Sri Aurobindo:   It is the subconscient that is active in ordinary dreams. But in the dreams in which one goes out into other planes of consciousness, mental, vital, subtle physical, it is part of the inner being, inner mental or vital or physical that is usually active.


Sri Aurobindo: A dream, when it is not from the subconscient, is either symbolic or else an experience of some supraphysical plane or a formation thrown in by some mental or vital or either force or in rare cases an indication of some event actual or probable in the past, present or future.     This is an instance of a dream of exact physical prevision. The power to have such dreams is comparatively rare, for ordinarily such previsions come in inner vision but not in sleep.


Sri Aurobindo: In dreams vital or mental formations often take shape which sometimes fulﬁl themselves in essence, but not with this accuracy of detail.  It is only a particular class of dreams that do that. Most coherent dreams are either symbolic or indicate things that take place in the mental or vital planes rather than on the physical.  This indicates a power of conscious thought-formation.  Thoughts have an effective power — usually by creating an atmosphere or tendencies — thus when one is ill, those around should not have thoughts of gloomy foreboding, grief or fear, for that works against cure.


Sri Aurobindo: But the capacity of conscious thoughtformation is a special power and uncommon. It can be acquired or come of itself by sadhana.     All dreams of this kind [] are very obviously formations such as one often meets on the vital, more rarely on the mental plane.


Sri Aurobindo: Sometimes they are the formations of your own mind or vital; sometimes they are the formations of other minds with an exact or a modiﬁed transcription in yours; sometimes formations come that are made by the non-human forces or beings of these other planes. These things are not true and need not become true in the physical world, but they may still have effects in the physical if they are framed with that purpose or that tendency and, if they are allowed, they may realise their events or their meaning — for they are most often symbolical or schematic — in the inner or the outer life. The proper course with them is simply to observe and understand and, if they are from a hostile source, reject or destroy them.  There are other dreams that have not the same character but are a representation or transcription of things that actually happen on other planes, in other worlds under other conditions than ours. There are, again, some dreams that are purely symbolic and some that indicate existing movements and propensities in us, whether familiar or undetected by the waking mind, or exploit old memories or else raise up things either passively stored or still active in the subconscient, a mass of various stuff which has to be changed or got rid of as one rises into a higher consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: If one learns how to interpret, one can get from dreams much knowledge of the secrets of our nature and of other-nature.     Those [] which are formed from subconscient impressions arranged at haphazard (subconscient mind, vital or physical) either have no signiﬁcance or some meaning which is difﬁcult to ﬁnd and not very much worth knowing even if it is found.  Other dreams are either simply happenings of the mental, vital or subtle physical worlds or else belong to the wider mental, vital or subtle physical plane and have a meaning which the ﬁgures of the dream are trying to communicate.


Sri Aurobindo:   It often happens that when something is thrown out of the waking consciousness it still occurs in dream. This recurrence is of two kinds. One is when the thing is gone, but the memory and impression of it remains in the subconscient and comes up in dream-form in sleep. These subconscient dream-recurrences are of no importance; they are shadows rather than realities.


Sri Aurobindo: The other is when dreams come in the vital to test or to show how far in some part of the inner being the old movement remains or is conquered. For in sleep the control of the waking consciousness and will is not there. If then even in spite of that one is conscious in sleep and either does not feel the old movement when the circumstances that formerly caused it are repeated in dream or else soon conquers and throws it out, then it must be understood that there too the victory is won. Your dream which seems to have corresponded with realities was a true experience of this kind; the old movement did come from habit, but at once you became conscious and rejected it. This is an encouraging sign and promises complete removal in a very short time.


Sri Aurobindo:   Subconscient dreams and lower vital dreams are usually incoherent. Higher vital dreams are usually and mental dreams are always coherent.  When one is in the physical consciousness, then the sleep is apt to be of the subconscious kind, often heavy and unrefreshing, the dreams also of the subconscient kind, incoherent and meaningless or if there is a meaning the dream symbols are so confused and obscure that it is not possible to follow it. It is by bringing the Mother’s Light into the subconscient that this can be dispelled and the sleep becomes restful or luminous and conscious.


Sri Aurobindo:   A dream from the subconscious plane has no meaning; it is simply a of impressions and memories left in the subconscient from the past.


Sri Aurobindo: Dreams of this kind [] arise from the subconscient. It is one of the most embarrassing elements of Yogic experience to ﬁnd how obstinately the subconscient retains what has been settled and done with in the upper layers of the consciousness. But just for that reason these dreams are often a useful indication as they enable us to pursue things to their obscure roots in this underworld and excise them. No, it does not indicate that you are taking in any part of your consciousness your present pursuit of Yoga as a stopgap, but merely that old vital tendencies and activities are still there in that mysterious and obscure subconscient limbo and that their ghosts can rise twittering to the surface when the conscious will is in abeyance. If the dream was trivial, it would seem to show that this ghost was not a strong demon like the militant Norwegian saga but a phantom from an unsubstantial Hades.


Sri Aurobindo:   Most people have that kind of dream at night. It is because the thoughts and memories that belong to the past are there always in some part of the being, even if they are not active in the waking state, and they become active at night. That is why one is constantly meeting the people once known, either one goes to the old places and meets them or they come.


Sri Aurobindo:  You seem to be attaching too much importance to dreams. Keep your waking mind and vital free — you can deal afterwards with the dreams which will then be only memories from the subconscient.  Most among the sadhaks see many dreams of the vital plane when they sleep. In sleep the being goes out into other worlds and planes and it has to pass through the vital on the way — and as the vital is nearest to the waking consciousness, it is there  it most vividly remembers.


Sri Aurobindo: Probably you see better dreams but do not remember them.    In dreams on the vital plane there is always a deviation from the norm of the physical fact — sometimes this is because of the free play in the vital, but at others it is only a fantasy of formation either in the vital itself or in the subconscient mind which transcribes the incidents of the dream and sometimes alters them by contributions of its own.    These are dreams of the vital plane — they have probably some reference to something going on in your vital, but these dreams cannot be precisely interpreted unless there is either a clue that is clear on the surface or else


Sri Aurobindo: you yourself can relate it to something in your experience of which you are aware. The images of the ascent and the coming down of water (consciousness or some other gift from above) are frequent and the general meaning is always the same — but the precise signiﬁcance here is not clear.    Your dreams are of a very familiar kind, both coming often to sadhaks. The ﬁrst is a sort of formation on the vital plane or a possibility for the future — whether or how it will come about in the physical is a different matter.


Sri Aurobindo: The other is an excursion into the vital world where there are all the types and forms of things that happen here, each having its own region or province there. One is constantly going into these planes (and others also, mental and psychic and subtle physical as well as vital) and seeing and doing things there. Very often what one does and experiences there is a symbol of things in the nature, tendencies, achievements, difﬁculties, things hidden within or only half-seen on the surface. This one came clearly to show how far you have travelled from certain elements, tendencies or possibilities that were there in the past. The feeling in the dream was the sign of that progress.


Sri Aurobindo:   A great many people have these dreams []. It is the vital being that goes out in sleep and moves about in the vital worlds and has this sense of ﬂoating in the air in its own (vital) body. The waves of a sea having the colour of lightning must have been the atmosphere of some vital province.


Sri Aurobindo: I have known of some sadhaks, when they go at ﬁrst out of the body in a more conscious way, thinking they have actually levitated, the vividness of the movement is so intense, but it is simply the vital body going out.     Flying during sleep over houses, streets, etc. simply means that the consciousness in the vital sheath has gone out and is moving over places in the vital or subtle physical world (even sometimes the material); it is always in the vital sheath that one ﬂies like that.  The ascending movement is different — in that, it is the consciousness that goes high up to other planes or lands and comes down again to the body.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is a dream of the vital plane. In these dreams the ﬁgures of the physical life take another form and meaning and the consciousness that lives and acts among them is not the outer physical consciousness but some inner vital part of the being.  The insurrection of the French soldiers is a ﬁgure of some disturbance on the vital plane which wants to happen and affect the inner life. The import of the dream is the readiness of the vital inner consciousness to put its reliance on the Mother and take refuge in her against all possible disturbances or perils of the inner life.


Sri Aurobindo:   These dreams are of the vital plane. Those about going home come from a part of the vital which still keeps the memory of the past relations and goes there during the sleep. The dreams about the Mother record meetings with her on the vital plane.  For the ﬁrst you should throw them away when you awake and not let your vital keep their impress.


Sri Aurobindo: The experiences you had there (of the Mother coming in the heart and telling you) were psychic in character, not of the vital dream kind.  The difﬁculty you have in sadhana may come from the vital or physical mind becoming active. That often happens after the ﬁrst experiences of calm and silence. One has to detach oneself from these activities in meditation as a witness and call down the original calm into these parts also. But this may take time.


Sri Aurobindo: If one can in meditation sufﬁciently isolate oneself from the surroundings and go inside, the quietude comes more quickly.   The dream was of a kind one often has in the vital plane in which one gets into inextricable difﬁculties till suddenly one ﬁnds the way out. Gujerat in the dream was not Gujerat, but only a symbol of one part of the vital world which is opposed to the spiritual life and full of vital powers that come in the way either by fraud or by force. These dreams are indications of certain parts of vital nature (not one’s own, but the general vital Nature) which stand in the way of spiritual fulﬁlment. When one goes there and masters them, then one is free from any intervention of these parts of Nature in the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: The dreams you describe are very clearly symbolic dreams on the vital plane. These dreams may symbolise anything, forces at play, the underlying structure and tissue of things done or experienced, actual or potential happenings, real or suggested movements or changes in the inner or outer nature.  The timidity of which the apprehension in the dream was an indication, was probably not anything in the conscious mind or higher vital, but something subconscient in the lower vital nature. This part always feels itself small and insigniﬁcant and has very easily a fear of being submerged by the greater consciousness — a fear which in some may amount at the ﬁrst contact to something like a panic alarm or terror.


