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Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1934 — 1935

Letter ID: 639

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

October 31, 1935

I am rather taken aback by the interpretation you have put on my letter. There was absolutely nothing in it of dismissal or giving you up. You had written that you found you desired Krishna only and in the old way with desire for the Ananda and the Milan, that you could not arrive at ahaitukī bhakti and that the Supramental glories of my Yoga and the greatness of my Avatarhood were beyond you and not for you and that you wanted only Krishna. You concluded that I should find you unfit and send you away. My answer was intended to show that none of these things need constitute unfitness. I had not asked you to seek after the Supermind, my writing about it was only in answer to questions for intellectual discussion and knowledge; for none can attain to Supermind unless Supermind comes to them, unless, as I put it, it descends into the earth-consciousness. As for Avatarhood, we had agreed that you should regard me as Guru and it was not necessary for you to accept or see me as the Divine. I had also said several times that I had no objection to your seeking after the Divine in the form and personality of Krishna. All these things had been agreed upon between us – at least so I understood it – some time ago. So I did not see why for these things I should declare you unfit or send you away. So long as you have the seeking for the Divine as Krishna that is quite sufficient. As for ahaitukī bhakti, I wanted to point out that to think I insisted on it is a mistake; it is the highest and most powerful method, but in its absence sahaitukī bhakti is quite enough. I emphasised my point by saying that even if that were absent – I never said that that was your case or that your case was like Dhurjati’s – a man need not despair of reaching the Divine, for there were other ways, such as that of Knowledge, or even without any way a sincere pressure of seeking on the nature would end by finding whatever it sought of the Divine in whatever form. Therefore it was sufficient to follow the urge in you and not force yourself to seek other things or consider them indispensable for fitness.

I hope this will make my meaning clear to you. I never thought of dismissing you or giving you up and the idea of wanting you to go away is so far from me and foreign to me that I did not even think it necessary to say so, as you knew it well from past correspondence and from my attitude to you all throughout – it has never changed from that of an unalterable love and sympathising patience. For I know that you can arrive at the goal if you give yourself the chance.

The only thing that stands in your way is the impatience of the length of the way and these repeated fits of despair. Even that has been the experience of many bhaktas and yet they have gone through, but there is no necessity for these despondencies. I had shown you what to do to avoid them and while you did it you made great progress in preparing the nature so that Somnath could speak to the Mother of the miraculous change he found in your character. An equally miraculous change can come in the direction of spiritual experience. All that is needed is the fixed will to go through.

I do not see why you should try to force yourself to go away when neither you nor I desire it. For me to desire it is indeed not thinkable. I trust that you will put that thought away altogether.