Sri Aurobindo: The only way to know them and get rid of them is to be always above, in your true consciousness, in contact with the Mother’s light and force. The light and force will then descend upon them, at once showing what they are and dissolving and eliminating them and changing that part of the nature. But ﬁrst you must learn to keep always in contact with the Mother, always in the true consciousness, only then can these things be dealt with safely.  Do not go down into these lower unredeemed parts without the Mother’s force with you. If you feel yourself down, remain quiet, call on the Mother and her force, but do not try to deal with it by your mind.


Sri Aurobindo: But as far as possible resist the downward movement so long as the true consciousness is not settled in you.     It is certainly possible to draw forces from below. It may be the hidden divine forces from below that rise at your pull, and then this motion upward completes the motion and effort of the divine force from above, helping especially to bring it into the body.


Sri Aurobindo: Or it may be the obscure forces from below that respond to the summons, and then this kind of drawing brings either tamas or disturbance — sometimes great masses of inertia or a formidable upheaval and disturbance.  The lower vital is a very obscure plane and it can be fully opened with advantage only when the other planes above it have been thrown wide to light and knowledge. One who concentrates on the lower vital without that higher preparation and without knowledge is likely to fall into many confusions. This does not mean that experiences of this plane may not come earlier or even at the beginning; they do come of themselves, but they must not be given too large a place.   In the lower vital all is a working of general forces which try to seize upon the individual and use him for their satisfaction; they are not his forces at all.


Sri Aurobindo: In the mind or the higher vital it is much easier to establish some kind of control over the forces.  That is the very reason why one should never put oneself into the control of these forces or make oneself a free crossways for their passage. It is only by opening to the Mother’s force alone that a control can be established over these lower workings.  It is indeed in the lower vital that there is the main difﬁculty for the spiritual change of human nature. If that were not there, the rest could be more easily dealt with and there would be no long resistance.


Sri Aurobindo: The vital pleasure is not a true Ananda, but only a pleasant excitement which cannot abide — that pleasure and grief and pain are always near to each other and the consciousness passes easily from one to the other. One has to establish peace and quietude there, so that the true psychic and spiritual joy can take the place. It is the touch of the psychic that gives the soothing effect of which you speak.    Evidently, the condition into which you have fallen is due to an upsurging of suppressed elements in the lower vital nature.


Sri Aurobindo: It has been compelled by the mind and the higher vital part in you to give up the little “joys and pleasures” to which it was habituated, but it — or at any rate the subconscient part of it which is often the most powerful — did that without entire conviction and probably with “reservations” and “safeguards” and in exchange for a promise of compensations, other and greater joys and pleasures to replace all it was losing. This is evident from what you write; your description of the nature of the depression, the return of what you call impure thoughts which are merely indices of the subconscient lower vital desirecomplex, the doubt thrown upon the generosity of the Divine, the demand for compensation for losses, something like striking a bargain with the Divine, a pact, are all unmistakable. Latterly, there has been a combination of circumstances (’s turning inwards,’s emigration etc.) which have rather suddenly increased the deprivation of its former outlets; this attack is its way of non-cooperation or protest. There is only one way to deal with it, — to cast the whole thing away — depression, demands, doubts, sex-thoughts, the whole undesirable baggage, — and have in its place the one true movement, the call for the true consciousness and the presence of the Divine.  It may be that behind this persistence of the lower vital demand for satisfaction there was something not quite clear — in the obscurer part of the physical mind — in your mental attitude towards the Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: You seem to regard this demand for the replacement of the old lower vital satisfactions by other joys and pleasures as something quite legitimate; but joys and pleasures are not the object of Yoga and a bargain or demand for a replacement of this kind can be no legitimate or healthy element in the sadhana. If it is there, it will surely impede the ﬂow of spiritual experience. Ananda, yes; but Ananda and the spiritual happiness which precedes it () are something quite different from joys and pleasures. And even Ananda one cannot demand or make it a condition for pursuing the sadhana — it comes as a crown, a natural outcome and its precondition is the growth of the true consciousness, peace, calm, light, strength, the equanimity which resists all shocks and persists through success and failure. It is these things which must be the ﬁrst objects of the sadhana, not any hedonistic experience even of the highest kind; for that must come of itself as a result of the Divine Presence.


Sri Aurobindo: I would rather like you to tell me what,, you do in your hours of meditation, how you do it and what happens within you.  Meanwhile the ﬁrst thing you must do is to throw out this perilous stuff of despondency and its accompaniments and recover a quiet and clear balance. A quiet mind and a quiet vital are the ﬁrst conditions for success in sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: To live within does not mean to give up reading and writing or other external activities; I shall try to explain to you what I meant. I had in fact started to do so when you had your last ﬁt of despondency, but stopped when you recovered, thinking it was not after all necessary and supposing besides that the essential in what I was about to write must already be known to you.  Now, however, that the despondency has returned and you put the question, I will this time try to explain the whole matter.  It is evident that you still cherish some misunderstanding about peace and joy and Ananda. (Peace by the way is not joy — for peace can be there even when joy is quiescent.)


Sri Aurobindo: It is not a fact that one ought not to pray or aspire for peace or spiritual joy. Peace is the very basis of all the siddhi in the Yoga, and why should not one pray or aspire for foundation in the Yoga? Spiritual joy or a deep inner happiness (not disturbed even when there come superﬁcial storms or perturbations) is a constant concomitant of contact or union with the Divine, and why should it be forbidden to pray or aspire for contact with the Divine and the joy that attends it? As for Ananda, I have already explained that I mean by Ananda something greater than peace or joy, something that, like Truth and Light, is the very nature of the supramental Divine. It can come by frequent inrushes or descents, partially or for a time even now, but it cannot remain in the system so long as the system has not been prepared for it.


Sri Aurobindo: Meanwhile, peace and joy can be there permanently, but the condition of this permanence is that one should have the constant contact or indwelling of the Divine, and this comes naturally not to the outer mind or vital but to the inner soul or psychic being. Therefore one who wants his Yoga to be a path of peace or joy, must be prepared to dwell in his soul rather than in his outer mental and emotional nature.  I objected in a former letter not to aspiration but to a demand, to making peace, joy or Ananda a condition for following the Yoga. And it is undesirable because if you do so, then the vital, not the psychic, takes the lead. When the vital takes the lead, then unrest, despondency, unhappiness can always come, since these things are the very nature of the vital — the vital can never remain constantly in joy and peace, for it needs their opposites in order to have the sense of the drama of life.


Sri Aurobindo: And yet when unrest and unhappiness come, the vital at once cries, “I am not given my due, what is the use of my doing this Yoga?”  Or else it makes a gospel of its unhappiness and says, as you say in your letter, that the path to fulﬁlment must be a tragic road through the desert. And yet it is precisely this predominance of the vital in us that makes the necessity of passing through the desert. If the psychic were always there in front, the desert would be no longer a desert and the wilderness would blossom with the rose.  Apropos, if your despondency has lasted so long this time, is it not because something in the vital has been clinging to it, justifying it on one ground or another?


Sri Aurobindo: That at least is what I have felt, every time we have tried to remove it.  Sometimes the aspiration is felt at the navel, but that is part of the larger vital. The lower vital is below. The lower vital aspires by offering all its small movements in the ﬁre of puriﬁcation, by calling for the light and power to descend into it and rid it of its little greeds, jealousies, resistances and revolts over small matters, angers, vanities, sexualities etc. to be replaced by the right movements governed by selﬂessness, purity, obedience to the urge of the Divine Force in all things.


Sri Aurobindo: It is evident that the lower vital has received the Divine Consciousness when even in the small movements of life there is an aspiration to the Divine, a reference as it were to the Divine Light for guidance or some feeling of offering to the Divine or guidance by the Divine. The lower vital commands the little details of emotion, impulse, sensation, action — it is these that, when converted, it offers to the Divine control for transformation.  The peacefulness in the lower abdomen is very good, for it means that the true consciousness is settling down in the lower vital — if the lower vital is liberated and peaceful, there is little ground for any perturbations to come.    It is what I meant when I spoke of something remaining calm even behind the surface disturbances.


Sri Aurobindo: What happens is that some part of the being becomes quieted, enlightened and strong — say the mind or the mind and the higher vital. But perhaps the lower vital and the physical may be only temporarily inﬂuenced and quieted — in time the work begins on them to change permanently, and owing to some outer touch or the pressure of the hostile forces or the lower nature their possibilities of egoism or unrest rise up and have to be dealt with. The advantage is, as you have seen, that a part of the nature is there in which you can stand and deal with the still recalcitrant parts. One has to remain ﬁrm and persistently bring what has been gained down into the lower parts, till there is a permanent peace and freedom assured in the whole nature.  Cheerfulness is the salt of sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a thousand times better than gloominess.   Be more cheerful and conﬁdent. Sex and Doubt and Co. are there, no doubt, but the Divine is there also inside you. Open your eyes and look and look till the veil is rent and you see Him — or Her.


Sri Aurobindo: The change noted by evidently indicates a great progress in the vital and physical being. There is nothing spiritually wrong in being glad and cheerful, on the contrary it is the right thing. As for struggles and aspiration, struggles are really not indispensable to progress and there are many people who get so habituated to the struggling attitude that they have all the time struggles and very little else. That is not desirable. There is a sunlit path as well as a gloomy one and it is the better of the two — a path in which one goes forward in absolute reliance on the Mother, fearing nothing, sorrowing over nothing.


Sri Aurobindo: Aspiration is needed but there can be a sunlit aspiration full of light and faith and conﬁdence and joy. If difﬁculty comes, even that can be faced with a smile.    It is that cheerfulness that we want to be always there in you.  It is the happiness of the psychic that has found its way and, whatever difﬁculties come, is sure that it will be led forward and reach the goal.


