arriving towards a supramental accuracy – spontaneous and careless in spite of the lightning speed of my epistolary movement.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1. 1936
Letter ID: 1573
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
March 14, 1936
What Sir, in your letter on “Swan and its symbol” expect has become except ? Supramental slip!
Do you mean to say this is the first you have met? I used to make ten per page formerly in the haste of my writing. Evidently I am arriving towards a supramental accuracy – spontaneous and careless in spite of the lightning speed of my epistolary movement.
I admit that the swan is a symbol, but don’t you think that behind the expressions there should be a meaning?
Yes, of course.
The Vedic bird can be imagined to be bringing pots of Soma, but what would you understand by:
তব নৃত্যে ণ্রকটি শিহরে জন্ম লভিল উর্ব্বশী?1
Take this line বাসনামত্ত মাতসে তুমি শান্ত করিলে2 – one can find some meaning, but what about the line above?
As the মত্ত মাতসে3 is significant, so Urvasi is significant – so why should there be no meaning? Of course what you signify by Urvasi is another question. For me Urvasi is the divine beauty in the vital, with its intoxication and ecstasy. Why can’t that come into being by a quiver, vibration, frisson of the dance of the Soul? Is it so meaningless? I confess that feeling it in that sense the line gave me a poetic thrill.
Isn’t it true that you can’t really love the Divine until you experience him in some way? Before that it won’t be an intense or deep love.
Your supposition conflicts with the experience of many sadhaks. I think Ramkrishna indicated somewhere that the love and joy and ardour of seeking was much more intense than that of fulfilment. I don’t agree, but that shows at least that intense love is possible before realisation.
For Mulshankar, I think the servant will do because only a slow up-and-down movement is needed. But when he is dispensed with, no longer needed, we can ask Virabhadra.
This servant is to be dismissed on the 19th, as he is found unsatisfactory in several respects. So perhaps you could press V into service as masseur.
1 taba nṛtye ṇrakaṭi śihare janma labhila urbaśī. By one single quiver of your dance Urvasi was born...
2 bāsanāmatta mātase tumi śānta karile. You pacified the elephant maddened by desire...
3 matta mātase. Mad elephant.