of as his friend, guru, playmate? Could I, for a moment, play all these pranks on you if I saw your Vishwarup?Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1. 1936
Letter ID: 1541
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
February 5, 1936
You can send your Force to whomever you like – Lenin, Kemal, Gandhi, but how people calling Shiva or Krishna for their Ishta Devata1 get responses from you, I don’t understand.
Again who is Shiva? and who is Krishna? and what is an Ishta Devata? There is only one Divine, not a thousand Divines.
It would mean that wherever a sincere heart is aspiring for the Divine, his aspiration reaches your ears.
Why my ears? Ears are not necessary for the purpose. You might just as well say, reaches me by the post.
And you send your responses, because you want to manifest the Divine rule on earth.
That has nothing to do with it. Besides it is not the Divine Rule on earth that I am after, but the supramental rule. This however has nothing to do with any supramental or Divine Rule on earth. It is only a general question of the response of the Divine and to the Divine.
Why should you stupefy me? Good Lord! Have you forgotten how Arjuna was stupefied, horrified, flabbergasted by seeing the Vishwarup2 of Krishna whom he had thought of as his friend, guru, playmate? Could I, for a moment, play all these pranks on you if I saw your Vishwarup?
But that was because the Vishwarup was enjoying a rather catastrophic dinner, with all the friends and relations of Arjuna stuck between his danshtrani karalani.3 But my viswarupa has no tusks, Sir, none at all. It is a pacifist vishwarup.
Already people say that I have no respect for you because I write anything and everything! “Sri Aurobindo is the Lord Supreme and with Him he plays all these pranks!”
And I return the compliment – I mean reply without restraint, decorum or the right grave rhythm. That is one reason why I indulge so freely in brackets.4
No, Sir, I am satisfied with you as Sri Aurobindo pure and simple.
No objection, I only suggested that I don’t know who this Sri Aurobindo pure and simple is. If you do, I congratulate you.
I am wrong about J.B., I discover. I forgot that he was put in contact with you by his photograph long ago. Who knew that you have been acting on him since then?
You must not imagine I have been thinking solely about J all the time. When a fellow contacts, a Force goes out to him and acts according to his capacity of response, that’s all.
I have sent P’s photograph also, but apparently there was no contact.
Plenty of people have sent their photographs – some mad, some sane, some good, some bad, some indifferent. You don’t expect all to get the contact, do you? That would be too too even for a viswarupa.
Mulshankar is much better today, Sir, and the doctor has asked him to eat macaroni and potatoes. But the fellow can’t bear the name of potato! Very queer, all of us are mad over it in the Ashram!
Quite queer – for he has surely eaten plenty of potatoes in the Ashram.
... The surgeon says he suspects a contusion in the abdomen – can’t localise it... He seems to have said that it is or was a very serious case. But no serious symptoms are visible. What did you find in the occult, Sir? Had to work a lot?
Yes, still have to.
What should be done with the letters written to him from outside?
I suppose the letters can be sent to him or is it medically inadvisable?
1 Chosen deity.
2 Supreme or universal form.
3 Terrible tusks.
4 Replies that I was not supposed to show to other Ashramites, were enclosed by Sri Aurobindo in square brackets.