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LONGER LETTERS
Your letter has been communicated to me and the questions you ask in it were for me, at a certain state of my development, of such intense interest that I shall take great pleasure in replying to them. Nevertheless, a reply which is formulated mentally, however complete it may be, can never be the reply, the one which silences every doubt and quietens the mind. Certitude can only come with spiritual experience, and the most beautiful philosophical works can never equal or replace a few minutes of Knowledge that is lived. You say: “Should a man of average development, who is no longer tormented by earthly desires and who is linked to the world only by his affections, renounce the hope of not reincarnating? Is there not, beyond the human state, a less material state where one goes when one is no longer recalled by desire into the human state? This seems strictly logical to me. Man cannot be at the summit of the scale. The animals are very near to him; is he not very near to the following state?” First of all, what maintains the relation with the earth is not only vital desire but any specifically human movement, and affections certainly form part of this. One is bound to the necessity of reincarnation as much by one’s affections, by one’s feelings, as by one’s desires. However, in the matter of reincarnation as in all things, each case has its own solution, and it is certain that a constant aspiration for liberation from rebirth, together with a sustained effort towards the elevation and sublimation of the consciousness, should have the result of severing the chain of earthly existences, although it does not for all that put an end to individual existence, which is prolonged in another world. But why think that his existence in another, more ethereal world should be the “following state” which, relative to man, would be what man is to the animal? It seems to me more logical to think (and a deeper knowledge confirms this certitude) Page - 263 that the following state too will be a physical one, although we may conceive of this physical as magnified, transfigured by the descent, the infusion of Light and Truth. All the ages and millennia of human life that have elapsed so far have prepared the advent of this new state, and now the time has come for its concrete and tangible realisation. That is the very essence of Sri Aurobindo’s teaching, the aim of the group he has allowed to form around him, the purpose of his Ashram. For your second question,¹ I intended to send you the translation of a few extracts from Sri Aurobindo’s works. But when I told him that I wanted to translate some passages from The Life Divine to send to you, he told me that I would have to translate no less than two chapters if I wanted to convey a fairly complete reply to you. Seeing my perplexity, he of himself decided to write some new pages on this subject;² he gave them to me very recently and I immediately began the translation. I do not wish to spoil the freshness of the beautiful pages that I shall have the privilege of translating, but in the meanwhile, until I am able to send them to you, I shall give you, if I may, my too simple and succinct view of the problem. It seems beyond question to me that the universe in which we live is not one of the most successful, particularly in its outermost expression; but it is also beyond question that we are part of it and that consequently, the only logical and wise thing for us to do is to set to work to perfect it, to extract the best from the worst and to make it into the most marvellous possible universe.
¹“The divine spirit, having embodied itself in form, has therefore foreseen and willed everything. But then why does it seem to pursue a goal, a consciousness, since it could have realised this at the very outset? Why has it allowed pain and evil which exist in its essence? If human evil can be attributed to men, the injustice that smites animals and plants can only be attributed to the divine order. Why has the divine order not organised everything in delight? Pain does not always lead us to perfection; more often, it casts us into incurable despair.” ² Published under the title “The Riddle of this World” in Cent. Vol. 22, pp. 24-32. Page - 264 For, I would add, not only is this transfiguration possible, but it is certain. May the peace and joy of Knowledge be with you. 14 June 1933 Friend, sister of former days and always, In your letter of the 9th June which has just arrived, you write that the Buddha “is smiling with gentle irony”, but the Buddha’s smile can only be a smile of perfect understanding before a luminous accomplishment. And in this state in which physical life has already lost for you so much of its concrete reality, whether you are in the solitude of the Himalayas or in the solitude of a house on the road to N, it should be equally easy to live in the deep peace of the immense Buddhist compassion.
Well, I suppose I shall be the first person to tell you that I do not find you so different from the others; of course I mean in a special way − for each one is different in a way from all the others, but it is certainly not of that difference that you are speaking. I suppose also that the impression of being “different” which you gave to your people and generally to those with whom you lived comes from the fact that you are unconventional. This is generally considered as the sign of a great “difference” in the nature and temperament. It is only the sign that one has reached a certain inner freedom which liberates you − at least partially − from the collective suggestion and the social rules − and that inner freedom is one of the signs of a grown-up psychic being. But to have a grown-up psychic being is not, after all, something so very exceptional among the people who are upon earth now. Page - 265 It seems to me that you received from us your share of encouragements like the others, but you have perhaps overlooked it as it might have been not exactly what you expected or wished for. There was certainly an egocentric pride that had to be broken before any good spiritual progress could be made. But now the thing has been mostly done there is no need of being anxious for the future. This is all I can say for the moment. My help, love and blessings are always with you. 23 October 1939 Dear Madam, Your letter has just reached me and I hasten to answer. Here are the replies to your questions. The acute stage of your sister’s illness was very brief and she did not suffer very much. For the last days she was saying that all the time she was feeling a great light and force upon her and the end was very tranquil. She did not know that she was going to die, we ourselves were fighting to the last to keep her and nothing was told to her of the greatness of the danger. Only once she had the impression that she was going to pass away, and then she wanted to write to you telling her will about her material affairs, money, property, etc. She informed me of what she wanted to write, but when it came to the actual writing she felt too weak and gave it up. At that moment she worried very much about you and wondered what you would do without her − several times before she expressed the wish that you should come and live with her here − more than once she asked that my force and protection should be with you and I promised her that whenever you wished for them they would be there. We would have been very pleased to erect the grave-stone at our own expense, but I understand your feeling about it and it shall be as you wish. For the plan I had been relying on our architect; Page - 266 he and your sister had been close friends and she loved his work very much. But he has received a commission in the army in India and is now far away and too busy to make the plan. To save time I thought that you might yourself arrange for the design and send it to me for execution; only it must be very simple, otherwise it would be difficult to have it made here. I may say that she would not have liked to have a cross on her tombstone. I propose to put an inscription (in French, as it is a French graveyard): Ci-gît la depouille mortelle de X (Here lie the mortal remains of X) (Date of birth − Date of death) We intend to erect the memorial stone as close as possible to the anniversary of her passing away, so I need the design as soon as possible. You will find enclosed a note giving the measurement of the ground − the monument must be smaller than the ground. Faithfully yours. 1944 (About letters written to two high-ranking government officials)
