THE MASTER'S TOUCH THROUGH LETTERS

THE period extending from 1930 to 1938 cannot be closed without reference to the sadhaks' correspondence with the Master and his luminous replies which are our richest treasures and an unfailing source of our inspiration. The replies received were looked upon as blessings and matters of high privilege.

Sri Aurobindo's writings, his letters to his disciples have not a little to contribute to charging the air of the Ashram with the vibrations of Truth along with purity, serenity, clarity, discipline and orderliness. To be born in an age when the Divine himself blesses the earth in human form is in itself an unprecedented good fortune. The inner side of this communication was communion. And this communion helped each to be on the height of his consciousness.

The Sri Aurobindo literature in the form of letters is huge in quantity, diverse in character and covers a multiplicity of subjects. They are mainly of two categories : sadhana and literature.

To get into the heart of mystic or symbolic poetry one has to have some glimpse of the poet's experiences and an uplook at the heights he is exploring. Letters in reply to queries throw a vivid light on the nature of the spiritual poetry, for it is the poet himself who can unlock the significances of symbols and metaphors. All the letters on Savitri written to K.D. Sethna, two of them running up to 20 and 22 printed pages, throw a flood of light on his great Epic and are of immense help in one's approach to the book.

The general correspondence began diminishing in volume from 1937 and practically came to a close in 1938 with the exception of letters to Sethna on Savitri or to a few others. The last letter he received on the Epic was in 1948, though other

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communications continued up to a month or so before the Master's passing.

Further, in the letters to his disciples we come into touch with the creative personality of the Master. They go home to our soul. Glimpses of what changes took place in the life of Sri Aurobindo can be had mostly from them. Hence such letters carry an inestimable value and rank high in literature. They run to 1715 pages.

A visitor from the Punjab who had come here in 1951 had some misgivings in his mind about whether he was on the right path. He was a devotee of Sri Krishna. In a dream he saw himself climbing a mountain and afterwards when passing through several valleys he had the feeling of hearing the Voice of Sri Krishna, 'You are on the right path. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo are my forms. They have come to the earth to raise it to a higher level of consciousness.'¹

Before coming here an Ashramite used to repeat the name of Sri Krishna one lakh times a day, but he did not know how to meditate. On coming here for the first time he tasted the joy of meditation but only for a while. To his surprise, he found, while repeating the name of Sri Krishna, he would insensibly pass into repeating the name of Sri Aurobindo. He felt very much perplexed about his loyalty to Sri Krishna. He was now in a fix. He could hold fast neither to Sri Krishna nor to Sri Aurobindo. He was at the time on a short visit. Before leaving Pondicherry he wrote a long letter and earnestly prayed for a reply. He received a registered letter dated 8.3.32 from the Secretary:

"Sri Aurobindo says in reply to your letter: 'The struggle in you (between bhakti for Sri Krishna and the sense of divinity of the Mother) is quite unnecessary; for the two things are one and go perfectly together. It is He who has brought you to the Mother and it is by adoration of her that you will realise Him. He is here in the Ashram and it is His work that is being done here."

Nolini Kanta Gupta

1. Prithwi pai prithwi ko utnane aye hain.

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A pointed answer to a question of comparison between Sri Aurobindo and Sri Krishna which agitates some minds can be seen in the extract from a letter dated 25.2.1945 :

"You cannot expect me to argue about my own spiritual greatness in comparison with Krishna's ... The question itself would be relevant only if there were two sectarian religions in opposition : Aurobindoism and Vaishnavism, each insisting on its own God's greatness. That is not the case. And then what Krishna must I challenge, — the Krishna of the Gita who is the transcendent Godhead, Paramatma, Parabrahma, Purushottama .. or the Godhead who was incarnate at Brindavan and Dwaraka and Kurukshetra and who was the guide of my Yoga and with whom I realised identity ?