Sri Aurobindo: When a sadhak has that constantly, we know that he has got over the worst difﬁculty and that he is now ﬁrmly on the safe path.     The cheerfulness [] is vital. I do not say that it should not be there, but there is a deeper cheerfulness, an inner which is the spiritual condition of cheerfulness.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is an inner joy and cheerfulness that helps, but this [ ] is merely a vital bubbling on the surface. It is all right in ordinary life, but in Yoga it merely expends the vital force for nothing.  Sense of humour?


Sri Aurobindo: It is the salt of existence. Without it the world would have got utterly out of balance — it is unbalanced enough already — and rushed to blazes long ago.     I am not aware that highly evolved personalities have no sense of humour or how the person can be said to be integrated when this sense is lacking; “looseness” applies only to a frivolous levity without any substance behind it.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no law that wisdom should be something rigidly solemn and without a smile.      Whatever seriousness is necessary must come of itself from within.


Sri Aurobindo: To be serious outwardly by rule is not needed.    Why on earth should people not be serious if they want? Life may be a joke, — though all do not ﬁnd it so — but one can’t be laughing at it all the time. The idea seems to be that one can’t be serious unless one is either (1) in a rage, (2) discontented, (3) sad and miserable.


Sri Aurobindo: But surely one can be serious when one is thinking or when one is looking at serious things or simply and purely when one is not laughing. And one can’t be laughing 24 hours without stopping, — the muscles of the stomach would not stand it and even the American record makers might shy at such a test.   What you write about is quite correct. It is not necessary to be always serious of face or silent in doing the Yoga, but it is necessary to take the Yoga seriously and silence and inward concentration have a large place. One can’t be all the time throwing oneself outward if to go inside and meet the Divine there is one’s aim.


Sri Aurobindo: But that does not mean that one has to be grave and gloomy all the time or gloomy a big part of the time, and I don’t suppose the sadhaks here are like that. It is’s rhetorical way of putting his difﬁculty — the difﬁculty of a vital that wants to throw itself always outward in action and emotion while another part is dissatisﬁed with the result and feels that its own movement is frustrated. There are two people in him, one wanting a life of vital expansion, the other an inner life. The ﬁrst gets restless because the inner life is not a life of outward expansion; the other becomes miserable because its aim is not realised. Neither personality need be thrown away in this Yoga; but the outer vital one must allow the inner to establish itself, give it the ﬁrst place and consent to be only an instrument of the soul and to obey the law of the inner life.


Sri Aurobindo: This is what’s mind still refuses to understand; he thinks one must be either all gloomy and cold and grave or else bring the vital bubble and effervescence into the inner life. A quiet, happy and glad control of the vital by the inner being is a thing he is not able as yet to conceive.  Happiness in the ordinary sense is a sunlit state of the vital with or without cause. Contentment is less than happiness — joy of peace or being free from difﬁculty is rather a state of joyful . Happiness ought not to be a state of self-satisfaction or inertia, and need not be, for one can combine happiness and aspiration.


Sri Aurobindo: Of course there can be a state of happy inertia, but most people don’t remain satisﬁed with that long, they begin to want something else. There are Yogins who are satisﬁed with a happy calm immobility, but that is because the happiness is a form of Ananda and in the immobility they feel the Self and its eternal calm and want nothing more.  Joy is a vital feeling, like its opposite, sorrow.    There is no real reason why delight should necessarily be followed by sorrow — except that it is the habit of the vital.


Sri Aurobindo: But that habit can be overcome.    It is dangerous to have a heart insisting on its own vital emotions.  Not to be the slave of vital joy or sorrow is a condition one has to pass through in order to arrive at true Anandam. If people are right [] then there can never be any equality and we have even to say that equality is a bad thing.


Sri Aurobindo: If so, then the whole of the Gita is a mass of nonsense.     There are vital joys that are innocent and need not be seriously put down — such as joy in art, poetry, literature. They have to be not put down, but put aside only when they interfere with sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: Sorrow and pain and suffering? The curious thing is that my Yoga does not approve of sorrow and suffering or of taking stumbles and difﬁculties too seriously, as the Tapaswis do or of viraha pangs as the Vaishnavas do or of vairagya as the Mayavadis do, yet the old ideas and forces bring these things into the Asram through the minds of the sadhaks and there they are. Well, well!    The thing in you which enjoys the suffering and wants it is part of the human vital — it is these things that we describe as the insincerity and perverse twist of the vital; it cries out against sorrow and trouble and accuses the Divine and life and everybody else of torturing it, but for the most part the sorrow and the trouble come and remain because the perverse something in the vital wants them!


Sri Aurobindo: That element in the vital has to be got rid of altogether.    Yes, it is so [ ]. Even there is something in the vital consciousness that would not feel at home if there were no suffering in life. It is the physical that fears and abhors suffering, but the vital takes it as part of the play of life.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is the vital that enjoys the drama of life and takes a pleasure even in sorrow and suffering — it [] is not a revolt but an acceptance. Of course there are moods of revolt also in the vital in which it takes a pleasure. The part that does not like suffering and would be glad to get rid of it is the physical consciousness, but the vital pushes it always and so it cannot escape.  It is the rajaso-tamasic vital ego that is responsible both for revolt and for the acceptance of depression.


Sri Aurobindo: Rajas predominating there is revolt, tamas predominating there is depression.    It is not the soul but the vital or rather something in it that takes pleasure in groaning and weeping and in fact in sorrow and suffering of all kinds.


Sri Aurobindo: The surface nature does not enjoy [] — but something within enjoys the of “laughter and tears”, joy and grief, pleasure and pain, in a word the play of the ignorance.  In some people this comes up to a certain extent on the surface.  Many, if you propose to them the removal of suffering from life, look askance at you and feel that it would be terribly boring to have nothing but joy and Ananda and peace — many even have said it.


Sri Aurobindo: The gloom and other difﬁculties come from a resistance of inertia in the lower vital and physical consciousness. What you have to do is to prepare the consciousness by getting rid of the inertia. A sattwic gladness and calm and conﬁdence is the proper temperament for this Yoga; gloom, depression and weeping should not be indulged in, as they stand in the way of the opening, unless the tears are the psychic weeping of release or adoration or a moved love and bhakti. The progress made in controlling the sex and other rajasic movements of the lower vital is a good preparation, but not enough; by itself it is only the negative side, though indispensable. Aspire for a positive sattwic opening for strength, for light, for peace and do not worry or repine if the progress is slow at ﬁrst, nor grudge the time and labour of preparation necessary before there can be a rapid advance in the Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo:  You should not indulge this sense of grief — remain calm, conﬁdent, turned to the one Will in all circumstances; that is the way to secure that each step will be taken in the right measure and produce its best possible consequences. Regard henceforth the question of and your relation with as a minor and subordinate thing on the outer side of your sadhana. If you take it as a problem of the ﬁrst importance it will become that and stand in your way again. Look at it as a question from the past that has been ﬁrmly settled and put in its place and turn to the central aim of your sadhana.  For the rest, apart from this circumstance, you need change nothing in the inward aim and concentration of your will and endeavour on the one thing to be done — the entire self-giving and self-dedication of your inner and outer being to the Divine alone.


Sri Aurobindo: If you can adopt ﬁrmly the right inward attitude, it may even be easier than by an outward rule for your main guidance.    I hope you will be able to reject this; it must be an attempt of something of the old consciousness to come back, — for a psychic sorrow would not burn. These things come from the subconscient, so for such a grief no particular reason would be necessary. It is the force of sorrow in itself that rises like that and lays a claim on the nature.


Sri Aurobindo:   Tamasic indifference is one thing and the absence of sorrow is another. One has to observe what is wrong and do all that one can to set it right. Sadness in itself has no power to cure what is wrong; a ﬁrm quiet persistent will has the power.


Sri Aurobindo: It is clear that the force and peace are descending and working more and more to ﬁx themselves in you.  The other feelings, the wanting to be sad, the fear of being happy, the suggestion of incapacity or unﬁtness are the usual movements of the vital formation which is not yourself and they come up to try and prevent the change in you. You have only to refuse to accept these suggestions and put yourself persistently on the side of the Truth in you which will make you free and happy, and all will be well.  It seems to me from what you have written that it is the old vital restlessness and indulgence in melancholy that has taken hold of you. It has no special cause, but takes hold of everything to feed itself; in itself it is only a habitual nervous weakness.


Sri Aurobindo: The more one broods on it, the more it increases. There are three ways of combating it. One is to take interest and busy yourself in something else not yourself and to think of your condition as little as possible. Another is to separate yourself from this vital restlessness and melancholia as much as possible and face it, as you were doing, with an energetic and resolute refusal to accept it. The third is to habituate yourself to turn your mind upwards in a call for the Mother’s peace.


Sri Aurobindo: It is there above you waiting to come down if you make yourself open to it; if it came down, it would rid you permanently of all this suffering and trouble.  Not to get discouraged when there is no immediate result is very important — for then the force within sinks and when the force within sinks there is the of which the old Rishis were always complaining, for each time the tapas broke they had to start afresh till it was reconstructed.    Tell him that discouragement is the one thing that the sadhak should never indulge. One should go on steadily whether the pace is slow or hampered or swift and easy — one will always get to the goal in time.


Sri Aurobindo: Difﬁculties and periods of darkness cannot be avoided — they have to be gone through with quietness and courage.     There is no reason to be discouraged. Three years is not too much for the preparation of the nature and it is usually through ﬂuctuations that it gradually grows nearer to the point where a continuous progress becomes possible.


