did not know that, as I was very solemn with him, or perhaps I had not developed sufﬁciently on that side then. Anyhow if you could overcome that, you are bound to overcome all the other difﬁculties also.    This won’t do. It is a too exhilarating over-description.


Sri Aurobindo: It calls up to my mind a Falstaff or a Chesterton; it does not ﬁt in my style of hilarity. It is long since my laughter has been continuous and uncontrolled like that. For that to be true I shall have to wait till the Year 1, S.D. (Supramental Descent). And “rollicking”?  The epithet would have applied to my grandfather but not to his less explosive grandson.


Sri Aurobindo: Well, one can give good advice even when one does not follow it oneself — there is the old adage “Do what I preach and not what I practise.” More seriously, there are different personalities in oneself and the one that is eager to advise and help may be quite sincere. I remember in days long past when I still had personal struggles and difﬁculties, people came to me from outside for advice etc. when I was in black depression and could not see my way out of a sense of hopelessness and failure, yet nothing of that came out and I spoke with an assured conviction. Was that insincerity? I think not, the one who spoke in me was quite sure of what he spoke.


Sri Aurobindo: The turning of all oneself to the Divine is not an easy matter and one must not be discouraged if it takes time and other movements still intervene. One must note, rectify and go on .    What nonsense! Suicide!


Sri Aurobindo: Who the devil told you that? Even if I knew that all was going to collapse tomorrow, I would not think of suicide, but go on to do what I still could for the future.  It is not a question of liking but of capacity — though usually (not always) liking goes with the capacity. But capacity can be developed and liking can be developed or rather the you speak of. One cannot be said to be in the full Yogic condition — for the purposes of this Yoga — if one cannot take up with willingness any work given to one as an offering to the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: At one time I was absolutely unﬁt for any physical work and cared only for the mental, but I trained myself in doing physical things with care and perfection so as to overcome this glaring defect in my being and make the bodily instrument apt and conscious. It was the same with some others here. A nature not trained to accept external work and activity becomes mentally top-heavy — physically inert and obscure. It is only if one is disabled or too physically weak that physical work can be put aside altogether. I am speaking of course from the point of view of the ideal — the rest depends upon the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: As for the deity presiding over control of servants, godown work as well as over poetry or painting, it is always the same — the Shakti, the Mother.    Ambitions of that kind are too vague to succeed. You have to limit your ﬁelds and concentrate in order to succeed in them. I don’t make any attempt to be a scientist or painter or general.


Sri Aurobindo: I have certain things to do and have done them, so long as the Divine wanted; others have opened in me from above or within by Yoga. I have done as much of them as the Divine wanted.   All right about the sea-baths. As for lolling there is no how about it, — one just lolls, — if one has the genius for it.


Sri Aurobindo: I have, though opportunities are now lacking for showing my genius .  But it can’t be taught, nor any process invented — it is just a gift of Nature.  It is true that we bring most of ourselves from past lives. Heredity only affects the external being and all the effects of heredity are not accepted,


Sri Aurobindo: only those that are in consonance with what we are to be or not preventive of it at least. I may be the son of my father or mother in certain respects, but most of me is as foreign to them as if I had been born in New York or Paraguay.  As to the report, who is the reporter? and in what “Reincarnation Review” have these items been reported?


Sri Aurobindo: Good Heavens, all that! You have forgotten that Mrs. Besant claims Julius Caesar. I don’t want to be prosecuted by her for misappropriation of personality. Alexander was too much of a torrent for me; I disclaim Milton and Virgil, am unconscious of Dante and Valmiki, difﬁdent like about the Bard (and moneylender?) of Avon. If, however, you can bring sufﬁciently cogent evidence, I am ready to take upon my back the offences of all the famous people in the world or any of them; but you must prove your case.


Sri Aurobindo: Seriously, these historical identiﬁcations are a perilous game and open a hundred doors to the play of imagination. Some may, in the nature of things must be true; but once people begin, they don’t know where to stop. What is important is the lines, rather than the lives, the incarnation of Forces that explain what one now is — and, as for particular lives or rather personalities, those alone matter which are very deﬁnite in one and have powerfully contributed to what one is developing now. But it is not always possible to put a name upon these; for not one hundredthousandth part of what has been has still a name preserved by human Time.


Sri Aurobindo: Confucius? Lao-Tse? Mencius? Hang-whang-pu? (Don’t know who the last was, but his name sounds nice.)


Sri Aurobindo: Can’t remember anything about it. As for the Hungarian gypsy, I suppose we must have been everything at one time or another, on this earth in some other cycle. But I am not aware of any particularly Magyar or Chinese element in me. However, when I came here, I was told I looked just like a Tamil sannyasi and some Christians said I was just like Christ. So it may be.


Sri Aurobindo: More seriously, Brunton seems to have thought I was LaoTse. Maybe, I can’t say it is impossible.     Never heard before of my declaring or anybody declaring such a thing.


Sri Aurobindo: What Leonardo da Vinci held in himself was all the new age of Europe on its many sides. But there was no question of Avatarhood or consciousness of a descent or pressure of spiritual planes. Mysticism was no part of what he had to manifest.  Horoscope by whom? According to a famous Calcutta astrologer (I have forgotten his name) my biggest time comes much later, though the immediately ensuing period is also remarkable.


Sri Aurobindo: Like doctors, astrologers differ.    Pondicherry was born long ago — but if means the rebirth, it may be, for it was absolutely dead when I came. I don’t know that there is a horoscope of the Earth. There was nobody present to note the year, day, hour, minute when she came into existence.


Sri Aurobindo: But some astrologer could take the position of the stars at the moment when I got out of the boat and build up the terrestrial consequences upon that perhaps! Unfortunately he would probably get everything wrong, like the astrologer who predicted that I would leave Pondicherry in March 1936 and wander about India till 1948 and then disappear while bathing in a river among my disciples. I believe he predicted it on the strength of the Bhrigu Samhita — the old dodge; but I am not sure. Long ago I had a splendiferous Mussolinic-Napoleonic prediction of my future made to me on the strength of the same old mythological Bhrigu.


Sri Aurobindo:   Astrologers tell all sorts of things that don’t come true. According to one I was to have died last year, according to another I was to have gone out from Pondicherry in March or May last year and wandered about India with my disciples till I disappeared in a river (on a ferry). Even if the prediction were a correct one according to the horoscope it need not fulﬁl itself, because by entering the spiritual life one opens to a new force which can change one’s destiny.