I have read your letter to X and I am sorry I had not the opportunity of reading the one you wrote to Y. The very fact that you wanted to despatch these letters without showing them to me ought to have put you on your guard concerning the origin of the impulse which you were obeying, as obviously it could not be a divine origin. This said, I must add that there is nothing essentially wrong in the letter itself. What you say is correct, but surely it is not meant for the person to whom you wanted to send it, nor to any similar person, that is to say, someone in a prominent political position. Statesmen believe only in their own knowledge Page - 267 and power and, moreover, they receive hundreds of letters from people who think they have found a solution to the world situation, and, as in general these political leaders have no power of discernment, they cannot distinguish between what is true and what is false − and they believe that such letters are the product of the heated brain of religious fanatics. We cannot allow ourselves to be mixed up with them and for that it is better to keep a dignified silence. In any case there is more than a ninety-nine per cent chance that your letter would never reach its destination and might fall into undesirable hands. 11 June 1954 Certainly to do the right thing is not cruel or selfish. What is cruel and selfish is to follow blindly one’s weakness and thus to drag another with oneself into a pit from which it is always difficult to come out and never without losing much of one’s time and energy, if not much more and much worse. So do not worry; try now seriously to find out the meaning and the aim of your life and prepare yourself to carry it out thoroughly and sincerely.
Do not worry. It will pass. It is the vital’s amour-propre that has received a fine knock on the face; it is vexed and has gone on strike. When it starts understanding that this is foolishness and that it leads to nothing, it will become reasonable again and listen once again to the wise advice of the psychic which tells it to be quiet and do its work well, that nothing of true value is lost, that true love is always there, immutable, and that only those movements which were not in conformity with the Divine Work have been destroyed. Page - 268 For it is to the Divine Work that one must exclusively belong because it alone can, in our life, give us true happiness.
What has happened was more or less expected. Each one in life acts according to his own nature, and those who are not steady in their faith cannot be steady in their love either. Surely I am not angry with you and my help is always there whenever you want it. As for doing anything wrong, all human beings do wrong things so long as they live in this world of ignorance, because even if they wish to do right, they do not know what is the right thing to do until their consciousness is transformed, and for transformation the first thing needed is complete sincerity; not only to speak the truth (this, it goes without saying, is an indispensable elementary condition) but to be always true to oneself and the Divine.
The whole thing is so powerfully symbolical and expresses so clearly how dangerous it is to be under the leading of an arrogant and ignorant human mind which relies on its own power alone and refuses the help of the Divine’s Grace. I do not need to enter into any detailed explanations; for with this clue you can easily understand the whole affair. Do you remember that I was asking you with some insistence who was driving the car and when you told me it was your driver, I felt relieved. But it was not your driver who held the steering wheel and the poor fellow suffered for the change. What makes the whole thing much more striking is just the conversation I had with X. I asked him if he was interested in yoga. He said it interested him as philosophical speculation, but not as a thing to be lived. On my remark that it might come to him later on, he said, “Oh no! I am an atheist, you see, Page - 269 I do not believe in God.” I asked smilingly, “Then how do you arrange your universe?” He felt the irony and replied: “I have taken a scientific attitude: I deny nothing but I believe in nothing.” I felt the danger for Y and said with some force: “But, I suppose, you do not interfere with the beliefs of others and you will leave Y free to think and feel as she likes.” “Certainly,” was his answer, but I did not believe him. Tell Y to keep her faith intact, whatever pressure may be put upon her to change her mind and attitude. She may have to meet some difficulties, but she must never forget to call on the Divine’s Grace with confidence and the protection and help will surely be with her. As for yourself, do not worry or apprehend dangers for Y. Her difficulties - and life is never without them - are not likely to be of the more external kind, and the others she can, by keeping her faith, meet and overcome.
Tell your mother to go deep inside her heart and she will feel that the Divine Grace is with her. I am sending her a card with my blessings. You can translate for her what is written upon it. You can tell her also that the consciousness of your father had left his body at the time of the accident. That is why he did not move or speak, there is nothing astonishing in that and no reason to be especially sorry about it.
I did not reply because her mind was in such a confusion as a result of her desires, that she would not have been able to understand what I would have written. Since then, I have tried to work on her mental and vital being to make it a little more open and receptive, so that she may understand that love for children and the growing hope for the future that they represent in the creation, does not mean that each and everybody must have children. Page - 270 To each one I disclose what is the best for him or her according to their nature and their spiritual need. But surely it is not always in keeping with the desires. October 1960 X is a very refined girl, and she is extremely sensitive, easily hurt. Never scold her or speak harshly to her or force her to do anything. I find her very nice. But she looked so frightened − I don’t know who could have told her about me that she should feel like that. Tell her that I found her very nice. She is very refined but somehow she has been living all tightened up. Let her feel quite free, don’t try to put any ring around her. Let her feel completely relaxed and free here, and tell her that she should relax and just feel as if she were all the time in sunshine. 16 September 1968 Page - 271 |