Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1936

Letter ID: 1728

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

September 19, 1936

Sri Aurobindo,

There you are, Sir, with your paradoxical, mysterious brevities! Dickens etc. won’t give the spiritual consciousness and it is a waste of time; again, they can be done with nirbhar! Then why should I do anything wasteful with nirbhar?

If you want to understand my supramental brevities, you must read carefully. You have absolutely ignored my pregnant “Possibly”. I never said that it must be a waste of time – but “possibly” yes or “possibly” not. Reading Dickens merely cannot give you the spiritual consciousness – that is obvious. It would be a miracle if it did. Reading the Oxford Dictionary might be more helpful in that direction. Unless of course a miracle took place; then even Dickens – But otherwise it may evidently be a waste of time. D got helped by Lawrence’s letters – even J gave him dream-meetings with J and his daughter. But most people would get little that is either occult or spiritual from either. But things done with nirbhar can help – not because of themselves, but because of the nirbhar.

To try to be a literary man and yet not to know what big literary people have contributed would be inexcusable...

Why is it inexcusable? I don’t know what the Japanese or the Soviet Russian writers have contributed, but I feel quite happy and moral in my ignorance. As for reading Dickens in order to be a literary man, that’s a strange idea. He was the most unliterary bloke that ever succeeded in literature and his style is a howling desert.

One may become, after hard studies of authors, a literary man, but the supramental will keep its tail high up. What has been the result? This is one great disharmonious problem I haven’t solved, neither have you helped me except by your supramentally brief jokes.

To be a literary man is not a spiritual aim; but to use literature as a means of spiritual expression is another matter. Even to make expression a vehicle of a superior power helps to open the consciousness. The harmonising rests on that principle.

Considering the capacity, worth and qualities I have been born with, my aspirations or ambitions are too great. In J’s words – “So much to be seen, so much to be done, so many fresh avenues to explore,” in spiritual as well as non-spiritual don tains. I haven’t got a clear vision of what to do, how to proceed, how to establish a harmony between the Spirit and the mundane and then to be fired with dynamism.

Ambitions of that kind are too vague to succeed. You have to limit your fields and concentrate in order to succeed in them. I don’t make any attempt to be a scientist or painter or general. I have seen certain things to do and have done them, so long as the Divine wanted; others have opened in me from above or within by Yoga; I have done as much of them as the Divine wanted. D has had dynamisms and followed them so long as they were there or as often as they were there. You mentalise, mentalise, discuss, discuss, hesitate, hesitate.

If by any chance I could throw away all troubles about progress in Yoga and push on with literature, that would be some solution.

There is no incompatibility between spirituality and creative activity – they can be united.

... At moments I have aspirations for being many-sided, then comes a voice – “Leave all those things, seek for something more precious, happy.” The eternal contradiction!

Fluctuating of course comes in the way of action and therefore of success. One can do one or other or one can do both, but not fluctuate eternally.

Can you now tell me something satisfactory, encouraging, hopeful, at the same time some practical suggestions – can’t plead now that you aren’t a doctor!

Give up the mentalising, hesitating, fluctuating habit. That is the one practical thing to do.

You say – I called, I didn’t open. Isn’t it mysterious when I called and sat up with paper and pencil for two hours and nothing came? Then all I can say is that opening is a mysterious business!

Who says it is not? Some people have the trick of always opening to a Force (e.g. Dilip, Nishikanta for creative literary activity), some have it sometimes, don’t have it sometimes (you, Arjava, myself). Why make it a case of kicks and despair?