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Sri Aurobindo

Autobiographical Notes

and Other Writings of Historical Interest

Part Two. Letters of Historical Interest

1. Letters on Personal, Practical and Political Matters (1890–1926)

Letters and Telegrams to Political and Professional Associates 1906–1926

To Motilal Roy [14]1

[June 1914]

Dear M

I have received from Grindlays Rs 400. That leaves Rs 200 out of the Rs 1000, which I hope will be received by next August. We have also the clothes and shoes,– but for myself only the slippers are useful as the shoes are too large. I have written to Saurin about the garden money and he says he has asked Sukumar to send it. But I have received nothing as yet. If I get this money and the remaining 200 from Das, that will be Rs 1100 in hand. With 100 more and 130 on account of the old rent, say Rs 250 altogether, we shall be provided for bare necessities for a year, during which other conditions may arise. That Rs 250 ought to come from Sham Babu and Sharma, but there is little hope of money once swallowed by a patriot being disgorged again. His philanthropic stomach digests sovereignly. I must seek it elsewhere. If this can be done, the only burden which will fall on you is to refurnish us with apparel and footwear from time to time. At the same time an attempt should be made to keep up the arrangement with Das, if possible; for we do not know whether our attempt to provide otherwise will succeed.

That attempt takes the form of a new philosophical Review with Richard and myself as Editors – the Arya, which is to be brought out in French and English, two separate editions,– one for France, one for India, England and America. In this Review my new theory of the Veda will appear as also a translation and explanation of the Upanishads, a series of essays giving my system of Yoga and a book of Vedantic philosophy (not Shankara’s but Vedic Vedanta) giving the Upanishadic foundations of my theory of the ideal life towards which humanity must move. You will see so far as my share is concerned, it will be the intellectual side of my work for the world. The Review will be of 64 pages to start with and the subscription Rs 6 annually. Of the French edition 600 copies will be issued, and it will cost about Rs 750 a year minus postage. Richard reckoned 200 subscribers in France at the start, ie Rs 1200 in the year. For the English edition we are thinking of an issue of 1000 copies, at a cost of about Rs 1200 annually. We shall need therefore at least 200 subscribers to meet this expense and some more so that the English edition may pay all its own expenses. Let us try 250 subscribers to start with, with the ideal of having 800 to 1000 in the first year. If these subscribers can be got before the Review starts, we shall have a sound financial foundation to start with. The question is, can they be got. We are printing a prospectus with specimens of the writings from my translation and commentary on a Vedic hymn, and an extract from Richard’s collections of the central sayings of great sages of all times called the Eternal Wisdom to show the nature of the Review. This is supposed to come out in the middle of this month, and the Review on the 15th August, so there will be nearly two months for collecting subscribers. How far can you help us in this work? There is always one thing about which great care has to be taken, that is, there should be no entanglement of this Review in Indian politics or a false association created by the police finding it in the house of some political suspects they search for; in that case people will be afraid to subscribe. My idea is that young men should be got as agents who would canvas for the Review all over Bengal, but there so many young men are now political suspects that it may not be easy to find any who will be free and active and yet above suspicion. In that case some other method must be tried. I should like to know from you as soon as possible how far you can help us and how many copies of the prospectus we should send to you. If the review succeeds, if, that is to say, we get in India 850 regular subscribers, and 250 in France etc. we shall be able to meet the expenses of the establishment, translation-staff etc. and yet have enough for each of the editors to live on with their various kinds of families, say Rs 100 a month for each. In that case the money-question will practically be solved. There will of course be other expenses besides mere living and there may be from time to time exceptional expenses, such as publication of books etc., but these may be met otherwise or as the Review increases its subscribers. Therefore use your best endeavours towards this end.

