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FILLER PORTRAITS
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to any spiritual belief. In fact, he proved by precept and practice the greatness of faith and intuitive knowledge. Yet should think that he was an irrational dogmatist What he clearly sees is that, “Reason was the helper, Reason is the bar.'13 It should be used where it rules, but abandoned in the higher realm above its limited authority. Again, in Savitri, II, x, he said :
"For not by reason was creation made
And not by reason can the truth be seen."!4
When Dilip Roy wrote that it was difficult for him to believe in the miraculous power of Yoga, owing to his European education, Sri Aurobindo replied
***I suppose I have had myself an even more completely European education than you,...but... I could never take the attitude of
doubt and disbelief."15
In this manner, almost always, Sri Aurobindo disapproved of his disciple's admiration for the Russellian type of rationalism and exhorted him to have faith in his own spiritual experiences.
Once Roy asked Sri Aurobindo if a stable faith could possibly be based on the hearsay evidence of saints, if an acceptance could be recommended before experience. Sri Aurobindo replied
"First of all, faith does not depend upon experience, it is something that is there before experience. When one starts the yoga, it is not usually on the strength of experience, but on the strength of faith. And it is so not only in yoga and the spiritual life, but in ordinary life also. All men of action, discoverers, inventors, creators of knowledge proceed by faith and, until the proof is made or the thing done, they go on in spite of disappointment, failure, disproof, denial, --because of something in them that tells them that this is the truth, the thing that must
be followed and done."16
Sri Aurobindo never cared for any fame, publicity or earthly success. Once Dilip Roy wrote a letter to Sri Aurobindo, appealing on behalf of Pramatha Choudhuri, to contribute an article to the Golden Book of Tagore. To that Sri Aurobindo answered :
"I am afraid Pramatha Choudhuri is asking from me a thing psychologically impossible. You know that I have forbidden myself to write anything for publication for some time past and some time to come I am self-debarred from the press, platform and public.17
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