Sri Aurobindo: One has to cleave ﬁrmly to the faith in the Mother’s working behind all appearances and you will ﬁnd that that will carry you through.    I do not quite know what is the drift of your questions. It sounds as if you had been allowing yourself to be inﬂuenced by a vague and confused atmosphere of discouragement and barren questioning which has caught many in the Asram. Otherwise there is no ground for any such feelings.


Sri Aurobindo: Where you are? In the Mother’s presence here and close to me. Where you are going? Towards union with the Divine through dedication and service. What you are doing here?


Sri Aurobindo: Service and self-giving to the Divine. The rest depends, as the Mother writes to you, on the simplicity and fullness with which you give yourself and serve. If there is anything more special in your thoughts that has disturbed you, it is better to say clearly what it is. But do not listen to the thoughts spoken or silently suggested that are moving about the Asram and of which I have spoken, for these are a poison that will only bring discontent and depression.  The outer being does not care for the sadhana unless it gets something by it which is to it pleasant or gratifying or satisfying — depression therefore comes easy to it.


Sri Aurobindo:   That is how the depression works in everybody. It takes hold of this or that excuse but really it comes for its own satisfaction and not for any particular reason.


Sri Aurobindo:    All depression is bad as it lowers the consciousness, spends the energy, opens to adverse forces.


Sri Aurobindo: After you went from here it seems that the vital difﬁculties which you were emerging from here came back with your return to the atmosphere and that was the cause of the violent depression and ill-health that fell upon you. The depression again was the cause why everything went wrong and the arrangements made fell through or took a wrong turn. For depression prevents the Force from ﬂowing through and calls in the adverse forces and gives them a chance to destroy the helpful formations that are made. All the trouble and difﬁculty you have had will disappear or be minimised if you shake off this tendency to depression altogether.   The vital may understand, but that is not enough, it must wholeheartedly call for the peace and transformation.


Sri Aurobindo: There must be a large part of it unable to change its position and give up its moods or its way of receiving things; otherwise these depressions could not be so acute. There is no reason why you should not get the peace, but this must change.     One should certainly not overestimate one’s progress, but not underestimate it either.


Sri Aurobindo: I don’t know whether dwelling on the defects and weaknesses is very wholesome. To know that they are there is one thing, to keep them always before the eye may be depressing and retard the progress.     There was nothing wrong in helping with the cooking.


Sri Aurobindo: But if there were a wrong movement in that, it is not to be met by getting depression — for depression itself is a wrong or mistaken movement; and how can one mistake be corrected by another?  The proper way to deal with a wrong movement is to look quietly at it and put the consciousness right at that point.


Sri Aurobindo: It [ ] is much better than vital depression at any rate


Sri Aurobindo: .  What is wanted is an inner peace and upon that a constant cheerfulness and gladness.     I am glad the cloud is lifting and hope to ﬁnd it lifted altogether soon.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the usual experience that if the humility and resignation are ﬁrmly founded in the heart, other things like trust come naturally afterwards. If once the psychic light and happiness which is born of these things is founded, it is not easy for other forces to cloud that state and not possible for them to destroy it. That is the common experience.  Often waves of depression come from the general Nature — the mind ﬁnds out inner or external reasons for them when there are none. That may be the reason why the reasons are not clear.


Sri Aurobindo: On the other hand it may be due to some part of the being getting discouraged or fatigued or unwilling to follow the movement either of work or of sadhana. If it is something in the vital being, it may hide itself so as not to be exposed or cleared; if a part of the physical, it may be simply dumb and obscure, unable to express itself. Finally, it may come up from the subconscient.  These are various cases in which there is what seems a causeless depression. One has to see for oneself which it is.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes. The depression comes from without, not from within. But some part of the vital is too habituated to respond or at least passively accept or reﬂect and to take it as its own. If it were not for this, there would be little or no difﬁculty in throwing off the depression when it tries to come.


Sri Aurobindo:   You seem to rely very much on and his experiences and ideas about them. ’s experience proves nothing because he is quite ignorant. His depression comes from outside and has its causes, only his vital mind does not record or understand the causes, but there is a response to them all the same.


Sri Aurobindo: Because the vital mind has in the past always associated depression with these causes and that impression remains in the vital stuff, so it responds to the touch with the usual reaction taught to it by the vital mind.  An ignorant and untrained mind like’s cannot be expected to realise the secret machinery of the movements of his own consciousness.    The vital mind is part of the mind. If mind (mental mind, vital mind, physical mind, subconscient mind) does not respond to outer things, depression is impossible.


Sri Aurobindo: The self at one end, the stone at the other never get into depression. In between them, the true mind, true vital, true physical consciousness never get depression because they do not give the responses to things that create depression.     Naturally the deep depression and low vitality [ ] try to get into you, or if the person pulls your vital force to restore hers or you yourself part with it for that purpose, you feel exhausted and empty afterwards.


Sri Aurobindo: That is the natural result.  One person may produce more of this result than another. Or if you are strong enough to resist in the mind and vital, the inﬂuence gets into the physical and produces some result there.  According to the nature of the person approached, the result may be violent or intense or of a minor character. Also certain effects may not manifest at the time but only afterwards.


Sri Aurobindo:  These cloudings are not rare and not personal to yourself — all get them, — very often they are formations thrown.  The important thing is not to get upset or distressed or take them to yourself or as your own, and to remain quiet till they pass.     Do not allow these depressing thoughts to ﬁnd credit with you.


Sri Aurobindo: If they come, look at them as not yours, as suggestions from outside. Remain as quiet as you can and let the Mother’s Force work in you.     However or from wheresoever it came, the only thing to do with a depression is to throw it out.


Sri Aurobindo: Naturally, if the vital is quiet and allows the mind to see things rightly, there will not be this depression.     Small desires and defects have not to be magniﬁed or made a cause of worry or depression, but they have to be noted and quietly got rid of.


Sri Aurobindo:  Be careful to reject always movements (like vexation, discontent etc.) that bring back confusion or depression. One cannot always help these movements coming, but one can reject them when they come; the more they are rejected, the more difﬁcult it becomes for them to recur — or, if they recur, they hold only for a moment and then drop away. To entertain them means to give them a chance to cover the true consciousness once more.


Sri Aurobindo: It [] comes back if you give it a chance. Do not give it a chance. Do not give it a room to live in if it comes.


Sri Aurobindo: Depression should not be indulged, for all who do the Yoga have difﬁculties with their ego; but the higher consciousness will always prevail with a true aspiration.    Do not allow yourself to admit any movement of vital depression, still less a depressed condition. As for the external being, it is always, not only in you but in everyone, a difﬁcult animal to handle. It has to be dealt with by patience and a quiet and cheerful perseverance; never get depressed by its resistance, for that only makes it sensitive and aggrieved and difﬁcult, or else discouraged.


Sri Aurobindo: Give it rather the encouragement of sunlight and a quiet pressure, and one day you will ﬁnd it opening entirely to the Grace.    It is indeed good that the psychic intervened and prevented the mind taking the wrong direction. It is not possible that there should not be occasional stumbles, failures etc. in the work of self-puriﬁcation and change; but to feel upset or remorseful over them is harmful rather than helpful; it easily brings depression and depression brings clouding of the mind and weakness. To observe calmly the wrong movement and its nature (here it was the tongue that was at fault and the tongue is always an easily erring member) and to set it right inwardly is always the best way.


Sri Aurobindo: Calm, especially when the true spiritual calm of the self is there, is the thing that must always be preserved; for with that everything else can be done in time and with the least trouble.    — remorse, repentance, is the natural movement of the vital mind when it sees it has done a mistake. It is certainly better than indifference. Its disadvantage is that it disturbs the vital stuff and sometimes leads to depression or discouragement.  For that reason what is usually recommended to the sadhak is a quiet recognition of the mistake with a sincere aspiration and will that it should not be repeated or at least that the habit of making such mistakes should soon be eliminated.


Sri Aurobindo: At a higher stage of development when the inner calm is established, one simply observes the defects of the nature as defects of a machinery that one has to put right and calls down the Light and Force for its rectiﬁcation. In the beginning however the movement of repentance even helps provided it does not bring discouragement or depression.    This kind of dejection [] must be cast aside. Life always has a meaning whether in success or in difﬁculty so long as it is turned towards the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: Protection will be given, but depression must be put aside so that you may be able to receive and use the help and the force.  I think the best thing I can write to you in the circumstances is to recommend to you’s aphorism, “Depression need not be depressing; rather it should be made a jumping-board for the leap to a higher and happier poise.”  The rule in Yoga is not to let the depression depress you, to stand back from it, observe its cause and remove the cause; for the cause is always in oneself, perhaps a vital defect somewhere, a wrong movement indulged or a petty desire causing a recoil, sometimes by its satisfaction, sometimes by its disappointment. In Yoga a desire satisﬁed, a false movement given its head produces very often a worse recoil than disappointed desire.  What is needed for you is to live more deeply within, less in the outer vital and mental which is exposed to these touches.


Sri Aurobindo: The inmost psychic being is not oppressed by them; it stands in its own closeness to the Divine and sees the small surface movements as surface things foreign to the true being.    It is regrettable that this attack [] should recur.  Perhaps it was a little my fault — you were or seemed to me going on so well that I was not on my guard against its possible recurrence. During the last two or three days the suggestion did come to me that there might be a turn of that kind, but I was so much in the joy of your music that I did not give it credence.


