As for his previous affection and its existence in the system, well, if it were syphilis, 4 or 5 injections could not have cured him. But there's only one way of being sure about it — blood-exam. But for such things I feel hesitant and ashamed for they reflect upon the reputation of the Asram, don't they? Of course, people don't know that these things are contracted outside and come in...

Where would the blood-examination be made? But I suppose it is better to avoid it if possible. What do you propose to do for his sores if they are not syphilitic, as we must assume since they have not the characteristics?

P hasn't turned up. She doesn't seem to have much faith in medicine.

This is not a question of faith, but of fact.

She has written to me saying Becharlal had already once examined her and found nothing. Will you ask Becharlal about it?

I seize the golden opportunity to ask you to deliver about the Supermind as you had promised. I hope you remember it;if not, the question was: What is exactly the significance of 24th November? Overmental, supramental realisation or what? You say that it was something like the descent of Krishna in the material. Some say that the descent took place in you. But you are not matter, are you? Not very clear.

Why not? Why can't I be matter? or represent it at least? At least you will admit that I have got some matter in me and you will hardly deny that the matter in me is connected or even continuous (in spite of the quantum theory) with matter in general? Well, if Krishna or the Overmind or something equivalent descended into my matter with an inevitable extension into connected general Matter, what is the lack of clarity in the statement of a descent into the material? What does logic say?

By your "trying to get the supermind down into the

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material", we understand that the ascent is done and now the descent has to be made. Something like one going up to you at Darshan and getting all the bliss, joy, etc. and trying to bring it down and not lose it as soon as one steps out. And what is this again? You say you are in contact with it and then again that you are very near the tail of it! Sounds funny! Contact and no contact?

But, supposing I reached supermind in that way, then under such conditions would it be probable that I should come down again at the risk of losing it? Do you realise that I went upstairs and have not come down again? So it was better to be in contact with it until I had made the path clear between S and M. As for the tail, can't you approach the tail of an animal without achieving the animal? I am in the physical, in matter — there is no doubt of it. If I threw a rope up from Matter, noose or lasso the Supermind and pull it down, the first part of Mr. S that will come near me is his tail dangling down as he descends, and that I can seize first and pull down the rest of him by tail-twists. As for being in contact with it, well I can be in contact with you by correspondence without actually touching you or taking hold even of your tail, can't I? So there is nothing funny about it —perfectly rational, coherent and clear.

Another point: Have you written anywhere what would be the nature of the physical transformation?

I have not, I carefully avoided that ticklish subject.

What would it be like? Change of pigment? Mongolian features into Aryo-Greco? Bald head into luxuriant growth? Old men into gods of eternal youth?

Why not seven tails with an eighth on the head — everybody different colours, blue, magenta, indigo, green, scarlet, etc; hair luxuriant but vermilion and flying erect skywards; other details to match? Amen. ..

Now you can't say surely that all your points have not been cleared?

September 15, 1935

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By the way, vomiting seems to be a very common complaint at present.

I notice that these things come by epidemics in the Asram. One starts, others follow suit.

H is having vomiting too. Yogic force on the brain ?

Jehoshaphat! What has the brain got to do with vomiting? Throwing up excess of Yogic knowledge? That might be with H the philosopher, but it does not fit the others.

I propose, if you approve, to take the three ladies P, K and Sh to the hospital for a screen-examination.

Not advisable. I believe if you could give these people (P, Sh etc.) some nervous balance, their ailments would walk off into blazes.

B. P.' s blood-exam has to be done in the hospital, but it doesn't seem necessary now. He has no other complaints. His sores seem to me like scabies, so we'll try sulphur ointment, otherwise calomel ointment.

All right.

Now, lend your ears, Sir, to my ailment! I was disappointed by your answer yesterday about the Supermind, for it is far from what you had in your mind when you made the promise...

