Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1938

Letter ID: 2093

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

May 5, 1938

Guru, I have absolutely gone for the Muse today in a terrible vengeance against her uncharitableness. The weather is splendidly hot and if the Muse makes me perspire still more, well, I shall be turned into a “perspiring idiot”!

But is a perspiring idiot worse than a dry idiot? I don’t think so.

“A purple shadow walks along...”It sounds rather like a sentry walking along, no? Seems funny!

“Walking along” suggests not a sentinel but someone taking a constitutional stroll on the beach in the hope of getting a motion. Too colloquial.

“Life is a lonely journey...”

? For most it is a chattering peopled journey – Besides “lonely” comes at the end.

I’ve already told Sahana that I shall give her that letter [on vital interchange].

In that case you can do so, but it is better if she does not show it to others.

In the future, I will take her.

? take her where?

N.P. came to me with a letter from Agarwal. I asked him to forward it to you, for your advice.

Don’t know anything about this.

On grounds of medical ethics I can’t give any opinion, I said, especially as he has approached Agarwal who is more competent than I. One thing struck me in his note, when Agarwal says that he cured N.P. in a day because Mother’s force works actively through him. It may be that the force works, but so actively as to cure him in a day?

Why not? If there is sufficient receptivity, then time does not matter.

Alas, the force works through me in months, if at all!

Agarwal has self-confidence and with that one can always succeed. If there are failures, nobody notices, because they are covered up by the high notes of the song of self-confidence.

Don’t understand at all these subtle things. The same disease, the same treatment, except hip-bath, purging 20 times, fruit diet, etc., and he cures in a day!

But even without the force, in ordinary cases, with the same disease and the same treatment there is sometimes cure and sometimes no-cure.

By the way, it is very interesting to note the difference of appreciation between D and T regarding the famous singer Kesarbai. T says, “I am forced to say it is good, though I can’t say that I like it,” while D is absolutely beyond words in praise of her.

Well, doesn’t criticism boil down to that “I like it” or “I don’t like it”? What more do you expect?

But then T is also a connoisseur!

My dear sir, what is the use of connoisseurs if they don’t have opinions entirely different from every other connoisseur?