Sri Aurobindo: These dreams are quite symbolical of the vital forces that come and attack you. If you face them with courage they are reduced to helplessness. I don’t think it is at all your father and brother that you meet — although something of their hostile feelings may be taken advantage of by those forces to take their forms — also they may do it in order to create sympathy in you and prevent you from acting against them. But apart from that the ﬁgures of the physical mother and father and relatives are very often symbolical of the physical or the hereditary nature or generally of the ordinary nature in which we are born.   Your dream was evidently a symbolic representation of some part of the vital plane (corresponding to a part of human nature also) in which the Mother had made her house (established something of her consciousness).


Sri Aurobindo: The village represented some formation of human life in which there is outward beauty and harmony as in certain parts of European life, but no touch of the Divine. The jungle represented the surroundings in which this formation has been made — it is made in the midst of a vital nature which is wild and savage and full of dangerous things — the village, the formation is therefore something quite insecure and artiﬁcial. That is indeed the nature of much of human civilisation, an artiﬁcial construction in the midst of a dangerously unregenerated vital nature, and it can collapse at any moment. The sea is the vital consciousness itself, for water is often a symbol of the vital. The footpath seems to indicate something the Mother wants the sadhaks to build, to form in that part of the vital, but which is not easy to make and only can be made by constant perseverance which will ﬁnally prevail against the instability of the vital.


Sri Aurobindo: Vital dreams of this kind are often very interesting and instructive if one can get the clue to their symbols, but to get the clue is not always easy.    The dream you relate in your letter is not of the psychic but of the vital plane — it relates entirely to conﬂicting movements of the vital consciousness, representing on the one side the attachments of the vital nature, on the other the movement of the higher (inner) vital to get free from them. Dreams like this one on the vital plane have to be observed and understood as indications of what is going on within you, but must not be taken too literally, as they are often symbolic and ﬁgurative, and cannot be always accepted as decisive directions for action in the external life.  Thus the ﬁgure of the Mother taking a meal of rice with ricewater and salt might be a valid symbol — in this case for the Mother’s freedom from all food desire and the necessity of your lower vital attaining to the same freedom; but if you gave it an external and physical application, e.g. that the Mother had actually taken to such a diet and you should do the same, the interpretation would be an obvious mistake.


Sri Aurobindo: So also the part about the service can only have been enacted on the vital plane to test or to stimulate the vital being’s readiness to give up the service, if and when the Mother might demand any such action from you. But to deduce from a vital experience of this kind, however useful for a vital change, that you ought actually to give up service, would be as much a mistake as to take up a diet of rice and salt and rice-water on the strength of that part of the dream.     Yes, your feeling about the protection is perfectly true.


Sri Aurobindo: The dream about and going to the Mother was an experience of something that took place on the vital plane. Things happen there that have some connection with the nature and life here, but they happen differently because there it is not the physical beings that meet, but the vital beings of people. One can gather what is the nature of one’s own inner vital being — which is often very different from the physical personality that acts in front in the body. By the acting of the consciousness in these dreams the inner parts of the being begin to be more active and have more inﬂuence on the outer nature. Your inner vital being seems from the dream experiences that you have related to be very strong, faithful, clear-minded, resolute, able to deal with the hostile forces and their activities in the right way and do the right thing.


Sri Aurobindo: The sensation of going somewhere means that part of the consciousness is going into some other plane than the physical.  The men you saw and also the vision that came afterwards belonged to these supraphysical worlds. The vision seems to be symbolic of something from above, but of what is not quite clear from the details. Gold is the colour of the Truth that comes from above.  These are dreams of the vital planes.


Sri Aurobindo: Sometimes they are actual appearances — things that happen on that plane. But sometimes they are merely formations, thoughts or feelings put into shape.  Not necessarily your thoughts or feelings, but those of others also or things ﬂoating in the atmosphere — or else formations made by the beings of those planes.    I said this dream was an actual happening on the vital plane, not a formation.


Sri Aurobindo: If somebody attacks you in the street, that is not a formation. But if somebody hypnotises you and suggests to you that you are ill — that suggestion is a formation put in by the hypnotiser.     Your dream was not a sign of the worldly desire in you, but only a test or ordeal dream such as you have had before.


Sri Aurobindo: Your absence of response in the dream shows that you have no such inclination towards these things as many have. The whole was only a formation or suggestion of outer forces on the vital plane to see what kind of response, if any, your consciousness would make.   These are dreams of the vital plane in which the vital plane takes up the spiritual experience and tries to turn it into forms of ego with a suggestion afterwards of loss of power and of consciousness and a fall. You should attach no importance to these dreams except as an indication of mixture in the sleeping state.   It is singular that you should have accepted dreams of this kind as true or allowed them to determine or inﬂuence your conduct even in the slightest degree.


Sri Aurobindo: These dreams are nothing but formations of the obscure lower-vital consciousness; they are made up of its desires, instincts and subconscious memories, all jumbled together to weave an incoherent dream-scene and dream-story and, in this case, used by some vital Desire-Force of that plane to turn you into the instrument of its movement. They have no other value for the Sadhana than to show you vividly what is there in your lower vital nature, whether awake on the surface or lying in wait in the subconscient parts. The only thing to do with them is to turn the Light upon those parts and call on the Divine Power to expunge them from the nature. It is perfectly easy for this Desire-Force or for the subliminal part of the mind to create images of anyone it pleases or to reproduce the voice and make him or her speak or act in any way convenient to it.   These are experiences of the vital plane; they have a meaning if one knows how to interpret them.


Sri Aurobindo: This one indicates the possibility of strong attacks on the vital plane, but at the same time promises protection. These are formations of the vital plane, sometimes things that try to happen but not necessarily effective. One can observe and understand, but not allow them to inﬂuence the mind; for often adverse forces try to inﬂuence the mind by suggestion through these dream experiences.    Your experience of the peace in the body was a very good one.


Sri Aurobindo: As for the bad dream, it was a hostile formation from the vital world — a suggestion in a dream form intended to upset you.  These things should be dismissed — you should say in yourself “It is false — no such thing can happen” and throw it away as you would a wrong suggestion in the waking state.  The experience of the hill and the rose and the sudden cold is one of those dream experiences that one gets on the vital plane, — for there things good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant are very close to each other.    Everybody has unpleasant or bad dreams and one can have them very frequently — they mean only that one gets into contact with or passes through the darker parts of the vital world.


Sri Aurobindo: All of us do that in sleep, for we go out of the material plane and pass through many realms. But there is no reason to be afraid of these things. Have faith in the protection of the Mother and go to sleep with it around you — that is the best way of passing through these regions.    These are dreams sent from the vital world.


Sri Aurobindo: There are three things she must develop with regard to them: (1) to get the habit of calling the Mother at once in the dream itself; (2) not to fear — if one does not fear, these other world forces become helpless; (3) to put no belief in the reality of such formations and regard them only as suggestions put into form, just as one gets a frightful imagination of this or that happening but the reason knows it to be a mere work of imagination and is not moved by it.   In sleep one enters into places of the vital world in which there are such dangers []; but if one goes there in full reliance on the Mother’s protection, all dangers either disappear or become ineffective.    These dreams come from the vital world, — there is nobody in the Asram who does not have them or else has not had them.  You must not get afraid or upset at these things, but look at them with indifference, without fear and passion.


Sri Aurobindo: Do not always be thinking of the Hostile Force or believe that everything of this kind is an attack of the Hostile Force. It is simply that in dream you entered into one part of an obscure vital world and saw or heard things there. Even if you are attacked, you have to remain quiet and ﬁrm and call in the Mother’s Protection and Force.    It is evident that’s experience was only what is called a nightmare — an attack in sleep from some force of the vital world, to which he probably opened himself in some way, it may be by answering to the man from the street who carried the worst vital atmosphere around him.


Sri Aurobindo: The ﬁgure of the woman was only a form given by his subconscient mind to this force. These forces are around everywhere, not only in one particular room or house, and if one opens the door to them, they come in wherever you are. It would have no importance but for the nervous reaction of irrational terror indulged in by. One who wants to do sadhana has no business to indulge in such panics; it is a weakness incompatible with the demands of the Yoga and, if one cannot throw it aside, it is safer not to try the Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo:   Don’t allow these bad dreams to trouble you. They are formations meant to disturb the consciousness — if you are troubled and fear they succeed. If you refuse to accept them or, still better, dissolve them, in dream or when you wake, then they can do nothing.  There are many kinds of mental dreams, but the main difference [] is that the mental are quite clear and coherent, their symbols are well-connected and easily intelligible and the forms also are clear cut and distinct in their signiﬁcance.


Sri Aurobindo: The vital are full of a pell mell of scenes, forms and incidents; the signiﬁcance if any is ﬂuid and depends upon a vital symbolism which it is not always easy for the mind to follow — everything is nearer to ordinary life and its confusions but still more chaotic.  The people of dream are very often different from the people of actuality. Sometimes it is the real man who comes on another plane — sometimes it is a thought, force etc. that puts on his appearance by some trick of association or other reason.