I am disappointed that you could not appreciate the splendidly coloured prospects held out there. But what had I in my mind and what was this promise? Apart from the colours, my two other answers were, though figurative, yet very much to the "point".

Today I caught sight of an atrocious incident in the paper, at Rajshahi, Bengal. I am sure you have read it.

Didn't. Have no time to read Bengal papers.

You know very well that it is the confounded Raj that is

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behind and has fomented this communal incident.

It looks as if it were going to be like that everywhere. In Europe also.

I won't say a word about this race, you know my feelings.

Which race?

With the coming of independence I hope such things will stop. Now I would like to ask you something. In your scheme of things do you definitely see a free India? You have stated that for the spreading of spirituality in the world India must be free. I suppose you must be working for it! You are the only one who can do something really effective by the use of your spiritual Force.

That is all settled. It is a question of working out only. The question is what is India going to do with her independence? The above kind of affair? Bolshevism? Goonda-raj? Things look ominous.

Supposing you were able to create a race of Supermen, then there would be two strata: Supermen and men.

There will also be cats. Look at the Asram!

Then the Supermen will no longer concern themselves with the lives and histories of men just as men are at present indifferent to the lives of animals?

Men are not indifferent to lives of animals — at least not in Europe. Look at the open-air zoos — hospitals for animals —refuges for unwanted cats and dogs — live-farms, etc., etc.!

But what will happen when the supramental comes down is a matter for the supramental to decide — no use laying down laws for it beforehand with the mind. It is the Truth-consciousness, sir — it will act according to the divine Truth behind things.

September 16, 1935

I am still in the slough of despondency. Really, Sir, no belief or faith in effort at all. I will choose the mulish revolting

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way and that would be the easiest. What do you say ?

I am inclined to say "Pshaw!" Have more faith, not less.

Apart from this, I have observed that whenever I communicate an experience to you, the next moment it stops. What's the truth of it?

That is a thing that we used often to note formerly when sadhana was in the early stages — viz. to speak of something experienced was to stop it. It is why many Yogis make it a rule never to speak of their experiences. But latterly it had altogether ceased to be like that. Why are you starting that curious old stunt all over again?

I remember a story of my childhood. I was dining with my father when I was obliged to go out. I turned round and said, "Papa, see you don't eat my fish!" Well, fathers may not, but Gurus?

No, Sir, I don't eat your fish. I have oceans of fish at my disposal and have no need to consume your little sprats. It is Messrs. H.F. (hostile forces) who do that — the Dasyus or robbers. You display your fine new penknife and they say "Ah! he's proud of his fine new penknife, is he? We'll show him!" and they filch it at the first opportunity.

Do tell us how the Supermind will make us great sadhaks overnight. We are hanging all our hopes on its "tail", which you said was descending.

If you expect to become supramental overnight, you are confoundedly mistaken. The tail will keep the H.F. at a respectful distance and flap at you until you consent to do things in a reasonable time instead of taking 200 centuries over each step as you seem o want to do just now. More than that I refuse to say. What is a reasonable time in the supramental view of things I leave you to discover.

Your Overmental Force seems to have utterly failed in the

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case of idiots like us. Where then is the chance of this Mr. Supramental who is only a step higher?

Overmind is obliged to respect the freedom of the individual — including his freedom to be perverse, stupid, recalcitrant and slow.

Supermind is not merely a step higher than Overmind — it is beyond the line, that is a different consciousness and power beyond the mental limit.

Please don't think of what India is going to do with her independence. Give her that first, and then let her decide her fate for herself. Independence any how — your Supermind will do the rest.

You are a most irrational creature. I have been trying to logicise and intellectualise you, but it seems in vain. Have I not told you that the independence is all arranged for and will evolve itself all right? Then what's the use of my bothering about that any longer? It's what she will do with her independence that is not arranged for — and so it is that about which I have to bother. To drag in the Supermind by the tail here is perfectly irrelevant. We have been talking all the time on an altogether infra-supramental basis — down down low in the intellect with an occasional illumined intuitive or overmental flash here and there. Be faithful to the medium, if you please. If you do not become perfectly and luminously logical and rational, how can you hope to become a candidate for the next higher stage even? Be a little practical and sensible.

