Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1935

Letter ID: 1301

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

April 4, 1935

How can one train oneself to have a direct Intuition? Possible?

It can be done – but I should have to write an essay on the Intuition to make any explanation intelligible.

I thought whatever is necessary will grow of itself either by growth of consciousness or by something else. Must one train oneself for things one after another? Why should they not open up like your painting vision?

It can or it may not. Why did not everything open up in me like the painting vision and some other things? All did not. As I told you, I had to plod in many things. Otherwise the affair would not have taken so many years (30).

In this Yoga one can’t always take a short cut in everything. I had to work on each problem and on each conscious plane to solve or to transform and in each I had to take the blessed conditions as they were and do honest work without resorting to miracles. Of course if the consciousness grows all of itself, it is all right, things will come with the growth, but not even then pell-mell in an easy gallop.

But why should you have any latent medico in you to diagnose diseases?

Why not? I can begin to write poetry only if I have a poet either latent or suddenly introduced into me. I can lay down the law to Einstein only if I have a scientist similarly lodged inside.

I thought your Yogic vision is something like X-ray, which when applied, gets the condition on the plate; or the vision directly penetrating a subject, at once says – his kidney is wrong, her lung is weak, etc.

A slightly too simple description of it. Essay needed again.

... Above all, you have the direct Intuition to fall upon.

I haven’t – not just now at any rate. I am too busy handling the confounded difficulties of Matter. The material is subconscious and I would have to be subconscious myself to get its true intuition. I prefer to wait for the supramental.

But even if you have no medico in you, it is high time that something should open up. Don’t you see how so many difficult cases are rising, the nearer the Supramental is descending, if it is descending at all?

Let it open up in you then. Don’t you see how all these things are coming just to make you bloom into a Dhanwantari overnight?

For me to supramentalise and then know definitely physical things is a “long way to Tipperary”.

Why not get it like my painting vision?

I would like to know how the experiences I had are going to have any practical utility. Do they come and go simply?

No – they are first indications of an opening – but the opening has to be stabilised and enlarged. Also so long as the external mind is very much on the top they come at intervals only. Continuous experience is only possible when one gets inside and stays there

Or do they come according to individual nature or requirement or opening?

All these are contributary determinants.

We had the feast at J’s. I thought of having it in the Dispensary, but felt the smell would disturb you. So I thought it is better to sacrifice K – by disturbing him than sacrificing the Supramental!

Certainly, the Dispensary is out of the question for such things. But when the Vedic or other ancient people made a বলি¹ they took care that the victim should not kick about or make a row. You did not take that precaution with K.

¹ bali: sacrifice.

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