The second part of my work is the practical, consisting in the practice of Yoga by an ever increasing number of young men all over the country. We have started here a society called the New Idea with that object, and a good many young men are taking up Vedantic Yoga and some progressing much. You say that it has spread in the North all over. But in what way? I am not at all enamoured of the way in which it seems to be practised outside Bengal. It seems there to be mixed up with the old kind of Tantra sometimes of the most paishachic and undesirable kind and to be kept merely as a sauce for that fiery and gruesome dish. Better no vyapti at all outside Bengal, if it is not to be purified and divine Yoga. In Bengal itself, there are faults which cannot but have undesirable consequences. In the first place, there is the misplacement of values. Vedanta is practised, or so it seems to be in some quarters, for the sake of Tantra, and in order to give a force to Tantra. That is not right at all. Tantra is only valuable in so far as it enables us to give effect to Vedanta and in itself it has no value or necessity at all. Then the two are mixed up in a most undesirable fashion, so that the Vedanta is likely to be affected by the same disrepute and difficulties on the way of profession as hamper the recognition of the truth in Tantra ie in its real sense, value and effectivity. There are difficulties enough already, let us not wilfully increase them. You have seen, for instance, that in recent political trials Yoga pamphlets and bombs seem to have been kept together everywhere with the queerest incongruity. That is a thing we could not control, we can only hope that it will not happen again. But meanwhile the work of publicity and spreading our yoga has got an unnecessary difficulty thrown in its way. Do not let any add to it by associating Vedanta and Tantra together in an inextricable fashion. The Tantric Yogins are few and should be comparatively reticent – for Vedanta is a wider thing and men may then help to fulfil it in all kinds of ways. Let the Tantriks then practise Vedanta silently, not trumpeting abroad its connection with their own particular school but with self-restraint and the spirit of self-sacrifice, knowing that they are only one small corps in a march that is vast and so meant to be world-embracing. The more they isolate themselves from the rest of the host that is in formation, the more they will be free for their own work and the more they will help without hampering the wider march.

Then as to the work of the Tantric discipline and kriya itself. Remember that Tantra is not like Vedanta, it exists as a Yoga for material gains, that has always been its nature. Only now not for personal gains, but for effectivity in certain directions of the general Yoga of mankind. The question I wish you to ask yourself, is whether you think that with its present imperfect basis it can really do the work for which it was intended. I see that it cannot. There have been two stages; first the old Tantra which has broken down and exists only in a scattered way ineffectual for any great end of humanity. Secondly, our own new Tantra which succeeded at first because it was comparatively pure in spite of the difficulties created by the remnants of egoism. But since then two things have happened. It has tried to extend itself with the result of bringing in undesirable elements; secondly, it has tried to attempt larger results from a basis which was no longer sufficient and had begun to be unsound. A third stage is now necessary, that of a preparation in full knowledge no longer resting on a blind faith in God’s power and will, but receiving consciously that will, the illumination that guides its workings and the power that determines its results. If the thing is to be done it must be done no longer as by a troop stumbling on courageously in the dark and losing its best strength by failures and the results of unhappy blunders, but with the full divine power working out its will in its instruments.

What is necessary for that action? First, that the divine knowledge and power should manifest perfectly in at least one man in India. In myself it is trying so to manifest as rapidly as the deficiencies of my mind and body will permit, and also – this is important – as rapidly as the defects of my chief friends and helpers will permit. For all those have to be taken on myself spiritually and may retard my own development. I advance, but at every fresh stage have to go back to receive some fresh load of imperfection that comes from outside. I want now some breathing time, however brief which will enable me to accomplish the present stage which is the central [? ] of my advance. This once accomplished, all the rest is inevitable. This not accomplished, the end of our Yogic movement is, externally, a failure or a pitiful small result. That is the first reason why I call a halt.

The second necessity is that others should receive the same power and light. In the measure that mine grows, theirs also will increase and prosper provided always they do not separate themselves from me by the ahankara. A sufficient Vedantic basis provided, a long, slow and obscure Tantra will no longer be necessary. The power that I am developing, if it reaches consummation, will be able to accomplish its effects automatically by any method chosen. If it uses Tantric kriya, it will then be because God has chosen that means, because He wishes to put the Shakta part of Him forward first and not the Vaishnava. And that kriya will then be irresistible in its effects, perhaps even strange and new in its means and forms. I have then to effect that power and communicate it to others. But at present the forces of the material Prakriti strive with all their remaining energy against the spiritual mastery that is being sought to impose on them. And it is especially in the field to which your kriyas have belonged and kindred fields that they are still too strong for me. You will remember what has been written, that the sadhana shall first be applied in things that do not matter and only afterwards used for life. This is not an absolute rule, but it is the rule of necessity to apply for some time now in this particular matter. I see that I have the necessary powers; I shall communicate them next to you and some others so that there may be a centre of irresistible spiritual light and effective force wherever needed. Then a rapid and successful kriya can be attempted. This is the second reason why I have cried a halt.