. September 18, 1935

You have admitted your failure in intellectualising me; now I am waiting to hear at any time the admission that all your attempts to make me a yogi seem to be in vain!

Perhaps that is because for the sheer fun of it I tried the impossible, intending not to succeed — because if you had really become luminously intellectual and rational, why, you would have been so utterly surprised at yourself that you would have sat down open- mouthed on the way and never moved a step farther

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But when did I tell you, Sir, that I expect to become supramental overnight? All I asked was whether this Mr. S is going to make us great sadhaks overnight, if so, how? By what supramental logic or intuition, do you heap this great ambition on my head, my human logic fails to comprehend...

You said "overnight", sir, "overnight". It was a logical inference from your desire to become a great sadhak overnight. In this remarkable correspondence I am not using intuition — I am proceeding strictly by mental (not supramental) reason and logic. A "great .sadhak" in the supramental Yoga means a supramental — or ought to according to all rules of logic.

Being an ass myself, I quite realise that to cross the "asses’ bridge” is neither in my power nor do I cherish, harbour, rear any such phantasms.

Asses seldom realise that. If they see a thistle on the other side, they try at once to go after it — so here again your logic fails.

I don't even project my myopic vision towards the splendidly coloured horizon of the Absolute... I want only peace... If the blessed outer nature is on blazing fire, the inner would be calm, terribly calm, in a calm Pacific peace which no Atlantic aggressions can disturb...

And yet you say you are not after the Absolute!!!

About the Supermind, I only wanted to know how this gentleman is going to help us. Minimising our depressions? Breaking our difficulties ? Keeping off the waves of the subconscient, etc., etc.?

He can do any or all of these things. But we can leave him to fix his programme after he has got on his feet (subsequent to the bump of the descent) and has had time to look about him.

I know my nature too well to hope for any Supermind, overmind or any other Mind — overnight. Still you say 'that I am an irrational, illogical, impractical creature?

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Well, but you talked of becoming a great sadhak {if not supramental) overnight. So unless you withdraw that ─

Some people say that Supermind will establish a direct connection with the psychic and spur it to come to the front quicker.

Well, it can do that, but it is not bound to do that only and take no other way.

In your Yoga the main issue seems to be to bring out the psychic to the front, after which everything becomes an easy walkover.

Not quite that. The psychic is the first of two transformations necessary — if you have the psychic transformation it facilitates immensely the other, i. e the transformation of the ordinary human into the higher spiritual consciousness ─ otherwise one is likely to have either a slow and dull or exciting but perilous journey.

You said yesterday that the Overmind is obliged to respect the freedom of the individual. Do you imply then that the Supermind will do no such thing ?

Of course I do! It will respect only the Truth of the Divine and the truth of things.

When I said apropos of India's independence, that your Supermind will do the rest ,I only meant that before India has any chance of becoming free, the Supermind will descend and guide India's destiny.

How do you know it will do that ? It may simply look on, twirl its mustache and say "Ahem" !

I would like to report that my head is very heavy, painful, body feverish and a painful boil in the nose .

Is it the result of your mind bumble-beeing too much around the tail of the Supramental ?

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I send you a photograph of mine along with the note-book. What do you think of this snap — a Mussolini gone morbid? Anyhow, it looks as if you have at last succeeded in putting some intellect in this brain-box of mine!

Good heavens, what a gigantic forehead they have given you! The Himalaya and the Atlantic in one mighty brow! also, with the weird supramental light upon it! Well, well, you ought to be able to cross the Ass's Bridge with that. Or do you think the bridge will break down under its weight?