Sri Aurobindo: It is no doubt possible to draw the illnesses of others upon oneself and even to do it deliberately, the instance of the Greek king Antigonus and his son Dimitrius is a famous historical case in point: Yogis also do this sometimes; or else adverse forces may throw illnesses upon the Yogi, using those round him as a door or a passage or the ill wishes of people as an instrumental force.  But all these are special circumstances connected, no doubt, with his practice of Yoga; but they do not establish the general proposition as an absolute rule. A tendency such as’s to desire or welcome or accept death as a release could have a force because of her advanced spiritual consciousness which it would not have in ordinary people. On the other side there can be an opposite use and result of the Yogic consciousness: illness can be repelled from one’s own body or cured, even chronic or deep-seated illnesses and long-established constitutional defects remedied or expelled and even a predestined death delayed for a long period. Narayan Jyotishi, a Calcutta astrologer, who predicted, not knowing then who I was, in the days before my name was politically known, my struggle with Mlechchha enemies and afterwards the three cases against me and my three acquittals, predicted also that though death was preﬁxed for me in my horoscope at the age of 63, I would prolong my life by Yogic power for a very long period and arrive at a full old age.


Sri Aurobindo: In fact I have got rid by Yogic pressure of a number of chronic maladies that had got settled in my body, reduced others to a vanishing minimum, brought about steadily progressing diminution of two that remained and on the last produced a considerable effect. But none of these instances either on the favourable or unfavourable side can be made into a rule; there is no validity in the tendency of human reason to transform the relativity of these things into an absolute.  I can’t say anything about the horoscope, as I have forgotten the little astrology I knew.  It came not by “training”, but by the spontaneous opening and widening and perfecting of the consciousness in the sadhana.  Only by cultivating a special siddhi, which would be much too bothersome to go after.


Sri Aurobindo: But I suppose if I had got the Yogic knowledge (in your hypothetical case) it should be quite easy to add the outer one.    Plod about what? For some things I had to plod — other things came in a moment or in two or three days like Nirvana or the power to appreciate painting. The “latent” philosopher failed to come out at the ﬁrst shot (when I was in Calcutta) — after some years of incubation (?) it burst out like a volcano as soon as I started writing the.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no damned single rule for these things. Valmiki’s poetic faculty might open suddenly like a champagne bottle, but it does not follow that everybody’s will do like that.  If I write about these questions from the Yogic point of view, even though on a logical basis, there is bound to be much that is in conﬂict with your own settled and perhaps cherished opinions, e.g. about “miracles”, persons, the limits of judgment by sense data etc. I have avoided as much as possible writing about these subjects because I would have to propound things that cannot be understood except by reference to other data than those of the physical senses or of reason founded on these alone. I might have to speak of laws and forces not recognised by physical reason or science.


Sri Aurobindo: In my public writings and my writings to sadhaks I have not dwelt on these because they go out of the range of ordinary knowledge and the understanding founded on it. These things are known to some, but they do not usually speak about it, while the public view of such of them as are known is either credulous or incredulous, but in both cases without experience or knowledge. So if the views founded on them are likely to upset, shock or bewilder, the better way is silence.  I do not mind if you ﬁnd inconsistencies in my statements. What people call consistency is usually a rigid or narrow-minded inability to see more than one side of the truth or more than their own narrow personal view or experience of things.


Sri Aurobindo: Truth has many aspects and unless you look on all with a calm and equal eye, you will never have the real or the integral knowledge.    Well, there seems evidently to be a confusion in his ideas about my philosophy, — though what has been responsible for creating it? — well, it is perhaps the goodness of his thinking! I fear the pleasure and honour of having a quarter of an hour’s talk with the Yogi Kishorlal is too high a thing for me to wish to attain to it in this life. I must try to obtain ﬁrst and strive to be born again in order to deserve it.


Sri Aurobindo:   I am afraid it would be a rather too colossal affair. But why ethics? I don’t think that there is any ethics; because ethics depends upon ﬁxed principles and rules of conduct, whereas here any such thing can only be for sadhana purposes as conditions for getting the spiritual or higher consciousness and afterwards everything is freely determined by that consciousness and its movements and dictates.


Sri Aurobindo: There is very little argument in my philosophy — the elaborate metaphysical reasoning full of abstract words with which the metaphysician tries to establish his conclusions is not there.  What is there is a harmonising of the different parts of a manysided knowledge so that all unites logically together. But it is not by force of logical argument that it is done, but by a clear vision of the relations and sequences of the knowledge.   If I allow the to publish something yet unpublished by me, I lose my defence against demands from outside which is that I have ceased to contribute to magazines, newspapers  and have made it indeed a rule not to do so.


Sri Aurobindo: Therefore —   I am afraid is asking from me a thing psychologically impossible. You know that I have forbidden myself to write anything for publication for some time past and some time to come — I am self-debarred from press, platform and public. Even if it were otherwise, it would be impossible under present circumstances to write at a week’s notice.


Sri Aurobindo: You will present him my excuses in your best and most tactful manner.    The answer to Woolf was written long ago at the time Woolf’s article appeared in the — a London weekly. It was who drew my notice to it and asked for an answer. this time wanted something of mine for the August 15th number and chose this one.


Sri Aurobindo:   I have not begun writing in the papers — what is being published in the magazines is excerpts from the unpublished things in the or translations such as is making. So I cannot give anything.  As for past writings, I never take the initiative for publication in papers., or sometimes ask for leave to publish this or that somewhere where it is asked for and I consent — that is all.


Sri Aurobindo:   The initiative is always and I do not send anything myself or intervene in his action, but he takes the sanction from me.  All that you need to write to Delhi is that Sri Aurobindo is not writing articles for the papers; the things that appear from time to time are old writings of his not yet published in book form and sent to the papers at their request with his sanction. He is not writing any new things nowadays, as his time is entirely occupied with his work.


Sri Aurobindo: This is simply to prevent demands on me for new contributions which I cannot satisfy.    As to the Foreword, I had made a strict rule not to publish anything of the kind or anything except the books from the  and letters, so as to avoid any call on me from anyone. I don’t know if I can break this rule now. In any case I shall have to read and consider, and I have now no time for anything but the correspondence and the work of concentration that is necessary — the pressure is too great for reading anything.


