Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
Letter ID: 634
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
October 12, 1935
But how the deuce can I give a formal “psychic certificate” like that to Mahendra Sarkar1? His capacities are undoubted and his experiences confirm what I saw at once about him that his is not an ordinary nature. But he is more complex than Somnath and for the moment I don’t want to act as a “Delimitation Committee.”
You put me in a great quandary by your question. We never know what to ask when such a question is put to us – we always try to shove the choice back on the shoulders of the giver. It is not ill-will but inability to think of anything whatever; it is only when something forces itself on our notice as needed or useful that we know and that never happens when somebody wants to give and says, “Tell me what.”
You can have him at the Trésor2 – in spite of his hopelessness for Yoga. But does he expect to pay his respects to me? The Man in the Moon would be more possible. You can at least see him across Space while I am invisible and untouchable – except when I am not but that is a day astronomically distant3.
You have made me acutely aware of “the wide high void that is my silent mind.” Imagination? not a trace of it – how can there be imagination in the śūnya Brahman [Supreme Void]? It would be so much easier for you who have an active mind to “eureka” something in the matter. The only thing I can do is to beat a long empty and quiescent boom with no result or else to wait calmly for the descent of a strong inspiration from the far-off Infinite.
1 Professor Mahendra Nath Sarkar was an eminent teacher of philosophy at Presidency college, Calcutta and author of many valuable books on Indian philosophy and spirituality. An ardent admirer of Sri Aurobindo, he visited and stayed in the Ashram for some time.
2 Trésor: name of Dilip’s house.
3 Allusion to the Darshan of 24th November.