Sri Aurobindo: These ﬁgures and intimations in dream may be due to three different causes — (1) Beings whom you meet in the supraphysical world and who interest themselves in you.  (2) Forces of Nature, mind nature or vital nature, that take these human appearances and in a symbolic dream convey to you some formation of the universal Mind or Life. These messages can take the form of intimations or warnings of what is going to happen. The woman must have been such a Force of Nature, for her child and box are evidently symbolic — the child of some creation or formation of hers which she wanted you to accept and keep in your consciousness, the box of some habitual movements which this force also wanted you to harbour. The offer to take care of you was only a way of saying that it wanted to control you.


Sri Aurobindo: To dismiss all that was the right thing to do.  (3) Constructions of your own mind in the form of dreams so as to convey to you intimations it had received or perceptions of some force of nature which, as in the last dream, it wanted the inner being to reject.  There is no solid connection [ ], but there can be a subtle one. Events of the waking state often inﬂuence the dream world, provided they have a sufﬁcient repercussion on the mind or the vital. Formations and activities of the dream planes can project something of themselves or of their inﬂuence into the waking physical state, though they seldom reproduce themselves with any exactness there.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only if the dream consciousness is very highly developed that one can usually see things there that are afterwards conﬁrmed by thoughts, speech or actions of people or events in the physical world.     It is a very small number of dreams that can be so explained [ ] and in many cases the explanation is quite arbitrary or cannot be proved. A much larger number of dreams arise from subconscient impressions of the past without any stimulus from outside.


Sri Aurobindo: These are the dreams from the subconscient which are the bulk of those remembered by people who live in the external mind mostly. There are also the dreams that are renderings of vital movements and tendencies habitual to the nature, personal formations of the vital plane. But when one begins to live within then the dreams are often transcriptions of one’s experiences on the vital plane and beyond that there is a large ﬁeld of symbolic and other dreams which have nothing to do with memory. Of course it has been proved that a very long and circumstantial dream can happen in a second or two, so that objection to Bergson’s statement does not stand. But there are also prophetic dreams and many others.


Sri Aurobindo: Memory holds together the experiences but it is absurd to identify consciousness (even in the restricted European idea of consciousness) with memory.  This theory of memory is part of Bergson’s fundamental idea that Time is everything. As for, in Europe mostly no distinction is made between the spiritual and the mental or vital.  Yes, certainly, dream-experiences can have a great value in them and convey truths that are not so easy to get in the waking state.   When you practise Yoga, the consciousness opens and you become aware — especially in sleep — of things, scenes, beings, happenings of other (not physical) worlds and yourself in sleep


Sri Aurobindo: go there and act there. Very often these things have an importance for the sadhana. So you need not regret seeing all this when you sleep or meditate.  But in no case should you fear. The fact that you were able to destroy the beings that fought with you (these were beings of a hostile vital world) is very good, for it shows that in your vital nature somewhere there is strength and courage.


Sri Aurobindo: Moreover, using the Mother’s name and having her protection, you should fear nothing.   They are dreams of the mental and higher vital planes in which things happen with another rhythm than here and freer forms, but some of them are formative of things and events here — not that they are fulﬁlled exactly like prophecies, but they create forces for fulﬁlment.   The dreams are experiences on the vital plane, actual contacts with myself and the Mother in your inner being, not symbolic though they may have symbolic elements, but expressing relations, inﬂuences or mutual workings of our consciousness with yours. The second dream has symbolic elements. The ladder is of course a symbol of an ascent from one stage to another.


Sri Aurobindo: The snake indicates an energy, sometimes a good one, more often a bad one (vital or hostile). It may be that the energy was quiescent and therefore not alarming, but by touching it to see how it was it awoke and you found it was something not safe to handle. There is no clear indication what this energy was. These dream-experiences do not depend on the waking thoughts as do ordinary subconscient dreams which are dreams only and not experiences. They have a life, a structure, an arrangement and forms and meanings of their own; but they are often connected with the inner condition and experiences or movements of the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not clear whether the ﬂower incident was symbolic or only something that happened on the inner plane. It might have been possible to say if it had been indicated what ﬂower it actually was that you had given.    These experiences are normal when the inner consciousness is growing and becoming more and more the natural seat of the being — it is the spontaneous intuitive knowledge of this inner consciousness which is becoming prominent in place of the ordinary reliance of the external mind on sense data and external happenings. It is indeed the being as a whole that becomes conscious — the substance of consciousness that becomes aware of things, not an outer instrumental part.


Sri Aurobindo: In the sleep part of the consciousness goes out to other planes of being and sees and experiences things there. It is quite possible for the witness consciousness to follow these happenings which usually transmit themselves in a coherent transcription to the sleeping part of the consciousness — the latter receives them and they appear as clear signiﬁcant dreams as opposed to the incoherent dreams of the subconscient. Or else the witness consciousness may feel itself there watching the happenings as well as here. This will probably develop after a while.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the condition of your consciousness I spoke of — the more conscious you become, the more you will be able to have dreams worth having.  Everybody spends the night dreaming — only most of the dreams and even the fact of having dreamed are forgotten. Also most dreams are incoherent. It is only when one becomes more conscious in sleep by sadhana, that the dreams become coherent.


Sri Aurobindo:   When the sleep is more awake, so to say, then one has dreams of all kinds; when there is no such awareness of dreams, it is because the sleep of the body is more deep, — the dreams are there but the body consciousness does not note them or remember that it had them.


Sri Aurobindo: The consciousness goes into another plane of existence [ ] and, as the physical consciousness is not connected with or takes no part in the experience there, when it returns, nothing is remembered.      The subconscient remains in the body [].


Sri Aurobindo: The being really goes out into different planes of consciousness, but its experiences are not kept in the memory, because the recording consciousness is too submerged to carry the record to the waking mind.   On coming to the waking consciousness the night experiences are often lost or else fade from the physical memory in a short time, unless they are immediately ﬁxed and recorded before rising.     Most people move most in the vital in sleep because it is the nearest to the physical and easiest to remain.


Sri Aurobindo: One does enter the higher planes but either the transit there is brief or one does not remember. For in returning to the waking consciousness it is again through the lower vital and subtle physical that one passes and as these are the last dreams they are more easily remembered. The other dreams are remembered only if (1) they are strongly impressed on the recording consciousness, (2) one wakes immediately after one of them, (3) one has learned to be conscious in sleep, i.e. follows consciously the passage from plane to plane. Some train themselves to remember by remaining without moving when they wake and following back the thread of the dreams.   It [] depends on the connection between the two states of consciousness at the time of waking.


Sri Aurobindo: Usually there is a turnover of the consciousness in which the dream state disappears more or less abruptly, effacing the fugitive impression made by the dream events (or rather their transcription) on the physical sheath. If the waking is more composed (less abrupt) or, if the impression is very strong, then the memory remains at least of the last dream. In the last case one may remember the dream for a long time, but usually after getting up the dream memories fade away. Those who want to remember their dreams sometimes make a practice of lying quiet and tracing backwards, recovering the dreams one by one.  When the dream state is very light, one can remember more dreams than when it is heavy.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is a change or reversal of the consciousness that takes place [], and the dream-consciousness in disappearing takes away its scenes and experiences with it. This can sometimes be avoided by not coming out abruptly into the waking state or getting up quickly, but remaining quiet for a time to see if the memory remains or comes back. Otherwise the physical memory has to be taught to remember.


Sri Aurobindo: Unless they are really signiﬁcant dreams it is a waste of time [ ].     Yes, these are symbolic dreams, but the exact meaning varies with the mind and condition of the one who sees them.


Sri Aurobindo: That [] is evidently unlike many others a symbol dream on the vital plane. But it is difﬁcult to interpret these vital symbolic dreams unless they offer their own clue — they are a sort of hieroglyph in their forms. Once one gets the clue some of them can be very signiﬁcant — others of course are rather trivial.


Sri Aurobindo: No; all dreams are not true. Even of those which have some truth in them, may have to be interpreted rightly before you can know what is true in them. There are others that are true — they are experiences that you have in other planes or worlds into which you go when you are asleep. As for the bad dreams, you should not allow them to upset you, but reject them as untrue.


Sri Aurobindo: How do you say that vital dreams have no link or reason? They have their own coherence, only the physical mind cannot always get at the clue by following which the coherence would unroll itself. For that matter the sequences of physical existence are coherent to us only because we are accustomed to it and our reason has made up a meaning out of it. But subject it to the view of a different consciousness and it becomes an incoherent phantasmagoria. That’s how the Mayavadin or Schopenhauer would speak of it, the former say deliberately that dream-sequences and life-sequences stand on the same footing, only they have another structure.


Sri Aurobindo: Each is real and consequent to itself — though neither, they would say, is real or consequent in very truth.     The physical mind (or else the subconscient) almost always interferes in dreams and gives its own version. It is only when there is a clear experience on the mental or vital plane that it does not try to intervene.


Sri Aurobindo:   I am not sure that it is advisable to tell these dreams to others — as a rule, the movements of the sadhana should be kept to oneself, because by speaking of them to others there is likely to be a dispersion of their force and perhaps a calling in of other atmospheres by the mental or vital reaction of the people to whom you tell them. It is only to very ﬁt persons that one can safely speak about them. I don’t think these dreams could be made into a book because they need a special knowledge to understand them and this knowledge is not common.


Sri Aurobindo: For yourself you can do it, but perhaps it would be better to wait a little before you do it.   It is a symbolic dream. The ﬂower-rain is the descent of something from the supramental or else from the higher realms of consciousness — the lake is a formation of it in the consciousness, the steamer symbolises a new movement of the Yoga which Sri Aurobindo is bringing down. The Mother’s descent with the diamond light is the sanction of the Supreme Power to the movement, the Peacock being the Bird of Victory.