Sri Aurobindo: So they should not depend on me for this Foreword.    must not expect the rather portentous article or essay he demands from me. You know I have made it a rule not to make any public pronouncement; the Cripps affair was an exception that remains solitary; for the other things on the war were private letters, not written for publication. I do not propose to change the rule in order to set forth a programme for the Supermind energy to act on if and when it comes down now or ﬁfteen years after. Great Powers do not publish beforehand, least of all in a journalistic compilation, their war-plans or even their peaceplans; the Supermind is the greatest of all Powers and we can leave it to its own secrecy until the moment of its action.


Sri Aurobindo:  I have been trying to get you informed without success about the impossibility of your getting your expected Message from me for the 15th August. I had and have no intention of writing a Message for my birthday this year. It is psychologically impossible for me to manufacture one to command; an inspiration would have to come and it is highly improbable that any will come in this short space of time; I myself have no impulse towards it. But how is it that you have clean forgotten my rule of not writing any article for an outside paper, magazine or journal — I mean other than those conducted from the Asram and by the Asram — and even for these I write nothing new except for the  at the Mother’s request, — also my reasons for this ﬁxed rule? If I started doing that kind of thing, my freedom would be gone; I would have to write at everybody’s command, not only articles but blessings, replies on public questions and all the rest of that kind of conventional rubbish.


Sri Aurobindo: I would be like any ordinary politician publishing my views on all and sundry matters, discoursing on all sorts of subjects, a public man at the disposal of the public. That would make myself, my blessings, my views and my Messages exceedingly cheap; in fact, I would be no longer Sri Aurobindo. Already, the  and I know not what other journals and societies are demanding at the pistol’s point special messages for the 15th for themselves and I am supposed to stand and deliver. I won’t. I regret that I must disappoint you, but self-preservation is a ﬁrst law of Nature.


Sri Aurobindo: Look here! Do these people expect me to turn myself again into a machine for producing articles? The times of the  and are over, thank God! I have now only the Asram correspondence and that is “overwhelming” enough in all conscience without starting philosophy for standard books and the rest of it.  And philosophy!


Sri Aurobindo: Let me tell you in conﬁdence that I never, never, never was a philosopher — although I have written philosophy which is another story altogether. I knew precious little about philosophy before I did the Yoga and came to Pondicherry — I was a poet and a politician, not a philosopher! How I managed to do it? First, because Richard proposed to me to cooperate in a philosophical review — and as my theory was that a Yogi ought to be able to turn his hand to anything, I could not very well refuse: and then he had to go to the War and left me in the lurch with 64 pages a month of philosophy all to write by my lonely self. Secondly, I had only to write down in the terms of the intellect all that I had observed and come to know in practising Yoga daily and the philosophy was there, automatically.


Sri Aurobindo: But that is not being a philosopher!  I don’t know how to excuse myself to Radhakrishnan — for I can’t say all that to him. Perhaps you can ﬁnd a formula for me? Perhaps — “so occupied not a moment for any other work; can’t undertake because I might not be able to carry out my promise”. What do you say?


Sri Aurobindo:   No, I think not.    As to Radhakrishnan, I don’t care whether he is right or wrong in his eagerness to get the blessed contribution from me.


Sri Aurobindo: But the ﬁrst fact is that it is quite impossible for me to write philosophy to order. If something comes to me of itself, I can write, if I have time. But I have not time. I had some thought of writing to Adhar Das pointing out that he was mistaken in his criticism of my ideas about consciousness and intuition and developing brieﬂy what were my real views about these things. But I have never been able to do it — I might as well think of putting the moon under my arm, Hanuman-like, — though in his case it was the sun — and going for a walk!


Sri Aurobindo: The moon is not available and the walk is not possible. It would be the same if I promised anything to Radhakrishnan — it would not get done, and that would be much worse than a refusal.  And the second fact is that I do not care a button about my having my name in any blessed place. I was never ardent about fame even in my political days; I preferred to remain behind the curtain, push people without their knowing it and get things done. It was the confounded British Government that spoiled my game by prosecuting me and forcing me to be publicly known and a “leader”.


Sri Aurobindo: Then again I don’t believe in advertisement except for books etc., and in propaganda except for politics and patent medicines. But for serious work it is a poison. It means either a stunt or a boom — and stunts and booms exhaust the thing they carry on their crest and leave it lifeless and broken high and dry on the shores of nowhere — or it means a movement. A movement in the case of a work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some other damned nonsense. It means that hundreds or thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to a pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy and silence.


Sri Aurobindo: It is what has happened to the “religions” and is the reason of their failure. If I tolerate a little writing about myself, it is only to have a sufﬁcient counterweight in that amorphous chaos, the public mind, to balance the hostility that is always aroused by the presence of a new dynamic Truth in this world of ignorance.  But the utility ends there and too much advertisement would defeat that object. I am perfectly “rational”, I assure you, in my methods and I do not proceed merely on any personal dislike of fame. If and so far as publicity serves the Truth, I am quite ready to tolerate it; but I do not ﬁnd publicity for its own sake desirable.


Sri Aurobindo: This “Contemporary Philosophy”, British or Indian, looks to me very much like bookmaking and, though the “vulgarisation” of knowledge — to use the French term — by bookmaking may have its use, I prefer to do solid work and leave that to others. You may say that I can write a solid thing in philosophy and let it be bookmade. But even the solid tends to look shoddy in such surroundings. And besides my solid work at present is not philosophy but something less wordy and more to the point. If that work gets done, then it will propagate itself so far as propagation is necessary — if it were not to get done, propagation would be useless.


Sri Aurobindo: These are my reasons. However let us wait till the book is there and see what kind of stuff it is.  I don’t think it is worth while doing anything. The thefts are obvious, but if he wants to add some peacock plumes to his dun colours!


Sri Aurobindo: No. I have said no public notice should be taken of the matter.  I consider it inadvisable, so the letters should not be sent.    From the Yogic point of view one ought to be indifferent and without sense of ownership or desire of fame or praise.


Sri Aurobindo: But for that one must have arrived at the Yogic poise — such a detachment is not possible without it. I do not mind Radhakrishnan’s lifting whole sentences and paragraphs from my writings at the World Conference as his own and getting credit for a new and quite original point of view.  But if I were eager to ﬁgure before the world as a philosopher, I would resent it. But even if one does not mind, one can see the impropriety of the action or take measures against its repetition, if one thinks it worth while.  The question of the royalty can be deferred till has seen the translation.


