Nirodbaran

Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

1. Spirituality

The Ashram and its Yoga

II. The true Way of Yoga

X says he has been eight years here; yet no peace, at times only joy and that also joy of literary creation.

Eight years? Amateur yogis! Those who know something about yoga would count 5,6,7,8,10 years as nothing for the work of preparation and self-purification. That was X's bane. He expected to conquer heaven in a gallop, but there was only one way of doing it, complete abdication of self, and that he refused and probably could not do. Then when the gallop could not succeed, he has been wrestling and groaning ever since – meditation, japa, prayer with only one idea “when is it coming? when is it coming? why is it not coming? of course it won't come. It will never come, never, never.” And of course it doesn't. That is not the way.

Yet he had promised me he would drop all that and go on quietly getting rid of ego etc., till he was fit. The subconscient has been too strong with its unvarying orbits of repetition of the same obstinately irrational movement.

But poetry, he says, is (work not in yoga). If that could give the Divine any number of literary people would have it.

That is like him and most of the sadhaks. All hold grip to their own ideas, follow their own conceptions about Yoga. Reason! logic! As for the ways pointed out by the Guru, all supramental nonsense. The surprising thing is that anyone succeeds here.

19.05.1936