Sri Aurobindo: To feel the peace above or about your head is a ﬁrst step; you have to get connected with it and it must descend into you and ﬁll your mind and life and body and surround you so that you live in it — for this peace is one sign of the Divine’s presence with you, and once you have it all the rest will begin to come.  Truth in speech and truth in thought are very important.  The more you can feel falsehood as being not part of yourself, as coming on you from outside, the easier it will be to reject and refuse it.   Persevere and what is still crooked will be made straight and you will know and feel concretely the truth of the Divine’s presence and your faith will be justiﬁed by direct experience.


Sri Aurobindo:  So long as the mind is restless, it is not possible to get at the inner Truth. Calm, peace, quietude — that is the ﬁrst necessary condition.     To be calm, undisturbed and quiet is not the ﬁrst condition for sadhana but for siddhi.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only a few people (very few, one, two, three, four in a hundred sadhaks) who can get it from the ﬁrst. Most have to go through a long preparation before they can get anywhere near it. Even afterwards when they begin to feel the peace and calm, it takes time to establish it — they swing between peace and disturbance for a fairly long time until all parts of the nature have accepted the truth and the peace. So there is no reason for you to suppose you cannot progress or arrive. You are ﬁnding a great difﬁculty with one part of your nature which has been accustomed to open itself to these feelings, separation from the Mother and attachment to relatives, and is not willing to give them up — that is all.


Sri Aurobindo: But everybody ﬁnds such obstinate difﬁculties in that part of the nature, even the most successful sadhaks here. One has to persevere until the light conquers there.     It is the quietness in which the Force can act and an entire reliance on that Force to do for you what is necessary — and for the rest a quiet vigilance not to consent to the confusion and restlessness — that you must achieve.


Sri Aurobindo: It has been evident throughout since the working in you began that this is the only possible foundation for your sadhana.     That is the right way — to keep the peace of the higher consciousness, then even if there is vital disturbance, it will be only on the surface. The foundation will remain till the Force can release the true vital.


Sri Aurobindo:   Detachment, silence, inner peace are certainly indispensable for the spiritual progress — a quiet peace-ﬁlled detachment. In that peace the Force must do its work. Attacks of confusion, pains etc. — the one thing to arrive at is to be able to stand back from them, to feel detachment from them, separate and call down the Force to act.


Sri Aurobindo: Whenever one can do that, the attack, the difﬁculty after a time retires — or even if it lasts a little cannot disturb what has been gained.    The depression and vital struggle must have been due to some defect of over-eagerness and straining for a result in your former effort — so that when a fall in the consciousness came it was a depressed, disappointed and confused vital that came to the surface giving full entry to the suggestions of doubt, despair and inertia from the adverse side of Nature. You have to move towards a ﬁrm basis of calm and equality in the vital and physical no less than in the mental consciousness; let there be the full downﬂow of Power and Ananda, but into a ﬁrm adhara capable of containing it — it is a complete equality that gives that capacity and ﬁrmness.


Sri Aurobindo: When the peace of the higher consciousness descends, it brings always with it this tendency towards equality, samata, because without samata peace is always liable to be attacked by the waves of the lower nature.  There can be no ﬁrm foundation in sadhana without equality, . Whatever the unpleasantness of circumstances, however disagreeable the conduct of others, you must learn to receive them with a perfect calm and without any disturbing reaction.  These things are the test of equality. It is easy to be calm and equal when things go well and people and circumstances are pleasant; it is when they are the opposite that the completeness of the calm, peace, equality can be tested, reinforced, made perfect.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yogic Samata is equality of soul, equanimity founded on the sense of the one Self, the one Divine everywhere — seeing the One in spite of all differences, degrees, disparities in the manifestation. The mental principle of equality tries to ignore or else to destroy the differences, degrees and disparities, to act as if all were equal there or to try and make all equal. It is like Hriday, the nephew of Ramakrishna, who when he got the touch from Ramakrishna began to shout, “Ramakrishna, you are the Brahman and I too am the Brahman; there is no difference between us”, till Ramakrishna, as he refused to be quiet, had to withdraw the power. Or like the disciple who refused to listen to the Mahout and stood before the elephant, saying, “I am Brahman”, until the elephant took him up in his trunk and put him aside.


Sri Aurobindo: When he complained to his Guru, the Guru said, “Yes, but why didn’t you listen to the Mahout Brahman? That was why the elephant Brahman had to lift you up and put you out of harm’s way.” In the manifestation there are two sides to the Truth and you cannot ignore either.   Samata means a wide universal peace, calm, equanimity, an equal feeling of all in the Divine.   Equality is to remain unmoved within in all conditions.


Sri Aurobindo:   Equality is the chief support of the true spiritual consciousness and it is this from which the sadhak deviates when he allows a vital movement to carry him away in feeling or speech or action.  Equality is not the same thing as forbearance, — though undoubtedly a settled equality immensely extends, even illimitably, a man’s power of endurance and forbearance.  Equality means a quiet and unmoved mind and vital; it means not to be touched or disturbed by things that happen or things said or done to you but to look at them with a straight look, free from the distortions created by personal feeling, and to try to understand what is behind them, why they happen, what is to be learnt from them, what is it in oneself which they are cast against and what inner proﬁt or progress one can make out of them; it means self-mastery over the vital movements, anger and sensitiveness and pride as well as desire and the rest, not to let them get hold of the emotional being and disturb the inner peace, not to speak and act in the rush and impulsion of these things, always to act and speak out of a calm inner poise of the spirit.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not easy to have this equality in any full and perfect measure, but one should always try more and more to make it the basis of one’s inner state and outer movements.  Equality means another thing — to have an equal view of men and their nature and acts and the forces that move them; it helps one to see the truth about them by pushing away from the mind all personal feeling in one’s seeing and judgment and even all mental bias. Personal feeling always distorts and makes one see in men’s actions, not only the actions themselves, but things behind them which, more often than not, are not there. Misunderstanding and misjudgment which could have been avoided are the result; things of small consequence assume large proportions. I have seen that more than half of the untoward happenings of this kind in life are due to this cause.


