Nirodbaran

Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

The Complete Set

N is keeping better. Temperature actually came down to 99.4° [37.4°C], the first time in his illness. He is already aspiring to do his gate duty on Darshan day. What more evidence? Yesterday during meditation he felt a lot of Force on his chest, he said.

It is evidence of a subjective improvement which helps – but we must get the objective one also. If his lungs are improving and temperature [has a] downward tendency then it is all right.

I have a very wonderful colleague in Dr. B. He can't utter two words about you without shedding tears! Is it second childhood? In spite of all this devotion, domestic affairs bind him.

It is not second childhood – he has always been like that. Here or over there looking after his affairs, his bhakti is constant and genuine.

I am simply overjoyed to learn that one day your retirement can really come to an end. We had always a fear that you might never come out. Tagore expressed this sentiment saying that the world has lost you. How can the world be changed without the personal presence of the Incarnate Divine?

You mean to say I am not personally present – I have gone off to the x loka already?

You refuse to be a Guru and decline to be a father, though ladies especially think of you as father and call you so. If they come to know of your refusal, I'll have to run with smelling salts from one lady to another!

Father is too domestic and Semitic – Abba¹ Father! I feel as if I had suddenly become a twin-brother of the Lord Jehovah. Besides, there are suggestions of a paternal smile and a hand uplifted to smite which do not suit me.

Let the ladies “father” me if smelling salts are the only alternative, but let it not be generalised.

But what is the relation you won't decline? Is it something besides the recognised ones in spiritual history?

I don't know. I always prefer something new to the old labels. I will see the Supramental and perhaps find something.

They are saying that a “sweet relation” has been established between you and me. I only hope and pray that it will be sweeter and sweetest.

The sweet relation is all right, but let it be nameless.

I have brought down a verse from heaven on the correspondence like Bahaullah² – which proves that if I am not an Avatar, at least I am a prophet. It is I fear full of chandapatan and bhāṣapatan but it expresses my feelings:

³

But for heaven's sake, don't show this undivine outbreak to anybody! They will think I am trying to rival Dara⁴ in his lighter poetic moods.

05.02.1935
Morning

¹ Hebrew term for father.

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² Founder of the Bahai.

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³ Translation: If the sadhaks had not in their hearts a craving for correspondence, I would live with a smiling face, merged in supramental bliss. Alas, alas, where is such a hope?

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⁴ An old disciple who used to write comic poems.

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