Sri Aurobindo: It is certainly not the answering of questions that will remove the underlying cause of this recurrence. Even if the answers satisfy, it could only be for a time. The same questionings would arise either in a mechanical reiteration — for it is not truly the reason from which they arise, it is a certain part of the vital consciousness affected by the surrounding atmosphere — or else presented from a shifted ground or a somewhat changed angle of vision. The difﬁculty can only disappear if you remain resolute that it shall disappear, — if you refuse to attach any value to the justiﬁcations which the mind is to put forward for your “sadness” under this atmospheric inﬂuence and, as you did in certain other matters, stick fast to the resolution to make the Yogic change, to awake the psychic fully, not to follow the voices of the mind but to do rather what the Mother asks of you, persisting or seem to be. It is so that the psychic can fully awaken and establish its inﬂuence — not on your higher vital where it is already awake and growing through your poetry and music and certain experiences so that whenever your higher vital is active you are in good condition, full of delight and creativeness and open to experience; but it is the inﬂuence on the lower vital, for it is there as I have already told you that your difﬁculties are and that this vital depression recurs.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is quite unwarranted to say that you have been going in the wrong direction — going west when you thought you were going east. You were going towards the east, all right, but you were going as if with a chain on your ankles and the chain was a certain tension and stiffness in your endeavour. This is what was found to have been wrong in your way of meditation. Therefore there is no need to lament that you have been going in the wrong direction all the time — for that is not the case; what is needed is to proﬁt by the discovery and get rid of the impediment.


Sri Aurobindo: The light which you saw seems to have got clouded by your indulging your vital more and more in the bitter pastime of sadness. That was quite natural, for that is the result sadness always does bring. It is the reason why I object to the gospel of sorrow and to any sadhana which makes sorrow one of its main planks (, revolt,). For sorrow is not, as Spinoza pointed out, a passage to a greater perfection, a way to siddhi; it cannot be, for it confuses and weakens and distracts the mind, depresses the vital force, darkens the spirit. A relapse from joy and vital elasticity and Ananda to sorrow, self-distrust, despondency and weakness is a recoil from a greater to a lesser consciousness; — the habit of these moods shows a clinging of something in the vital to the smaller, obscurer, dark and distressed movement out of which it is the very aim of Yoga to rise.


Sri Aurobindo: It is incorrect to say that the wrong key with which you were trying to open the faery palace has been taken away from you and you are left with none at all. The true key has been given to you in the right kind or condition of meditation — a state of inner rest, not of straining, of quiet opening, not of eager or desperate pulling, a harmonious giving of oneself to the Divine Force for its working, and in that quietude a sense of the Force working and a restful conﬁdence allowing it to act without any unquiet interference. Now that condition is the beginning of the psychic opening; there is of course much more that afterwards comes to complete it but this is the fundamental condition into which all the rest can most easily come. In this condition there may and will be call, prayer, aspiration. Intensity, concentration will come of themselves, not by a hard effort or tense strain on the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: Rejection of wrong movements, frank confession of defects are not only not incompatible, but helpful to it; but this attitude makes the rejection, the confession easy, spontaneous, entirely complete and sincere and effective. That is the experience of all who have consented to take this attitude.  Now as to the tension and stiffness. I may say in passing that consciousness and receptivity are not the same thing; one may be receptive, yet externally unaware of how things are being done and of what is being done. But for such an external unconsciousness there must be a reason, — and in you it was the stiffness created by a tension and a straining which made the consciousness thus rigid and closed it up.


Sri Aurobindo: Not that it closed you to the Force or that it took away the inner receptivity, but it did close you to the surface consciousness of what is being done. When that happens, the Force works, as I have repeatedly written, behind the veil; the results remain packed behind and come out afterwards, often slowly, little by little, until there is so much pressure that it breaks through somehow and forces open the external nature. There lies the difference between a mental and vital straining and pulling and a spontaneous psychic openness, and it is not at all the ﬁrst time that we have spoken of the difference. It is not really a question of the right or the wrong key, but of putting the key in the lock in the right or the wrong way, whether because of some difﬁculty you try to force the lock turning the key this way and that with violence or conﬁdently and quietly give it the right turn — and the door opens.  It is not that this pulling and straining and tension can do nothing; in the end they prevail for some result or another, but with difﬁculty, delay, struggle, strong upheavals of the Force breaking through in spite of all.


Sri Aurobindo: Ramakrishna himself began by pulling and straining and got his result but at the cost of a tremendous and perilous upsetting; afterwards he took the quiet psychic way whenever he wanted a result and got it with ease and in a minimum time. You say that this way is too difﬁcult for you but it is on the contrary the easiest and simplest and most direct way and anyone can do it, if he makes his mind and vital quiet. It is the other way of tension and strain and hard endeavour that is difﬁcult and needs a great force of Tapasya.  Take the psychic attitude; follow the straight sunlit path, with the Divine openly or secretly upbearing you — if secretly, he will yet show himself in good time, — do not insist on the hard, hampered, roundabout and difﬁcult journey.  All this has been pointed out before: but you were not inclined to regard it as feasible or at least not ready to apply it in the ﬁeld of meditation because your consciousness by tradition, owing to past lives and for other reasons, was clinging to former contrary conceptions.


Sri Aurobindo: Something in you was harking back to one kind of Vaishnava sadhana, and that tended to bring in it its pain-giving feeling-elements of, revolt, suffering, the Divine hiding himself (“always I seek, but never does he show himself”) — the rarity of the unfolding and the.  Something else in you was inclined to see as the only alternative some harsh, grim ascetic ideal, the blank featureless Brahman (and imagined that the supramental was that), something in the vital looked on the conquest of wrong movements as a hard desperate tapasya, not as a passage into the purity and joy of the Divine — even now some element in you seems to insist on regarding the psychic attitude as something extraordinary, difﬁcult, inhuman and impossible! There were these and other old lingerings of the mind and the vital; you have to clear them out and look at the simplicity of the Truth with a straight and simple gaze.  The remedy we propose, the key we offer to you ought not to be so difﬁcult to apply as you imagine. After all, it is only applying in “meditation” the way that has been so successful with you in your creative work.


Sri Aurobindo: There is a way of creation by strain and tension, by beating of the brain, by hard and painful labour — often the passage clogged and nothing coming or else coming only in return for a sort of intellectual tapasya. There is the other way in which one remains quiet and opens oneself to a power that is there behind and waits for inspiration; the force pours in and with it the inspiration, the illumination, the Ananda, — all is done by an inner Power. The ﬂood passes, but one remains quiet for the next ﬂood and at its time surely it comes. Here too all is not perfect at once; but progress comes by ever new waves of the same Power. Not then a strain of mental activity, but a restful opening to the Force that is there all the time above and around you, so that it may ﬂow freely and do its work in peace and illumination and Ananda.


Sri Aurobindo: The way has been shown to you, you yourself have had from time to time the true condition; only you must learn how to continue in it or recover it and you must allow the Force to do its work in its own way. It may take some time to take entire hold of it, get the other habit out and make this normal; but you must not start by deciding that it is impossible! It is eminently possible and it is the door of deﬁnitive entrance. The difﬁculty, the struggle were only the period of preparation necessary to get rid of or to exhaust the obstruction in the consciousness which was a thorn-hedge round the faery palace.


Sri Aurobindo: I ﬁnd it rather surprising that you should regard what the Mother said to you or what I wrote as a recommendation to relax aspiration or postpone the idea of any kind of siddhi till the Greek Kalends! It was not so intended in the least — nor do I think either of us said or wrote anything which could justly bear such an interpretation. I said expressly that in the way of med


Sri Aurobindo: itating of which we spoke, aspiration, prayer, concentration, intensity were a natural part of it; this way was put before you because our experience has been that those who take it go quicker and develop their sadhana, once they get ﬁxed in it, much more easily as well as smoothly than by a distressed, doubtful and anxious straining with revulsions of despondency and turning away from hope and endeavour. We spoke of a steady opening to the Divine with a ﬂow of the force doing its work in the adhar, a poised opening with a quiet mind and heart full of trust and the sunlight of conﬁdence; where do you ﬁnd that we said a helpless waiting must be your programme?  As for light-heartedness and insouciance, the Mother never spoke of insouciance — a light don’t-care attitude is the last thing she would recommend to anybody. She spoke of cheerfulness, and if she used the word light-hearted it was not in the sense of anything lightly or frivolously gay and careless — although a deeper and ﬁner gaiety can have its place as one element of the Yogic character. What she meant was a glad equanimity even in the face of difﬁculties and there is nothing in that contrary to Yogic teaching or to her own practice.


Sri Aurobindo: The vital nature on the surface (the depths of the true vital are different) is attached on the one side to a superﬁcial mirth and enjoyment, on the other to sorrow and despair and gloom and tragedy, — for these are for it the cherished lights and shades of life; but a bright or wide and free peace or an intensity or, best, a fusing of both in one is the true poise of both the soul and the mind — and of the true vital also — in Yoga. It is perfectly possible for a quite human sadhak to get to such a poise, it is not necessary to be divine before one can attain it. All this is nothing new and original; I have been saying it ever since I began speaking at all about Yoga and I cannot see anything in it resembling a gospel of helpless waiting or of light careless insouciance or anything contrary to our own practice. I do not think that we have either of us become relentlessly grim and solemn or lacking in humour or that the Mother has lost her smile! I am afraid you are looking at her and things as through a glass darkly and seeing them in too sombre colours.


Sri Aurobindo: As for instance what you say about the music, — she came up straight to me from it and spoke at once about your music and the presence of Krishna there, and she was in a very different mood from what you describe.     Do not allow yourself to be overborne by the dejection; it can only be an incident in the ups and downs of the sadhana, and, as an incident, it should be made as short as possible. Remember that you have chosen a method of proceeding in the sadhana in which dejection ought to have no place.