Sri Aurobindo: If it is not approved, the question of royalty does not arise. You can tell him that the Asram is not supported by public subscriptions but by what is given by disciples and private sympathisers. Therefore Sri Aurobindo’s publications cannot be given free, they are sold and the proceeds counted among the available resources just as is the case with the publications of the Ramakrishna Mission.  There is no intention of withdrawing support. The small book  was given to Rameshwar because it was necessary to bring it out without delay and the A.P.H. [ ] was already occupied with the which it had not been able to bring to completion.


Sri Aurobindo: It was hoped that Rameshwar’s joining the A.P.H. would unite all interests, but since you have not been able to agree together, it will be necessary to give him something from time to time as the long-standing connection with him cannot be broken — there being no reason for giving him up any more than for giving up A.P.H. This will not stand in the way of my giving my principal books to A.P.H. — provided always that the A.P.H. can keep its side of the arrangement by publishing them properly and without inordinate delay.  I can understand that there have been ﬁnancial and other difﬁculties in putting A.P.H. on a sound footing and I have not insisted either on publication or money or anything else. At the same time I am bound to say that the methods of work seem to be loose and haphazard, e.g. the enormous time taken to publish the Second Series [ Essays on the Gita], the endless delay in sending me my copies of the First Series, the absence of all information regarding the condition of the concern or of any regular accounts of my dues from the House etc. I hope that things will be better in the future.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not necessary or possible to publish all my books together; hardly any of them can go out without revision and as I have very little time for this kind of work revision will take time.  . I was revising, but as there seemed to be no progress with the and I had other work to do, I dropped it. I will now complete the revision and I expect it will not take more than another two months.  .


Sri Aurobindo: Not ﬁnished. I will look through it and revise and add two or three chapters to ﬁnish.  The time taken will depend on the amount of revision necessary — probably not very extensive alterations are needed.  . This also needs revision before it can be published; but it is not likely to take very long.


Sri Aurobindo: . My present intention is not to publish it as it stands. This must be postponed for the present.  It would be no use coming to see me, as I am seeing nobody, not even those who are living here. Nor is there any necessity for the journey, as I have not any present intention of altering the existing arrangement.


Sri Aurobindo: Refer him to A.P.H. Tell him that my political writings appeared in the daily and the weekly and have for the most part not been separately published.  You can mention however, ,,  as books that may be useful for his subject, as the two former are partly concerned with or touch upon Indian politics, and the two latter are written upon international questions. I do not remember any others; if there are any, they may be included in the list. Ask A.P.H. to send him a complete list of my published works.


Sri Aurobindo: Now that they have written, I remember that in fact the were transferred from the Prabartak to A.P.H. But then how is it that Rameshwar asked for it? I gave permission under the impression that it must be in his share of the already published books. You had better write to him about it. After receiving his answer I will decide.


Sri Aurobindo:   I ﬁnd it impossible to decide about the; the whole matter has got twisted up in a very undesirable way. It would be better if they settle it themselves amicably; otherwise I shall have to promise it to whoever can bring it out soonest or in the best style or put it up to auction or toss heads or tails. This whole matter of the publications being split up between half a dozen Arya Aurobindo houses is reaching the point of a  if not.


Sri Aurobindo: But nothing however absurd seems impossible here.    But who will decide what may come under the Press Act? It is a legal point and the law of sedition is exceedingly elastic.  Yes, I have seen it, but I don’t think it can be published in its present form as it prolongs the political Aurobindo of that time into the Sri Aurobindo of the present time.


Sri Aurobindo: You even assert that I have “thoroughly” revised the book and these articles are an index of my latest views on the burning problems of the day and there has been no change in my views in 27 years (which would surely be proof of a rather unprogressive mind). How do you get all that? My spiritual consciousness and knowledge at that time was as nothing to what it is now — how would the change leave my view of politics and life unmodiﬁed altogether? There has been no such thorough revision; I have left the book as it was, because it would be useless to modify what was written so long ago — the same as with. Anyway the review would almost amount to a proclamation of my present political views — while on the contrary I have been careful to pronounce nothing — no views whatever on political questions for the last I don’t know how many years.


Sri Aurobindo:   Evidently it is an untrue statement and cannot be allowed to continue as it creates a false impression. But I think it will be necessary for me to write myself — otherwise he may not listen.  Or you may write that I have asked you to inform him that I want this to be discontinued in future editions as it creates a wrong impression — since in fact these are reprints and I have not revised or rewritten any part of them.  I readily give the permission you request to embody my  as a chapter in the book projected by your Institute.


Sri Aurobindo: I have no time to go again through it, but I am asking my publishers, the Arya Publishing House of Calcutta, to send you a copy of the corrected and authorised edition. The Madras edition is unauthorised and full of gross errors. The book is only a series of preliminary essays never worked out or completed, but I shall be glad if, even as it is, you think it can be of some use.  The Yogi from the North (Uttara Yogi) was my own name given to me because of a prediction made long ago by a famous Tamil Yogi, that thirty years later (agreeing with the time of my arrival) a Yogi from the North would come as a fugitive to the South and practise there an integral Yoga (Poorna Yoga), and this would be one sign of the approaching liberty of India. He gave three utterances as the mark by which this Yogi could be recognised and all these were found in the letters to my wife.


Sri Aurobindo: As for it was not I exactly who wrote it, though it is true that I am not a Mayavadin.    No need of name. The publication of the name in the third edition of was unauthorised and is in fact a falsehood.


Sri Aurobindo:  As to, it is composition nor its contents the essence of my Yoga, whatever the publishers may persist in saying in their lying blurb in spite of my protests.     The has its use, but it is not one of the main or most important books published among mine, nor is it my own writing.  I don’t remember the passage.


Sri Aurobindo: Possibly it means that till you can act on the real nature in you and use the true will and consciousness, you should go on trying for that, and not try to shape life with an imperfect will and imperfect instrument.    Answer as under.   The is not Sri Aurobindo’s writing — only communicated to him.


Sri Aurobindo: The statement of the publishers that it contains the essence of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga is an error propagated by them against his own protest. He cannot therefore say what particular milestones were meant. It is true as a general rule, but can be partly cancelled by a concentrated movement.   Necessarily.