Sri Aurobindo: But in ordinary life personal feeling and sensitiveness are a constant part of human nature and may be needed there for self-defence, although, I think, even there, a strong, large and equal attitude towards men and things would be a much better line of defence.  But, for a sadhak, to surmount them and live rather in the calm strength of the spirit is an essential part of his progress.  The ﬁrst condition of inner progress is to recognise whatever is or has been a wrong movement in any part of the nature, — wrong idea, wrong feeling, wrong speech, wrong action, — and by wrong is meant what departs from the Truth, from the higher consciousness and higher self, from the way of the Divine. Once recognised it is admitted, — not glossed over or defended, — and it is offered to the Divine for the Light and Grace to descend and substitute for it the right movement of the true consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo:  Complete samata takes long to establish and it is dependent on three things — the soul’s self-giving to the Divine by an inner surrender, the descent of the spiritual calm and peace from above and the steady, long and persistent rejection of all egoistic, rajasic and other feelings that contradict samata.  The ﬁrst thing to do is to make the full consecration and offering in the heart — the increase of the spiritual calm and the surrender are the condition for making the rejection of ego, rajoguna etc. effective.  No doubt hatred and cursing are not the proper attitude. It is true also that to look upon all things and all people with a calm and clear vision, to be uninvolved and impartial in one’s judgments is a quite proper Yogic attitude. A condition of perfect samata can be established in which one sees all as equal, friends and enemies included, and is not disturbed by what men do or by what happens.


Sri Aurobindo: The question is whether this is all that is demanded from us. If so, then the general attitude will be one of a neutral indifference to everything. But the Gita, which strongly insists on a perfect and absolute samata, goes on to say, “Fight, destroy the adversary, conquer.” If there is no kind of general action wanted, no loyalty to Truth as against Falsehood except for one’s personal sadhana, no will for the Truth to conquer, then the samata of indifference will sufﬁce. But here there is a work to be done, a Truth to be established against which immense forces are arranged, invisible forces which use visible things and persons and actions for their instruments.


Sri Aurobindo: If one is among the disciples, the seekers of this Truth, one has to take sides for the Truth, to stand against the Forces that attack it and seek to stiﬂe it. Arjuna wanted not to stand for either side, to refuse any action of hostility even against assailants; Sri Krishna, who insisted so much on samata, strongly rebuked his attitude and insisted equally on his ﬁghting the adversary. “Have samata,” he said, “and seeing clearly the Truth, ﬁght.” Therefore to take sides with the Truth and to refuse to concede anything to the Falsehood that attacks, to be unﬂinchingly loyal and against the hostiles and the attackers, is not inconsistent with equality. It is personal and egoistic feeling that has to be thrown away; hatred and vital ill-will have to be rejected.


Sri Aurobindo: But loyalty and refusal to compromise with the assailants and the hostiles or to dally with their ideas and demands and say, “After all we can compromise with what they ask from us”, or to accept them as companions and our own people — these things have a great importance. If the attack were a physical menace to the work and the leaders and doers of the work, one would see this at once. But because the attack is of a subtler kind, can a passive attitude be right?  It is a spiritual battle inward and outward; by neutrality and compromise or even passivity one may allow the enemy Forces to pass and crush down the Truth and its children. If you look at it from this point you will see that if the inner spiritual equality is right, the active loyalty and ﬁrm taking of sides is as right, and the two cannot be incompatible.


Sri Aurobindo: I have of course treated it as a general question apart from all particular cases or personal questions. It is a principle of action that has to be seen in its right light and proportions.   It [] is to face it [] without being disturbed and to reject it calmly. Whether one tries to remedy or not remedy should make no difference. Only when one acts against it, one must do it calmly, without anger, excitement, grief or any other disturbing movement.


Sri Aurobindo: Samata does not mean the absence of ego, but the absence of desire and attachment.   I have said “samata” shows absence of desire and attachment — the ego-sense may disappear or it may remain in a subtilised and widened form — it depends on the person.  As for the detachment of which you speak, it comes by attaining the poise of the Spirit, the equality of which the Gita speaks always, but also by sight, by knowledge. For instance, looking at what happened in 1914 — or for that matter at all that is and has been happening in human history — the eye of the Yogin sees not only outward events and persons and causes, but the enormous forces which precipitate them into action. If the men who fought were instruments in the hands of rulers and ﬁnanciers etc., these in turn were mere puppets in the clutch of these forces.


Sri Aurobindo: When one is habituated to see the things behind, one is no longer prone to be touched by the outward aspects — or to expect any remedy from political, institutional or social changes; the only way out is through the descent of a consciousness which is not the puppet of these forces but is greater than they are and can force them either to change or disappear.    The Yogic attitude consists in calm, detachment, equality, universality — added to this the psychic element, bhakti, love, devotion to the Divine.  Equality is a very important part of this Yoga; it is necessary to keep equality under pain and suffering — and that means to endure ﬁrmly and calmly, not to be restless or troubled or depressed or despondent, to go on in a steady faith in the Divine Will. But equality does not include inert acceptance.


Sri Aurobindo: If, for instance, there is temporary failure of some endeavour in the sadhana, one has to keep equality, not to be troubled or despondent, but one has not to accept the failure as an indication of the Divine Will and give up the endeavour. You ought rather to ﬁnd out the reason and meaning of the failure and go forward in faith towards victory. So with illness — you have not to be troubled, shaken or restless, but you have not to accept illness as the Divine Will, but rather look upon it as an imperfection of the body to be got rid of as you try to get rid of vital imperfections or mental errors.


Sri Aurobindo: To be free from all preference and receive joyfully whatever comes from the Divine Will is not possible at ﬁrst for any human being. What one should have at ﬁrst is the constant idea that what the Divine wills is always for the best even when the mind does not see how it is so, to accept with resignation what one cannot yet accept with gladness and so to arrive at a calm equality which is not shaken even when on the surface there may be passing movements of a momentary reaction to outward happenings. If that is once ﬁrmly founded, the rest can come.    It is very good that you have had this experience; for this kind of consciousness full of equality (samata) is just the thing that has to be acquired and the very basis on which a sound Yogic consciousness full of the Mother can be built up.