Sri Aurobindo:   The dreams are very signiﬁcant and show a great progress in the inner being. The ﬁrst dream means that to call the Mother is not enough; by that the immediate difﬁculty is dispelled, but the full victory which will prevent any return of the attack is not won; for that you must cease to be helpless before the attack, you must be able to ﬁght and repel it (of course with the Mother’s Force near whether manifest or veiled and supporting you). At present you have got so far that you can sometimes repel it with your safety pin, that is, by a small action supported by the peace behind; but the strength, conﬁdence, courage to leap on the attacking force and drive it out (hands and feet) is not yet there.  In the second dream the servant is the outer physical consciousness while you are your own inner being.


Sri Aurobindo: The inner being awakes in the darkness of the physical obscurity but is not troubled. It knows and writes the mantra of the Truth and Light and that brings the beginning of the white Light, the highest True Light in the darkness which once begun is sure to increase.    The strings you saw me pulling down [] are the lines of consciousness which can connect the personal being with the Divine Truth; they are above out of reach, I am bringing them down into the human mind, life and body. You can see only a part of them because they reach into the heights far above the human mind, and you see only a little of what is brought down because they go into all parts of the Nature down to the subconscient of which the ordinary mind can see very little.


Sri Aurobindo: That is the meaning of the dream.    The meaning of the dream is not very difﬁcult to discover. Our house here represents the higher consciousness in which we live and from which its light must come to you. Between you and it there is what the old books call a lid — represented by the blinds of the windows — created by the mind and the ordinary consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: This lid is changed to glass which means that between you and the higher consciousness there is left only a transparent lid (probably the higher mind which is the ﬁrst stage of the higher consciousness) and through that the light can come to you in your own Adhar. It is a kind of promise or prospect held out to you in answer to your prayer.    The three grey-white birds must be your mental, vital and physical consciousness, partly enlightened by the inner Peace etc., therefore white, but still not quite released from the old nature, so grey — the dull movement is due to the obscuration by the old nature. But still they ﬂy towards the right which is the dynamic side in women, the side of action and effectuation


Sri Aurobindo: and this movement releases into ﬂight the psychic in all its luminousness and purity. That seems to be the signiﬁcance.    The dreams of the lower regions of the consciousness — the lower vital, the physical consciousness or the sheer subconscience — have always or almost always a double character. For there are two parts of the consciousness concerned — one that remains attached to the body but in a passive unsupported subconscient condition not capable of coherent and ordered experience and another that goes out into various planes and worlds of consciousness, has experiences there, moves among their scenes and beings and events, sees symbolic ﬁgures, scenes, happenings etc.


Sri Aurobindo: The experiences of the two mix together often and make a double texture.  The quiescent part is subject during sleep to impressions from outside which it distorts into dream-ﬁgures or else, more freely, to impressions arising from the subconscient — sometimes impressions of the day or from the waking environment, sometimes impressions from the past, sometimes things hereditary or even imprecise impressions left from past lives which come up under some obscure or secret impulsion. When one practises Yoga, the more superﬁcial impressions, those which are in a sort accidental or occasional, outside touches, the day’s memories etc., do not, after a time, play so active a part as in the sleep of ordinary people; but the others aggrandise their scope and increase. These subconscient emergences are by no means, however obscure or trivial they may seem, always without any use for Yoga. They can indicate things with which the subconscient is burdened and from which it has to be freed, binding memories of the vital and of the cells which have to be dismissed, forms, embedded notions, tendencies, habitual movements which it is no longer good to harbour, seeds of the past which have to be pulled out so that their undesirable fruit may no longer recur.


Sri Aurobindo: For in the lower obscurer part of our being we are creatures of habit of nature and ﬁxed past formations and complexes — as they are termed by a current Western psychology, — and these things have to be got rid of if we are not to be bound to our past selves, if there is to be a true and complete liberation and transformation of the external being. If one can learn to detect and understand the indications of these dreams when they come up and act upon what they show us to be still there in the obscure bed of our nature, it can be a great help for the successful change of what seems to be the most obscure and trivial and yet the most sticky and intractable part of the nature.  The other, the active part of our consciousness does not remain in the inert and sleeping physical consciousness, but goes out into other planes of existence. For the most part with most people it is some part of the vital, lower or higher, that goes out into the corresponding vital planes, and the experiences it has there are transcribed in the physical consciousness or brought back to it and these transcriptions or these reports are what we call dreams or experiences on the vital plane. The reports, if one may so call them, are the memories of the outgoing part which it brings back to the physical — but it is not easy to retain them in the memory after waking.


Sri Aurobindo: For there is a crossing of a border, a bridge or a gulf and the turning over of the consciousness, what was put behind by sleep coming in front, what was in front in sleep going behind and in this transition, in this reversing process, the report or memory which can by very vivid and complete is usually lost or only some last experience or a fragment of it lingers and even that is apt to fade away in a very short time. Especially if one wakes abruptly or under pressure or rises immediately without waiting to retain the dream-experience, it is apt to disappear at once and altogether. One can train oneself however to remember one’s dreams so that the material is ready to hand for interpretation and use, if they are of a nature to demand interpretation or lend themselves to use. But also, apart from these reports, there is the transcription or translation into the terms of the physical consciousness. For there is a thread that connects the outgoing and the instaying consciousnesses and along this thread messages can be sent either from here to the wandering part, most often for calling it back, but also for other purposes or from the wanderer signalling or transmitting his experiences, as it were, to the body in the measure in which it can receive them.


Sri Aurobindo: Unfortunately the terms of this transcription are usually supplied by the quiescent and very ill-ordered consciousness that remains in the body, terms belonging to its own normal life and range, and therefore the transcription is often trivial, confused, perplexing, tiresomely null in its terms even when the experience itself is vivid, signiﬁcant, coherent and full of interest. But as the dream consciousness in sleep develops, the outgoing part can increase its hold, and either manipulate the terms supplied to it from the physical being so as to express directly and vividly or else in signiﬁcant symbols its own characteristic consciousness and experience or else it can impose its own terms, ﬁgures, scenes with more or less modiﬁcation on the recipient consciousness in the body. In the end the consciousness can become so trained that even for dreams on the vital plane the difference between dreams and visions and experiences disappears or at most one can distinguish between dream-visions and dream-experiences and visions and experiences in a state of willed and perfectly self-conscious concentration. Even the dreams of the lower vital and the subtle physical become entirely vivid, real, coherent, signiﬁcant and expressive of a truth that one can at once recognise. The dream-experiences of the highest vital, the psychic and the mental or still higher planes have always this character, because when they can get through they impose themselves more than those of the lower vital realms and are less subject to distortion or mixture by the physical subconscience.


Sri Aurobindo: In the lower vital dreams, before this development comes, there is usually a mixture or a double texture. This has two disadvantages, ﬁrst that the scheme used, the terms, the ﬁgures are so trivial and uninteresting that one easily misses any signiﬁcance there can be behind them and, secondly, that the interpretation also becomes often very doubtful or hard to seize. And when as often happens, there is a symbology of the lower vital using the terms of the normal external consciousness, its system which is quite clear and convincing to the lower vital itself, can seem very absurd, incoherent and unintelligible to the physical mind.  For the lower vital uses the happenings, scenes, ﬁgures, persons of the physical life, but in deﬁance of the order and logic of the physical world and even without any reference to it, it ﬁts them into a quite different signiﬁcance-scheme of its own for its own purpose.


Sri Aurobindo: One has then to seek for a clue in some especially signiﬁcant ﬁgure or detail, and if one cannot ﬁnd it or cannot catch the clue when it is there, then one remains perplexed or doubtful or simply blank about the meaning of the dream; if it is found, it can often light up all the night and put them into a sufﬁcient coherence.  The last three dreams described by you are of this character.  The ﬁgures are supplied from the old social life in England, — though the place is not England; in the ﬁrst, with some attempt at structure, in the others in a more haphazard inconsequent way; but so far as that goes, all seem trivial and unmeaning and, as one might say, not worth dreaming. The strong signiﬁcant power and purposefulness and quite intelligible symbolism of the higher vital, the psychic or the mental dream-experiences is not there. But still there are in the ﬁrst dream three , the railway-journey, the meeting with the father and mother, the communion, and these all are suggestive symbols.


Sri Aurobindo: The railway-journey is in vital dreams a symbol of a journey or progress of the inner being; here it is in the vital consciousness that some movement of progress is under way and it is in the course of it that you get down at a station, that is to say in some particular region of the lower vital where you meet your father and mother. A meeting of this kind by itself might simply be an actual encounter on the vital plane with some contact or interchange there — for in the vital one can meet thus both those who have passed beyond and those who are still in the body. But once the presence of a symbolism is established, it is probable that the father and mother are also part of the symbolism and, as they very often do, represent what might be called the Purusha and Prakriti of that particular kingdom. If it is an actual encounter, it must be with some part of their vital selves which is in sympathy with or representative of this domain, not with the actual persons, not with their whole selves. But the assistant here is clearly not any earthly person, but a being of this world who embodies one of its characteristic forces, the zeal of a dogmatic and ritual religious traditionalism without any deeper spirit or experience behind it; it is with this external ritualism that you clash in the dream, he insisting on the form, you careless of the form and admitting it only as a means for contact with the original spiritual truth behind it.