September 19, 1935

When one has a mighty pen, Sir, one can wield it in any way one likes. However, I hope you intend to succeed in making me a yogi — not out of sheer fun!

I hope so.

But, really, Sir, I never expected you to take my "overnight" as overnight.

Don't understand your deep expressions — you did not mean that it would happen rapidly and suddenly? "Overnight" in English means that,- but if you had some extraordinary supramental meaning (beyond the mental and out of the human time-sense) in your mind - it is a different matter, and then I express my awe-struck, heart- felt, flabbergasted regrets, pleading only as excuse my inability to grasp such a deep and novel use of the language. May I ask, very humbly, what you did mean, if not a sudden and rapid development into great sadhaks?

Is it because you use only the mental? Suppose we use your expression "very near the tail of the Supramental” in our human time-sense?

I supposed that you would take it as a metaphor or as anyone reading English in the ordinary way, would do. No need of a super-human time-sense or timeless sense to interpret the phrase, although it seems it is needed in order to understand your "overnight".

I am not very clear about the transformation of the psychic.

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Doesn't it mean a process of change from a gross lower nature to a fine and higher one? But the psychic is a part of the Divine and hence always pure, noble and high. Do you mean a greater evolution ?

I fear, I shall have to stop writing altogether, since even the simplest things I write are so unintelligible even to the few "intellectuals" of the Asram. I never said anything about a "transformation of the psychic". I have always written about a "psychic transformation" of the nature which is a very different matter. I have sometimes written of it as a psychisation of the nature. The psychic is in the evolution, part of human being, its divine part — so a psychisation will not carry one beyond the present evolution but will make the being ready to respond to all that comes from the Divine or Higher Nature and unwilling to respond to the Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha or Animal in the being or to any resistance of the lower nature which stands in the way of the divine change.

You have said that the psychic being is at this stage aflame, not a spark. Does it apply to the human species as a whole ?

I simply meant that there was a psychic being there and not merely a psychic principle as at the beginning of the evolution.

And is there a difference between the psyche of one man and that of another? Since they are portions of one Essential Divine, they should be the same in all, only the difference being that of evolution.

The difference is one of evolution. The psychic being is more developed in some, but the soul-principle is the same in all.

By the way, can't you be a little less indefinite than saying "evolve itself out" regarding India's Independence? When the Yogi B. Babu was asked about the date of India's Independence he replied, "Not within 50 years." Good Lord! Can you give a more definite date or is it again a "play of forces"?

I am not a prophet like B. Babu. All I can say is that the coming

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of independence is now sure (as anyone with any political sense at all can see). As you do not accept my "play of forces" explanation of things, I can say no more than that — for that is all that can be said by the "human time-sense".

I had a temperature of 100° all day. Arjava threatens that people will lose all faith in doctors unless I cure myself quickly. I fear the Supramental gave me some severe lashes with its tail!

Not at all. You are simply "not well"— the reason you as a doctor ought to discover. Unless you have committed a secret sin (of one kind or another) and the temperature is a foretaste of the heat hereafter. But that also is for you to see.

P doesn't seem to be willing to oil her machine with olive oil!

She wants, I suppose, to rely "only on the Mother's force". I suppose she does not like medicines.

September 20. 1935

...Just see what you wrote — "The psychic is the first of two transformations necessary — if you have the psychic transformation it facilitates immensely the other, i.e. of the ordinary human into higher spiritual consciousness —..." Evidently then, you speak of two transformations — one psychic, and the other human into something else.

But, hang it all, the psychic is part of the human nature or of ordinary nature, — it has been there even before the human began. So your plea does not stand for a moment.

By that accursed phrase making us "great sadhaks overnight", as I said, I didn't mean anything precise. There might have been something in the subconscious, perhaps an idea about A. B, being a great sadhak.

There you go again! "Great sadhaks", "advanced sadhaks", "big

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sadhaks" like X, Y & Z.!¹ When shall I hear the last of these ego- building phrases which I have protested against times without number? And you object to being beaten!

