Correspondence 1934, March (II)

March 23, 1934

I have just received a letter from Biren Roy Chowdhuri[1] who had a talk with Tagore in which he told him a good many things about you and his conception of you. Briefly it is this, Biren writes, “Rabindranath has a strand of atheism in his composition: he admits the nirākār brahma [formless Brahman] on the one hand and this material world of forms on the other. Beyond this nothing. It is true his verses depict some ideas and perceptions in between, but he himself looks upon these as creations of his imagination — phantasy that is. His religious belief is powerfully tinged by Brahmoism (or rather brahmo-prabhāv). The result is that he finds himself unable to admit the Devas and their worlds which are supraphysical relative to our world of the senses.”

What do you think of this? Is Biren’s impression correct? Tagore is a humanitarian but I didn’t take him to be atheistic?

I suppose he is not an atheist; Brahmo-prabhav [influence of brahmoism] and Nirākār Brahma [Formless Brahman] are not atheism — but I suppose his beliefs are rather thin and vague. His idealism even is just idealism — it is good for the mind and soul to have “spiritual” ideas, but this cannot be put into concrete practice. I am told that he once expressed that idea.

But Tagore is I think fairly right in looking upon his spiritual poems not born of realisation but kalpanā jagater [the world of imagination]. It is interesting to know that he admits this. For Nolini told me this long ago that his so-called spiritual poems were more imaginative and colourful than psychic. What do you say to this?

Well, yes, he mentalises, aestheticises, sentimentalises the things of the spirit — but I can’t say that I have ever found the expression of a concrete spiritual realisation in his poetry — though ideas, emotions, ideal dreams in plenty. That is something, but —

Biren writes, “About Sri Aurobindo Tagore said that it has lately seemed to him that Sri Aurobindo was steadily delving deeper and ever deeper into the strata of the inner realms, and added that probably his nature was responsible for this. He wound up by saying that it was probably a mistake to claim him for our world of action. In a word, Tagore and the Tagorians have, by now, all but given up Sri Aurobindo for lost — as one irreclaimable. They have got this idée fixe now rooted in their minds that ‘Sri Aurobindo’s wings have become atrophied by his protracted seclusion in his meditative cage’ — to quote Tagore — so that they have no longer the faith they once had that Sri Aurobindo was going to inaugurate a new era of creation in this world of fact.”

Just think of Tagore saying this in his similesque way!

I feel Tagore has come to this conclusion after reading your “Riddle of this World” which must have appeared to him more of a riddle than of an explanation. For formerly he wrote to me about you enthusiastically as a creator — sab shrishtikartāï eklā — Sri Aurobindo о tāï [All creators are lonely, so is Sri Aurobindo], etc.

I suspect also that Romain Rolland’s retraction has something to do with Tagore’s retraction — albeit private now, but I expect sooner or later he will write somewhere about your becoming a thorough introvert. There of course the whole Bengal intelligentsia (such as it is) will agree with him. Are you staggered at such a lugubrious prospect?

I cannot find any symptom of a stagger in me, not even of a shake or a quake or a quiver — all seems quite calm and erect, as far as I can make out. And I don’t find the prospect lugubrious at all — the less people expect of you and bother you with their false ideas and demands, the more chance one has to get something real done. It is queer these intellectuals go on talking of creation while all they stand for is collapsing into the Néant without their being able to raise a finger to save it. What the devil are they going to create and from what material? and of what use if a Hitler with his cudgel or a Mussolini with his castor oil can come and wash it out or beat it into dust in a moment?

*   *   *

March 23, 1934

I felt all day a tinge of regret re. Tagore — though I had all but expected it — knowing his positivistic rationalistic sceptical (and what not) intellectualism. Still, I had a regard for him and his views and his scepticism has, I suppose, some similarity with mine. So I ruminated a little pensively on his retraction of you. But what hurt me most is that other people should be sceptical about what I find myself doubting, e.g. the subjective and elusive and vague character of spiritual experiences and their seeming so far away to us mortals. When I think on these lines (the physical mind alas!), I justify such doubts and think it legitimate to have some translation of these in the world of hard reality. But when I find Tagore and Rolland and Russell express the same kind of doubts I feel I love you very much and all that you stand for, however doubtful validity your claim of the Supramental Reality might have seemed to me, before. Yes, it is strange but true. Nevertheless I feel a tinge of regret, even of sadness, that others don’t realise how great you are and are so impatient— even though I happen to be more impatient than they….