Sri Aurobindo: If it can be ﬁxed, then most of the trouble and difﬁculty of sadhana disappears — all necessary changes can proceed quietly without these disturbances and upsettings which break and hamper the progress.  Also in it there can grow a right and clear understanding of people and things and how to deal with them without friction which can make work and action much more easy. Once this consciousness has come, it is bound to return and increase.


Sri Aurobindo: Through an equality gained by strong mental control [ ] — but that is not, it is, the power to bear which is only a ﬁrst step or a ﬁrst element of.    It is not enough to have that equality and silence and freedom only when you are in communion with the sky and sea. It is at all times that you must be able to receive it from above — then there will be a true foundation of the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo:   You must establish a basis of equanimity within — the peace of the inner being which these surface movements cannot touch, — then if they come on the surface, there will be no violent reaction and they can be rejected with more ease.     The sadhak has to keep his quietude and faith and equanimity in all conditions — even when the higher consciousness and experience are not there.


Sri Aurobindo:  One has to proceed on a basis of ﬁrm quietude and equanimity with a steady aspiration. It is only if there is a vital excitement that progress becomes a strain and relaxation is needed; for this demand for relaxation is the vital’s counterpart of excitement and its way of relief from it.     A perfect spiritual equanimity throughout the being is a sure defence against all the perturbations that might come through the environmental nature.


Sri Aurobindo:   The difﬁculty of getting the perfect equanimity is a fact, but not for you alone — it has been so for all of us — it is too universal for you to make it a legitimate ground of discouragement.  Nothing is more necessary, but nothing is more difﬁcult. So there is no reason why you should discount my encouragement. My encouragement is given in spite of difﬁculties and not because I think there are none.


Sri Aurobindo: Never mind these momentary mishaps — shake off the mood and once more.   The words “peace, calm, quiet, silence” have each their own shade of meaning, but it is not easy to deﬁne them.   Peace —.


Sri Aurobindo: Calm —.  Quiet —.  Silence —.   is a condition in which there is no restlessness or disturbance.   is a still, unmoved condition which no disturbance can affect — it is a less negative condition than quiet.


Sri Aurobindo: is a still more positive condition; it carries with it a sense of settled and harmonious rest and deliverance.   is a state in which either there is no movement of the mind or vital or else a great stillness which no surface movement can pierce or alter.     Quiet is rather negative — it is the absence of disturbance.


Sri Aurobindo: Calm is a positive tranquillity which can exist in spite of superﬁcial disturbances.  Peace is a calm deepened into something that is very positive amounting almost to a tranquil waveless Ananda.  Silence is the absence of all motion of thought or other vibration of activity.   Quietness is when the mind or vital is not troubled, restless, drawn about by or crowded with thoughts and feelings. Especially when either is detached and looks at these as a surface movement, we say that the mind or vital is quiet.


Sri Aurobindo: Calmness is a more positive condition, not merely an absence of restlessness, over-activity or trouble. When there is a clear sense of great or strong tranquillity which nothing troubles or can trouble, then we say that calm is established.     Calm is a strong and positive quietude, ﬁrm and solid — ordinary quietude is mere negation, simply the absence of disturbance.


Sri Aurobindo: Peace is a deep quietude where no disturbance can come — a quietude with a sense of established security and release.  In complete silence there are either no thoughts or, if they come, they are felt as something coming from outside and not disturbing the silence.  Silence of the mind, peace or calm in the mind are three things that are very close together and bring each other.


Sri Aurobindo: These [] are general words, of a general and not a special Yogic signiﬁcance. Quiet, calm and peace can all be described as tranquillity, silence is akin to what is meant by stillness.  Quiet means to keep the inner quietude and keep turned to the Mother with the aspiration towards or call for the return of the right condition.


Sri Aurobindo: Remember ﬁrst that an inner quietude, caused by the puriﬁcation of the restless mind and vital, is the ﬁrst condition of a secure sadhana. Remember, next, that to feel the Mother’s presence while in external action is already a great step and one that cannot be attained without a considerable inner progress. Probably, what you feel you need so much but cannot deﬁne is a constant and vivid sense of the Mother’s force working in you, descending from above and taking possession of the different planes of your being. That is often a prior condition for the twofold movement of ascent and descent; it will surely come in time. These things can take a long time to begin visibly, especially when the mind is accustomed to be very active and has not the habit of mental silence.


Sri Aurobindo: When that veiling activity is there, much work has to be carried on behind the mobile screen of the mind and the sadhak thinks nothing is happening when really much preparation is being done. If you want a more swift and visible progress, it can only be by bringing your psychic to the front through a constant self-offering. Aspire intensely, but without impatience.


Sri Aurobindo: Your mind is too full of demands and desires. If you want to be able to practise the Yoga here, you must throw them from you and learn quietude, desirelessness, simplicity and surrender. It is these you must get ﬁrst; other things can come afterwards — for this is the only true foundation of the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: Always get back to quietude. It is through the quietude that the right attitude and understanding and movements come back. It is natural for the lower vital to be made up of feelings, impulses and desires and to be attached to outer things — but that is only a part of you. There is also the psychic and the higher mind and higher vital which only need quietude and the help of the Force and Peace behind them to come forward more strongly and dominate over the lower vital and help to change it.   You are too easily invaded by these things [].


Sri Aurobindo: You must call for a calm quietness in the vital and physical and a Force in you and around you which will repel all foreign forces the moment they appear. If there is entire quietude and strength in the nerves, these outside forces will not easily be able to touch you.     You should realise that while quiet surroundings are desirable, the true quiet is within and no other will give you the condition you want.


