Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 4
I trust you did not take my yesterday’s letter amiss since it was prompted out of sincere reverence for you and not questioning. What I meant was perhaps not clear. So I enclose a letter of Krishnaprem I received two or three days ago. Read at least the red-lined sentence. It is this sort of recent views of his about everything-external-a-projection-of-the-internal and all-men-striving-so-none-is-to-blame sort of idea that repels me. I could never regard the world as so simple nor such a clear-cut precise view an all-round view – and so not essentially prompted by wisdom.
Is this view of things so simple and precise as that? It seems to me to involve a great complexity with no solution to it. But is it not the usual view from a phase of consciousness which goes beyond the ordinary human view and tries to see things from the impartial view-point of the equal Brahman, samam brahma and look with compassion and understanding on all beings struggling in the Ignorance to find their way in it or out of it. It is a phase through which one passes on the way to the highest Truth – I think most Yogis look at things or endeavour to look at them from this impartial consciousness. But for pragmatic world action it offers no solution except either to escape from the whole thing as Maya or doing one’s own work in one’s own circle of action and leaving the rest, Hitler included, to the mysterious unaccountable workings of the cosmic Ishwara.
And of this sum of all-round wisdom of which only dim rays are received by minds like ours I have had a glimpse only through contact with you and your writings. Why is it Krishnaprem is not influenced by such writings? Because, I feel, his guru teaches him such platitudes of all men being innocent and divine and everybody should be [?].
I suppose because he has worked out his own view of things and finds it sufficiently profound and satisfactory. He seems to appreciate the thought of the Life Divine, but he has his own line of thinking and experience which he has followed pretty far going through one phase after another and he wants to follow it out to the end. I don’t think it can be said that he has a platitudinous mind – on the contrary if there is danger, it might be in the opposite side.
That is why Krishnaprem doesn’t condemn even the monster Hitler vehemently though he (for self preservation, I think) protests against Hitler’s campaign against all intellectuals whom H. regards as vermin. Krishnaprem is in a hopeless quandary now, I too noticed. So I thought that his guru was at least partly responsible as these are her views too – goody-goody platitudes that have little application to Life in its weird vast mysterious aspects. Life that cannot be tackled with such simple formulas but has to be approached with infinite pain and aspiration for Light to be even partially comprehended. I write in a hurry so may be I fail to convey my precise meaning but you will easily imagine what my drift is. I have seen Gopinath Kaviraj revelling in much greater absurdities. My mayavadi class friend who came here last year told me year before last G. was asserting before him that G/s guru (the humbug Vishuddhananda who made heaps of money because he could make sugar from sand) could create not only sugar but the brahmanda [universe] like Vishwamitra – because G.’s guru has always asserted this. I saw him once asserting like this and got disgusted at Puri in 1927.
This Visuddhananda affair does not seem to me clear on the facts presented to me. The facts might admit of being explained by jugglery or legerdemain, but the circumstances as stated to me make that a little difficult; they admit equally of being explained by the possession of certain occult powers, e.g. power to materialise subtle objects (sukshmagandha, rupa), power to communicate one’s own subtle sensings or [?] temporarily to others, occult power of transmutation (e.g. Ramakrishna’s turning of wine into D. Gupta’s fever mixture or Christ’s turning of water into wine) – but here a spiritual force was at work.
I am told there is no record or evidence of V. having any spiritual realisation. If so his powers, if any, would be occult alone, probably on the vital plane. Such powers do not presuppose any spirituality, some who had them were very clearly unspiritual. Such men are often proud and egoistic and many boast extravagantly of their power and need not be averse to making money by them. Still if his powers were genuine, the Kabiraj’s faith in him becomes understandable, though his acceptation of “miracles” alone as sufficient is not so intelligible. I am told that V. claimed to do his phenomena by the power of solar light and had established at great risk an institute for experiments with glass instruments in that direction, but died before the instruments came from Europe. That looks like a sort of straddling over the line between occult science and a hypothetical and experimental physical science. If genuine, such an experimentation would be sufficiently interesting, but these things have nothing to do with spiritual realisation. There is a spiritual occultism, but that is a different matter.
And this sort of thing is happening always – the mountebank Gurus hoodwinking credulous disciples who would believe anything of such gurus. That was why I had sworn never to accept a guru unless he was of the eminence of Sri Ramakrishna. That is why I came to you, only to learn however, from you and Mother that any guru will do if the disciple is sincere because through the guru the latter opened to the Divine. I was very sorry to hear this as you spoke from knowledge yet the “my guru” did havoc in India in all conscience. K.’s recent deterioration I attribute to this my-guru-loyalty.
Not “any guru,” surely but one’s own accepted guru. However, I will try to deal with that separately.
I don’t know whether there has been any “deterioration”, I hear now that they have always been occultising over there; the Chakrabartis1 were theosophists. So their indulgence in occultist theories (a slippery ground where there is much room for intellectual ingenuity) may not be new. I have not read K.’s book, I only heard certain things from it from Purani which surprised me. I shall read the book when I have time. One can be intuitive in spiritual matters and yet not so sure of foot when one is occultising.
He says that with fanaticism. Only my guru – the rest matters not. That is why he tries his best to keep you at arm’s length because he does not want to be influenced by Truth for which you stand but for his guru. This attitude of his I deeply deplored but I stood routed at every turn when I wanted to hold to this deep conviction that it is dangerous for spiritual guidance to go to a guru who is not already a god-realised person. You may say how is K. to know whether his guru was god-realised. Well she doesn’t claim she is, she only claims she has bhakti. Why then K. thinks – he told me himself nearly eighteen years ago – that his guru was a “jibanmukta”? And I feel (may be here I am irrational) that his fall ...
? That is rather a big term. Fall from what?
... is due to his guru’s inability to guide him into the deepest truth.
But if a guru can’t do this how can he be a fit guru! I feel if Krishnaprem had you for his guru he would have got just this guidance to say nothing of the utterly deluded Gopinath. But both [?] I respect as admirable men. That is the tragedy and that [?] “my guru” doctrine.