"I had no urge toward spirituality
in me, I developed spirituality. I was incapable of
understanding metaphysics, I developed into a
philosopher. I had no eye for painting -- I developed
it by Yoga. I transformed my nature from what it was to
what it was not. I did it by a special manner, not by a
miracle and I did it to show what could be done and how
it could be done. I did not do it out of any personal
necessity of my own or by a miracle without any
process. I say that if it is not so, then my Yoga is
useless and my life was a mistake -- a mere absurd
freak of Nature without meaning or consequence. You all
seem to think it a great compliment to me to say that
what I have done has no meaning for anybody except
myself -- it is the most damaging criticism on my work
that could be made. I also did not do it by myself, if
you mean by myself the Aurobindo that was. He did it by
the help of Krishna and the Divine Shakti. I had help
from human sources also. (Volume 26, Sri Aurobindo
Birth Centenary Library, p.148-9)
|
Q: How did your intellect become so powerful
even before you started Yoga?
A: It was not any such thing before I
started the Yoga. I started the Yoga in 1904
and all my work except some poetry was done
afterwards. Moreover, my intelligence was
inborn and so far as it grew before the Yoga,
it was not by training but by a wide haphazard
activity developing ideas from all things read,
seen or experienced. That is not training, it
is natural growth.
|
"But what strange ideas again! --
that I was born with a supramental temperament and that
I know nothing of hard realities! Good God! My whole
life has been a struggle with hard realities, from
hardships, starvation in England and constant and
fierce difficulties to the far greater difficulties
continually cropping up here in Pondicherry, external
and internal. My life has been a battle from its early
years and is still a battle: the fact that I wage it
now from a room upstairs and by spiritual means as well
as others that are external makes no difference to its
character. But, of course, as we have not been shouting
about these things, it is natural, I suppose, for
others to think that I am living in an august,
glamorous, lotus-eating dreamland where no hard facts
of life or Nature present themselves. But what an
illusion all the same!" (Volume 26, Sri Aurobindo
Birth Centenary Library, p.153-4)
| "You think then that in me (I
don't bring in the Mother) there was never any
doubt or despair, no attacks of that kind. I have
borne every attack which human beings have borne,
otherwise I would be unable to assure anybody
"This too can be conquered." At least I would
have no right to say so. Your psychology is
terribly rigid. I repeat, the Divine when he
takes on the burden of terrestrial nature, takes
it fully, sincerely and without any conjuring
tricks or pretence. If he has something behind
him which emerges always out of the coverings, it
is the same thing in essence even if greater in
degree, that there is behind others -- and it is
to awaken that that he is here. The psychic being
does the same for all who are intended for the
spiritual way -- men need not be extraordinary
beings to follow it. That is the mistake you are
making -- to harp on greatness as if only the
great can be spiritual." (Volume 26, Sri
Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library,
p.154) |
Q: We have been wondering why you
should have to write and rewrite your poetry -- for
instance, "Savitri" ten or twelve times -- when you
have all the inspiration at your command and do not
have to receive it with the difficulty that faces
budding Yogis like us.
A: That is very simple. I used Savitri as a means of
ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level,
each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from
that level. Moreover I was particular -- if part seemed
to me to come from any lower levels I was not satisfied
to leave it because it was good poetry. All had to be
as far as possible of the same mint. In fact Savitri
has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and
finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how
far poetry could be written from one's own Yogic
consciousness and how that could be made creative. I
did not rewrite Rose of God or the sonnets except for
two or three verbal alterations made at the
moment.(Volume 26, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary
Library, p.239)
|
Q: The Overmind seems so distant from us, and
your Himalayan austerity and grandeur takes my
breath away, making my heart palpitate!
A: O rubbish! I am austere and grand, grim
and stern! every blasted thing I never was! I
groan in an un-Aurobindian despair when I hear
such things. What has happened to the common
sense of all you people? In order to reach the
Overmind it is not at all necessary to take
leave of this simple but useful quality. Common
sense by the way is not logic (which is the
least commonsense-like thing in the world), it
is simply looking at things as they are without
inflation or deflation -- not imagining wild
imaginations -- or for that matter despairing
"I know not why" despairs.(Volume 26, Sri
Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library,
p.354)
|
You say that this way is too
difficult for you or the likes of you and it is only
"Avatars" like myself or the Mother that can do it.
That is a strange misconception; for it is, on the
contrary, the easiest and simplest and most direct way
and anyone can do it, if he makes his mind and vital
quiet, even those who have a tenth of your capacity can
do it. It is the other way of tension and strain and
hard endeavour that is difficult and needs a great
force of Tapasya.
As for the Mother and myself, we have had to try all
ways, follow all methods, to surmount mountains of
difficulties, a far heavier burden to bear than you or
anybody else in the Ashram or outside, far more
difficult conditions, battles to fight, wounds to
endure, ways to cleave through impenetrable morass and
desert and forest, hostile masses to conquer -- a work
such as, I am certain, none else had to do before us.
For the Leader of the Way in a work like ours has not
only to bring down and represent and embody the Divine,
but to represent too the ascending element in humanity
and to bear the burden of humanity to the full and
experience, not in a mere play or Lila but in grim
earnest, all the obstruction, difficulty, opposition,
baffled and hampered and only slowly victorious labour
which are possible on the Path.
But it is not necessary nor tolerable that all that
should be repeated over again to the full in the
experience of others. It is because we have the
complete experience that we can show a straighter and
easier road to others -- if they will only consent to
take it. It is because of our experience won at a
tremendous price that we can urge upon you and others,
"Take the psychic attitude; follow the straight sunlit
path, with the Divine openly or secretly upbearing you
-- if secretly, he will yet show himself in good time,
-- do not insist on the hard, hampered, roundabout and
difficult journey." (Volume 26, Sri Aurobindo Birth
Centenary Library, p.463)