Sri Aurobindo: That would justify our taking the whole thing as symbolism, representing a special lower vital world — one which plays a large part in moulding this external human life as it is now. It is a world of social forms, social and domestic feelings, social intercourse; whatever appearance of spiritual life there is, is traditional and formal: this is what you felt in the blessing of your father. The last part of the dream is more obscure — there is evidently a meaning in the luggage and the lost trunk, but the clue is insufﬁcient; if one could catch it, it would probably explain why you got down at all in this province of the lower vital world instead of continuing your journey.  This is a very good example of the nature of these dreams and their indications and that is why I have dealt with it at a greater length than its importance seems to warrant. The other two are of the same world, but the third is ambiguous and in the second


Sri Aurobindo: the clue is missing. The second, if taken as only an encounter with ordinary beings of the human world met on the vital plane seems merely absurd and trivial; but if the people represent forces or movements of this particular vital province, then some meaning is there — for I have always found that there is something which even the most casual or insigniﬁcant dreams of this kind are trying to indicate. If we take the two dreams together, the elderly lady would represent the interest certain beings in this kind of world take in some kind of pseudo-spiritual stuff of the lower occultist kind, e.g. Steiner’s anthroposophy — taken by her more as a fad than anything else, a fad which she imposes on her guests. That would explain her wanting to sit in the rain — for the rain is a symbol of a descent from some other consciousness, and it would explain also the remark of the guest who had been in India, that is to say in some hot-air province of this world where the contact with occultist spirituality or pseudo-spirituality could be had more abundantly than here! To the physical mind the working out of the imagery is absurd and illogical, but this kind of dream cares only to get its symbols through and, not addressing itself to the mind, it disregards logical coherence.


Sri Aurobindo: The whiskey would be the image of the dram drinking which this kind of occultism can be; along with the rain it would be the clue image.  This is how these dreams are built and the question at once arises, what is their utility and why should they with their triviality and incoherent symbolism and the obscurity and pettiness of the world to which they belong take so large a place. The answer is that it is here between the subconscient and the petty lower vital world that there is the hidden basis of a great part of man’s ordinary movements, especially the things that are hereditary, customary, imposed by education and surrounding and left strongly entrenched in the subconscious obscurity, even when suppressed and rejected and entirely contradicted by the mind and will and the higher vital: it is the ﬁeld of the suppressed complexes of the Freudians, it is the basis of the herd mind, it is the support of all that is petty and obscure in the being and of many other undesirable things. In your dreams — even in your lower vital — you are out of sympathy with this world, irritated and ill at ease and yet there is something in the subconscient nature that is tied and constantly going there as soon as the waking mind and will are quiescent. So it is with all, for one has to go there for two reasons, ﬁrst either to become acquainted with its movements and work them out in the subtle experience till they go out of the system by rejection or to clear them out by a conscious action or else to work upon this world and bring into it a real consciousness and a true Light.


Sri Aurobindo: Of course, it [] is perfectly natural and all men have it. Nature has put it as part of her functioning for the purpose of procreation, so that the race may continue. In the animals it is used for that purpose, but men have departed from Nature and use it for pleasure mainly — so it has taken hold of them and harasses them at all times.


Sri Aurobindo: Certainly, Nature gave it [] to encourage her aim of procreation. The proof is that the animal does it only by season and as soon as the procreation is over, drops it. Man having a mind has discovered that he can do it even when there is not the need of Nature — but that is only a proof that Mind perverts the original intention of Nature. It does not prove that Nature created it only to give man a brief and destructive sensual pleasure.


Sri Aurobindo: The terrestrial sex-movement is a utilisation by Nature of the fundamental physical energy for purposes of procreation. The thrill of which the poets speak, which is accompanied by a very gross excitement, is the lure by which she makes the vital consent to this otherwise unpleasing process — whatever or others may feel, there are numbers who experience a recoil of disgust after the act and repulsion from the partner in it because of the disgust, though they return to it when the disgust has worn off for the sake of this lure.    Conversion [] is one thing and acceptance of the present forms in ordinary human nature is another.  The reason given for indulging the sex-action is not at all imperative.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only a minority that is called to the strict Yogic life and there will be always plenty of people who will continue the race. Certainly, the Yogi has no contempt or aversion for human nature; he understands it and the place given to each of its activities with a clear and calm regard. Also, if an action can be done with self-control without desire under the direction of a higher consciousness, that is the better way and it can sometimes be followed for the fulﬁlment of the divine will in things that would not otherwise be undertaken by the Yogin, such as war and the destruction which accompanies war. But a too light resort to such a rule might easily be converted into a pretext for indulging the ordinary human nature.  All movements are in the mass movements of Nature’s cosmic forces — they are movements of universal Nature.


Sri Aurobindo: The individual receives something of them, a wave or pressure of some cosmic force, and is driven by it; he thinks it is his own, generated in himself separately, but it is not so, it is part of a general movement which works just in the same way in others. Sex, for instance, is a movement of general Nature seeking for its play and it uses this or that one — a man vitally or physically “in love” as it is called with a woman is simply repeating and satisfying the world-movement of sex, if it had not been that woman, it would have been another; he is simply an instrument in Nature’s machinery, it is not an independent movement. So it is with anger and other Nature-motives.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no how to these things — the sex-impulse exists for its own sake and it uses the person as an instrument and hooks him on to another — whenever it can throw the hook, it throws it and once the connection is there holds on for some time at least. This is the physical vital and subtle physical action — for if it is the gross physical that dominates, there is no choice — any woman will serve the fun. The sensation you feel is physical vital + subtle physical, that is why it is so concrete. Naturally these sensations do not stop by enjoyment — they are recurrent and so long as the pressure lasts they continue. It is only by rejection or by the domination of a contrary force that they cease.


Sri Aurobindo:  Naturally, the sex-movement is a force in itself, impersonal and not dependent on any particular object. It fastens on one or another only to give itself body and a ﬁeld of enjoyment. When it is checked in the vital interchange, it tends to lose its vital character and attacks through its most physical and elemental movement. It is only when it is thrown out from the vital physical and most physical that it is conquered.   The sexual sensations do not “become” a principle of the physical consciousness — they are there in the physical nature already — wherever there is conscious life, the sex-force is there.


Sri Aurobindo: It is physical Nature’s main means of reproduction and it is there for that purpose.     The sexual impulse is its own reason to itself — it acts for its own satisfaction and does not ask for any reason, for it is instinctive and irrational.


Sri Aurobindo: The sex exists for its own satisfaction and this or that person is only an excuse or occasion for its action or a channel for awakening its activity. It is from within, by the peace and purity from above coming into that part and holding it, that it must disappear.   The sex exists in itself — put a number of sexual men together debarred from all possibility of feminine society — after a time they will begin to satisfy themselves homosexually.    Sex-sensation may begin anywhere.


Sri Aurobindo: As vital love it begins in the vital centre, heart or navel — many romantic boys have this and it starts a love affair (often at the age of 10 or even 8) before they know anything about sex-connection. With others it begins with the nerves or with that and the sex-organ itself. There are others who do not have it. Many girls would not have it at all throughout life if they were not taught and excited by men.  Some even then hate it and tolerate only under a sort of social compulsion or for the sake of having children.


Sri Aurobindo:  There is no “delight” in the sex-affair, it is necessarily and can only be a passing excitement and pleasure which ﬁnally wears itself out with the wearing out of the body.    Yes, it [] has become rampant everywhere, especially as men no longer believe in the old moral restraints and nothing else has been substituted.  Sex is a degradation or distortion of the Ananda Force.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is true that the sex-centre and its reactions can be transformed and that an Ananda from above can come down to replace the animal sex-reaction. The sex-impulse is a degradation of this Ananda. But to receive this Ananda before the physical (including the physical vital) consciousness is transformed, can be dangerous; for other and lower things can take advantage and mix in it and that would disturb the whole being and might lead into a wrong road by the impression that these lower things are part of the sadhana and sanctioned from above or simply by the lower elements overpowering the true experience.


Sri Aurobindo: In the last case the Ananda would cease and the sex-centre be possessed by the lower reactions.   The sadhak has to turn away entirely from the invasion of the vital and the physical by the sex-impulse — for, if he does not conquer the sex-impulse, there can be no settling in the body of the divine consciousness and the divine Ananda.    The is the Shakti of the Divine Ananda and Love taking possession of the whole being down to the vital and physical. But it is the Ananda and love of the Divine — the spiritual, it cannot be turned to a human love and vital pleasure.


Sri Aurobindo: It can have nothing to do with marriage. In your dream it was neither the divine nor the human that came, but a supernormal and supraphysical vital and joy — a being from that world intervening in the sleep and trying to take possession of what should be given only to the Divine. That is a particularly dangerous kind of intervention, so I had immediately to put you on your guard against it. It was of the nature of a supraphysical temptation such as the appearance of the Apsaras to the Tapaswis in the stories of the epics and Puranas. The other dreams were dreams of success and fame and were also of the vital plane.


Sri Aurobindo: You need not be depressed by these ordeals in the subtle worlds; they come to all in one form or another; only you have to learn vigilance and ﬁnd your way through these lesser planes to the highest, so that it may be the highest that will come down into you. When these trials come, it is a sign that you are advancing, for otherwise the Powers of these worlds, whether lesser gods or Daityas, would not take the trouble to test you.     The only truth in that [ ] is that all intense pleasure goes back at its root to Ananda — the pleasure of poetry, music, production of all kinds, battle, victory, adventure too — in that sense only all are brothers of Brahmananda.


