SITE OF SRI AUROBINDO & THE MOTHER
      
Home Page | Works | Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

Letter ID: 147

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

August 16, 1931

The Mother will see Bhavashankar tomorrow. The idea of the refrigerator is, she says, an excellent one; she has long wanted it, but a big “frigidaire”, as that alone would serve the purpose.

Never mind the lower vital, it is not so dreadful as you think, if one can take hold of it by both ends and keep it in its place. It is the same as with the other instruments, body, mind, higher vital, even the Overmind powers,– they are good as instruments, but bad as masters.

I am accustomed to Biren’s1 handwriting, and can read it with little difficulty. But I am surprised at Tagore’s remark2 about the two years; he must have greatly misunderstood or misheard me. I did tell him that I would expand only after making a perfect (inner) foundation here, but I gave no date. I did give that date of two years long before in my letter to Barin,3 but I had then a less ample view of the work to be done than I have now – and I am now more cautious about assigning dates than I was once. To fix a precise time is impossible except in the two regions of certitude – the pure material which is the field of mathematical certitudes and the supramental which is the field of divine certitudes. In the planes in between where life has its word to say and things have to evolve under shock and stress, Time and Energy are too much in a flux and apt to kick against the rigour of a prefixed date or programme.

 

1 Birendra Kishore Roy Chowdury, Zamindar of Gouripur, East Bengal. A veteran sarod player and very close friend and admirer of Dilip. He became a disciple of Sri Aurobindo at the instance of Dilip.

Back

2 Dilip’s note: Birendrakishore had written to me a letter in which he reported Tagore as having said to him with a sigh that Sri Aurobindo had told him in 1928 that he would “expand” after two years.

Back

3 In his well-known letter of 7 April 1920 to his younger brother Barin, Sri Aurobindo wrote: “These past ten years He has been making me develop it [the body of this Yoga] in experience, and it is not yet finished. It may take another two years....”

Back