I regret to find that this phrase has led to so much froth. If you take such things seriously you will find many occasions for beating me and one day in sheer despondency you might utter, "Useless! useless! All pains, all efforts in vain, in vain!"

It looks like it! "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and vexation of spirit" saith the Preacher! I fear all Preachers have to come to that in the end — especially the vanity of correspondence.

What "secret sin" did you insinuate? Joke or jest? Well, a few days ago I cooked a little "khichuri" here, but that is hardly a sin!

That's all? Only a "little" khichuri? Umph! The transformation seems to have begun already.

I am much tempted to quote to you a very fragmentary touching picture of your brother Monomohan: "Dressed in a grey suit, tall, well-built — the face mysterious like the night, dreamy and tired eyes, Monomohan came to the class and all were spell-bound. A cursed poet fallen from the heaven of beauty onto our dusty earth. He used to read poetry and his sad eyes flamed up in delight. The class would come to an end like a dream..."²

If any part of you has remained human, you will shed two drops of tears on reading this. But there seems to be some similarity between you and him as regards charming the students by an overwhelming personality.

Not even a fragment of a drop! Monomohan had a personality,

¹ Note that Sri Aurobindo wrote X, Y, Z in the MS. They are not here the usual editorial substitutions.

² An abridged version of a portraiture originally in Bengali.

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but it was neither overwhelming nor sweetly pathetic. So even with this piece of honeyed rhetoric the tears refuse to rise.

September 21, 1935

I understand your protesting against "great" or "big" sadhaks, but why against "advanced" sadhaks? It is a fact that some are more advanced than others and so we mention X as ,on advanced sadhak, don't mean anything else.

Advanced indeed! Pshaw! Because one is 3 inches ahead of another, you must make classes of advanced and non-advanced? Advanced has the same puffing egoistic resonance as "great" or "big". It leads to all sorts of stupidities, rajasic self-appreciating egoism in some, tamasic self-depreciating egoism in others, round-eyed wonderings why X an advanced sadhak, one 3 inches ahead of Y, should stumble, tumble or fumble while Y, 3 inches behind X, still plods heavily and steadily on, etc., etc. Why, sir, the very idea in X that he is an advanced sadhak (like the Pharisee "I thank thee, O Lord, that I am not as other unadvanced disciples",) would be enough to make him fumble, stumble and tumble. So no more of that, sir, no more of that.¹

September 25, 1935

T says I leave the smell of medicine in the lap of the Mother which she has to breathe every day. Perhaps I smell of that since I come straight from the Hospital. If it is nauseating to Mother and others, I think I should change my clothes before going to Pranam.

Mother smelt the hospital fragrance in you but she does not mind at all, it does not disturb her. As for others, well, I leave it to you. Some are pernickety, some are not; but I don't know if any others go into the first category.

September 26, 1935

S's abrasion is following quite a normal course. The wound

¹ Here again Sri Aurobindo wrote X, Y, Z in the MS. They are not editorial substitutions.

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is perfectly clean and healthy. He wants it to take a speedy, supernormal course. But unfortunately doctors can't do that... Our duty ends there and yours begins.

Perhaps S has doubts about what the Doctors may be doing with him, just as you have doubts about what the Divine may be doing with him — hence some nervousness. Better or worse? Where the deuce is the progress? When am I going to be healed? After centuries?

I had a discussion with Amal about the soul-theory. He says it is true the soul comes into evolution for the sake of experience, but once it is in Ignorance, it is divine only in name. It's imprisoned in matter. From there it slowly emerges making its very slight and imperceptible influence felt on , the gross matter, then on the lower nature, while all the time a higher Force presses it forward till it becomes the Master.

An incomplete but not incorrect account of the process.

That is why the psychic takes thousands of lives to evolve and turn towards the Divine. Is the involution also a similar process, or is it one single descent all at once into the Inconscient?