Sri Aurobindo: They are powers, forces or beings of the mental, vital or subtle physical worlds. There are some that simply want to utilise, there are others that want to possess, oppose or destroy and are known by us as “the hostile forces”.   He means “when he becomes identiﬁed with the Divine”, or “when he feels himself to be only a portion of the Divine and thinks and acts as such.”


Sri Aurobindo: The terms Manas etc. belong to the ordinary psychology applied to the surface consciousness. In our Yoga we adopt a different classiﬁcation based on the Yoga experience. What answers to this movement of the Manas there would be two separate things — a part of the physical mind communicating with the physical vital. It receives from the physical senses and transmits to the Buddhi — i.e. to some part or other of the Thought-Mind; it receives back from the Buddhi and transmits idea and will to the organs of sensation and action. All that is indispensable in the ordinary action of the consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: But in the ordinary consciousness everything gets mixed up together and there is no clear order or rule. In the Yoga one becomes aware of the different parts and their proper action, and puts each in its place and to its proper action under the control of the higher consciousness or else under the control of the Divine Power.  Afterwards all gets surcharged with the spiritual consciousness and there is an automatic right perception and right action of the different parts because they are controlled entirely from above and do not falsify or resist or confuse its dictates.   The real conceptual activity belongs rather to the Buddhi — that of the Manas is simply a rendering of perceptions and impressions into thought-forms. There is no necessity of specially stilling this function — it comes best with a general stillness of the mind.


Sri Aurobindo:   I don’t remember the context; but I suppose he means that when one has to escape from the lower Dharma, one has often to break it so as to arrive at a larger one. E.g. social duties, paying debts, looking after family, helping to serve your country, etc. etc. The man who turns to the spiritual life, has to leave all that behind him often and he is reproached by lots of people for his Adharma. But if he does not do this Adharma, he is bound for ever to the lower life — for there is always some duty there to be done — and cannot take up the spiritual dharma or can do it only when he is old and his faculties impaired.


Sri Aurobindo: That is a point in instance.    How is it you do not know these elementary things? Man has not a gross () visible body only, but a subtle body ( ) in which he goes out of the at his death.  The navel is the vital center in the physical body — but the native seat of the vital is in the vital sheath of the subtle body, which sheath it pervades, but for action through the gross body its action is centred at the navel and below it.


Sri Aurobindo: Sri Aurobindo is the author of. It must be by an error of the printers that his name has been omitted.  But the book represents an early stage of Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana and only a part of it is applicable to the Yoga as it has at present taken form after a lapse of more than twenty years.  The is not Sri Aurobindo’s own writing, but was published with a note by him, — that is all. The statement made to the contrary by the publishers was an error which they have been asked to correct.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no necessity of following the methods suggested in that book unless one ﬁnds them suggestive or helpful as a preliminary orientation of the consciousness — e.g. in the upbuilding of an inner Will etc.  A book giving some hints about the Yoga compiled from letters to the sadhaks is about to be published, but it cannot be said to be complete. There is no complete book on the subject; for even, published in the but not yet republished in book form, gives only the theory of different components of the Yoga (Knowledge, Works, Devotion) and remains besides unﬁnished; it does not cover the more recent developments of the Yoga.   is not at all suitable for the purpose as it was written very long ago and expresses things that belong to the early stages of my sadhana, not the fullness of the integral and supramental sadhana.  It is not meant that He gives always whatever anyone demands — but that what they demand is all He gives — they cannot get anything else.


Sri Aurobindo:  The passage in is written from the point of view of the spiritualised Mind approaching the supreme Truth directly, without passing through the Supermind or disappearing into it. The Mind spiritualises itself by shedding all its own activities and formations and reducing everything to a pure Existence, Sad Atman, from which all things and activities proceed and which supports everything. When it wants to go still beyond, it negates yet farther and arrives at an Asat, which is the negation of all this existence and yet Something inconceivable to mind, speech or deﬁning experience. It is the silent Unknowable, the Turiya or featureless and relationless Absolute of the monistic Vedantins, the Sunyam of the nihilistic Buddhists, the Tao or omnipresent and transcendent Nihil of the Chinese, the indeﬁnable and ineffable Permanent of the Mahayana. Many Christian mystics also speak of the necessity of a complete ignorance in order to get the supreme experience and speak too of the Divine Darkness — they mean the shedding of all mental knowledge, making a blank of the mind and engulﬁng it in the Unmanifest, — the.


Sri Aurobindo: All this is the mind’s way of approaching the Supreme — for beyond the,, is the Supreme, the Purushottama of the Gita, the Para Purusha of the Upanishads. It is in contrast to the darkness of the Unmanifest; it is a metaphor, but not a mere metaphor, for it is a symbol also, a symbol visually seen by the, the subtle vision, and not merely a symbol, but, as one might say, a fact of spiritual experience. The sun in the Yoga is the symbol of the supermind and the supermind is the ﬁrst power of the Supreme which one meets across the border where the experience of spiritualised mind ceases and the unmodiﬁed divine Consciousness begins the domain of the supreme nature, . It is that Light of which the Vedic mystics got a glimpse and it is the opposite of the intervening darkness of the Christian mystics — for the supermind is all light and no darkness. To the mind the Supreme is, but if we follow the line leading to the supermind, it is an increasing afﬁrmation rather than an increasing negation through which we move.


Sri Aurobindo: Light is always seen in Yoga with the inner eye and even with the outer eye, but there are many lights; all are not and all do not come from the.    There is no need to put “the” before “quality” — in English that would alter the sense. Matter is not regarded in this passage as a quality of being perceived by sense; I don’t think that would have any meaning. It is regarded as a result of a certain power and action of consciousness which presents forms of itself to sense perception and it is this quality of sense-perceivedness, so to speak, that gives them the appearance of Matter, i.e. of a certain kind of substantiality inherent in themselves — but in fact they are not self-existent substantial objects but forms of consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: The point is that there is no such thing as the self-existent Matter posited by nineteenth-century Science.  Chitta is ordinarily used for the mental consciousness in general, thought, feeling, etc. taken together with a stress now on one side or another, sometimes on the feelings as in, sometimes on the thought-mind — that is why I translated it [ ] “heart and mind” in its wider sense. Chetas can be used in the same way, but it has a different shade of sense, properly speaking, and can include also the movements of the soul, covering the whole consciousness even; [ ]


Sri Aurobindo: I take it in its most general sense. The translation is not meant to be literal but to render the thought in the line in its fullness.  practically amounts to what in English we would describe as a spiritual consciousness.  It is a ﬁgure meaning to comprehend in our consciousness with love and Ananda.  Nature here means the parts of Prakriti in the human being: as it is the condition of the Prakriti that changes with shifting of the gunas and it is this condition of the Prakriti that will become illumined by the transformation of into.


