Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1935

Letter ID: 1451

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

October 22, 1935

S is suffering from neuralgia, no doubt but 2ry to the joint trouble.

[Underlining “2ry”]:

This is worse than Aeschylus. Is it an Egyptian hieroglyph? English? Bengali? Shorthand?

I intend to give him salicylate, iodine or arsenic one after the other.

It looks like throwing stones at a dog in the hope that one of them will hit him.

A screen examination is advisable. These things are intractable and there is a hereditary taint.

Well, you can do the screen exam, but if there is any scream on the screen, be discreet and let us know first before S is informed. After we know what’s the matter, can fix medicine.

Do you mean that the method you advised for reading The Life Divine can really do something?

It was a joke. But all the same that is the way things are supposed to come. When the mind becomes decently quiet, an intuition perfect or imperfect is supposed to come hopping along and jump in and look round the place. Of course, it is not the only way.

I read somewhere of people suddenly merging into silence and emerging with a resplendent solution. I wonder how.

What does it matter how it happens, provided it does happen?

I understand that you wrote many things in that way, but people also say that Gods – no, Goddesses – used to come and tell you the meaning of the Vedas.

People talk a stupendous amount of rubbish. I wrote everything I have written since 1909 in that way, i.e. out of or rather through a silent mind and not only a silent mind but a silent consciousness. But Gods and Goddesses had nothing to do with the matter.

But no Goddesses for poor folks like us; they can only cut jokes, play pranks or tease our tails, that’s all.

Well, if they tease your tail sufficiently, might not a poem be the result?

I had a dream last night that I found a hidden treasure consisting of silver coins, but at the bottom, bundles of incense sticks.

Silver = spirituality. Silver coins = spiritual wealth. Incense sticks – devotion, bhakti, worship of the Divine.

J says that the dream obviously means spiritual wealth. Have I got it? When? Where?

It is an offer of these things to you, probably from some tail-teasing God or Goddess.