Nirodbaran

Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

2. Art and Literature

Poetic Inspiration and Yoga

You actually propose “Laugh and grow fat” though laughing never makes fat!

You oppose one of the most ancient traditions of humanity by this severe statement. But your statement is mistaken even according to Science. We are now told that it is the activity of certain glands that makes you thin or fat. If glands, then why not gladness?

Really I am now wondering at my own revelry and hilarity. No particular concern about yoga, yet I am happy. What kind of psychic attitude is this?

It is not a psychic attitude, but is better than depression.

What has happened to my typescript? Hibernating?

My dear sir, if you saw me nowadays with my nose to paper from afternoon to morning, deciphering, deciphering, writing, writing, writing, even the rocky heart of a disciple would be touched and you would not talk about typescripts and hibernation. I have given up (for the present at least) the attempt to minimise the cataract of correspondence; I accept my fate like Raman Maharshi with the plague of prasads and admirers, but at least don't add anguish to annihilation by talking bout typescripts.

What is the use of your complaining? You have committed the grave blunder of coming into this sorrowful world with a mighty magical pen. Sri Krishna,  I conjecture, may have complained about his lungs because of his incessant blowing and fluting to melt our hearts.

It is an idea! strange that none of the poets has mentioned it – a modernist poet would catch it at once. “The Flute and the Lungs.” or “Krishna's Bronchitis.”

09.03.1936