Sri Aurobindo: No. It is in a more general sense the maintenance of the world order which may be a developing, not necessarily a stationary one, an order spiritual, moral etc. and not merely a social order.  The sentence is rather loose in expression. It does not mean that Maya is Brahman’s freedom, but “the doctrine of Maya simply comes to this that Brahman is free from the circumstances through which he expresses himself.”


Sri Aurobindo: This limited play is not He, for He is illimitable; it is only a conditioned (partial) manifestation, but He is not bound by the conditions (circumstances) as the play is bound. The world is a ﬁgure of something of Himself which he has put forth into it, but He is more than that ﬁgure.  The world is not unreal or illusory, but our present seeing or consciousness of it is ignorant, and therefore the world  can be described as an illusion. So far the Maya idea is true.  But if we see the world as it really is, a partial and developing manifestation of Brahman, then it can no longer be described as an illusion, but rather as a Lila.


Sri Aurobindo: He is still more than his Lila, but He is in it and it is in Him; it is not an illusion.  The is a work of spiritual philosophy founded on personal realisation; it is obviously not meant for minds that do not think out spiritual things in all their aspects.   For understanding one must have a sufﬁciently trained and developed intellect or else a basis of experience along with a capacity of mentalising experience. as yet has neither. It is sufﬁcient if he can get accustomed to forming general ideas and thinking coherently about them.


Sri Aurobindo:   To answer these questions it would be necessary to write a volume. I have written some letters about the psychic being and the self — you can get hold of those and read them.  Supramental nature can only be understood if one understands what supermind is and that is not altogether possible for mind so long as it does not open into the higher planes. So far as a mental account can be given, I have done it in the.


Sri Aurobindo: Divine Nature is the nature of the divine Consciousness, Truth, Peace, Light, Purity, Knowledge, Power, Ananda on whichever plane it manifests. Supermind is one plane of the Divine Nature. The Divine is Sachchidananda.    I do not ﬁnd it easy to answer the few brief and casual sentences in Angus’ letter, — precisely because they are so brief and casual.


Sri Aurobindo: Not knowing him or the turns of his mind, I do not exactly seize what is behind this passage in his letter. It would be easier to reply if I had some notion of the kind of thought or experience on which he takes his stand when he dismisses so cavalierly the statement of spiritual truth put forward in the . As it is, I am obliged to answer to what be behind his sentences and, as there is much that possibly stands behind them, the reply becomes long and elaborate and is in danger of seeming long and discursive. I could of course answer easily myself by a few brief and trenchant sentences of the same calibre, but in that kind of discussion there is no proﬁt.


Sri Aurobindo: Let me say that he makes an initial mistake — quite natural for him, since he has not read the, — when he describes the extract sent to him as a “theological fragment”. I must insist that there is no theology in the. Nothing there is written to support or to develop any kind of religious belief or dogma or to conﬁrm or enunciate the credo of any old or new religion.  No less does he miss the mark when he describes as a scholastic distinction the substance of the passage.


Sri Aurobindo: The teaching there is not taken from books, nor, although put in philosophic language, is it based upon abstract thought or any formal logic. It expresses a fundamental spiritual experience, dynamic for the growth of the being, conﬁrmed and enlarged and ﬁlled with detail by almost thirty years of continuous sadhana, and, as such, it cannot be seriously challenged or invalidated by mere intellectual question or reasoning, but, if at all, then only by a greater and wider spiritual experience. Moreover, it coincides (not in expression, it may be, but in substance) with the experience of hundreds of spiritual seekers in many paths and in all parts of the world since the days of the Upanishads — and of Plotinus and the Gnostics and Suﬁs — to the present time. It is hardly admissible then to put it aside as the thought of a tyro or beginner in spiritual knowledge making his ﬁrst clumsy potshots at a solution of the crossword enigma of the universe. That description seems to show that he has missed the point of the passage altogether and that also makes it difﬁcult to reply; for where there is no meeting point of minds, discussion is likely to be sterile.


Sri Aurobindo: I was a little surprised at ﬁrst by this entire lack of understanding, shown still more in his cavil at the two Divines — for I had somehow got the impression that Angus was a Christian and the recognition of “two Divines” — the Divine Transcendent and the Divine Immanent — is, I have read, perfectly familiar to Christian ideas and to Christian experience. The words themselves in fact — transcendent and cosmic — are taken from the West. I do not know that there is anything exactly corresponding to them in the language of Indian spiritual thinking, although the experiences on which the distinction rests are quite familiar. On another side, Christianity insists not only on a double but a triple Divine. It even strikes me that this triple Godhead or Trinity is not very far off at bottom from my trinity of the individual, cosmic and transcendent Divine — as far at least as one can judge who has not himself followed the Christian discipline.


Sri Aurobindo: Christ whether as the human Incarnation or the Christos in men or the Godhead proceeding from the Father, seems to me to be quite my individual Divine. The Father has very much the appearance of the One who overstands and is immanent in the cosmos. And although this is more obscure, yet if one can be guided by the indications in the Scripture, the Holy Ghost looks very much like a rather mysterious and inexpressible Transcendence and its descent very much like what I would call the descent of Light, Purity, Peace — that passeth all understanding — or Power of the supramental Spirit. In any case these Christian and Western ideas show surely that my afﬁrmation of a double or a triple Divine is not anything new and ought not to be found startling or upsetting and I do not see why it should be treated as (in itself) obscure and unintelligible.  Again, are these or similar distinctions very positively made in the Christian, Suﬁ or other teachings mere theoretical abstractions, scholastic distinctions, theological cobwebs, or metaphysical puzzles?


