25       You have asked me only two questions, but they have set up quite a world of cerebral coruscation. You will have to be patient and tolerant with me, for I am answering in the manner of a wind which "bloweth where it listeth".   Your first question is: "How should one react to circumstances until the Psychic Being takes over? Should we live entirely within and ignore events, or observe all without evaluating?"   We certainly can't ignore events altogether. One may shut out some aspects of the outer world, but one shouldn't take the attitude of that line of Keats's - "Standing apart in giant ignorance". I for one actually stood thus in the early days of

13       I am always very pleased to read of your meditative experience: "At will 1 am able to step back and offer myself to the Mother and consequently I feel a kind of presence around my head." You also write apropos of your Physics examination: "This time while taking the test I feel as if all this is happening outside me." In tune with these words are the later ones: "I seem to be always a bit lost. All the activities appear to be happening outside me. I don't feel interested in anything; everywhere around I find things so obstinate, rigid. The sole solace I get is to watch the gentle sway of tall trees in the breeze, to watch the movements of small leaves as if gig

5       Please forgive my inordinate delay in replying to your earnest letter asking for my interpretation of two verbal problems in Sri Aurobindo's early poetry. In the lines (p. 7 of Collected Poems) -   Perfect thy motion ever within me, Master of mind -   it is possible to take "Perfect" as either a semi-exclamatory frontally projected adjective or as a verb in the imperative mood. The choice has to be guided by the suggestion, if any, in the succeeding lines. What follows is:   Grey of the brain, flash of the lightning. Brilliant and blind, These thou linkest, the world to mould, Writing the thought in a scroll of gold, V

11       I am very happy that you have taken yourself thoroughly in hand and are doing your best to combine normal natural behaviour with the Yogic aspiration. What often stands in the way of both is what I have called "too much preoccupation with oneself". A relaxation away from the ego is indicated in an outward direction by cordial and friendly and co-operative relations with those among whom one lives or works: the same is indicated in an inward direction by getting in touch with the deeper layer of the mind which looks up to a light beyond the mere thinker and with the depth behind the mere "feeler" to a love for some ideality of existence towards which our sense of the

33     ' It gratifies me indeed that you have given so fine a response to my poetry at even the first reading.   Poetry of the sort I write - seeking to be in tune with the Aurobindonian Muse - is not always easy to enjoy immediately: one has to live with it for a while, listen to it intently with the inner ear, brood on it with a hushed mind, before it yields fully both its meaning and its vision. One must do these things in reading it because I have done them in writing it. Not that it has not flowed through, spontaneously and rapidly - some of it has come with a rapturous rush while some came slowly, bit by ecstatic bit, but even when there was a rush I have

35       I welcome your warning against what you think to be "a growing trend of Mother India to devote more and more pages and attention to its Editor". I endorse your remark: "Self-praise is a slow poison that can kill a soul. Please shake up yourself and free yourself from this slow poison." Yet I must echo the old cry of Themistocles: "Strike, but hear!"   Your expression - "self-praise" - has to be understood, I suppose, in a special sense. Surely you cannot mean that there is any article by me praising myself? Perhaps you intend the expression to signify that I have let admiration of me by my friends find a place in the very journal I edit? Well, I have edited

27       Before I launch on the main issues raised in your letter, I should like to- say a word on what you have advised about guarding "against interference with the inspirational substance" of people's writings. 1 hold that we cannot have a proper sense of inspiration unless we are ready again and again to accept interference either by others or by oneself with what seems to be inspired. The common criterion of inspiration is: "It all came just like that in a rush!" There are numerous levels of being from which things can rush forth in one shape or another and there are also numerous connecting passages where various kinds of intrusions and interventions in what is rushin

4     What you write about Sri Aurobindo's poem, "The Death of a God" (p. 598 of Collected Poems), calls for serious consideration. You say:   "Am I allowed to ask from you a 'Clear Ray' {'Amal Kiran') to bring some light into a dull corner of my heart? See, every time I read 'The Death of a God' I cannot avoid the feeling of listening to the voice of someone who is not only recognising his own defeat but even his own giving up the fight. Of course, I know that all this is by nature strange to Sri Aurobindo, but I fail to find in the poem something deeper, even something different. When did Sri Aurobindo write this piece full of pain and greyness in which one misses so

24       What you have written about "International Spiritualism" is correct in essence. By the way I should like you to speak not of Spiritualism but of Spirituality. The former term has now popularly acquired a special meaning, referring to communication with the spirits of the dead through mediums. As for certain experiences being not exclusively Indian, the lines you have quoted from Wordsworth clearly show the truth of your contention. But Wordsworth's Prelude and other mystical poems are not typical of Western spirituality. The West is Christian, and to the bulk of Christians the universe is not something emanating from the Divine and ultimately God-stuff, with a "with

INTRODUCTION       The "personal letters" which started appearing sixteen years ago in Mother India, Monthly Review of Culture, published from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, have proved to be a popular feature. A large number of readers from all over the country and even some from abroad have expressed their gratitude for helpful treatment of a lot of problems which aspirants to the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother meet on their way. Repeated suggestions have also come to collect the series of "Life-Poetry-Yoga" in book-form so that it may be easily available for consultation.   These suggestions have now been taken up and the project is to divi