Sri Aurobindo:   The inner spiritual progress does not depend on outer conditions so much as on the way we react to them from within — that has always been the ultimate verdict of spiritual experience. It is why we insist on taking the right attitude and persisting in it, on an inner state not dependent on outer circumstances, a state of equality and calm, if it cannot be at once of inner happiness, on going more and more within and looking from within outwards instead of living in the surface mind which is always at the mercy of the shocks and blows of life. It is only from that inner state that one can be stronger than life and its disturbing forces and hope to conquer.  To remain quiet within, ﬁrm in the will to go through, refusing to be disturbed or discouraged by difﬁculties or ﬂuctuations, that is one of the ﬁrst things to be learned on the Path.


Sri Aurobindo: To do otherwise is to encourage the instability of consciousness, the difﬁculty of keeping experience of which you complain. It is only if you keep quiet and steady within that the lines of experience can go on with some steadiness — though they are never without periods of interruption and ﬂuctuation; but these, if properly treated, can then become periods of assimilation and exhaustion of difﬁculty rather than denials of sadhana.  A spiritual atmosphere is more important than outer conditions; if one can get that and also create one’s own spiritual air to breathe in and live in it, that is the true condition of progress.    If you can achieve quietude followed by an upward openness, it is better than the effort which sways between strong experiences and strong adverse reactions.


Sri Aurobindo:  Even to have the quietude and calm somewhere behind or in a passive way is more important and helpful than it seems.  It provides a sort of permanent ground on which ultimately a lasting peace, power and joy can be built. If one can feel one part of the being always quiet in spite of the disturbances in another part, then one has made the ﬁrst ﬁrm step towards a permanent change.    This state of emptiness and quietude and absence of reactions is regarded by Yogins as a great step in advance, especially the equality and indifference to what is said or done.


Sri Aurobindo: For the moment it is a neutral condition only, but that it is usually at ﬁrst.  Afterwards it changes into peace or even into an equal Ananda undisturbed by anything that can happen.     The quiet and calm have to be increased so as to be a ﬁrm basis for the love and Ananda.


Sri Aurobindo: A quiet mind is a mind that does not get disturbed, is not restless and always vibrating with the need of mental action.     It is not possible to make a foundation in Yoga if the mind is restless. The ﬁrst thing needed is quiet in the mind.


Sri Aurobindo: Also, to merge the personal consciousness is not the ﬁrst aim of the Yoga; the ﬁrst aim is to open it to a higher spiritual consciousness and for this also a quiet mind is the ﬁrst need.    The ﬁrst step is a quiet mind — silence is a farther step, but quietude must be there, and by a quiet mind I mean a mental consciousness within which sees thoughts arrive to it and move about, but does not itself feel that it is thinking or identify itself with the thoughts or call them its own. Thoughts, mental movements may pass through it as wayfarers appear and pass from elsewhere through a silent country — the quiet mind observes them or does not care to observe them but in either case does not become active or lose its quietude. Silence is more than quietude; it can be gained by banishing thought altogether from the inner mind keeping it voiceless or quite outside; but more easily it is established by a descent from above — one feels it coming down, entering and occupying, or surrounding the personal consciousness which then tends to merge itself in the vast impersonal silence.


Sri Aurobindo:  To get rid of the random thoughts of the surface physical mind is not easy. It is sometimes done by a sudden miracle as in my own case, but that is rare. Some get it done by a slow process of concentration, but that may take a very long time. It is easier to have a quiet mind with things that come in passing on the surface, as people pass in the street, and one is free to attend to them or not — that is to say, there develops a sort of double mind, one inner silent and concentrated when it pleases to be so, a quiet witness when it chooses to see thoughts and things, — the other meant for surface dynamism.


Sri Aurobindo: It is probable in your case that this will come as soon as these descents of peace, intensity or Ananda get strong enough to occupy the whole system.   How can you throw away the mind unless you want to disappear from manifested existence? It has ﬁrst to be made quiet and open to the higher consciousness and transformed by the descent of the higher consciousness.   First aspire and pray to the Mother for quiet in the mind, purity, calm and peace, an awakened consciousness, intensity of devotion, strength and spiritual capacity to face all inner and outer difﬁculties and go through to the end of the Yoga. If the consciousness awakens and there is devotion and intensity of aspiration, it will be possible for the mind, provided it learns quietude and peace, to grow in knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo:  It is in the quiet mind that the true observation and knowledge come.   You have to become conscious [] as in Yoga.  The mind has to be silent and you have to become aware of the inspiration as it comes and its source and of the mixture that comes on the way. The more the mind becomes quiet, the more all this is possible.


Sri Aurobindo:    All quietude of the mind makes good conditions for the receptivity to act.


Sri Aurobindo: As I have said already, in all matters, work and study as well as in the inner progress in the Yoga, the same thing is needed if you want perfection — quietude of mind, becoming aware of the Force, opening to it, allowing it to work in you. To aim at perfection is all right, but restlessness of mind is not the way towards it. To dwell upon your imperfections and be always thinking how to do and what to do, is not the way either. Remain quiet, open yourself, allow the consciousness to grow — call the Force to work. As it grows and as the Force works, you will become aware not only of what is imperfect, but of the movement which will take you (not at one step, but progressively) out of the imperfection and you will then only have to follow that movement.


Sri Aurobindo: If you overstrain yourself by too prolonged work or a restless working, that disturbs or weakens the nervous system, the vital-physical, and lays one open to the action of the wrong forces. To work but quietly so as to have a steady progress is the right way.    1.


Sri Aurobindo: A quiet mind makes consciousness easier.  2. If you keep a quiet mind and a constant contact with myself and the Mother and the true Light and Force, then things will become easy and straight — it is the way to get to the realisation.  3. It is a mistake to think that this method will not lead you to the supramental realisation.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the only way to advance towards the supramental change.   4. It is because you become doubtful and begin to follow after other ways and other (lower) experiences that you get again confused and full of incertitudes.  5.


Sri Aurobindo: Keep to way, the way shown to you by me. It is by following this way that you can reach the wideness you want — if you run about on many ways, that will bring not wideness but confusion.   6. Here in the lower nature there are many things, but they are in a state of disharmony, so to follow them all together means disharmony, confusion, want of organisation, ﬁght.