The first and supreme object you must have now is to push forward in yourself and in others the Vedantic Yoga in the sense I have described. The spread of the idea is not sufficient, you must have real Yogins, not merely men moved intellectually and emotionally by one or two of the central ideas of the Yoga. Spreading of the idea is the second necessity – for that the Review at present offers itself among other means. The other means is to form brotherhoods, not formal but real, (not societies of the European kind but informal groups of people united by one effort and one feeling) for the practice of Vedantic Yoga (without any necessary thought of the Tantric). But of this I shall write to you hereafter.

Finally as to commercial matters. I had arranged things according to the last idea, but at the last moment an objection was made that the arrangement was not a very reasonable one,– an objection which my reason was forced to admit. It was then proposed to send the Brahmin as a commercial agent and I so wrote to you. But a few days afterwards when I asked for him to be sent, I was informed that the Brahmin was no longer possible as a commercial agent as he was now an object of suspicion to the third party. Another man I had fixed on is so circumstanced that he cannot go now. There the matter stands. As for your suggestion, these people here never objected to dealing direct with you, the objection was mine due to the terms and the accidents of your correspondence. On the other hand every attempt I have made personally to get the matter settled has been frustrated by Krishna. I have made these attempts contrary to the inner instructions received and by the light of the reason. That always fails with me; if it succeeds momentarily, it brings some coarse result afterwards. The point now is that if you do as you suggest, it must be so done that there shall not be the least chance of the transaction interfering with our business here – I mean not any commercial business, but the enterprises (Society, Review etc.) we are starting. The question is not one of direct communication, but of right handling and especially of the right person not only from the point of view of the buyer and seller, but with regard to the third party who is indirectly interested in the transaction. In any case you must write to me what you propose to do, before you act.

By the way, there was a very shocking and [aślīla] word in your last letter to me with regard to my past activities, Bande Mataram, Karmayogin etc. I do not wish to repeat it here. Please do not use such an indecorous expression in writing in future. In personal talk it does not matter; but not, if you please, in correspondence.

As to your request for details of my life, about which you wrote to Bijoy, it is a very difficult matter for there is very little one can write without offending people, eg S. Mullick, B. Pal, S. S. Chakraborty and revealing party secrets. However we shall see what can be done. But let me know what you are writing about me and how and where you mean to publish it.

A. K.

 

1 June 1914. The “New Idea” was officially sanctioned by the government of French  India in June 1914.{{1}}In February 1910, Sri Aurobindo left Calcutta and took temporary refuge in Chandernagore, a small French enclave on the river Hooghly about thirty kilometres north of Calcutta. There he was looked after by Motilal Roy (1882–1959), a young member of a revolutionary secret society. After leaving Chandernagore for Pondicherry in April, Sri Aurobindo kept in touch with Motilal by letter. It was primarily to Motilal that he was referring when he wrote in the “General Note on Sri Aurobindo’s Political Life” (p. 64 of this volume): “For some years he kept up some private communication with the revolutionary forces he had led through one or two individuals.” In these letters, which were subject to interception by the police, he could not of course write openly about revolutionary matters. He developed a code in which “tantra” meant revolutionary activities, and things connected with tantra (yogini chakras, tantric books, etc.) referred to revolutionary implements like guns (see Arun Chandra Dutt, ed., Light to Superlight [Calcutta: Prabartak Publishers, 1972], pp. 27–30). The code sometimes got rather complicated (see the note to letter [3] below). Sri Aurobindo did not use his normal signature or initials in the first 22 letters. Instead he signed as Kali, K., A. K. or G. He often referred to other people by initials or pseudonyms. Parthasarathi Aiyangar, for example, became “P. S.” or “the Psalmodist”.

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