Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1936

Letter ID: 1658

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

June 24, 1936

I would like to know if there are going to be any personal relations afterwards among sadhaks. To think that everybody will be equal to our eyes pains most of us.

Yes, it pains the outer vital, because that vital thinks it is a negative state of indifference and non-attachment, things that it hates because liking and disliking are its native atmosphere.

But with having psychic love for all, is there also going to be any pure divine love for a particular one?

But first you must realise what the “pure divine” love is!

Of course new friendships may come up and old ones break, but I am inclined to wonder whether such personal pure ties will be there or not.

But that is not the question your “inclination” asks – it is practically asking whether one can’t keep up one’s attachments and carry them into the higher atmosphere!

I gather from your reply to J that one will have the same deep psychic feelings for all.

Not the same psychic feelings for all, but different psychic feelings are possible.

We always think that all our relations will be impersonal. That is one of the reasons why we cling to our objects of love and desire.

That is not the reason – the reason lies in the clinging itself.

During meditation I had a vision of J lying dead in a room. Her death was accidental and not natural. Suddenly the door of the room opened and a hideous figure came in. It was so vivid that I still shudder to think of it. I was just sitting on a chair and looking at J’s corpse. Is it J’s mania of suicide from the subconscient?

It looks on the surface like a nightmare vision of the vital. It might refer to what you say – something shot up from a subconscient impression into form. Or, who knows, it may mean simply the old vital attachment by her lying dead and old vital Nature looking on in a horrified disapproval!

I don’t think it is much use writing about personal relations in the true spiritual life (which does not yet exist here). None would understand it except as a form of words. Only three points –

(1) Its very base would have to be spiritual and psychic and not vital. The vital would be there but as an instrument only.

(2) It would be a relation flowing from the higher Truth, not continued from the lower Ignorance.

(3) It would not be impersonal in the sense of being colourless, but whatever colours were there would not be the egoistic and muddy colours of the present relations.

It appears to me that women generally are not so disturbed because they deliberately eliminate from their mind any idea of physical sex contacts.

They don’t; but they don’t want to face the dangers or the consequences of the vital physical impulse which they have to bear for the most part.

Also their vitals are satisfied more easily by simple vital exchanges, e.g. walking, talking, at most holding hands.

That is true of many women.