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

9       I have quite a pile of your letters - with quite a host of questions. I shall try to answer them not in a chronological order but as they come up in the order in which the pile has put them.   The first to hand reminds me of the Biblical war-horse neighing "Ha! Ha!" as its nostrils breathe the smell of the battlefield. You are in a regular frenzy facing the field of human knowledge as laid out by encyclopaedias and dictionaries. Here comes your aspiration to be a polymath, master of a hundred disciplines. Ever since my middle teens I have thrilled to the same lure. Except for mathematics, which don't daunt you, I have felt competent to tackle all the ranges

31       You have quoted from Savitri (Centenary Ed., p. 61) the lines - The universe is an endless masquerade: For nothing here is utterly what it seems, It is a dream-fact vision of a truth Which but for the dream would not be wholly true, You have asked: "Do lines 3 and 4  mean:   'It is a vision of a veridical fact seen as in a dream, which but for the dream would not be quite true'   or:   'it is a vision of a veridical fact such as happens in a dream'   or:   'it is a vision of a dream-happening that appears as a true fact'?"   Here is my answer:   The meaning seems to me rather complex, a

21       Now we are nearing the birthday of the Mother: 21 February. There will be a special force at work on and around that date. 1 take it to be a force that may surprise us by saying:   "Why do you worry whether you are strong enough or worthy enough to do Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga? Just keep visualising me constantly. Those of you who have seen me should try to revive memories of me as you saw my face and form in one activity or another. Whoever has not seen me in person has still my various photographs to go by. The photographs of either Sri Aurobindo or me are not mere pictures. They automatically carry by their very representations of us our consciousness

16 I was greatly impressed by your "Golden Vision". It reveals the Mother in her full reality - not only the Universal Form of her but also the Individual Being. People often say that now that the Mother has left her body she is a Universal Form - as if the bodily shape alone constituted her individuality. What you saw shows not only the cosmic power set to greater use by her departure from the Body. It shows also how closely and organically the Universal and the Individual in her were related and how naturally they interplay.   It would seem that her individuality no less than her universality can now come home more vividly. Her individual aspect acted on you i

6       I have been much interested by your comment:   "Apropos your 'Life - Poetry - Yoga' in the May Mother India, where you have quoted St. Augustine's well-known sentence 'Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee', I remember to have read it originally in German which runs thus:   " 'Du hast uns zu Dir hin geschaffen, und ruhelos ist unser Herz bis es Ruhe findet in Dir.'   "Here the words 'zu Dir hin' meaning 'towards Thee' ('hin' conveys movement) make the statement profounder still, as they indicate the Divine's intention in creating us. The whole meaning then reads: 'Thou hast created us towards Thyself

34       You have asked how lines 5 and 6 are to be interpreted in the following passage in Savitri, pp. 34-35:   This too the supreme Diplomat can use, He makes our fall a means for greater rise. For into the ignorant nature's gusty field, Into the half-ordered chaos of mortal life The formless Power, the Self of eternal light Follow in the shadow of the spirit's descent; The twin duality for ever one Chooses its home mid the tumults of the sense. You have quoted Madhav Pandit's Readings in "Savitri" as saying:   "In the very process of its descent from the heights of the Spirit, the Divine has followed and involv

2       Your letter suggests to me that somewhere in your being there is a born "Pilgrim of Pondicherry" as well as "Initiate of Poetry" - and perhaps the former will fully emerge through the development of the latter. It is remarkable that the reading of my sonnet "Mukti" should have left so deep an impression on you. The fact that not just the sense but also the sound of it means so much proves to me that my second description of the potential you is quite correct. For, contrary to the general notion, it is the sound that is the soul of poetry and it is the sense that is the body. By "sound" I mean the inner subtle life-throb of the vision or experience that articulates it

20 The Gods and Goddesses are emanations of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. So their connections in some way or other with the work of our Gurus, according to the choice of our Gurus, are natural. But the question is whether the disciples are encouraged to have connections with the Gods and Goddesses. Here, as elsewhere in the Integral Yoga, there are no hard-and-fast rules and several things are not objected to if they serve as temperamental aids. Yet the general stand is clear. Has not the Mother emphatically said that those who want to worship Gods and Goddesses may do so but such worship has nothing to do with the Supramental Yoga of Sri Aurobindo?   You make mu