Nirodbaran

Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

2. Art and Literature

Poetic Inspiration and Yoga

We feel that your Force gives us the necessary inspiration for poetry, but I often wonder if you send it in a continuous current.

If it were so, we would not write 15 to 20 lines at a stretch and then go on for days together producing only 3 or 4 lines.

Of course not. Why should I? It is not necessary. I put my Force from time to time and let it work out what has to be worked out. It is true that with some I have to put it often to prevent too long stretches of unproductivity, but even there I don't put a continuous current. I have not time for such things.

That depends on the mental instrument. Some people write freely – others do so only when in a special condition.

I don't think a latent faculty brought out by  Yogic Force would achieve the same result as a faculty -which manifests in the natural way.

Of course not so long as it is latent or not fully emerged. But once it is manifested and settled there is no reason why it should not achieve equal perfection. All depends on the quality of the inspiration that comes and the response of the instrument.

This means that the quick emerging of a faculty depends on a favourable Adhar. But on what does this favourableness depend?

How can one say on what it depends? It depends on all the past and all the future and on what is behind the present also!! The mental instrument is what has been formed for the present life – naturally if it has by present nature a marked beginning of capacity in a certain direction, it will be more easy for something that is pressing to manifest, to develop through it than it will be for an instrument not so naturally responsive. But “more easy” is all one can say. It does not follow that the facile instrument will do more than the difficult one. There are poets who produce with no difficulty; there are poets who produce with difficulty; there are poets who produce with occasional facility and customary difficulty. All kinds go into the cosmic hotch-potch.

12.06.1935