Is it in the system or in the air? Endemic? epidemic? You seem to be only one of many cases.
Nirodbaran
Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo
Second Series
1. Spirituality
The Man of Sorrows
III. Despair and Commonsense
I am unhappy and I don't know why. To put it medically; there is some hidden focus of infection disseminating slow and mild but constant toxins of unhappiness in the system.
Well but hang it all! If there is no “why,” “why” then be unhappy?
Is it in the system or in the air? Endemic? epidemic? You seem to be only one of many cases.
I felt immense joy at the darshan on February 21, but it ebbed away as soon as I came down.
It sounds like facilis descensus Averno.1 But after all downstairs and Erebus are not the same thing.
There are some Yogis, I hear, who are in bliss during meditation, but when they come down they are swallowed up in the lower nature, and to escape from this they at once leap up to their static sublimity. Unfortunately I can't rush up again till August 15 – the next darshan. Will you kindly come down and help the poor amateur Yogi?
Come down? into Erebus? No, thank you – I might become like the said Yogis.
But why hug despair without a cause – Dilipian or other? Come to your senses and develop a Nirodian jollity instead (not necessarily Mark Tapleyan, though that is better than none). Laugh and be fat – then dance to keep the fat down – that is a sounder programme.
The Overmind seems so distant from us, and your Himalayan austerity and grandeur takes my breath away, making my heart palpitate!
O rubbish! I am austere and grand, grim and stern! every blasted thing I never was! I groan in an unAurobindian despair when I hear such things. What has happened to the common sense of all of you people? In order to reach the Overmind it is not at all necessary to take leave of this simple but useful quality. Common sense by the way is not logic (which is the least commonsense-like thing in the world), it is simply looking at things as they are without inflation or deflation – not imagining wild imaginations – or for that matter despairing “I know not why” despairs.
23.02.1935
1 Easy the descent to Hell.