Sri Aurobindo: In the higher (supramental) nature there is a greater wideness and much more is there than in the lower nature; but all is harmony, organisation, peace. Follow therefore the one way that leads to the higher supramental nature.  7. Do not be impatient, because full knowledge does not come to you at once. In quietude of mind keep the contact, let the true Light and Force work and with time all knowledge will come and the Truth will grow in you.


Sri Aurobindo:   Do you imagine that a quiet mind cannot reject anything and it is only the unquiet mind that can do it? It is the quiet mind that can best do it. Quiet does not mean inert and tamasic.


Sri Aurobindo:   That is absurd. Doing nothing with the mind is not quiet or silence. It is inactivity that keeps the mind thinking mechanically and discursively instead of concentrating on an object — that is all.


Sri Aurobindo:   Keeping the mind without occupation is not the same thing as peace or silence.  Keep the quietude and do not mind if it is for a time an empty quietude; the consciousness is often like a vessel which has to be emptied of its mixed or undesirable contents; it has to be kept vacant for a while till it can be ﬁlled with things new and true, right and pure. The one thing to be avoided is the reﬁlling of the cup with the old turbid contents. Meanwhile wait, open yourself upwards, call very quietly and steadily, not with a too restless eagerness, for the peace to come into the silence and, once the peace is there, for the joy and the presence.


Sri Aurobindo:   The difference between a vacant mind and a calm mind is this, that when the mind is vacant, there is no thought, no conception, no mental action of any kind, except an essential perception of things without the formed idea; but in the calm mind, it is the substance of the mental being that is still, so still that nothing disturbs it. If thoughts or activities come, they do not rise at all out of the mind, but they come from outside and cross the mind as a ﬂight of birds crosses the sky in a windless air. It passes, disturbs nothing, leaving no trace. Even if a thousand images or the most violent events pass across it, the calm stillness remains as if the very texture of the mind were a substance of eternal and indestructible peace.


Sri Aurobindo: A mind that has achieved this calmness can begin to act, even incessantly and powerfully, but it will keep its fundamental stillness — originating nothing from itself but receiving from Above and giving it a mental form without adding anything of its own, calmly, dispassionately, though with the joy of the Truth and the happy power and light of its passage.  It is the ﬁrst secret of Yoga, to maintain the inner calm always and from that calm to meet everything.   It is not necessary [] that there should be no thought. When there is no thought, it is silence. But the mind is said to be calm when thoughts, feelings, etc. may pass through it, but it is not disturbed.


Sri Aurobindo: It feels that the thoughts are not its own; it observes them perhaps; but it is not perturbed by anything.   What you have written about your condition seems to be correct as a whole. There is certainly a greater calm within and a freedom of the inner being which was not there once. It is this which gives you the equality you feel there and the capacity to escape from the more serious disturbances. When one has this basis of inner calm, the difﬁculties and imperfections of the surface can be dealt with without upsets, depressions, etc.


Sri Aurobindo: The power to go among others without any invasion is also due to the same cause.   Do not attach so much importance to mistakes or insist on your non-receptiveness and unconsciousness. You have only to turn always to the Force that gives you calmness and in the calmness you will become progressively more and more conscious and receptive.    Calm, even if it seems at ﬁrst only a negative thing, is so difﬁcult to attain that to have it at all must be regarded as a great step in advance.


Sri Aurobindo: In reality, calm is not a negative thing; it is the very nature of the Sat-Purusha and the positive foundation of the divine consciousness. Whatever else is aspired for and gained, this must be kept. Even Knowledge, Power, Ananda, if they come and do not ﬁnd this foundation, are unable to remain and have to withdraw until the divine purity and peace of the Sat-Purusha are permanently there.   Aspire for the rest of the divine consciousness, but with a calm and deep aspiration.


Sri Aurobindo: It can be ardent as well as calm, but not impatient, restless or full of rajasic eagerness.  Only in the quiet mind and being can the supramental Truth build its true creation.     The calm from above came to you and established your connection with the Above, — and if you hold ﬁrmly to it, you will be able to remain calm.


Sri Aurobindo: But to be rid of these vital disturbances from outside, you have to get down the Power and Will that is also there above — or at least so to be connected with it that it will act whenever you call upon it against the forces of the Ignorance.     It is the calm that has come down from above, only you are feeling it from there (mind and heart) and not from above the mind. But you have to ﬁnd it below the heart and not only from the heart above, — the calm has to spread lower down.


Sri Aurobindo:   The ﬁrst [] is the ordinary fundamental calm of the individual Adhar — the second [] is the fundamental limitless calm of the cosmic consciousness, a calm which abides whether separated from all movements or supporting them.  This [] is the calm of the Atman, the Self above, silent, immutable and inﬁnite.  Peace is more positive than calm — there can be a negative calm which is merely an absence of disturbance or trouble, but peace is always something positive bringing not merely a release as calm does but a certain happiness or Ananda of itself. There is also a positive calm, something that stands ﬁrm against all things that seek to trouble, not thin and neutral like the negative calm, but strong and massive.


Sri Aurobindo: Very often the two words are used in the same sense, but one can distinguish them in their true sense as above.     In peace there is besides the sense of stillness a harmony that gives a feeling of liberation and full satisfaction.   It is very good news.


Sri Aurobindo: The peace settling in the system and with it a happy activity — that is the basis for your Yoga which I always wanted you to have — a sunny condition in which what has to come in will come in and expand like a bud into ﬂower and what has to fall off will fall off in its time like a slough discarded.    The quietude and silence which you feel and the sense of happiness in it are indeed the very basis of successful sadhana. When one has got that, then one may be sure that the sadhana is placing itself on a sound footing. You are also right in thinking that if this quietude is fully established all that is concealed within will come out.


Sri Aurobindo: It is true also that the happiness of this peace is far greater than anything outer objects can bring — there can be no comparison. To become indifferent to the attraction of outer objects is one of the ﬁrst rules of Yoga, for this non-attachment liberates the inner being into peace and the true consciousness.  It is only when one sees the Divine in all things that objects get a value for the Yoga, but even then not for their own sake or as objects of desire, but for the sake of the Divine within and as a means of the divine work and manifestation.  To nobody does the divine calm and peace come uninterruptedly in the early stages of the Yoga — it comes little by little — it is sometimes absent for long periods together, or there are strong attacks which cloud it over. It is by long sadhana that one gets the permanent peace.


