Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1936

Letter ID: 1723

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

September 12, 1936

D’s letter gives me an occasion to ask you about the suicide of X’s wife. You said something about Fate which is always a mysterious word.

Well, the determination of human life and events is a mysterious thing. Can’t help that, you know Fate is composed of many things – Cosmic Will + individual self-determination + play of forces + Karma + x + y + z + a + b + c ad infinitum.

Suicides and accidents are supposed to be due to hostile Forces.

Not Forces hostile to our work, but hostile to the suicide and to the accidented fellow.

She died because “she was hostile to the Divine”. So it can’t be the action of hostile Forces, for it would be in their interest to keep her alive, so that X may be hampered in his aspiration.

Was she hostile to the Divine? All I heard was that she was somewhat in the way of X’s sadhana – but so many wives and husbands are like that and they don’t get drowned.

And since X’s turn to the Divine was much quicker than he thought, can one conclude from this accident that the Divine perhaps wanted to remove the obstacle? Of course it is a very drastic method.

All that is simplificative reasoning – the truth is much more complex than that.

I was tempted to conclude so, because I heard you had said that X being a rare sattwic type, you wanted him sooner, or something like it.

No. We were not particular about the time.

Some say the Divine’s way would have been to try to turn the wife also this way or to help X to go through the ordeal – not this drastic step! A word or two please!

God only knows what God does and why he is doing it. And God is not in the habit of letting other people know – except when it suits him.

A has malaise; not refreshed after sleep...

I have been without light, so blank, blank, blank. Keeping everything in hope of better luck today. (This has nothing to do with A’s malaise, by the way. Only take advantage of bottom of page.)