Sri Aurobindo: I had always supposed that they corresponded to very living, very dynamic, almost — for the paths to which they relate — indispensable experiences. No doubt, for those who follow other ways or no way at all or for those who have not yet had the illuminating and vivifying experience, they may seem at ﬁrst a little difﬁcult or unseizable. But that is true of most spiritual truth — and not of spiritual truth alone. There are many very highly intelligent and cultured people to whom a scientiﬁc explanation of even so patent and common a fact as electricity and electric light (this is a reminiscence of an article by Y. Y. in the) seems equally difﬁcult to seize by the mind or to ﬁx either in the memory or the intelligence.  And yet the distinction between positive and negative electricity, both necessary for the existence of the light, — like that of the passive and active Brahman (another scholastic distinction?) both necessary for the existence of the universe, — cannot be dismissed for that reason as something academic or scholastic, but is a very pertinent statement of things quite dynamic and real.


Sri Aurobindo: No doubt the unscientiﬁc man does not and perhaps need not trouble about these things and can be content to enjoy the electric light (when he is allowed to do so by the grace of the Pondicherry Municipality), without enquiring into the play of the forces behind it: but for the seeker after scientiﬁc truth or for the practical electrician it is a different matter. Now these distinctions in the spiritual ﬁeld are a parallel case; they seem theoretical or abstract only so long as experience has not made them concrete, but once experienced they become living stuff of the consciousness and, after a certain stage, even the basis of action and growth in the spiritual life.  Here I am driven to a rather lengthy digression from the main theme — for I am met by Angus’ rather bafﬂing appeal to Whitham’s History of Science. What has Whitham or Science to do with spiritual truth or spiritual experience? I can only suppose that he condemns all intrusion of anything like metaphysical thought into the spiritual ﬁeld — a position excessive but not altogether untenable — and even perhaps proposes to bring the scientiﬁc method and the scientiﬁc mentality into spiritual experience as the sole true way of arriving at or judging the truth of things.


Sri Aurobindo: I should like to make my view clear as to that point, because here much confusion has been created about it, and more is possible. And the ﬁrst thing I would say is that if metaphysics has no right to intervene in spiritual experience, neither has Science. There are here three different domains of knowledge and experience each with its own instrumentation, its own way of approach and seeing, suited for its own task, but not to be imposed or substituted in these other ﬁelds of knowledge, — at least unless and until they meet by some kind of supreme reconciling transmutation in something that is at the source of all knowledge. For knowledge may be essentially one, but like the one Divine, it manifests differently in different ﬁelds of its play and to abolish their distinctions is not the way to arrive at true understanding of experience.  Science deals effectively with phenomenon and process and the apparent play of forces which determine the process.


Sri Aurobindo: It cannot deal even intellectually in any adequate way with ultimate truths, that is the province of the higher, less external mind — represented up till now by metaphysics, though metaphysics is not its only possible power. If Science tries to ﬁx metaphysical truth by forcing on this domain its own generalisations in the physical ﬁeld, as people have been doing for almost the last century, it makes a mess of thought by illegitimately extended conclusions and has in the end to retire from this usurpation as it is now beginning to retire. Its discoveries may be used by philosophy, but on the grounds proper to philosophy and not on the grounds proper to Science. The philosopher must judge the scientiﬁc conceptions of relativity or discontinuity or space-time, for instance, by his own processes and standards of evidence. So too, Science has no instrumentation or process of knowledge which can enable it to discover spiritual truth or to judge or determine the results of spiritual experience.


Sri Aurobindo: There is a ﬁeld of knowledge of process in the spiritual and the occult domain, in the discovery of a world of inner forces and their way of action and even of their objective dynamisation in the mind and life and the functioning of the body. But the mathematical exactitudes and rigid formulas of physical Science do not apply here and the mentality created by them would hamper spiritual experience.  There is possible a realistic as well as an illusionist Adwaita.  The philosophy of is such a realistic Adwaita.  The world is a manifestation of the Real and therefore is itself real.


Sri Aurobindo: The reality is the inﬁnite and eternal Divine, inﬁnite and eternal Being, Consciousness-Force and Bliss. This Divine by his power has created the world or rather manifested it in his own inﬁnite Being. But here in the material world or at its basis he has hidden himself in what seem to be his opposites, Non-Being, Inconscience and Insentience. This is what we nowadays call the Inconscient which seems to have created the material universe by its inconscient Energy; but this is only an appearance, for we ﬁnd in the end that all the dispositions of the world can only have been arranged by the working of a supreme secret intelligence.  The Being which is hidden in what seems to be an inconscient void emerges in the world ﬁrst in Matter, then in Life, then in Mind and ﬁnally as the Spirit.


Sri Aurobindo: The apparently inconscient Energy which creates is in fact the Consciousness-Force of the Divine and its aspect of consciousness, secret in Matter, begins to emerge in Life, ﬁnds something more of itself in Mind and ﬁnds its true self in a spiritual consciousness and ﬁnally a supramental consciousness through which we become aware of the Reality, enter into it and unite ourselves with it. This is what we call evolution which is an evolution of consciousness and an evolution of the Spirit in things and only outwardly an evolution of species. Thus also, the delight of existence emerges from the original insentience ﬁrst in the contrary forms of pleasure and pain and then has to ﬁnd itself in the bliss of the Spirit or as it is called in the Upanishads, the bliss of the Brahman. That is the central idea in the explanation of the universe put forward in .  The phrase “extra-cosmic Divinity” is used here in  because in that stage of the reasoning nothing more emerged as positively established.


Sri Aurobindo: In fact Sri Aurobindo regards the Divinity, the Reality behind and in the universe as at once supracosmic or transcendent of cosmos and immanent in it, and all, constituting the universe by its being, consciousness and force and by that too bringing out from the Inconscient the evolution and developing its stages inevitably according to a truth in things which is its element of Necessity and the possibilities of the Consciousness and Force (seen by the human mind as Chance) through which the truth works itself out.   is being revised and largely rewritten for publication; so I don’t think it is possible to send out copies of it like this. For the time the revision has been stopped, because I have not a moment free, but I hope to resume it shortly; the publishers are in fact pressing for the book. It was why I wrote to that it could not be sent outside.


Sri Aurobindo:  These six chapters cannot be translated and published separately or along with the other unrevised chapters. It can only be done when the revision of the whole book is complete.    I hope you are not referring to the whole colossal mass of the , — though that too be ready for publication before the next world war (?) or after the beginning of the Satya Yuga (new World Order?). If you mean the Yoga of Works, I am writing or trying to write four or ﬁve additional chapters for it.