Sri Aurobindo: If you have a growing faith that all that is happening has somehow to happen and that God knows what is best for you, — that is already a great thing; if you add to it the will to keep your face always turned towards the goal and the conﬁdence that you are being led towards it even through difﬁculties and apparent denials, there could be no better mental foundation for sadhana. And if not only the mind, but the vital and physical consciousness can be imbued with this faith, dejection will become either impossible or so evidently an outer thing thrown from outside and not belonging to the consciousness that it will not be able to keep its hold at all. A faith of that kind is a very helpful ﬁrst step towards the reversal of consciousness which makes one see the inner truth of things rather than their outward phenomenal appearance.  As for the causes of the dejection, there were causes, partly general in the shape of a resistance to a great descending force which was not personal to you at all, and, so far as there was a response to it in you, it was not from your conscious being, otherwise you would not have had it in this way, but from the part in us which keeps things for a long time that have been suppressed or rejected by the conscious will. It is the conscious will that matters, for it is that that prevails in the end, the will of the Purusha and not the more blind and obstinate parts of Prakriti.


Sri Aurobindo: Keep the conscious will all right and it will carry on to the goal, — just as the resistance in universal Nature will yield in the end before the Divine Descent.    The depression of the vital you feel is a continuation of the old feeling in the struggle, but you must reject it and make of it a diminishing movement. The past in Yoga is no guide to the future. For what happened in the past was due to temporary and not permanent causes and to eliminate them is the very purpose of the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is no doubt about the beauty of the poems you have written but if sometimes — not by any means always — our sweetest songs spring from saddest feelings, there is a quite different rule both for life and for Yoga. For the life in its progress, for the soul in its ascendance, grief and suffering should be only an incident on the way and the vision look always and steadily to a joy and a glory beyond it — let the gloom pass and look beyond it towards Light.


Sri Aurobindo: The difﬁculty you feel or any sadhak feels about sadhana is not really a question of meditation versus bhakti versus works, it is a difﬁculty of the attitude to be taken, the approach or whatever you like to call it. Yours seems to be characterised on one side by a tremendous effort in the mind, on the other by a gloomy certitude in the vital which seems to watch and mutter under its breath if not aloud, “Yes, yes, go ahead, my ﬁne fellow, but — ”, and at the end of the meditation, “What did I tell you, ”. A vital so ready to despair that even after a “glorious” ﬂood of poetry, it uses the occasion to preach the gospel of despair. I have passed through most of the difﬁculties of the sadhak, but I cannot recollect to have looked on delight of poetical creation or concentration in it as something undivine and a cause for despair. This seems to me excessive.


Sri Aurobindo:   I have always told you that you ought not to stop your poetry and similar activities. It is a mistake to do so out of asceticism or with the idea of tapasya. One can stop these things when they drop of themselves, because one is in full experience and so interested in one’s inner life that one has no energy to spare for the rest. Even then, there is no rule for giving up; for there is no reason why the poetry etc. should not be a part of sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: The love of applause, of fame, the ego feeling have to be given up, but that can be done without giving up the activity itself. Your vital needs some activity, most vitals do, and to deprive it of its outlet, an outlet that can be helpful and is not harmful, makes it sulking, indifferent and despondent or else inclined to revolt at any moment and throw up the sponge. Without the assent of the vital it is difﬁcult to do sadhana — it non-cooperates, or it watches with a grim even if silent dissatisfaction ready to express at any moment doubt and denial; or it makes a furious effort and then falls back saying, “I have got nothing.” The mind by itself cannot do much; it must have support from the vital; for that the vital must be in a cheerful and acquiescent state. It has the joy of creation and there is nothing spiritually wrong in creative action.


Sri Aurobindo: Why deny your vital this joy of outﬂow?  I had already hinted to you that to be able to wait for the Divine Grace (not in a tamasic spirit, but with a sattwic reliance) was the best course for you. Prayer, yes — but not prayer insisting on immediate fulﬁlment — but prayer that is itself a communion of the mind and the heart with the Divine and can have the joy and satisfaction of itself, trusting for fulﬁlment by the Divine in His own time. Meditation? Yes, but your meditation has got into a wrong Asana, that of an eager and vehement wrestling followed by a bitter despair.


Sri Aurobindo: It is no use getting on with it like that; it is better to drop it till you get a new Asana. (I am referring to the old Rishis who established an Asana, a place and a ﬁxed position, where they would sit till they got siddhi — but if the Asana got successfully disturbed by wrong forces (Asuras, Apsaras etc.), they left it and sought for a new one.) Moreover, your meditation is lacking in quietude, you meditate with a striving mind — but it is in the quiet mind that the experience comes, as all Yogis agree — the still water that reﬂects rightly the sun. Your vital besides is afraid of quietude and emptiness, and that is because, probably, the strife and effort in you make what comes of them something neutral or desert, while they should be a restful quietude and an emptiness giving the sense of peace, purity or release, the cup made empty so that the soma-rasa of the spirit may be poured in it. That is why I would like you to desist from these too strenuous efforts and go on quietly, praying and meditating if you like but tranquilly without strain and too vehement striving, letting the prayer and meditation (not too much of the latter) prepare the mind and heart till things begin to ﬂow into them in a spontaneous current when all is ready.


Sri Aurobindo:  Accustomed as I am to the misunderstanding or misreporting of the Mother’s statements, I found that this about her having said that transformation is easy carries the habit to the extreme limit. Needless to say, she did not and could not say anything of the kind and it is astonishing that you should believe she could say anything so absurd and false. I must remind you that I have always insisted on the difﬁculty of the sadhana. I have never said that to overcome doubt is easy; I have said on the contrary that it was difﬁcult because it was the nature of something in the human physical mind to cling to doubt for its own sake.


Sri Aurobindo: I have never said that to overcome grief, depression, gloom and suffering was easy; I have said that it was difﬁcult because something in the human vital clings to it and almost needs it as part of the drama of life. So also I have never said that sex, anger, jealousy etc. were easy to overcome; I have said it was difﬁcult because they were ingrained in the human vital, and even if thrown out were always being brought back into it either by its own habit or by the invasion of the general Nature and the resurgence of its own old response. These things I have repeated hundreds of times. Your idea that my difﬁculties were different from those of human nature is a mental construction or inference without any real basis. If I am ignorant of human difﬁculties and therefore intolerant of them, how is it that I am so patient with them as you cannot deny that I am?


Sri Aurobindo: Why for years and years do I go on patiently arguing about your doubts, spending so much of my time, always trying to throw light on your difﬁculties, to show how things stand, to give reasons for a knowledge gained by living and experience? Am I writing these letters every night because I have no understanding and no sympathy with you in your doubts and difﬁculties?  Why do I wait patiently for years for sadhaks to get over their sex difﬁculties? Why do I tolerate and help and write soothing and encouraging letters to these women who break out and hunger-strike and threaten suicide once a fortnight? Why do we bear all this trouble and and and resistance and obloquy and harsh criticism from the sadhaks, why were we so patient with men like and and others, if we had no understanding and no sympathy with the difﬁculties of human nature?


Sri Aurobindo: It is because I press always on faith and discourage doubt as a means of approach to the spiritual realisation. What spiritual guide with a respect for truth can do otherwise? And if I encourage and support doubt, the only result will be that doubt will last for ever and no assured realisation be possible — just as if I encourage and support sex or any other contrary movement, it will last for ever — even without that they last quite long enough by their own force and motion. All that I can do for them is to tolerate and be patient and give time enough for their transformation or removal. Surely when you look at all this fairly, you will see that you have made a very incorrect inference.


Sri Aurobindo: As to the statement about drama and something liking to suffer, nobody doubts that your external consciousness dislikes its suffering. The physical mind and consciousness of man hates its own suffering and if left to itself dislikes also to see others suffer. But if you will try to fathom the signiﬁcance of your own admission of liking drama or of the turn towards drama — from which very few human beings escape — and if you go deep enough, you will ﬁnd that there is something in the vital which likes suffering and clings to it for the sake of the drama; it is something below the surface, not on the surface, but it is strong, almost universal in human nature and difﬁcult to eradicate unless one recognises it and gets inwardly away from it.  The mind and the physical of man do not like suffering for if they did it would not be suffering any longer, but this thing in the vital wants it in order to give a spice to life.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the reason why constant depressions can go on returning and returning even though the mind longs to get rid of them, because this in the vital responds, goes on repeating the same movement like a gramophone as soon as it is set going and insists on turning the whole round of the often repeated record. It does not really depend on the reasons which the vital gives for starting off the round, these are often of the most trivial character and wholly insufﬁcient to justify it. It is only by a strong will to detach oneself, not to justify, to reject root and branch that one can in the end get rid of this most troublesome and dangerous streak in human nature. When therefore we speak of the vital comedy, the vital drama, we are speaking from a psychological knowledge which does not end with the surface of things and looks at these hidden movements. It is impossible to deal with things for the purposes of Yoga if we conﬁne ourselves to the surface consciousness only.


Sri Aurobindo:   I cannot candidly say that the Mother and I approve of the idea of your going to Calcutta for a fortnight for relief from your sufferings: if we ever sanction such a movement, it is against our own seeing of things because no choice is left to us owing to circumstances or the state of mind of the sadhak. We have never found that such absences do any spiritual good: they usually relax or lower the consciousness or renew old movements that must go. It is much better to face the difﬁculty however sticky it is till the conquest is there.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a pity that this movement of depression has come back with its painful and irrational circle. It must be thrown away for good: these movements go round in a circular repetitionary way characteristic of these things. It is lent force by the reasonings of the physical mind which are specious but of no value. It is not true of spiritual things that experience must come within a certain number of years or not at all. There are some who begin to succeed after a few years, some who take longer, succeeding only in work but not in meditation or activity of the inner consciousness, but ﬁnally the veiled inner preparation of so many years has prevailed and they begin to get the psychic change, the inner opening of head and heart, the descents, the growth through frequent though not uninterrupted experience.