We could write to Sri Aurobindo any time up to 11 p.m. when the Ashram gate closed. Letters were generally addressed to the Mother and left on a tray in a corner of the staircase near the door of the first floor. We received replies early next morning. X wrote twice a day continually for four years. There is an instance of one of us writing thrice a day. One or two sadhikas' innocent of English, were answered by the Master in their own mother-tongues. Heaps of letters, at times up to a hundred, received his attention every night.

Sri Aurobindo would read each of them and give replies in his own handwriting, using slips of paper of various sizes. Letters with space on the margin or at the bottom had his notes thereon. The Mother would write the names of sadhaks on variously-painted or artistically-decorated envelopes, using, in particular instances, pink-coloured envelopes symbolising the psychic being. Thus we had the blessing of a double touch. The closed letters were taken by the Secretary to each addressee. His arrival was welcome like the breath of a spring morning.

Let me cite a known case to illustrate this double touch : X was under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna's teachings till he

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was 24. He would not look at the face of a girl and took care that his sight always fell on her feet. He hoped to be jitendriya by following the method of control by will-power.

When he came here he did not know what suppression or rejection signified. He thought he had enough control over himself and was on the way to self-mastery.

After 5 or 6 years' stay he found that his whole body was afire with what he thought he had conquered. He was, as it were, possessed by it and felt helpless.

Fortunately, he concealed nothing and was frank and bold enough to put everything before Sri Aurobindo. By the way, if letters concerned sadhana, even those addressed to him, Sri Aurobindo would read them out to the Mother. In reply to the sadhak in trouble he wrote :

"I suppose you had pressed down the sex-desire into the subconscient and from there, as usually happens when it is suppressed but not eradicated, it has risen up to the surface. This uprush of suppressed subconscient forces has always a certain irrational violence about it. But you should not allow yourself to be alarmed by that. Keep the mind and higher vital calm and quiet, detach yourself from the sex-desire and regard it as a foreign element, and reject it quietly and firmly till it passes away. It must be thrown away outside of the consciousness altogether. Naturally, you must always call in the Mother's Force as your main reliance, supporting it fully with a calm and unswerving will..."

Under this note there was :

"Mon aide et mes benedictions sont toujours avec toi."

- La Mere

"My help and my blessings are always with you."

- The Mother

Showing me the letter in the original he said — 'This was not

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mere writing. Both poured themselves (what the Upanishads call saktipat)² on me and gave me the strength to fight out the battle once for all." To-day he feels quite free. Of course total change will come in its time but he is no longer a slave to passion. He is quite persuaded that sex-craving is no necessity. Its invasion comes from outside. This he could not discern before. He asserts that anyone trying sincerely can free himself from animality.

Once a sadhak had a vision of Sri Aurobindo seated in a chair and writing something. Behind his head there was a circular green light. To a question what this meant he wrote: "The green light is that of dynamic vital energy (of work). As I was writing—at work- it is natural that that light should be behind my head."

Even one word from his pen would transport our heart with delight. A sadhak heard a voice — "You are bom to do this Yoga." On his reporting this to the Mother Sri Aurobindo confirmed it with his "Yes." This one syllable once imprinted on the soul, could it ever be erased ?

X heard the Mother in a dream saying : "These days you have made marvellous progress." On his referring this to the Mother, the Master wrote back: "Yes. It is a contact (with the Mother) in the inner being."

Another voice was heard — "Your realisation is certain."

SRI AUROBINDO: 'These voices express what is being done. They express the certitude of realisation now that so much purification has been made. They are not prophecies but assurances."

(1-9-1936)

One heard a voice not in the heart but in the head: "You are one with the Truth."

Sri Aurobindo : 'These are symbols of the union of the being with the higher truth in the highest mind centre."

To a question about what as many as seven visions in a day

2. Infusion of spiritual strength by the Guru.

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indicated, the answer was : "A great activity of sadhana in the inner being."

(9-6-1936)

Again on being asked what four or five experiences almost daily signified, the Master wrote :"It is an increase in the power of the sadhana for realisation and experience."

