Nirodbaran

Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

The Complete Set

I hope you have understood the psychology behind all my waitings. My headache and fear are that you allow the other forces to take away some of the poor Nirods from your “train”, being weary of the fight, perhaps.

Excuse me, I don't allow – the poor Nirods allow or they take themselves away in a huff.

But I sincerely pray that you will drag this really poor Nirod in your train till his last breath!

What else am I doing, but dragging towards that?

You call me a poet? A poet without poems? A briefless barrister?

It was the ucchvāsa that extorted that exclamation from me.

What is double being or double nature? Are both the same? Is it, as you say, aiming high and aiming low simultaneously? In that case I am afraid most of us have it more or less!

Every man has a double nature except those who are born (not unborn) Asuras, Rakshasas, Pishachas and even they have a psychic being concealed somewhere by virtue of their latent humanity. But a double being (or a double nature in the special sense) refers to those who have two sharply contrasted parts of their being without as yet such a linking control over them. Sometimes they are all for the heights and then they are quite all right – sometimes all for the abysses and then they are nothing for the heights, even sneer or rail at them and give full rein to the lower man. Or they substitute for the heights a smoky volcano summit in the abyss. These are extreme examples, but others while they do not go so far, yet are now one thing, now just the opposite. If they can convert the lower fellow or discover the central being in themselves, then a true harmonious whole can be created. (For a case of a double being who had no central organising part in him you can take R as an example.)...

During meditation, I had again a strong feeling of pressure. As you had advised, I tried to enlarge my consciousness by thinking that I was as large as the universe. But is that the way?

Yes. At any rate it is a very good way – there may be others, but I think it is the best.

08.01.1935