Sri Aurobindo: But the phrase is absolutely inaccurate. We can say that there is a physical Ananda born of Brahmananda which is far higher, ﬁner and more intense than the sexual, but of which the sexual is a coarse and excited degradation — that is all.  Nature in the material world started with the physical sex-pull for her purpose of procreation and brought in the love on the basis of the sex-pull, so the one has a tendency to wake the other.  It is only by a strong discipline or a strong will or a change of consciousness that one can eliminate the pull.   It is not that it is not possible to keep the love pure, but the two things [] are so near each other and have been so much twined together in the animal beginnings of the race that it is not easy to keep them altogether separate.


Sri Aurobindo: In the pure psychic love there is no trace of the sex-desire, but usually the vital affection gets very strongly associated with the psychic which is then mixed though still not sexual; but the vital affection and the vital physical sex-emotion are entirely close to each other, so that at any moment or in any given case one may awake the other. This becomes very strong when the sex-force is strong in an individual as it is in most vitally energetic people.  To increase always the force of the psychic, to control the seximpulse and turn it into the, to turn the love towards the Divine are the true remedies for this difﬁculty. Seminal force not sexually spent can always be turned into.


Sri Aurobindo: When the psychic puts its inﬂuence on the vital, the ﬁrst thing you must be careful to avoid is any least mixture of a wrong vital movement with the psychic movement. Lust is the perversion or degradation which prevents love from establishing its reign; so when there is the movement of psychic love in the heart, lust or vital desire is the one thing that must not be allowed to come in — just as when strength comes down from above, personal ambition and pride have to be kept far away from it; for any mixture of the perversion will corrupt the psychic or spiritual action and prevent a true fulﬁlment.     The movement of self-existent psychic or spiritual love general and without a special object can come, but it must be kept free from all taint of sex — otherwise it cannot endure.


Sri Aurobindo:   What is real love? Get clear of all the sentimental sexual turmoil and go back to the soul, — then there is real love. It is then also you would be able to receive the overwhelming love without getting the lower being into an excitement which might be disastrous.


Sri Aurobindo:   What is this idea that this desire of the heart hungering to love women is not sex-desire? That and the physical lust are both forms of sex-desire.    Why hanker [] when it is a vital desire?


Sri Aurobindo: It is a form of sex and usually calls up the more physical desire.     Oneness with all [] would then mean satisfying the sex-instinct with all — that would be a rather startling, though there is something like it in the practice of Tantra of the left hand. But the left-hand Tantriks are more logical than you — for why should oneness, if it is to justify sex-expression, support only the lighter and not the cruder forms of love-expression?


Sri Aurobindo: But is sex really based on love or sex-love based on sex-instinct? and is sex-instinct an expression of the spiritual feeling of the One in all? Is it not really based on duality, except when it simply seeks satisfaction and pleasure where there is no question of love at all? Is one attracted to a woman by the sense that she is oneself or by the fact that she is somebody else attracting one by some charm or beauty which one wants to enjoy or possess or simply by the fact of the difference from oneself, the fact of her being a female and not a male so that the sex-instinct can ﬁnd a full ﬁeld there?


Sri Aurobindo:   Abnormal is a word which you can stick on anything that is not quite common, cheap and ordinary. In that way genius is abnormal, so is spirituality, so is the attempt to live by high ideals.   The tendency to physical chastity in women is not abnormal, it is fairly common and includes a very high feminine type.


Sri Aurobindo: The mind is the seat of thought and perception, the heart is the seat of love, the vital of desire — but how does that prevent the existence of mental love? As the mind can be invaded by the feelings of the emotional or the vital, so the heart too can be dominated by the mind and moved by mental forces.  There is a vital love, a physical love. It is possible for the vital to desire a woman for various vital reasons without love — in order to satisfy the instinct of domination or possession, in order to draw in the vital forces of a woman so as to feed one’s own vital or for the exchange of vital forces, to satisfy vanity, the hunter’s instinct of the chase etc. etc. This is often called love, but it is only vital desire, a kind of lust.


Sri Aurobindo: If however the emotions of the heart are awakened, then it becomes vital love, a mixed affair with any or all of these vital motives strong, but still vital love.  There may too be a physical love, the attraction of beauty, the physical sex-appeal or anything else of the kind awakening the emotions of the heart. If that does not happen, then the physical need is all and that is sheer lust, nothing more. But physical love is possible.


Sri Aurobindo: In the same way there can be a mental love. It arises from the attempt to ﬁnd one’s ideal in another or from some strong mental passion of admiration and wonder or from the mind’s seeking for a comrade, a complement and fulﬁller of one’s nature, a , a guide and helper, a leader and master or from a hundred other mental motives. By itself that does not amount to love, though often it is so ardent as to be hardly distinguishable from it and may even push to sacriﬁce of life, entire self-giving etc. etc. But when it awakes the emotions of the heart, then it may lead to a very powerful love which is yet mental in its root and dominant character. Ordinarily, however, it is the mind and vital together which combine; but this combination can exist along with a disinclination or positive dislike for the physical act and its accompaniments.


Sri Aurobindo: No doubt if the man presses, the woman is likely to yield, but it is, as they say, against her feelings and her deepest instincts.  It is an ignorant psychology that reduces everything to the sex-motive and the sex-impulse.     There are a number of women who can love with the mind, the psychic, the vital (the heart), but they shrink from a touch on the body and even when that goes, the physical act remains abhorrent to them.


Sri Aurobindo: They may yield, under pressure, but it does not reconcile them to the act which always seems to them animal and degrading. Women know this, but men seem to ﬁnd it hard to believe it; but it is perfectly true.  The idea of the new European mystics like Lawrence and Middleton Murry etc. is that the indulgence of sex is the appointed way to ﬁnd the Overself or the Under Self, for that is what it really seems to be! Brunton of course knows better. But if the personal Overself is all that is wanted and not the Divine, then sex and many other things are permissible.


Sri Aurobindo: One has only to realise that one is not the body, not the life, not the mind, but the Overself and then do whatever the Overself tells you to do.     I spoke of the Overself — meaning the realisation of something in us (the Purusha) that is not the Prakriti, not the movements of mind, vital or physical, but something that is the Thinker, etc. This Purusha can give assent to any movement of nature or withhold it or it can direct the Prakriti what to do or not to do.


Sri Aurobindo: It can allow it to indulge sex or withhold indulgence.  It is usually the mental Purusha (Manomaya Purusha) that one thus realises, but there is also the Pranamaya or vital Purusha.  By the word Overself they probably mean this Purusha — they take it as a sort of personal Atman.  What has this Yoga got to do with sex and sex-contact? I have told you repeatedly that sex has to be got rid of and overcome before there can be siddhi in this Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo:   Any suggestion about Tantric practices must certainly be a trick of the vital. The sex-impulsions can be got rid of without them.  They persist only because something still wants to reserve a place for them. So the best answer to the question about the sadhana (What is the place of sex in our sadhana?) is “No place”.


Sri Aurobindo: One must give up the sex-satisfaction and be satisﬁed with the Divine Love and Ananda.    The whole mistake is not to have a clear and unmistakable direction that sex (whether open or masquerading as deep romantic affection) and this Yoga cannot go together. This notion of making sex help the sadhana is one that has been taken hold of by many under one form or another and it has always proved an immense stumbling block to all who indulged it. It ties the being down to the vital and prevents the spiritual liberation which is essential as the basis of the transformation of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: Even the higher experiences begin to get coloured with the sexual tinge and falsiﬁed in their substance.    There is one simple answer to’s falsehood and perversions.  In this way of Yoga an absolute mastery of the sex-movements and an entire abstention from the physical (animal) indulgence are ﬁrst conditions, because this way aims not only at a mental and vital but a physical transformation. A psychic purity is demanded in all the consciousness and there is needed a transformation of all the vital and physical energies which in the absence of these conditions is impossible.


Sri Aurobindo:   The Mother has already told you the truth about this idea. The idea that by fully indulging the sex-hunger it will be ﬁnished and disappear for ever is a deceptive pretence held out by the vital to the mind in order to get a sanction for its desire — it has no other raison d’ˆetre or truth or justiﬁcation. If an occasional indulgence keeps the sex-desire simmering, a full indulgence would only sink you in its mire. This hunger like other hungers does not cease by temporary satiation; it renews itself after a temporary abeyance and wants again indulgence.


Sri Aurobindo: Neither sops nor gorgings are the right treatment for it. It can only go by a radical psychic rejection or a full spiritual opening with the increasing descent of a consciousness that does not want it and has a truer Ananda.    I do not know what you mean by harm, but the harm of sex to a sadhak is that it stands as a strong barrier to the realisation and spiritual progress and in that way it harms not only oneself but the person on whom one imposes the sex-touch.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is not a question of fear — it is a question of choosing between the Divine Peace and Ananda and the degraded pleasure of sex, between the Divine and the attraction of women. Food has to be taken to support the body but sex-satisfaction is not a necessity. Even for the rasa of food it can only be harmonised with the spiritual condition if all greed of food and desire of the palate disappears. Intellectual or aesthetic delight can also be an obstacle to the spiritual perfection if there is attachment to it, although it is much nearer to the spiritual than a gross untransformed bodily appetite; in fact in order to become part of the spiritual consciousness the intellectual and aesthetic delight has also to change and become something higher.


