Nirodbaran

Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

1. Spirituality

Spiritual Force and Other Forces (II)

If it [the latent medico] were there, I would develop that and run the Dispensary myself. What would be the need of a Nirod or Becherlal or Ramchandra?... What logic? Because Mother and myself are not engineers, therefore Chandulal can't develop the right intuition in engineering? or because neither I nor Mother are experts in Gujerati prosody, therefore Pujalal can't develop the inspiration for his poems?

Oh Lord, what a question! To guide internally is a million times easier than to guide externally. Let us suppose I want General X to beat Y's fellows back at Guadalagasu (please pronounce properly). I put the right force on him and he wakes up and, with his military knowledge and capacity, does the right thing and it is done. But if I, having no latent or patent military genius or knowledge in me, write to him saying “do this, do that”, he won't do it and I would not be able to do it either. It is operations of two quite different spheres of consciousness. You absolutely refuse to make the necessary distinction between the two fields and their processes and then you jumble the two together and call it logic.

... Intuition and revelation are inner things – they don't belong to the outer mind.... Do you imagine that I tell you inwardly or outwardly what expressions to use in your Bengali poems when you are writing? Still you write from an inspiration which I have set going.