Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Poetry and Art
SABCL - Volume 27
Part 3. Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga
Section 4. Literature, Art, Music and the Practice of Yoga
Literature and Yoga
Poetry and Sadhana [17]
Why is my mind so wretchedly limited, my soul such a
feeble flame?
It is not the question, for this is not a question of
personal capacity but of the development of the receptivity and for that the
sole thing necessary is an entire or at least a dominant will to receive. What
you call your mind and your soul are only a small surface part of you, not your
whole being. Personal capacity belongs to the temporary surface personality
which you have put forward in this life and which is mutable, is already
changing and can change much farther — e.g. the poems you are writing are
certainly beyond what was your original capacity — they belong to a range of
experience to the Word of which you have opened by a development beyond your old
mental self — a farther development beyond not only your old mental self but
also your old vital self is needed to get the concrete realisation of that range
of experience.
What is standing in the way is something that is still
attached to the limitations of the old personality and hesitates to take the
plunge because by doing so it may lose these cherished 
limitations.
It stands back in apprehension from the plunge because it is afraid of being
taken out of its depths — but unless one is taken out of the very shallow depth
of this small part of the self, how can one get into the Infinite at all?
Furthermore, there is no real danger in finding oneself in the Infinite, it is a
place of greater safety and greater riches, not less; but this something in you
does not like the prospect because it has to merge itself into a larger
self-existence. You asked the Mother to press on you the lighting of the fire
within and she has been doing so, but this is standing back with the feeling “Oh
Lord! what will become of me if this flame gets lit.” You must get rid of this
clinging to the past self and life, then you can have a fire which will not be
feeble. You have not fallen between two stools,— you are hesitating between two
consciousnesses, the old and the new, the small and the great, that is all.
As for the poetry, well — you have developed up to a
point at which your work is of a very rare and unique quality — in no way
inferior to that of the others of whom you speak,— the difficulty of
intermittency of production is nothing, for all feel that except Nishikanta and
Dilip who have no misgivings about their creative power. Yours rises probably
from the fact that in order to have free command of the highest planes of
poetry, you have to rise into them and not only open to the Word from them — it
is therefore the same difficulty in another form. Otherwise, if you had the old
self-satisfaction of which you draw so glowing a picture, you would have found
your present poetry marvellous and gone on writing freely only oscillating
between the different planes achieved and content to do so. This is not a proof
of incapacity but of the will to greater things. Only that will must not be in
the mind only but take full hold of the vital also and must be a will that what
you write of shall be a part not only of thought but of life. Which comes back
to what I have written above — get free from the obscure hesitation to open and
let the force do its work.
One must either do that if one wants a rapid change or
go 
quietly and wait for the slower working from
behind the veil to reduce and break the obstacle.
10 August 1937