Sri Aurobindo:   In the beginning the peace and calmness comes like that only for a short time. The Adhar cannot keep it, its own natural condition being different. But afterwards the power of holding increases until in some part of the being at least it is constant.  It is very good indeed.


Sri Aurobindo: The peace and silence must settle deep in, so deep that whatever comes from outside can only pass over the surface without troubling the settled calm within — it is good also that the meditation comes of itself. It means that the Yoga-Force is beginning to take up the sadhana.     Yes, a settled peace and strength supporting the intensity and from which everything foreign falls off, is the true basis.


Sri Aurobindo:   The ﬁrst thing to do in the sadhana is to get a settled peace and silence in the mind. Otherwise you may have experiences, but nothing will be permanent. It is in the silent mind that the true consciousness can be built.  A quiet mind does not mean that there will be no thoughts or mental movements at all, but that these will be on the surface and you will feel your true being within separate from them, observing but not carried away, able to watch and judge them and reject all that has to be rejected and to accept and keep to all that is true consciousness and true experience.


Sri Aurobindo: Passivity of the mind is good, but take care to be passive only to the Truth and to the touch of the Divine Shakti. If you are passive to the suggestions and inﬂuences of the lower nature, you will not be able to progress or else you will expose yourself to adverse forces which may take you far away from the true path of Yoga.   Aspire to the Mother for this settled quietness and calm of the mind and this constant sense of the inner being in you standing back from the external nature and turned to the Light and Truth.  The forces that stand in the way of sadhana are the forces of the lower mental, vital and physical nature.


Sri Aurobindo: Behind them are adverse powers of the mental, vital and subtle physical worlds.  These can be dealt with only after the mind and heart have become one-pointed and concentrated in the single aspiration to the Divine.    If the peace or silence is once absolutely established, no amount of movements on the surface can impair or abolish it. It can bear all the movements of the universe and yet be the same.


Sri Aurobindo:   When the peace is fully established everywhere in the being, these things [] will not be able to shake it. They may come ﬁrst as ripples on the surface, then only as suggestions which one looks at or does not care to look at, but in either case they don’t get inside, affect or disturb at all.  It is difﬁcult to explain, but it is something like a mountain at which one throws stones — if conscious all through the mountain may feel the touch of the stones, but the thing would be so slight and superﬁcial that it would not be in the least affected.


Sri Aurobindo: In the end even that reaction disappears.   The peace liberates from all dependence on outer contacts — it  brings what the Gita calls the. But at ﬁrst there is a difﬁculty in keeping it intact when there is the contact with others because the consciousness has the habit of running outwards in speech or external interchange or else of coming down to the normal level. One must therefore be very careful until it is ﬁxed; once ﬁxed it usually defends itself, for all outer contacts become surface things to a consciousness full of the higher peace.


Sri Aurobindo:   Even when there is the peace and the wideness, these things [] can ﬂoat on the surface and try to come in — only then they do not occupy the consciousness but touch it merely. It is what was regarded by the old Yogis as a mechanical remnant of Prakriti, a continuation of its blind habit which remained after the essential liberation of the self. It was treated lightly as of no importance — but that view is not tenable in our sadhana which aims not only at a liberation of the Purusha but at a transformation of the Prakriti also.


Sri Aurobindo:   That is of course how it should be. It should go so far indeed that you will feel this peace and vastness as your very self, the abiding stuff of your consciousness — unchangeably there.  Yes, certainly, there is a mental peace, a vital peace, a peace of the physical Nature. It is the peace of a higher consciousness that descends from above.


Sri Aurobindo:   The silence and peace are there waiting to manifest. Let the mind and vital give all themselves and they will pour in and reveal themselves.


Sri Aurobindo:   There can be peace in the mind even when the vital is not quite at rest or peace in the inner being even if the surface is disturbed.  Consciousness cannot feel at rest and free, if there is no peace.    If you get peace, then to clean the vital becomes easy.


Sri Aurobindo: If you simply clean and clean and do nothing else, you go very slowly — for the vital gets dirty again and has to be cleaned a hundred times. The peace is something that is clean in itself — so to get it is a positive way of securing your object. To look for dirt only and clean is the negative way.


Sri Aurobindo: When the light and peace are full in the vital and physical consciousness, it is this that remains always as a basis for the right movement of the whole nature.     It is the same peace [] — but is felt materially in the material substance, concretely in the physical mind and nervous being, as well as psychologically in the mind and vital or subtly in the subtle body.


Sri Aurobindo:   I presume that [ ] would mean that the peace had become or was becoming very material and solid and physically tangible — “peace in the cells”. Everything is a “substance” — even peace, consciousness, ananda, — only there are different orders of substance.


Sri Aurobindo: Certainly, peace, purity and silence can be felt in all material things — for the Divine Self is there in all.    Nature by itself is always full of peace — a peace which is fundamental and even the perturbations of mind and life cannot break.  It is quite usual to feel an established peace in the inner being even if there is disturbance on the surface. In fact that is the usual condition of the Yogi before he has attained the absolute samata in all the being.


Sri Aurobindo:   When the peace is deep or wide, it is usually in the inner being.  The outer parts do not ordinarily go beyond a certain measure of quietude — they get deep peace only when they are ﬂooded with it from the inner being.


Sri Aurobindo: The peace starts in the inner being — it is spiritual and psychic but it overﬂows the outer being — when it is there in the activity, it means either that the ordinary restless mind, vital, physical has been submerged by the ﬂood of the inner peace or, at a more advanced stage, that they have been partially or wholly changed into thoughts, forces, emotions, sensations which have in their very stuff an essence of inner silence and peace.     If peace becomes permanent in the inner being, then the subnature becomes an external and superﬁcial thing — one part of the consciousness is then free; unmoved by anything that happens, it regards the surface turmoil as something not belonging to itself. If the peace extends in the same way into the external parts also, then the whole being becomes free and the inferior nature is felt only as something moving about in the atmosphere, trying to enter but unable to do so.