Sri Aurobindo: But all things that have a rasa cannot be kept. There is a rasa in hurting and killing others, the sadistic delight, there is a rasa in torturing oneself, the masochistic delight — modern psychology is full of these two. Merely having a rasa is not a sufﬁcient reason for keeping things as part of the spiritual life.   It is possible for anger to be felt as pleasant — there are many people who dislike sweet things — so also there are many, especially women, who dislike the sex-sensation, even hate it.  For the taste, when it exists — some eliminate it by rejection and the calling down of peace and purity into the cells, others by substituting for the lower rasa the higher Ananda — some like the Vaishnavas try to sublimate it by the taking up the sexual rasa from the sex-centre into the heart and turning it there towards the Divine, but the last is a rather risky method.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is one of the aims of the Yoga to centralise and harmonise all the parts of the being — not around the ego as is done in ordinary life, but around ﬁrst the psychic being and then the central being in its station above the head — or else round a nexus of the two. It is the thing that was preparing in you. The consciousness was moving to take its station above the head.  But in the meanwhile it has gone down into the physical and the ﬁrst result has been a relaxation and diffusion which has given an opening to the old movements to recur.


Sri Aurobindo: When a movement like that happens [], there is generally a good reason for it, something that has to be dealt with in the physical consciousness. Instead of getting upset or discouraged, one has to observe from this point of view and see what has to be done.  There is no sense in getting discouraged like this because things recur. They always do. In a transformation such as we have undertaken, movements are not got rid of once for all.


Sri Aurobindo: They go down from one level of the nature to the other and it is only when one has got them out of the physical and subconscient that one can say “Now that is done.” If these recurrences were to be taken as a proof of failure, there are few in the Asram who should not be pronounced as failures. I don’t think more than 2 or 3 have got over some sex-trouble; it lasts in one form or another even when people are “advanced” — as they say here.  It is because sex is one of the strongest things in man’s nature and cannot be overcome till one has got the sex out of the subconscient. Why then consider your case as if it were unique or build on it the idea of personal impossibility or unﬁtness?


Sri Aurobindo: It is no use indulging the idea of giving up. You can’t give up. So the only thing to do is to recover yourself, look at these things with detachment and push forward to the realisation of the self that was coming.


Sri Aurobindo: Sex is not a rational force; it is purely irrational, a power of the inferior, animal nature; you cannot therefore be rightly astonished if it acts irrationally without any justiﬁcation or reason and without any other cause than its own habit and instinct.  Moreover, this force as it is now acting in you with regard to seems to be purely vital physical and physical in its character. It is not supported by your thinking mind or your rational will, these are opposed to its continuance; it has no emotional support, for you are no longer attracted by her or in love with her; the higher vital does not seem to be concerned, for neither beauty nor passion draws or drives you. But at this level of sex none of these things are necessary. The vital physical and physical urge of sex does not ask for beauty or love or emotional gratiﬁcation or anything else; desire, repetition of vital-physical habit and bodily gratiﬁcation (most usually, but not necessarily by the sex-act) are its motive forces.


Sri Aurobindo: To set it in action nothing more is needed. Moreover, by mental and other rejections it has plunged down in the subconscient and is hidden there and rises suddenly from there. It is itself born from the Inconscient as a blind push of its dark force of Nature. It owes no allegiance. It can only be got rid of by a ﬁrm and persistent rejection, separation, detachment, not yielding to it by any act, refusing to take joy in it in any part of the being, until it is a dead thing and has no longer any motive or power of existence.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is not meant by “the sacriﬁce of works” that there should be no choice between different acts, no control over impulse and desire. To regard the sex-act as an offering might easily lead to the sanctiﬁcation of desire.


Sri Aurobindo:   A married man can get experiences, especially if he is not gross or over-sexy by nature. But if he follows this Yoga, he will have to drop copulation or he will get upsettings.    What are these strange ideas?


Sri Aurobindo: Do you imagine that after the transformation, copulation between man and woman and the desire to copulate will continue as the normal functionings of the life and the body? If so, why should it be forbidden in the sadhana? The injunction would then be not to stop sex-intercourse, but to copulate freely and sublimely and divinely.  Sex (occult) stands on a fair level of equality with ambition etc. from the point of view of danger, only its action is usually less ostensible — i.e. the Hostiles don’t put it forward so openly as a thing to be followed after in the spiritual life.


Sri Aurobindo:   This movement [] is a wrong and a dangerous one. It is not so much repeating the old game under the garb of Yoga, but, what is worse, turning the Yoga-power itself into the instrument of satisfaction of a vital force. There must be absolute abstention from all vital interchange with others. The warning has often been given that no special or personal relation, even under the colour of a psychic connection or otherwise, must be formed with the women sadhakas.


Sri Aurobindo: The whole principle of this Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody and to nothing else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother Power all the transcendent light, force, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ananda of the supramental Divine. In this Yoga, therefore, there can be no place for vital relations or interchanges with others; any such relation or interchange immediately ties down the soul to the lower consciousness and its lower nature, prevents the true and full union with the Divine and hampers both the ascent to the supramental Truth consciousness and the descent of the supramental Ishwari Shakti. Still worse would it be if this interchange took the form of a sexual relation or a sexual enjoyment, even if kept free from any outward act; therefore these things are absolutely forbidden in the sadhana. It goes without saying that any physical act of the kind is not allowed, but also any subtler form is ruled out. It is only after becoming one with the supramental Divine that we can ﬁnd our true spiritual relations with others in the Divine; in that higher unity this kind of gross lower vital movement can have no place.


Sri Aurobindo: To master the sex-impulse, — to become so much master of the sex-centre that the sexual energy would be drawn upwards, not thrown outwards and wasted — it is so indeed that the force in the seed can be turned into a primal physical energy supporting all the others, into. But no error can be more perilous than to accept the immixture of the sexual desire and some kind of subtle satisfaction of it and look on this as a part of the sadhana. It would be the most effective way to head straight towards spiritual downfall and throw into the atmosphere forces that would block the supramental descent, bringing instead the descent of adverse vital powers to disseminate disturbance and disaster. This deviation must be absolutely thrown away, should it try to occur and expunged from the consciousness, if the Truth is to be brought down and the work is to be done.  It is an error too to imagine that, although the physical sexual action is to be abandoned, yet some inward reproduction of it is part of the transformation of the sex-centre.


Sri Aurobindo: The action of the animal sex-energy in Nature is a device for a particular purpose in the economy of the material creation in the Ignorance.  But the vital excitement that accompanies it makes the most favourable opportunity and vibration in the atmosphere for the inrush of those very vital forces and beings whose whole business is to prevent the descent of the supramental Light. The pleasure attached to it is a degradation and not a true form of the divine Ananda. The true divine Ananda in the physical has a different quality and movement and substance; self-existent in its essence, its manifestation is dependent only on an inner union with the Divine. You have spoken of Divine Love; but Divine Love, when it touches the physical, does not awaken the gross lower vital propensities; indulgence of them would only repel it and make it withdraw again to the heights from which it is already difﬁcult enough to draw it down into the coarseness of the material creation which it alone can transform.


Sri Aurobindo: Seek the Divine Love through the only gate through which it will consent to enter, the gate of the psychic being, and cast away the lower vital error.  The transformation of the sex-centre and its energy is needed for the physical siddhi; for this energy is the support in the body of all the mental, vital and physical forces of the nature. It has to be changed into a mass and a movement of intimate Light, creative Power, pure Divine Ananda . It is only the bringing down of the supramental Light, Power and Bliss into the centre that can so change it.


Sri Aurobindo: As to the working afterwards, it is the supramental Truth and the creative vision and will of the Divine Mother that will determine it. But it will be a working of the conscious Truth, not of the Darkness and Ignorance to which sexual desire and enjoyment belong; it will be a power of preservation and free desireless radiation of the life-forces and not of their throwing out and waste. Avoid the imagination that the supramental life will be only a heightened satisfaction of the desires of the vital and the body; nothing can be a greater obstacle to the Truth in its descent than this hope of a gloriﬁcation of the animal in human nature. Mind wants the supramental state to be a conﬁrmation of its own cherished ideas and preconceptions; the vital wants it to be a gloriﬁcation of its own desires; the physical wants it to be a rich prolongation of its own comforts and pleasures and habits. If it were to be that, it would be only an exaggerated and highly magniﬁed consummation of the animal and the human nature, not a transition from the human into the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: It is dangerous to think of giving up “all barrier of discrimination and defence against what is trying to descend” upon you.  Have you thought what this would mean if what is descending is something not in consonance with the divine Truth, perhaps even adverse? An adverse Power could ask no better condition for getting control over the seeker. It is only the Mother’s Force and the divine Truth that one should admit without barriers.  And even there one must keep the power of discernment in order to detect anything false that comes masquerading as the Mother’s Force and the divine Truth, and keep too the power of rejection that will throw away all mixture.


Sri Aurobindo: Keep faith in your spiritual destiny, draw back from error and open more the psychic being to the direct guidance of the Mother’s light and power. If the central will is sincere, each recognition of a mistake can become a stepping stone to a truer movement and a higher progress.    I have stated very brieﬂy in my previous letter my position with regard to the sex-impulse and Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: I may add here that my conclusion is not founded on any mental opinion or preconceived moral idea, but on probative facts and on observation and experience. I do not deny that so long as one allows a sort of separation between inner experience and outer consciousness, the latter being left as an inferior activity controlled but not transformed, it is quite possible to have spiritual experiences and make progress without any entire cessation of the sex-activity.  The mind separates itself from the outer vital (life-parts) and the physical consciousness and lives its own inner life. But only a few can really do this with any completeness and the moment one’s experiences extend to the life-plane and the physical, sex can no longer be treated in this way. It can become at any moment a disturbing, upsetting and deforming force.