Sri Aurobindo: This has happened even to those who are troubled by these circular movements and have been again and again on the point of rushing away in despair. There is nothing more futile than to despair in the spiritual path and throw up the game: it is to break a working which would have led one to the realisation asked for if one had persevered.    Thirst for the Divine is one thing and depression is quite another, nor is depression a necessary consequence of the thirst being unsatisﬁed; that may lead to a more ardent thirst or to a ﬁxed resolution and persistent effort or to a more and more yearning call or to a psychic sorrow which is not at all identical with depression and despair. Depression is a clouded grey state in its nature and it is more difﬁcult for light to come through clouds and greyness than through a clear atmosphere.


Sri Aurobindo: That depression obstructs the inner light is a matter of general experience.  The Gita says expressly, “Yoga should be practised persistently with a heart free from depression” —. Bunyan in symbolises it as the Slough of Despond, one of the perils of the way that has to be overcome. It is no doubt impossible to escape from attacks of depression, almost all sadhaks go through these attacks, but the principle is that one should react against them and not allow them by any kind of mental encouragement or acceptance of their suggestions to persist or grow chronic.  It is hardly a fact that sorrow is in order to make the soul seek the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the call of the soul within for the Divine that makes it turn, and that may come under any circumstances — in full prosperity and enjoyment, at the height of outward conquest and victory without any sorrow or disappointment but by a sudden or growing enlightenment, by a ﬂash of light in the midst of sensuous passion as in Bilwamangal, by the perception that there is something greater and truer than this outward life lived in ego and ignorance. None of these turns need be accompanied by sorrow and depression. Often one turns saying, “Life is all very well and interesting enough as a game, but it is only a game, the spiritual reality is greater than the life of the mind and senses.” In whatever way it comes, it is the call of the Divine or the soul’s call to the Divine that matters, the attraction of it as something far greater than the things that usually hold the nature. Certainly if one is satisﬁed with life, entranced by it so that it shuts out the sense of the soul within or hampers the attraction to the Divine, then a period of vairagya, sorrow, depression, a painful breaking of the vital ties may be necessary and many go through that.


Sri Aurobindo: But once the turn made, it should be to the one direction and a perpetual vairagya is not needed. Nor when we speak of cheerfulness as the best condition, do we mean a cheerful following of the vital life, but a cheerful following of the path to the Divine which is not impossible if the mind and heart take the right view and posture. At any rate if positive cheerfulness is not possible in one’s case, still one should not acquiesce in or mentally support a constant depression and sadness. That is not at all indispensable for keeping turned to the Divine.  In speaking of the Buddhist and his nine years of the wall and other instances the Mother was only disproving the view that not having succeeded in seven or eight years meant unﬁtness and debarred all hope for the future.


Sri Aurobindo: The man of the wall stands among the greatest names in Japanese Buddhism and his long sterility did not mean incapacity or spiritual unﬁtness. But apart from that there are many who have gone on persisting for long periods and ﬁnally prevailed. It is a common, not an uncommon experience.


Sri Aurobindo: This movement [] is one that always tries to come when you have a birthday or a darshan and is obviously a suggestion of forces that want to disturb you and give you a bad birthday or bad darshan. You must get rid of the idea that it is in any way helpful for sadhana, e.g. makes you remember the Divine etc. — if it does it makes you remember the Divine in the wrong way and in addition brings up the weakness, also depression, self-distrust etc. etc. cheerfulness?  It puts you in the right condition for the psychic to work and without knowing it you grow in just the right perceptions and right feelings for the spiritual attitude. This growth I have been observing in you for a fairly long time now and it is in the cheerful states that it is the most active. Japa, thinking of the Divine is all right, but it must be on this basis and in company with work and mental activity, for then the instrument is in a healthy condition.


Sri Aurobindo: But if you become restlessly eager to do nothing but japa and think of nothing but the Divine and of the “progress” you have or have not made (Ramana Maharshi says you should never think of “progress”, it is according to him a movement of the ego), then all the fat is in the ﬁre — because the system is not yet ready for a Herculean effort and it begins to get upset and think it is unﬁt and will never be ﬁt. So be a good cheerful worker and offer your bhakti to the Divine in all ways you can but rely on him to work out things in you.    I don’t remember saying anything on this subject [ ], except that disappointed vital desire must bring about suffering. Pain and suffering are necessary results of the Ignorance in which we live; men grow by all kinds of experience, pain and suffering as well as their opposites, joy and happiness and ecstasy.


Sri Aurobindo: One can get strength from them if one meets them in the right way. Many take a joy in pain and suffering when associated with struggle or endeavour or adventure, but that is more because of the exhilaration and excitement of the struggle than because of suffering for its own sake. There is, however, something in the vital which takes joy in the whole of life, its dark as well as its bright sides. There is also something perverse in the vital which takes a kind of dramatic pleasure in its own misery and tragedy, even in degradation or in illness.  I don’t think mere doubt can bring any gain; mental questioning can bring gains if it is in pursuit of truth, but questioning just for the sake of sceptical questioning or in a pure spirit of contradiction can only bring, when it is directed against the truths of the spirit, either error or a lasting incertitude.


Sri Aurobindo: If I am always questioning the Light when it comes and refusing its offer of truth, the Light cannot stay in me, cannot settle; eventually, ﬁnding no welcome and no foundation in the mind, it will retire. One has to push forward into the Light, not be always falling back into the darkness and hugging the darkness in the delusion that that is the real light. Whatever fulﬁlment one may feel in pain or in doubt belongs to the Ignorance; the real fulﬁlment is in the divine joy and the divine Truth and its certitude and it is that for which the Yogin strives.  In the strife he may have to pass through doubt, not by his own choice or will, but because there is still imperfection in his knowledge.   If you accept Krishnaprem’s insistence that this and no other must be your path, it is this that you have to attain and realise; any exclusive other-worldliness cannot be your way.


Sri Aurobindo: I believe that you are quite capable of attaining this and realising the Divine and I have never been able to share your constantly recurring doubts about your capacity or the despair that arises in you so violently when there are these attacks, nor is their persistent recurrence a valid ground for believing that they can never be overcome. Such a persistent recurrence has been a feature in the sadhana of many who have ﬁnally emerged and reached the goal; even the sadhana of very great Yogis has not been exempt from such violent and constant recurrences; they have sometimes been special objects of such persistent assaults, as I have indeed indicated in in more places than one — and that was indeed founded on my own experience. In the nature of these recurrences there is usually a constant return of the same adverse experiences, the same adverse resistance, thoughts destructive of all belief and faith and conﬁdence in the future of the sadhana, frustrating doubts of what one has known as the truth, voices of despondency and despair, urgings to abandonment of the Yoga or to suicide or else other disastrous counsels of. The course taken by the attacks is not indeed the same for all, but still they have strong family resemblance. One can eventually overcome if one begins to realise the nature and source of these assaults and acquires the faculty of observing them, bearing, without being involved or absorbed into their gulf, ﬁnally becoming the witness of their phenomena and understanding them and refusing the mind’s sanction even when the vital is still tossed in the whirl or the most outward physical mind still reﬂects the adverse suggestions.


Sri Aurobindo: In the end these attacks lose their power and fall away from the nature; the recurrence becomes feeble or has no power to last: even, if the detachment is strong enough, they can be cut out very soon or at once. The strongest attitude to take is to regard these things as what they really are, incursions of dark forces from outside taking advantage of certain openings in the physical mind or the vital part, but not a real part of oneself or spontaneous creation in one’s own nature. To create a confusion and darkness in the physical mind and throw into it or awake in it mistaken ideas, dark thoughts, false impressions is a favourite method of these assailants, and if they can get the support of this mind from over-conﬁdence in its own correctness or the natural rightness of its impressions and inferences, then they can have a ﬁeld day until the true mind reasserts itself and blows the clouds away. Another device of theirs is to awake some hurt or rankling sense of grievance in the lower vital parts and keep them hurt or rankling as long as possible. In that case one has to discover these openings in one’s nature and learn to close them permanently to such attacks or else to throw out intruders at once or as soon as possible.


Sri Aurobindo: The recurrence is no proof of a fundamental incapacity; if one takes the right inner attitude, it can and will be overcome. The idea of suicide ought never to be accepted; there is no real ground for it and in any case it cannot be a remedy or a real escape: at most it can only be postponement of difﬁculties and the necessity for their solution under no better circumstances in another life. One must have faith in the Master of our life and works, even if for a long time he conceals himself, and then in his own right time he will reveal his Presence.  I have tried to dispel all the misconceptions, explain things as they are and meet all the points at issue. It is not that you really cannot make progress or have not made any progress; on the contrary, you yourself have admitted that you have made a good advance in many directions and there is no reason why, if you persevere, the rest should not come.


Sri Aurobindo: You have always believed in the Guruvada: I would ask you then to put your faith in the Guru and the guidance and rely on the Ishwara for the fulﬁlment, to have faith in my abiding love and affection, in the affection and divine goodwill and loving kindness of the Mother, stand ﬁrm against all attacks and go forward perseveringly towards the spiritual goal and the all-fulﬁlling and all-satisfying touch of the All-Blissful, the Ishwara.  Despair and despondency are always wrong. If you make a mistake, quietly observe it and correct the tendency next time. Even if the mistake recurs often, you have only to persevere quietly — remembering that nature cannot be changed in a day.