Sri Aurobindo: But this of course happens only when the descents of Peace have turned into a massive stability of Peace.    Yes, the inward move is the right one. To live within in the peace and silence is the ﬁrst necessity. I spoke of the wideness because in the wideness of silence and peace (which the Yogins recognise as the realisation of self at once individual and universal) is the basis for harmonising the inward and the outward.


Sri Aurobindo: It will come.    Peace is never easy to get in the life of the world and never constant, unless one lives deep within and bears the external activities as only a surface front of our being.  Passive peace is not supposed to do anything. It is by the complete solid presence of peace alone that all disturbance is pushed out to the surface or outside the consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is not the innate character of passive peace that it can only concentrate in inaction. It can be there and concentrate in or behind action also.  The Peace is not of the nature of inertia, but the inertia (tamas) is a degradation of peace or rest as rajas is a degradation of divine Force.


Sri Aurobindo: So when the physical is invited to peace and cannot receive it, it brings up inertia instead.     Rest of the being from effort, disturbance etc. The Spirit is eternally at rest even in the midst of action — peace gives this spiritual rest.


Sri Aurobindo: Tamas is a degradation of it and leads to inaction.  The peace is the condition of the right play of the Force. Force and Peace are two different powers of the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: Peace is the ﬁrst condition, but peace of itself does not bring Force — it is a receptacle of Force, not a bringer of Force.     A peaceful state is the basis of the Yogic consciousness. It is only when that is complete and fully established that the true intensity and energy can come.


Sri Aurobindo:  The greater the quietude, the greater the energy that can be received.  It is the Vaishnava feeling that the Vedantic peace is not enough, the love and joy of the Divine is more precious. But unless the two things go together, the love and joy felt is perhaps intense, but impermanent, and it is also true that it gets easily mixed, misdirected or turns to something that is not the true thing at all. Peace and purity must be got as the foundation of the consciousness, otherwise there is no ﬁrm standing ground for the divine play.


Sri Aurobindo:   Active experience of the joy, peace, love, etc. when the direct contact is there; but even when it is not there, a quiet mind, heart and vital waiting and aspiring for the contact and the Presence — this should always be the condition.   No disturbance or confusion due to mere vital-physical impressions and experiences. To throw these away always, not to want them or get interested when they come — this is what is very much needed in you.


Sri Aurobindo: the contact and the true experience the quiet peace and aspiration.  To be full of peace, the heart quiet, not troubled by grief, not excited by joy is a very good condition. As for Ananda, it can come not only with its fullest intensity but with a more enduring persistence when the mind is at peace and the heart delivered from ordinary joy and sorrow. If the mind and heart are restless, changeful, unquiet, Ananda of a kind may come, but it is mixed with vital excitement and cannot abide. One must get peace and calm ﬁxed in the consciousness ﬁrst, then there is a solid basis on which the Ananda can spread itself and in its turn become an enduring part of the consciousness and the nature.


Sri Aurobindo:   The peace need not be grave or joyless — there should be nothing grey in it — but the gladness or joy or sense of lightness that comes in the peace must be necessarily something internal, selfexistent or due to a deepening of experience — it cannot, like the laughter of which you speak, be conveyed by an external cause or dependent upon it, e.g. something amusing, exhilarating etc.   It is when one is full of peace that one laughs most gladly. It is an inner condition, not something external like being silent or not laughing. It is a condition of serenity and stillness within in which there is no disturbance even if things go wrong or people are unpleasant or the body feels unwell — the state of serene inner gladness remains the same.


Sri Aurobindo: It is self-existent.     Happiness is a condition of gladness, sense of inner ease and welfare, contentment, a sunlit life — it is more quiet in its nature than joy and delight.  Joy () is more intense.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a strong movement of great gladness with an exultation, a leaping up of the vital to take some happiness, good fortune or other thing pleasant to the being.  Delight is an intense joy or an intense pleasure in something or an intensely joyful condition. At its most intense it becomes what is called rapture or ecstasy when one is “carried away” or “lifted out of” oneself by the intensity of the delight.   Joy is a vital movement, exciting, restless and transient.  In Ananda there is no excitement, it is a calm and happy and intense spiritual state or spiritual movement.


Sri Aurobindo:  The joy also should be deep within, then it will not conﬂict with the deeps of peace and inner consciousness.     Shanti is peace or calm — it is not Ananda. There can of course be a calm Ananda.


Sri Aurobindo:   Peace is a sign of mukti — Ananda moves towards siddhi.


Sri Aurobindo: There are two conditions, one of Ananda, another of great calm and equality in which there is no joy or grief. If one attains the latter, afterwards a greater more permanent Ananda becomes possible.     The active Ananda can culminate in the shanta Ananda.


Sri Aurobindo: Also when the shanta Ananda is established, it is the base from which active Ananda arises without disturbing its calmness.  Silence means freedom from thoughts and vital movements — when the whole consciousness is quite still.    It is the silence of the mind and vital — silence implying here not only cessation of thoughts but a stillness of the mental and vital substance. There are varying degrees of depth of this stillness.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is not possible to establish a deep silence all at once unless you can separate yourself from the thoughts, feel them as coming from outside and reject them before they enter. But everybody cannot do that at once.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is quite possible for thoughts to pass without disturbing the silence — but for that you must be perfectly detached from the thoughts and indifferent to them.    If there is absolute silence within it is quite natural that the thoughts on entering and touching it should fall off. It is the way in which silence of the outer mind usually comes.


Sri Aurobindo:   In the entirely silent mind there is usually the static sense of the Divine without any active movement. But there can come into it all higher thought and aspiration and movements. There is then no absolute silence but one feels a fundamental silence behind which is not disturbed by any movement.