(18.8.1936)

X had a standing regret that he could not visit Brindavan before joining the Ashram. From his school life he had been dreaming of meeting Sri Krishna face to face. One difficulty was that often a dark force would rise in his heart and heap ill-names on Sri Krishna. Over this he would shed unending tears. He had taken a vow that he would visit Brindavan only when he would have the capacity to compel Sri Krishna to appear before him.

Afterwards on his way to Hardwar and Rishikesh in quest of a Guru he could easily have visited Brindavan but he did not. In the meantime an unseen hand brought him to the feet of Sri Aurobindo. Here in a few months he felt the tightly screwed-up parts of his being unloosened and the doors of heaven flung open to him. A letter from Sri Aurobindo confirms his feeling:

"The crown of the head is the place through which the Force usually descends; the mind is now free and the higher consciousness is well-founded there, the emotional centre open so that the Force can pass through; but in the lower vital centres it has still to make a pressure (that is what you feel in the waist, hips and lower down — for the navel and the abdominal centre are the vital proper). The lowest centre is the physical and the pressure in the legs shows that the Force has passed into the material layers."

(25.12.1932)

Still he kept feeling a wrench that he had not met Sri Krishna, Then came from the Master a gentle nudge:

"Whether you visit the physical Brindavan or not does not matter; what is necessary is to find the inner union through love and Bhakti."³

3. The true worship of God is the inner worship. — Sri Aurobindo Circle, 1947, p. 174.

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This gave a full-scale turn to his sadhana. Sri Aurobindo's letters are dynamic agents in moulding the lives of sadhaks.

To speak only of joy in Ashram life without mentioning the hurdles in the way would be giving an incomplete picture. Each one had to contend (even as now) with odds, sometimes tremendously. When two instances were cited as having met with no difficulty, the Master replied that neither A nor K had found the path a Grand Trunk Road.

All have to pass the test. Some pass with ease. Others fail to attain even bare pass-marks despite hard labour. To those who assume an air of superiority, the following words of the Mother should serve as a warning; "It is only the small consciousness that seeks to show superiority . Even a child is more developed than such a being; for it is spontaneous in its movements. Rise above all smallness."

Those were also the trying days of dryness, as part of the austere life, of tapasya. By tapasya we do not mean the ordinary forms of asceticism. For us tapasyd meant, and still means, spiritual discipline: "When the will and energy are concentrated and used to control the mind, vital and physical and change them or to bring down the higher consciousness or for any other Yogic purpose or high purpose, that is called tapasyd."⁴

But that was not, nor is, an easy job. The reactions of the vital were painful, its demands exacting. Almost immediately after each Darsan there were cases of turning back to the ordinary life. Only a few of the resolute souls out of the number of sadhaks of those days stuck on.

The period extending from February to August (there being in those days no Darsan in between) would appear like crossing a long desert. If one wanted to take to spirituality one must be ready to pass through seemingly endless deserts. In these burning deserts also there are oases, if an unfailing stream of inner peace

4. Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Fourth Series, p. 131.

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flows within, an outer drought matters nothing.

Once in 1940,1 heard that Nolini Kanta Gupta, who is known for measured living, was a bit out of sorts. On meeting him I asked, "How do you do?"

"I never fall ill," came his easy reply. At another time, to a remark, "Now summer has set in," he said, "Where is summer here ? Here it is always spring."

But all cannot rise to this height. There are letters of Sri Aurobindo which affirm the invasions of depression. In fact, during this period depressions were frequent, weighing heavily upon the sadhaks — often to such an extent as to render them totally helpless. Despite the Mother's help they could not shake them off.