Russell has his doubts because he has no spiritual experience. Rolland because he takes his emotional intellectuality for spirituality; as for Tagore — if one is blind, it is quite natural for the human intelligence which is rather an imbecile thing at its best — to deny light; if one’s highest natural vision is that of glimmering mists, it is equally natural to believe that all high vision is only a mist or a glimmer. But Light exists for all that — and for all that spiritual Truth is more than a mist and a glimmer.

*   *   *

March 24, 1934

I am not sure that it is very discreet to send these obiter dicta [incidental remarks] outside; I think it would be better to keep these up your sleeve as an indiscretion would very easily set them rolling till they got a semi-public character. While such obiter dicta are all right with regard to poems and problems and happenings, they can only be passed under seal of privacy on persons, most of all persons in public view. So, let the seal be there. Obiter dicta of this kind are after all only side-flashes—not a judgment balanced and entire.

I don’t think we should hastily conclude that Tagore is passing over to the opposite camp. He is sensitive and perhaps a little affected by the positive robustuous, slogan-fed practicality of the day — he has passed through Italy and Persia and was feted there. But I don’t see how he can turn his back on all the ideas of a life-time. After all he has been a wayfarer towards the same goal as ours in his own way — that is the main thing, the exact stage of advance and the putting of the steps are minor matters. So let there be no clash, if possible. Besides he has had a long and brilliant day — I should like him to have as peaceful and undisturbed a sunset as may be. His exact position as a poet or a prophet or anything else will be assigned by posterity and we need not be in haste to anticipate the final verdict. The immediate verdict after his death or soon after it may very well be a rough one — for this is a generation that seems to take a delight in trampling with an almost Nazi rudeness on the bodies of the Ancestors, especially the immediate ancestors. I have read with an interested surprise that Napoleon was only a bustling and self-important nincompoop all whose great achievements were done by others, that Shakespeare was “no great things” and that most other great men were by no means so great as the stupid respect and reverence of past ignorant ages made them out to be! What chance has then Tagore?[2]

As for your question, Tagore of course belonged to an age which had faith in its ideas and whose very denials were creative affirmations. That makes an immense difference. Your strictures on his later development may be correct, but this mixture even was the note of the day and it expressed a tangible hope of fusion into something new and true — therefore it could create. Now all that has been smashed to pieces and its weaknesses exposed — but nobody knows what to put in its place. A mixture of scepticism and slogans, “Heil-Hitler” and the Fascist salute and Five-Year Plan and the beating of everybody into one amorphous shape, a disabused denial of all ideals on one side and on the other a blind “shut-my-eyes and shut-everybody’s-eyes” plunge into the bog in the hope of finding something there, will not carry us very far. And what else is there? Until new spiritual values are discovered, no big creation is possible.

*   *   *

March 25, 1934

The first step is a quiet mind — silence is a further step, but quietude must be there; and by a quiet mind I mean a mental consciousness within which sees thoughts arrive to it and move about but does not itself feel that it is thinking or identifying itself with the thoughts or call them its own. Thoughts, mental movements may pass through it as wayfarers appear and pass from elsewhere in a silent country — the quiet mind observes them or does not care to observe them but does not become active or lose its quietude. Silence is more than quietude; it can be gained by banishing thought altogether from the inner mind keeping it quite outside; but more easily it comes by a descent from above — one feels it coming down entering and occupying or surrounding the personal consciousness.

As for the subconscient that is best dealt with when the opening of the consciousness to what comes down from above is complete. Then one becomes aware of the subconscient as a separate domain and can bring down into it the Silence and all else that comes from above.

*   *   *

[1] Birendra Kishore Roy Chowdhury, Zamindar of Gouripur, East Bengal. A veteran sarod player and Dilip’s close friend.

[2] The published version of this letter (in the 1972 Centenary Edition) continues with the following passage (perhaps added later by Sri Aurobindo): “But these injustices of the moment do not endure — in the end a wise and fair estimate is formed and survives the changes of time.”