Sri Aurobindo
The Mother

to Prithwi Singh

Correspondence (1933-1967)

4-11 September 1934

Prithwi Singh

(The following four texts are not letters, but from Prithwi Singh's diary.)

How clearly do I feel to-day, Mother, that my work has ended. The responsibility has ceased to be mine. The work belongs to Thee and Thine the responsibility. All the ordinary motive-forces behind my work have now dwindled into non-entity and it is but Thy Energy that has taken charge of the machinery. This seizure of the being by Thyself has been effected in the inner levels of consciousness and the Power is now asserting Itself victoriously, marching forward triumphantly, conquering plane after plane and ruthlessly smiting down all forces that oppose the onward march. It is because of this rapid progression of Thy consciousness that this feeling of the cessation of my work has become so strong. The persistence of the outer being in its egoistic play is there by habit and the outer crust may fall off any moment when the pressure from within is impetuous. The inner movements of the nature are definitely becoming more and more concentric and the Time is ahead when the realisation of the Psychic Self in all Its luminous amplitude will become the sole aim and object of life. This concentric movement has sounded a death-knell of all egoistic ways of activity and prepared the conditions for an eventual efflorescence of Thy supreme Self.

Undated

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Mother,

Bury the dead past. Let the memories of the past, — memories of sad mistakes, false identification, haltings and delayings on the way, deviations, weak-kneed aspiration, dilettantism, oscillations and such ignorant clinging to the habits and formations of life, — no more afflict the being. They try to cast a spell of gloom over the bright and sanguine movements of the higher nature, suggesting, “How sad mistakes did you commit in the past; you got true impulses and true attitude very often but failed to remain faithful to them.” It suggests, moreover, that had I remained faithful to the call, what a wonderful progress would I have made by this time. That is why, I pray to Thee, O Mother, bury the past fraught with sad memories and let it not have the strength to cast shadows upon the play of Light, Truth and Joy. If the past has had a long history of tragic errors and ignorant activities, it had also to counterbalance them, bright movements, true formations, upward pushes, ardent aspiration, sincere invocation to Light, Power and Joy, moments of unconditioned opening to the Supreme Truth, dedication, loving remembrance and many such movements of Light. The past, I see, is not an unmixed evil. It records a mixed play of light and darkness, power and weakness, truth and untruth and even the stumblings and failures, I feel, have but served the Divine Purpose and been wisely manipulated by the Supreme Will and Wisdom to lead the being towards the Supreme Felicity. Pray, let me have the strength to turn my back upon the past life and look forward and fix my steadfast gaze upon the Light and the Truth. I do not belong to the past dawns but to the noons of the future.¹ The past is past and it cannot bind the future. May the future movements be an unbroken history of luminous movements and flaming intensities.

4 September 1934

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Unbounded is my love for Thee, O supreme Mother. Knowingly or unknowingly from times immemorial, I have loved but Thee. My love has stood the test of time and now it unfurls the banner of its victory over all the opposing forces. Forgetting Thee I fulfilled Thy Intention, going astray I served Thy Purpose. My heart refuses to believe that there was ever any breach in my love for Thee. If, by way of play, Thou didst hide Thyself from my view, it was to reappear with a greater effulgence and if I ran away from Thee it was but to run into Thy lap and hug and kiss Thee. It was nothing else than a rapturous play of hide-and-seek. Now I feel, Mother, that the nature of the play would be different. No more a play of hide-and-seek but that of seek-and-seek. Thou and I in the orb of light, playing an eternal game, — that is the picture that floats before my mind's eye. The future play, therefore, will not be a play of light and darkness but of an undying light. But even when darkness intervened and a separative consciousness grew up in our mutual play, my love never for a moment turned its face from Thee. Attachment, lust, greed, passion, egoistic demands, deviations and all these so-called undivine forces were created by Thee for enacting the play of hide-and-seek most perfectly and even in that period of total oblivion of Thyself my love never languished. This feeling of an uninterrupted and overflowing love for Thee is very strong in me to-day and I doubt not its validity.

10 September 1934

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Enough of unprofitable questionings and doubtings of the mind: let it now have a free and silent room for a descent of the Supreme Truth. Let the sense-mind be no more enmeshed in the sense-objects and be satisfied with flickering and pale enjoyments but let each and every sense-organ get a perfect enjoyment in the Divine. Let the sense-mind depend for its myriad activities upon the Divine and in Him let it find the ultimate satisfaction. It will then see the Divine, hear the Divine, smell the Divine, touch the Divine and taste the Divine, in short, it will sense nothing else than the Divine. That will ensure its perfect functioning and real enjoyment.

The pragmatic mind rejoices in playing habitually in a narrow groove. Partial and dusky reflections of the Supreme Idea, random play of thoughts, ill-formed and yet constantly trying to assert themselves without having any real control over the objective world, blind adherence to its parochial ideations — these are the things that characterise the play of the pragmatic mind. Let it now be made a free, conscious and dynamic channel of the expression and formation of the Supreme Idea.

The ethical mind is too much enamoured of the rules, the canons, the laws and the regulations of its own creation and thus ignorantly fetters itself Starting with the purpose of ultimately getting the Divine, it but loses Him, His Plenitude and His Freedom. The rules and canons give it more satisfaction than even the Divine. Bright beginning but sad end. May it be made an unobstructing and a luminous channel for the right activity of the Supreme Law, the Supreme Harmony and the Supreme Truth.

The aesthetic mind, while having an inherent seeking after the Supreme and Plenary Beauty of the Divine, rests satisfied with fragmentary mental representations of It. Not the whole of It but Its shadow-reflections does the aesthetic mind happen to get. Let its limited and sensuous enjoyment be replaced by the clear-seeing and rapturous enjoyment of the Supreme Beauty.

The emotive mind ignorantly revels in the derivative play of the Pure Emotion. Limping and feverish play of emotions, sometimes giving thrilling sensations, sometimes rendering the mind an arid desert — that is the nature of its enjoyment. Let it, my Lord, be a rapture-bound instrument for the limpid and boisterous play of the Supreme Emotion.

The vital mind in the same way slavishly indulges in the dualistic and diseased satisfactions of vital insistences. In the place of a strong, impetuous and cyclonic enjoyment of the Supreme Life-expression, it has to remain satisfied with sham enjoyments. Let it be made a strong, pure and luminous channel for the expression of the Supreme Life.

Purify, Mother, each and every part of the mind, make it a consecrated and transformed instrument of Thy expression in all Thy luminous amplitudes. Not an annihilation of the mind but a transmutation of it in the light of the Supreme Truth, not a quietist enjoyment at the expense of the mind but a Pleroma of Light, Beauty and Power, not a truncated realisation but an integral and a harmonious one, — these and nothing short of them that I pray for. Listen to this heart-felt prayer of mine and make the mind, released from its physical obsessions, a sublime and effective instrument for Thy Ineffable Play.

11 September 1934

¹ From Sri Aurobindo's sentence in Essays on the Gita (Vol. 13, p. 8): “We do not belong to the past dawns but to the noons of the future.”

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