One look, one touch, one word from the Mother at the Pranam-time would be enough to lighten the burden for a while and to sweep away the clouds but they would gather again and yet again. The Master gives the reason :

"It is not easy to overcome gloom, depression, grief and suffering because something in the human vital clings to it and

almost needs it as part of the drama of life.....The mind and the

physical of man do not like suffering, for if they did, it would not be suffering any longer, but this thing in the vital wants it in order to give a spice to life. It is the reason why constant depressions can go on returning and returning even though the mind longs to get rid of them, because this in the vital responds, goes on repeating the same movement like a gramophone as soon as it is got going and insists on turning the whole round of the oft-repeated record."⁵

All round there are thorns in the midst of which one has to bloom like a rose — this is the life of a true sadhak. Occasions were not rare when life turned out to be a veritable battlefield. One could see an array of forces and counter forces facing each

5. Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Second Series,

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other. Why it so happens is brought out very clearly in the following letter of June 6,1930.

"It is a common experience in one form or another of all who try to rise above their ordinary nature ... there are contradictory elements in human nature and in every human being through which he is made to act in a way which his better mind disapproves. This happens to every body, to the most ordinary men in the most ordinary life. It only becomes marked and obvious to our minds when we try to rise above our ordinary external selves, because then we can see that it is the lower elements which are being made to revolt consciously against the higher will. There then seems to be for a time a division in the nature, because the true being and all that supports it stand back and separate from these lower elements. At one time the true being occupies the field of the nature, at another the lower nature, used by some contrary Force pushes it back and seizes the ground, — and this we now see, while formerly the thing happened but the nature of the happening was not clear to us. If there is the firm will to progress, this division is overpassed and in the unified nature, unified around that will, there may be other difficulties, but this kind of discord and struggle will disappear".⁶

In the days of struggle and depression, correspondence with Sri Aurobindo was the divine lever of our souls. When nights of doubt and depression haunted us, his letters would often shine forth as the morning star of hope and joy.

We all know how Nishikanta wished to leave the body and be reborn as a child to join the Green Group of the Play-ground. That was not a solitary case. Another person wrote: "There are so many kinds of vital as well as physical troubles; why not get rid of this body and be born again, better equipped, to do the sadhana?" Sri Aurobindo discouraged the idea as no remedy. But that sort of death the same difficulty would have to be faced

6. Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Fourth Series, pp. 383-84.

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in the next birth.

At times the help would come like a boon and disperse the gloom, opening the way to the sun-lit path. There are sadhaks here who can breast the waves and keep serene amid blinding storms.

"Strength, if it is spiritual," says Sri Aurobindo, "in a power for spiritual realisation; a greater power is sincerity; a greatest power of all in Grace."⁷

Very much depressed, a sadhak once felt suffocated as if shut up in an airtight compartment. No prayer arose from within. The only thought that seized him was, "Why is the Mother punishing me so severely? Where is the mistake? Why am I made to suffer?" At times it appeared that somebody was sucking his blood, drop by drop. At other times he had promptings from within, urging him to go away; happily he realised at length that they were not his own movements but intrusions from outside. So he wrote to the Mother.

An hour after, he felt a great relief. At night he dreamt that he was being carried in the Mother's car. The car was speeding as if through the air. Then he questioned : "Mother, where are you taking me?" And the car stopped. Then the Mother got down and walked towards a house. The door-keeper, a black being, obeyed the Mother like a servant and showed her in. The sadhak could not remember what happened just after this. But the next thing he recalled of the dream was that he met Pavitra smiling at him as if saying, "So the Mother helped you across the desert!"

Such experiences would make us pour our hearts' worship unreservedly at the feet of the Mother.

Sri Aurobindo's writings had a magical effect on us because we could know from them what was going on in us and how the sadhana was progressing. He knew more of us than we knew ourselves. What could be a greater joy to an aspirant than to

7. Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Second Series, p. 261.

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know from his Guru how he was faring on the way ?

"You seem to have made a good progress on the whole. You need not feel troubled about the resistance—such periods always happen when some part of the being, not yet opened, interposes its obscurity and interrupts the full course of the sadhana. It is done so that these parts may be worked upon, opened and brought fully into light; afterwards the sadhana continues with a completer movement than before."