No, certainly not. The involution is of the Divine in the Inconscience and it is done by the interposition of intermediate planes (Overmind etc., mind, vital — then the plunge into the Inconscient which is the origin of matter). But all that is not a process answering to the evolution but in the inverse sense—for there is no need for that, but a gradation of consciousness which is intended to make the evolution upwards possible.

What is the first experience that the soul had in its descent?

Partial separation from the Divine and the Truth — these things at the back and no longer in front and everywhere; division, diminished sense of unity with all, stress growing in separate existence, separate viewpoint, separate initiation, aim, action.

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You say that if the soul goes on with its Karma, it does not get liberation. But isn't liberation a consummation of the result of Karma, at least according to Buddhism ?

Not that I know of, in the ordinary theory. Karma always produces fresh karma; it is only the cut from karma that produces liberation.

Buddhism seems to say that we are bound to the chain of Karma and so past Karma is always guiding our present and future. In that case would not Buddha's very attainment of Nirvana be due to his past Karma?

The only truth of that is that by the use of compassion and acts of compassion one is helped to become a Bodhisattwa — just as sattwic deeds and feelings help to become less murky with the Ignorance. But it is knowledge that liberates according to both Buddhism and Vedanta, not Karma.

According to Buddhism, one can't explain then the play of forces behind any action, or would it say that even that has been arranged and determined by past Karma?

I suppose so.

But isn't it curious that Buddha did not concern himself with any play of forces ?

Why should he? It was the play of sanskaras¹ that interested him, the binding play of wrong ideas, and his whole aim was to get rid of that.

He seemed to have gone in for personal effort and. struggle, didn't he?

Yes, because individual salvation was his aim and for him God and Shakti did not exist — only the Permanent above and a mechanical chain of karma below. To undo the chain of sanskaras that create the individual is the point; the individual is a knot that must

¹ Fixed impressions, habitual reactions formed by one's past.

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undo itself by disowning all that constitutes itself. The individual must do it, because who else is going to do it for him? There isn't anybody. All else including the Gods are only other knots of sanskaras and no knot can undo another knot — each knot must undo itself. Comprenez?

September 27, 1935

If Shakti didn't exist for Buddha, and if for the individual, his own efforts must undo the "knot", then I must say that his disciples had a very uphill job — to do everything by themselves.

Buddhist Yoga is an uphill business like the Adwaita Vedanta. You have to do the whole thing off your own bat, and even TotaPuri, Ramakrishna's teacher in Adwaita, was after thirty years of sadhana far from his goal, so much so that he went off to the Ganges to drown himself there — only Ramakrishna and Kali interfered in a miraculous way; that at least is the story.

The Buddhist Church, however, as distinguished from the uncompromising theory of the thing, proved weak and admitted ¹ in Buddha as well as in the Dharma and the Sangha.

Didn't he really "pump” his force into his disciples?

Surely not. He would have considered it a wrong thing altogether — even if he had any idea about pumping force, which he probably never had. At least I never heard of his doing this operation. He might have given enlightenment, but I think only through upadesh² — not certainly by pumping light into them. An individual knot of sanskars can tell another how to dissolve itself, but where is the ground for a more direct interference? All that of course is only the conscious theory of Buddha's action. I won't swear that without meaning it he did not influence his disciples in more secret and subtle ways.

Can you tell me why two Atelier workers have been sent to the hospital for simple conjunctivitis without consulting

¹ sharanam: refuge.

² Advice and instruction.

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me? I was treating them and they were improving. All on a sudden I found one of them in the hospital. He said that his master had sent him there. I take it to be a breach in medical etiquette.

It is the workmen themselves that complained the eye was worse after the medicine, paining badly and suddenly red all over, and did not want to go back to the dispensary — so of course they have to go to the hospital. You must remember we are dispensing against the law, so we can't stand on medical etiquette.

September 28, 1935