Sri Aurobindo:   These feelings of despair and exaggerated sense of self-depreciation and helplessness are suggestions of a hostile Force and should never be admitted. The defects of which you speak are common to all human nature and the external being of every sadhak is full of them; to become aware of them is necessary for the transformation, but it must be done with a quiet mind and with the faith and surrender to the Divine and assured aspiration to the higher consciousness which are proper to the psychic being. The transformation of the external being is the most difﬁcult part of the Yoga and it demands faith, patience, quietude and ﬁrm determination. It is in that spirit that you have to throw these depressions aside and go steadily on with the Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo:   You are “alternately getting” these things [ ], because you allow the vital despondency to lay hold on you. If you consistently rejected it, it would not be able to recur like this. When the difﬁculties come, you should call back the faith; that is the use of faith, to carry you through the difﬁculties and help to dissipate them.


Sri Aurobindo:   Why allow yourself to be overpowered like that? These ﬁts of despair are quite irrational — there is no true reason why you should feel so despondent. Our solicitude and help are there always — in spite of these attacks your spiritual capacity is constantly increasing — only remain ﬁrm, the victory of the Truth in you is then inevitable.


Sri Aurobindo: I will do all to change your consciousness — only open yourself. Keep yourself open as much as you can in quietude — that is the condition I ask of you.    I did not receive any letter from you so recently as a fortnight or three weeks ago. If you feel in a pitiable condition, it is certainly not because you have incurred our displeasure.


Sri Aurobindo: I have said that we are always with you and it is true, but to feel it you must draw back from your vital and be able to concentrate in your inner being. If you do that faithfully and sincerely, after a time you will feel the connection and the support.  The meaning of the phrase you speak of is this, that usually the vital tries to resist the call to change. That is what is meant by revolt or opposition. If the inner will insists and forbids revolt or opposition, the vital unwillingness may often take the form of depression and dejection, accompanied by a resistance in the physical mind which supports the repetition of old ideas, habits, movements or actions while the body consciousness suffers from an apprehension or fear of the called-for change, a drawing back from it or a dullness which does not receive the call.


Sri Aurobindo: It is these things you have to get rid of. But a sorrowful or despondent mood is not the proper condition for doing that.  You have to stand back from the feeling of suffering, anguish and apprehension, reject it and look quietly at the resistance, afﬁrming always to yourself your will to change and insisting that it shall be done and cannot fail to be done now or later with the divine help, because the divine help is there. It is then that the strength can come to you that will overcome the difﬁculties.


Sri Aurobindo:   The weakness in yourself of which you speak is there, as the persistency of these movements [] shows, but it is not in the heart — your heart is all right — but in the lower vital nature. All your weaknesses are there; the rest of your being is quite strong enough for the spiritual life. But this inadequacy of the lower vital is not peculiar to you, it is present in almost every human being. This tendency to irrational sadness and despondency and these imaginations, fears and perverse reasonings — always repeating, if you will take careful notice, the same movements, ideas and feelings and even the same language and phrases like a machine — is a characteristic working of the lower vital nature.


Sri Aurobindo: The only way to get rid of it is to meet it with a ﬁxed resolution of the higher vital and the mind and psychic being to combat, reject and master it. As you were determined to master the sex impulse and the desire of the palate, so you must determine to master this “irrational knot” of despondency in the lower vital nature. If you indulge it and regard it as a natural part of yourself with good causes for existence or if you busy yourself ﬁnding this or that justiﬁcation for it when it comes, there is no reason why it should let go its unpleasant grip upon you. Be ﬁrm and courageous here, as you have learnt to be with other movements of your lower vital; you will then, I think, ﬁnd less difﬁculty in your meditation and your general sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: It is surely better to seek to right yourself than to let yourself ﬂoat in the stream of vital despondency and weakness. What do you expect the Mother to answer to such prayers []? It is not the soul’s demand or need, but an outcry of vital weakness.  did not pray for death, but for light and progress out of his lower consciousness towards the Truth. Ramana Maharshi, whatever his objections to birth in this world, did not pray or seek for death, but for elevation to a height of consciousness for which there is neither birth nor death: he is certainly not so ignorant as to believe that the mere death of the body brings by itself a release; if he were, he would not have taken the trouble to go through so prolonged and intense a tapasya.


Sri Aurobindo: If a way out is wanted, that is the only way out and there is no other.      The outer reasons [] are created by the mind and it is the mind that responds or does not respond to them.


Sri Aurobindo: Nothing outward can affect unless the mind (vital mind usually) represents them to itself in a particular way and makes its own response.     If the mind does not respond to any suggested reasons for despondency, that is indeed a great liberation.  It is not a question of feeling sorrow or joy or any other emotion, everybody does that who has not overcome the ordinary Nature.


Sri Aurobindo: That is not sentimental but emotional. Sentimentalism comes in when you take a pleasure either in indulging or in displaying the feelings or when you have them for no reason or without sufﬁcient reason.    It is a sentimental part of the vital nature that quarrels with people and refuses to speak to them and it is the same part in a reaction against that mood that wants to speak and get the pleasure of the relation. So long as there is either of these movements, the other also is possible.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only when you get rid of this sentimentalism and turn all your puriﬁed feelings towards the Divine, that these ﬂuctuations disappear and a calm goodwill to all takes their place.  It [] is a matter of temperament. Some are psychically and vitally sensitive and responsive to all that comes from anywhere; others are solid of nerve and walled against invasion.  It is not at all a question of strength or weakness. The ﬁrst have a greater sense of life and answer to life; they suffer more from life and get more from it.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the difference between the Greek and the Roman. Even without egoism the difference remains because it is of the temperament. In Yoga the ﬁrst type are more able to feel everything directly and know everything in detail by close experience; it is their great advantage. The others have to use the mind to know and their grasp is less intimate.


Sri Aurobindo: It [] is neither good nor bad. It comes like that in the course of the development. Some are incapable of consciously or visibly opening to others because they are insensitive.  On the other hand to be too open is troublesome.


Sri Aurobindo:   There can be no transformation of the being in an insensitive consciousness.    Most sensitiveness is the result or sign of ego.


Sri Aurobindo: It was indeed a microscopically small cause for so strong an upsetting, but really it is the whole difﬁculty of this raw and unreasonable sensitiveness which cropped up with this very inﬁnitesimally small excuse — and that sensitiveness is one of the most persistent obstacles of many sadhaks here. There are two remedies for it — the psychic’s conﬁdence in the Mother and the surrender that goes with it, i.e. “whatever she wills is best for me”, and the vastness which you feel now, — it is the wideness of the true self, of the true mental, vital, physical being also, from which such things fall off like dust, for they are of no importance to it whatever.  It is the one thing to do, to get permanently into the wideness, peace and silence and let the ego dissolve in it and the attachments fall away.


Sri Aurobindo: The portion below the navel is the lower vital, — in your case it has become very sensitive to the condition of the same part in others or perhaps even to their general condition — so that it gives a sort of reﬂection or an appropriate reaction to that. It is a phase in the development that must be overpassed, because the lower vital must get a perfect peace in it and even if it feels the condition of others do it as an act of perception or knowledge without any reaction or reﬂection.    One has not to cure oneself of one’s sensitiveness, but only acquire the power to rise to a higher consciousness taking such disenchantments as a sort of jumping-board. One way is not to expect even square dealings from others, no matter who the others are.


Sri Aurobindo: And besides, it is good to have such experiences of the real nature of some people to which a generous nature is often blind, for that helps the growth of one’s consciousness.  The blow you wince at seems to you so hard because it is a blow the world of your mental formation has sustained. Such a world often becomes a part of our being. The result is that a blow dealt to it gives almost physical pain. The great compensation is that it makes you live more and more in the real world in contradistinction to the world of your imagination which is what you would like the real world to be.


Sri Aurobindo: But the real world is not all that could be desired, you know, and that is why it has to be acted upon and transformed by the Divine Consciousness. But for that, knowledge of the reality, however unpalatable, is almost the ﬁrst requisite. This knowledge often enough is best brought home to us through blows and bleedings. True, idealistic people, sensitive people, reﬁned natures smart under such disillusionments more than do others who are somewhat thick-skinned, but that is no reason why ﬁne feelings should be deprecated and the keen edge of ﬁne susceptibilities be blunted. The thing is to learn to detach oneself from any such experience and learn to look at such perversions of others from a higher altitude from where one can regard these manifestations in the proper perspective — the impersonal one.


Sri Aurobindo: Then our difﬁculties really and literally become opportunities. For knowledge, when it goes to the root of our troubles, has in itself a marvellous healing-power as it were. As soon as you touch the quick of the trouble, as soon as you, diving down and down, get at what really ails you, the pain disappears as though by a miracle. Unﬂinching courage to reach true Knowledge is therefore of the very essence of Yoga.  No lasting superstructure can be erected except on a solid basis of true Knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: The feet must be sure of their ground before the head can hope to kiss the skies.  As for shyness, there are two kinds: one is egoistic, being ashamed of expressing the Truth or showing allegiance to it in ways which would not be understood by others — the other is a certain reserve, an unwillingness to expose one’s deeper feelings to the gaze of others, the wish to keep sacred and secret the relations of love with the Divine — that is a psychic feeling.  The ﬁrst [] is vital indecision — the other is vital instability.  Those who can’t choose, have the vital indecision and it is usually due to a too active physical mind, seeing too many things or too many sides at a time. The other rises from a lack of control and too much impulse.


Sri Aurobindo:  It [] usually comes from a certain instability in the lower vital which does not give a consistent support to the Will, but is restless and ﬂuctuates from one interest to another. It does not mean an incapacity for success — usually one who has that could succeed in many directions, but the ﬂuctuation prevents sustained success in any. It is a defect that has to be got over and can be got over.   The failure [] is due not to want of capacity but to want of steadiness — a restlessness in the vital and a sort of ardent hastiness that lacks in care of detail and in perseverance. What you need is the inner silence and the solid strength and force that can act through this inner silence, making the vital its instrument but not allowing it to condition the action by its defects.