Sri Aurobindo: I have observed that to an equal extent with ego (pride, vanity, ambition) and rajasic greeds and desires it is one of the main causes of the spiritual casualties that have taken place in sadhana. The attempt to treat it by detachment without complete excision breaks down; the attempt to sublimate it, favoured by many modern mystics in Europe, is a most rash and perilous experiment. For it is when one mixes up sex and spirituality that there is the greatest havoc.  Even the attempt to sublimate it by turning it towards the Divine as in the Vaishnava carries in it a serious danger, as the results of a wrong turn or use in this method so often show.  At any rate in this Yoga which seeks not only the essential experience of the Divine but a transformation of the whole being and nature, I have found it an absolute necessity of the sadhana to aim at a complete mastery over the sex-force; otherwise the vital consciousness remains a turbid mixture, the turbidity affecting the purity of the spiritualised mind and seriously hindering the upward turn of the forces of the body.


Sri Aurobindo: This Yoga demands a full ascension of the whole lower or ordinary consciousness to join the spiritual above it and a full descent of the spiritual (eventually of the supramental) into the mind, life and body to transform it. The total ascent is impossible so long as sex-desire blocks the way; the descent is dangerous so long as sex-desire is powerful in the vital. For at any moment an unexcised or latent sexdesire may be the cause of a mixture which throws back the true descent and uses the energy acquired for other purposes or turns all the action of the consciousness towards wrong experience, turbid and delusive. One must therefore clear this obstacle out of the way; otherwise there is either no safety or no free movement towards ﬁnality in the sadhana.  The contrary opinion of which you speak may be due to the idea that sex is a natural part of the human vital-physical whole, a necessity like food and sleep, and that its total inhibition may lead to unbalancing and to serious disorders.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a fact that sex suppressed in outward action but indulged in other ways may lead to disorders of the system and brain troubles. That is the root of the medical theory which discourages sexual abstinence.  But I have observed that these things happen only when there is either secret indulgence of a perverse kind replacing the normal sexual activity or else an indulgence of it in a kind of subtle vital way by imagination or by an invisible vital interchange of an occult kind, — I do not think harm ever occurs when there is a true spiritual effort at mastery and abstinence. It is now held by many medical men in Europe that sexual abstinence, , is beneﬁcial; for the element in the which serves the sexual act is then changed into its other element which feeds the energies of the system, mental, vital and physical — and that justiﬁes the Indian idea of Brahmacharya, the transformation of  into and the raising of its energies upward so that they change into a spiritual force.  As for the method of mastery, it cannot be done by physical abstinence alone — it proceeds by a process of combined detachment and rejection.


Sri Aurobindo: The consciousness stands back from the sex-impulse, feels it as not its own, as something alien thrown on it by Nature-force to which it refuses assent or identiﬁcation — each time a certain movement of rejection throws it more and more outward. The mind remains unaffected; after a time the vital being which is the chief support withdraws from it in the same way, ﬁnally the physical consciousness no longer supports it. This process continues until even the subconscient can no longer rouse it up in dream and no farther movement comes from the outer Nature-force to rekindle this lower ﬁre.  This is the course when the sex-propensity sticks obstinately; but there are some who can eliminate it decisively by a swift radical dropping away from the nature. That however is more rare.


Sri Aurobindo: It has to be said that the total elimination of the sex-impulse is one of the most difﬁcult things in sadhana and one must be prepared for it to take time. But its total disappearance has been achieved and a practical liberation crossed only by occasional dream-movements from the subconscient is fairly common.    I have not said [] that the sex-impulse has not been mastered in other Yogas. I have said that it is difﬁcult to be free from it entirely and that the attempt at sublimation as in the Vaishnava sadhana has its dangers.


Sri Aurobindo: That is evidenced by all one knows of what has frequently and even largely happened among the Vaishnavas. Transcendence and transformation are different matters. There are three kinds or stages of transformation contemplated in this sadhana, the psychic transformation, the spiritual and the supramental. The ﬁrst two have been done in their own way in other Yogas; the last is a new endeavour. A transformation sufﬁcient for spiritual realisation is attainable by the two former; a transformation sufﬁcient for the divinisation of human life is, in my view, not possible except by a supramental change.


Sri Aurobindo: The sex-energy utilised by Nature for the purpose of reproduction is in its real nature a fundamental energy of life. It can be used not for the heightening but for a certain intensiﬁcation of the vital emotional life; it can be controlled and diverted from the sex-purpose and used for aesthetic and artistic or other creation and productiveness, or preserved for heightening of the intellectual or other energies. Entirely controlled it can be turned into a force of spiritual energy also. This was well known in ancient India and was described as the conversion of into  by Brahmacharya. Sex-energy misused turns to disorder and disintegration of the life-energy and its powers.


Sri Aurobindo:   That is correct. The whole theory of Brahmacharya is based upon that by the Yogis. If it were not so, there would be no need of Brahmacharya for producing and.  It is not a question of vigour and energy, but of the physical support — in that physical support the produced by Brahmacharya counts greatly.


Sri Aurobindo: The transformation of into  is a transformation of physical substance into a physical (necessarily producing also a vital-physical) energy. The spiritual energy by itself can only drive the body, like the vital and mental, but in driving it it would exhaust it if it has not a physical support. (I speak of course of the ordinary spiritual energy, not of the supramental to be which will have not only to transmute  into but into something still more sublimated.)    The sex-impulse is certainly the greatest force in the vital plane; if it can be sublimated and turned upwards is created which is a great help to the attainment of higher consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: But mere restraint is not sufﬁcient.    Doctors advise marriage because they think satisfaction of the sexual instinct is necessary for the health and repression causes disturbances in the system. This is true only when there is no true giving up of the sexual indulgence, but only a change in the way of indulging it. Nowadays a new theory has come up which conﬁrms the Indian theory of Brahmacharya, viz. that by continence can be changed into and the vigour and power of the being enormously increase.


Sri Aurobindo:  It [] would not be permanently effective in itself, because the seed would always be there unless removed by a transformation of the sex-impulse; but the inhibition can help towards this transformation. It is now being  recognised in Europe by the doctors — who used formerly to say that sex was to be inhibited at the risk of complications in the body, that on the contrary there is part of the seminal force that is used for health, strength, youth etc. (turned into, as the Yogins say), another that serves for sex purposes ; if a man is perfectly chaste, the latter turns more and more into the former. Only of course the external inhibition does not help this change, if the mind indulges in sex-thought or the vital or body in the unsatisﬁed sex-desire or sex-sensation.


Sri Aurobindo: But if all these are stopped then the inhibition is useful.     You mean the doctors. But even all doctors do not agree on that; there are many (I have read their opinions) who say that sexsatisfaction is not an absolute necessity and sex-abstinence can be physically very beneﬁcial and is so — of course under proper conditions.


Sri Aurobindo: As for scientists the product of the sex glands is considered by them (at least so I have read) as a great support and feeder of the general energies. It has even been considered that sex force has a great part to play in the production of poetry, art etc. and in the action of genius generally. Finally, it is a doctor who has discovered that the sex-ﬂuid consists of two parts, one meant for sex-purposes, the other as a basis of general energy, and if the sex-action is not indulged, the ﬁrst element tends to be turned into the second ( into, as the Yogis had already discovered). Theories? So are the statements or inferences of the opposite side — one theory is as good as another.


Sri Aurobindo: Anyhow I don’t think that the atrophy of the sex-glands by abstinence can be supported by general experience. ’s contention [ ] is however logical if we take not individual results but the course of evolution and suppose that this evolution will follow the line of the old one, for the useless organs are supposed to disappear or deteriorate. But will the supramental evolution follow the same course as the old one or develop new adaptations of its own making? — that is the uncertain element.


Sri Aurobindo: You have not understood [].  I was answering the statement that scientists don’t attach any value to sex-gland product and think it is only of use for an external purpose. Many scientists on the contrary consider it a base of productive energy; among other things it plays a part in artistic and poetic production. Not that artists and poets are anchorites and Brahmacharis but that they have a powerful sex-gland activity, part of which goes to creative and part to (effectual or ineffectual) procreative action. On the latest theory + Yoga theory, the procreative part would be, the creative part the basis of.


Sri Aurobindo: Now supposing the artist or poet to conserve his and turn it into, the result would be an increased power of creative productivity. Q.E.D., sir! Logic, sir!    The most recent discovery about the sex is that the liquid is composed of two elements — one is used for sexual purposes, the other supplies all kinds of higher energies, vital, mental and, I would add, spiritual.


Sri Aurobindo: It was formerly supposed by the doctors that the sex-liquid had to be spent in order to relieve its excess from time to time, otherwise there would be bad results. It is now found that that is not necessary — if the sex is controlled both in act and thought, there is an automatic of the amount of liquid used for sex and a corresponding increase of the other element available for higher energies. In other words, the old knowledge of the Vedic and Vedantic Yogis and Rishis about becoming, viz. that by control one can turn into and use it for higher energies vital, mental and spiritual is amply justiﬁed by this discovery. The use made naturally depends upon a man’s occupations and interests. The athlete etc. would use it for physical strength and its work, the poet and artist for creation, others for study or mental work of different kinds, the Yogi for the increase and use of spiritual energy.


Sri Aurobindo:   If it [ ojas] is to be done by a process, it will have to be by Tapasya (self-control of mind, speech, act) and a drawing upward of the seminal energy through the Will. But it can be better done by the descent of the Force and its working on the sex-centre and consequent transformation, as with all other things in this Yoga.   As to the sexual impulse.