Sri Aurobindo: I hope they will be ready in a reasonable time, — but my daily time is short and chapters are long. In the absence of exact prophetic power, that is all I can say.  As to the extract about Vivekananda, the point I make there does not seem to me humanitarian. You will see that I emphasise there the last sentences of the passage quoted from Vivekananda, not the words about God the poor and sinner and criminal. The point is about the Divine in the World, the All, of the Gita.


Sri Aurobindo: That is not merely humanity, still less only the poor or the wicked; surely even the rich or the good are part of the All and those also who are neither good nor bad nor rich nor poor. Nor is there any question (I mean in my own remarks) of philanthropic service; so neither nor is the point.  I had formerly not the humanitarian but the humanity view — and something of it may have stuck to my expressions in the   But I had already altered my viewpoint from the “Our Yoga for the sake of humanity” to “Our Yoga for the sake of the Divine”. The Divine includes not only the supracosmic but the cosmic and the individual — not only Nirvana or the Beyond but Life and the All.


Sri Aurobindo: It is that I stress everywhere. But I shall keep the extracts for a day or two and see what there is, if anything, that smacks too much of a too narrow humanistic standpoint. I stop here for today.


Sri Aurobindo: I have not the original chapter before me just now; but from the sentences quoted it seems to be the essential mental Idea. As for instance in the method of Vedantic knowledge one concentrates on the idea of Brahman omnipresent — one looks at a tree or other surrounding objects with the idea that Brahman is there and the tree or object is only a form. After a time if the concentration is of the right kind, one begins to become aware of a presence, an existence, the physical tree form becomes a shell and that presence or existence is felt to be the only reality. The idea then drops, it is a direct vision of the thing that takes its place — there is no longer any necessity of concentrating on the idea, one sees with a deeper consciousness, . It should be noted that this concentration on the idea is not mere thinking,  — it is an inner dwelling on the essence of the Idea.


Sri Aurobindo:   It would take too long. You can get it explained to you by someone, it is not difﬁcult. The central idea is that the Divine Truth is greater than any religion or creed or scripture or idea or philosophy — so you must not tie yourself to any of these things.


Sri Aurobindo:   It means the life-energy which comes from within and is in consonance with the psychic being — it is the energy of the true vital being, but in the ordinary ignorant vital it is deformed into desire. You have to quiet and purify the vital and let the true vital emerge. Or you have to bring the psychic in front, and the psychic will purify and psychicise the vital and then you will have the true vital energy.


Sri Aurobindo: was not meant to give a method for all to follow. Each side of the Yoga was dealt with separately with all its possibilities, and an indication as to how they meet so that one starting from knowledge could realise karma and bhakti also and so with each path. It was intended when the Self-Perfection was ﬁnished, to suggest a way in which all could be combined, but this was never written. and the were not intended to be a systematic treatment of the sadhana as a whole; they only touch on various elements in it.  The mental being spoken of by the Upanishad is not part of the mental nervous physical composite — it is the , the mental being leader of the life and body.


Sri Aurobindo: It could not be so described if it were part of the composite. Nor can the composite or part of it be the Purusha, — for the composite is composed of Prakriti. It is described as by the Upanishad because the psychic being is behind the veil and man being the mental being in the life and body lives in his mind and not in his psychic, so to him the  is the leader of the life and body, — of the psychic behind supporting the whole he is not aware or dimly aware in his best moments. The psychic is represented in man by the Prime Minister, the, itself being a mild constitutional king; it is the to whom Prakriti refers for assent to her actions. But still the statement of the Upanishad gives only the apparent truth of the matter, valid for man and the human stage only — for in the animal it would be rather the  that is the, leader of mind and body.


Sri Aurobindo: It is one reason why I have not yet allowed the publication of “Rebirth and Karma” because this had to be corrected and the deeper truth put in its place. I had intended to do it later on, but had not time to ﬁnish the remaining articles.  The book is unﬁnished — that is the main obstacle to its publication. However I will look at the copy Nolini has sent up and see.  With regard to, the book has to be revised before it is ready for reprinting.


Sri Aurobindo: Sri Aurobindo will take up the work when he is able to make some time for it.  These translations are provisional, not ﬁnal — so I should not like them to be freely copied and seen by all; but I have no objection to your keeping a copy.  I see that this is a glossary of Vedic words with their current meanings. I have no objection to that. But I do not want any publication of Vedic interpretations or signiﬁcances founded upon my translations, so long as my work on the Veda is incomplete and has not taken its ﬁnal form.


Sri Aurobindo: The casual renderings in the cannot be published as my translation, — they were not intended for the purpose.    The explain the ordinary karmayoga as developed in the Gita, in which the work done is the ordinary work of human life with only an inward change. There too the violence to be used is not a personal violence done from egoistic motives, but part of the ordered system of social life.  Nothing can spiritually justify individual violence done in anger or passion or from any vital motive.


Sri Aurobindo: In our yoga our object is to rise higher than the ordinary life of man and in it violence has to be left aside altogether.    The permission cannot be given — the translations in the are more explanatory than textually precise or cast in a literary style — I do not want that to go out as my translation of the Gita.    That is a common experience — most books with any profundity of knowledge in them have that effect.


Sri Aurobindo: Almost all spiritual problems have been brieﬂy but deeply dealt with in the Gita and I have tried to bring out all that fully in the.    The is the most important of the published books. If it is to be translated in Telugu it should be assured that it is an accurate translation in good style. A translation from a translation does not usually secure that object.


Sri Aurobindo: That is quite a different question from the choice referred to in the passage of the.  What is written must be read and interpreted according to the context. In the Gita, the question is between two kinds of action — the quietistic life of the Sannyasin with the minimum of action and the dynamic life offered in all its actions whatever they be as a sacriﬁce to the Divine. It might be said that Arjuna might do either, it does not matter — but the Gita thinks it does matter: that Arjuna being called to a life of dynamic action must follow that and not the quietistic life.


Sri Aurobindo:   This is not my interpretation, it is what the Gita itself plainly says. It explains Kshara as “all existences” and since Purusha is the being which observes and experiences all the movements of Nature, (which is what is meant here by soul) it cannot be anything else than the universal Soul identifying itself with all existences in Nature.  The word  [] means really mobile as opposed to the immobile immutable Akshara. The Kshara Purusha is that which follows the movement of the universe and seems to move and change, because it identiﬁes itself while the Akshara is not identiﬁed and stands apart.