Sri Aurobindo:   There are some who are solid and tenacious in their vital, it is they who can be steady — others are more mercurial and easily moved by impulses, it is these who are sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes drop into fatigue. It is a matter of temperament.  On the other hand the mercurial people are often capable of a quicker ardour, so that they can progress fast if they want in their own way.


Sri Aurobindo: In any case the remedy for all that is to ﬁnd one’s true self above mind and vital and so not bound by temperament.  The rigidity was in the obstinacy with which your mind and vital clung to their own ideas and vital habits and did not want to change. But the result was rather laxity, a general looseness which did not want to tune the nature to the spiritual endeavour, but let all sorts of things wander over its strings at their pleasure.  Plasticity of the consciousness is necessary, but plasticity to the true touch of the Power, not to any ordinary touch of the forces in Nature. To tune all to the Higher should be your aim — then there will be the full poetry of the spirit not in writing only but in life.


Sri Aurobindo: I suppose the ego came there [] ﬁrst as a means of the outer consciousness individualising itself in the ﬂux of Nature and, secondly, as an incentive for tamasic animal man to act and get something done. Otherwise he might merely have contented himself with food and sleep and done nothing else. With that incentive of ego (possession, vanity, ambition, eagerness for power etc. etc.) he began doing all sorts of things he might never otherwise have done. But now that he has to go higher, this ego comes badly in the way.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes, ego is the reason of the difﬁculty in everybody.    But that [] is the case with all human beings.  All the action is shot through with ego, acts, feelings, thoughts, everything, big or small, good or bad.


Sri Aurobindo: Even humility and what is called altruism is with most people only a form of ego. It does not depend on having something to be proud of.


Sri Aurobindo: It is so with everybody. Human nature is shot through in all its stuff with the threads of the ego. Even when one tries to get away from it, it is in front or walks behind all the thoughts and actions like one’s shadow. To see that is the ﬁrst step — to discern the falsity and absurdity of the ego movements is the second — to discourage and refuse it at every step is the third — but it goes entirely only when one sees, experiences and lives the One in everything and equally everywhere.


Sri Aurobindo:   The human being is naturally egoistic and ego-centred — all he does, thinks, feels has the stamp of the ego on it and it cannot be otherwise until he learns to make not the ego but the Divine the centre of his existence and thinks, acts, feels only for the Divine — or until he enters into the higher or divine consciousness or the divine consciousness into him — for in the divine consciousness there is no ego.     All human beings are full of ego.


Sri Aurobindo: If you want to change, you must be very quiet and always aspire for a higher consciousness to come down into you in which there is not the ego. When it comes down, the real change will come. But you must be quiet within, not worried and restless — you must open conﬁdently to the Mother’s Force and let it work in you.


Sri Aurobindo: The human consciousness is permeated in all its past ideas with this substance of egoism. It is only by a constant quiet vigilance and increasing consciousness that it can be got out — for if it is not allowed to play openly, it conceals itself and takes subtle and disguised forms.   It is the ego that is showing itself in its true character. Formerly, it was associating with the sadhana because it either got something of what it desired or had great expectations. Now that these things are held back and the demand for the true attitude is made on it, it resists or non-cooperates, saying, “No value in such a sadhana.”


Sri Aurobindo: In all the sadhaks here, the ego (in its physical or vital physical roots) is proving to be the stumbling block. No transformation is possible unless it changes.     Obviously, unless the object is Nirvana, the small ego has to be attended to — not indulged, but transformed out of existence.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes, that is right — to remember constantly and live in the peace and calmness so that the Force may work and the Light may come. The small things of daily life must go on in the surface consciousness, not ﬁlling too large a place in it, until the Force and Light have taken possession and can lay direct hold of these also. It is the ego that gives them too big a place — the ego must be discouraged. “Not for myself, but for the Divine” should grow to be the law of the whole consciousness and thought and action.


Sri Aurobindo: It cannot be done thoroughly all at once, but that must become the insistent note in the mind as soon as possible.     I meant [] the giving up of the preoccupation with your ego and its rights and claims and ideas of unfair treatment and all the rest and to think more of the Divine and the seeking for the Divine for which you came here and make that your chief preoccupation. It is not in meditation alone, but in life and thought and act and feeling that that has to be done.


Sri Aurobindo:   Human nature has always been egoistic in its basis and so it brings in the ego motive into the work for the Divine also. That can only be overcome slowly, for what is ingrained in the human vital nature and has been active through hundreds of lives cannot disappear at once. To be conscious and to have the steady will to change and make the inner motive of bhakti and self-giving prevail over the outer motives is the one thing necessary.


Sri Aurobindo:   If you are becoming so conscious of the ego and the animal which ﬁll so large a place in every human being, it is really a progress, because to be conscious is the ﬁrst step. But along with it you must have an aspiration and a conﬁdent faith in the Divine Power and Grace and in the divine element within you, psychic and spiritual, that through these the nature will be transformed and the ego replaced by the true person and the animal by the true vital and physical being become ﬁt instruments of the Divine Mother.    Yes, these experiences [] always come when one is opening into the wideness of the cosmic consciousness and your conclusions are correct.


Sri Aurobindo: The selfimportance of the ego has to dissolve — the importance of life or the progress of the being can come only from its being a vehicle of the Divine’s play, evolution, realisation and that is independent of the vastness of Space and Time.   The right attitude is to see that as a separate being, as an ego, one has no importance whatever and the insistence on one’s own desires, pride, position etc. is an ignorance, but one matters only as a spirit, as a portion of the Divine, not more than others, but as all souls matter to the Soul of all.    Impersonality in itself is not the Divine. All these mistakes can be and are made by many who claim to be in an impersonalised consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: A force may be impersonal but may be also a wrong force. Many think they are impersonal and free from ego because they are obeying a force or something bigger than their own personality — but that force or that something may be quite other than the Divine and it may hold them by something in their personality and ego.    It [] depends on the nature of the ego.  Some egoists are hard-skinned and not sensitive at all; others are hyper-sensitive.


Sri Aurobindo: It [] rises because it is its nature to do so; it wants to keep hold of the being which it considers its property and ﬁeld of expression.      Your


Sri Aurobindo: ego does come up from time to time without your seeing that it is the ego. It comes up not in your higher parts but in your physical mind and consciousness and you think that because your higher parts are clear this also is clear.


Sri Aurobindo: Ego, whatever its basis, can reproduce itself in different parts of the being, e.g. a vital ego, a mental ego, but fundamentally it is one.      The mind and the vital are much more full of ego than the body — in the body the ego is obscure and instinctive only.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no reason why ego should not be conquered in the end — although it is difﬁcult — even in the external nature.     The ﬁght with the ego is part of the ﬁght with the physical nature, for it is the superﬁcial ego in the physical consciousness, irrational and instinctive, that refuses to go.


Sri Aurobindo:   No, it need not. It is so thought because the old Yogas did not care about the liberation of the body and other instruments, and thought only of the separation of the soul from the Prakriti. If you do not liberate the Prakriti, ego and other forms of bondage will naturally remain so long as there is any action of Prakriti.  The earth-consciousness does not want to change, so it rejects what comes down to it from above — it has always done so.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only if those who have taken this Yoga open themselves and are willing to change their lower nature that this unwillingness can disappear.  What stands in the way of course is always the vital ego with its ignorance and the pride of its ignorance and the physical consciousness with its inertia which resents and resists any call to change and its indolence which does not like to take the trouble — it ﬁnds it more comfortable to go on its own way repeating always the same old movements and, at best, expecting everything to be done for it in some way at some time.  The ﬁrst thing is to have the right inner attitude — you have that; the rest is the will to transform oneself and the vigilance to perceive and reject all that belongs to the ego and the tamasic persistence of the lower nature. Finally, to keep oneself always open to the Mother in every part of the being so that the process of transformation may ﬁnd no hindrance.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes, even in ordinary life there must be a control over the vital and the ego — otherwise life would be impossible. Even many animals, those who live in groups, have their strict rules imposing a control on the play of the ego and those who disobey will have a bad time of it. The Europeans especially understand this and even though they are full of ego, yet when there is a question of team work or group life, they are adepts at keeping it in leash, even if it growls inside; it is the secret of their success. But in Yoga life of course it is a question not of controlling ego but of getting rid of it and rising to a higher principle, so demand is much more strongly and insistently discouraged.


Sri Aurobindo: It is much better to tell []. But you are not alone in these feelings — two-thirds of the Asram have them in more or less vehemence — it is the unregenerate vital ego which is just the thing that stands most in the way of the transformation — other things are comparatively mild obstacles compared with this part of the being. It is much better that the Mother refused consideration to this part of you — consideration would have been a much more dangerous test than refusal.    Yes, it [] is a thing which comes to many; exaggerated and made a principal part of the vital attitude, it has been the cause of failure and departure of several who consider themselves great sadhaks — they made it an excuse for indulging and magnifying the vital ego.


Sri Aurobindo: Since you see that it is ridiculous, you should have no difﬁculty in getting rid of it.  The only truth in it is that each one who opens himself in such a way that the Force can get through to his material so as to change it , will by that be contributing to the victory of the Force — but it applies to everybody, not to any one individual.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes, the talk about “advanced” sadhaks is a thing I have always discouraged — but people go on because that appeals to the vital ego.     I have already told you the nature of the difﬁculty that has arisen in you, that it is nothing but the revolt of your vital mind and vital ego and I have pointed out to you the only way in which it can be overcome. You had by an effort supported by a special concentration from us arrived at a ﬁrst psychic opening in your mind and heart which enabled you even to throw out for a time the sexual obsession from your vital consciousness.