"In your case it is the mind that has been open to the influence; the emotional and vital being was less open. The action in the heart (the pain was there because of some obscure vital resistance) and the something trying to come out from within was the result of an attempt of the psychic being to come to the front. If the psychic comes forward, the mind being already open to the working of the Yoga-force, then the emotional and vital can be opened also, purified and made a field of sadhana."⁸

When X wrote a letter he would keep awake till 12 or 1 a.m. in the hope of receiving something consciously. All of a sudden either his heart or the whole being would get filled with Light or Peace. He would at once know that his letter was being read because the inner illumination or the intensity of the experience would last only a few minutes and that invariably after he had written a letter.

After 5 or 6 years' stay, whenever he had a good experience or a descent of Peace, its effect would last for hours. Once he felt that the whole earth was full of peace, even the roaring sea had calmed down; but often he had physical sufferings.

Letters of general or of cardinal importance were for all to see and when one such letter was put up on the notice-board it drew instantaneously a crowd of readers. Not unoften it proved a collective spur.

When a letter on Peace (since published in Lights on Yoga,

8 1-3-1932.

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p. 63) was first released, I remember very well, every word of it acted like a mantra. How to make it part of us was the thought that it inspired. Such was also the case when Bases of Yoga first saw the light (1936). The release of this book seemed to release the forces, massed in it, right into the atmosphere.

A successful lawyer chanced upon the book in a book-shop at Varanasi. He bought it, read it and felt that it had decided his future.

Blessed are they whose sadhana has been fostered directly by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The most interesting occasions of life were those into which were inserted gems of spiritual experience. The inner meaning and deep bearing that Sri Aurobindo disclosed of them are landmarks in spiritual history.

Who would not dismiss as sheer nonsense the vision of one's offering a stone to the Mother ? And who but Sri Aurobindo could suggest that it might mean an offering of the material being ?

Offering the body as a fruit—what did it mean ? The answer was: "The body here is the physical being and the sense of being a fruit indicates surrender." (15-6-1936) To another question the answer came : "White bricks indicate the building of a new consciousness."(4-7-1937)

An experience was disclosed to Sri Aurobindo. It was the vision of a cyclonic blast smashing the physical being. A column of light fell headlong as a thunderbolt piercing the obscurities of the lower vital. The sadhak was horrified. Sri Aurobindo interpreted the vision as follows :

"It is simply that some part of the nature has come up which is not yet open to the descent. The fear of it is common to the lower vital and physical—so it must be something there. Aspire for the opening of this part.

"There should have been nothing horrifying in this last experience. It meant only a descent into the subconscient physical plane but under very favourable conditions, a descent of light, not into

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obscurity. A tempest also may mean only a movement of inner change, the action of Indra the Maruts, to clear the atmosphere of the Vritra forces. Whatever the experience, the fear or alarm should always be rejected.

(10.2.1933)

We were novices and often wrote, as Sri Aurobindo characterised it," at random and wasted their time."⁹ In 1930 he wrote to one of us — " The twenty-four hours are already too short for what I have to do." Just after three years he wrote again :

" You do not realise that I have to spend 12 hours over the ordinary correspondence, numerous reports, etc. I wrote three hours in the afternoon and the whole night up to 6 in the morning over this.

(17.6.1933)

Someone suggested that if instead of wasting time over such correspondence he utilised it in writing other things, marvels of literature could be produced. Sri Aurobindo simply asked whether, if he spent his time in writing fine poems, that would build up a new race.

This explains why despite his marvellous poetic gifts his poetic output is relatively small. "I never thought politics or feeding the poor or writing beautiful poems would lead straight to Vaikuntha or the Absolute".

9. In those days tooth-sticks were not in use in the Ashram. A dentist from Gujarat recommended them instead of tooth-brush and paste. A sadhak referred the thing to Sri Aurobindo. Even such tetters he would read and answer.

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