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

Creative Activity Subordinate to One’s Spiritual Life

Nirod, Nolini and Sahana are all wrong in laying down a rule of that kind for my conduct. I do not base my action on mental rules which have to be applied to every case. It is a still greater error to suppose that because I (or the Mother) do something in the case of one person or another, we are bound to do it for everybody and to complain of our not doing it as “making a difference”. All that belongs to the ignorance and clamour of the vital egoistic nature and has nothing to do with spiritual life.

I cannot allow myself to be drawn back into a preoccupation with the poetry of the sadhaks. I have much more serious things to deal with on which depends the whole work and Yoga. I have ceased to deal with Bengali poetry — if any is sent, which is no longer done, I send it back with or without a word of comment. But neither can I spend time in teaching beginners how to write English verse. Nirod’s case is one in which for special reasons I have made an exception, nor is he any more a beginner. Neither on his own nor on Romen’s poems have I need to spend a long time. Even so, I do it only because I have a few moments to dispose of; if they claimed it as a right, I would refuse.

The spiritual life and one’s own inner psychic and spiritual change should be the first preoccupation of a sadhak — poetry or painting is something quite subordinate and even then it should be done not to be a great poet or artist but as a help to the inner sadhana. It is time that everyone got away from the vital view of things to the psychic and spiritual on which alone can stand Yoga and the spiritual life.