Sri Aurobindo: A silent mind is the ﬁrst step towards true knowledge and the experience of the Divine.    I have read again the message of the Yogi quoted in’s letter but apart from the context nothing much or very deﬁnite can be made out of it. There are two statements which are clear enough — “In Silence is wisdom” — it is in the inner silence of the mind that true knowledge can come; for the ordinary activity of the mind only creates surface ideas and representations which are not true knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: Speech is usually only the expression of the superﬁcial nature — therefore to throw oneself out too much in such speech wastes the energy and prevents the inward listening which brings the word of true knowledge.  “In listening you will win what you are thinking of” means probably that in the silence will come the true dynamic thought formations which can effectuate or realise themselves. Thought can be a force which realises itself, but the ordinary surface thinking is not of that kind, there is in it more waste of energy than anything else. It is in the thought that comes in a quiet or silent mind that there is power.  “Talk less and gain power” has essentially the same meaning.


Sri Aurobindo: Not only a truer knowledge, but a greater power comes to one in the quietude and silence of a mind that instead of bubbling on the surface can go into its own depths and listen for what comes from a higher consciousness.  It is probably this that is meant — these are things known to all who have some experience of Yoga.  Silence is a state of the consciousness which comes of itself from above when you open to the Divine Consciousness — you need not trouble about that now.  A quiet mind, receiving things and looking at them without effervescence or haste, not rushing about or throwing up random ideas, is what is necessary.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is not an undesirable thing for the mind to fall silent, to be free from thoughts and still — for it is oftenest when the mind falls silent that there is the full descent of a wide peace from above and in that wide tranquillity the realisation of the silent Self above the mind spread out in its vastnesses everywhere.  Only, when there is the peace and the mental silence, the vital mind tries to rush in and occupy the place or else the mechanical mind tries to raise up for the same purpose its round of trivial habitual thoughts. What the sadhaka has to do is to be careful to reject and hush these outsiders, so that during the meditation at least the peace and quietude of the mind and vital may be complete. This can be done best if you keep a strong and silent will.


Sri Aurobindo: That will is the will of the Purusha behind the mind; when the mind is at peace, when it is silent one can become aware of the Purusha, silent also, separate from the action of the nature.  To be calm, steady, ﬁxed in the spirit,,, this quietude of the mind, this separation of the inner Purusha from the outer Prakriti is very helpful, almost indispensable. So long as the being is subject to the whirl of thoughts or the turmoil of the vital movements one cannot be thus calm and ﬁxed in the spirit. To detach oneself, to stand back from them, to feel them separate from oneself is indispensable.  For the discovery of the true individuality and building up of it in the nature, two things are necessary, ﬁrst, to be conscious of one’s psychic being behind the heart and, next, this separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti.


Sri Aurobindo: For the true individual is behind veiled by the activities of the outer nature.    Silence is always good; but I do not mean by quietness of mind entire silence. I mean a mind free from disturbance and trouble, steady, light and glad so as to be open to the Force that will change the nature. The important thing is to get rid of the habit of the invasion of troubling thoughts, wrong feelings, confusion of ideas, unhappy movements.


Sri Aurobindo: These disturb the nature and cloud it and make it more difﬁcult for the Force to work; when the mind is quiet and at peace, the Force can work more easily.  It should be possible to see things that have to be changed in you without being upset or depressed; the change is the more easily done.     Let us not exaggerate anything.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not so much getting rid of mental activity as converting it into the right thing. Krishnaprem has mental activity, but it is a mind that has gone inside and sees things from there, an intuitive mind ; I have mental activity (in the midst of silence) whenever necessary, but it is a mind that has gone up and sees things from above, an overmind action.  What has to be surpassed and changed is the intellectual reason which sees things from outside only by analysis and inference — when it does not do it rather by taking a hasty look and saying “So it is” or “So it is not”. But you can’t get the inner or upper mind unless the old mental activity becomes a little quiet.


Sri Aurobindo: A quiet mind does not involve itself in its thoughts or get run away with by them; it stands back, detaches itself, lets them pass, without identifying itself, without making them its own. It becomes the witness mind watching the thoughts when necessary, but able to turn away from them and receive from within and from above. Silence is good, but absolute silence is not indispensable, at least at this stage. I do not know that to wrestle with the mind to make it quiet is of much use; usually the mind gets the better of that game. It is this standing back, detaching oneself, getting the power to listen to something else other than the thoughts of the external mind that is the easier way.


Sri Aurobindo: At the same time one can look up, as it were, imaging to oneself the Force as there just above and calling it down or quietly expecting its help. That is how most people do it till the mind falls gradually quiet or silent of itself or else silence begins to descend from above. But it is important not to allow the depression or despair to come in because there is no immediate success; that can only make things difﬁcult and stop any progress that is preparing.  The silence and peace are themselves part of the higher consciousness — the rest comes in the silence and peace.


Sri Aurobindo: When the mind is silent, there is peace and in peace all things that are divine can come. When there is not the mind, there is the Self which is greater than the mind.     You have attained the silent inner consciousness, but that can be covered over by disturbance — the next step is for calm and silence to be established as the basis in the more and more outer consciousness — probably these [] forces are working for that.


Sri Aurobindo: Then the play of the ordinary forces will be only on the surface and can be more easily dealt with.  The silence is the silence of the inner consciousness and it is in that silence unmoved by outward things that the true activity of the consciousness can come without disturbing the silence — true perceptions, will, feelings, action. There also one can feel more easily the Mother’s working. As for the heat, it must be the heat of Agni, the ﬁre of puriﬁcation and tapasya; it often feels like that when the inner work is going on.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not possible for the spontaneous silent condition to last always at once, but that is what must grow in one till there is a constant inner silence — a silence which cannot be disturbed by any outward activity or even by any attempt at attack or disturbance.  The condition you describe shows precisely the growth of this inner silence. It has to ﬁx itself eventually as the basis of all spiritual experience and activity. It does not matter if one does not know what is going on within behind the silence. For there are two conditions in the Yoga, one in which all is silent and there is no thought, feeling or movement even though one is acting outwardly as others do — another in which a new consciousness becomes active bringing knowledge, joy, love and other spiritual feelings and inner activities, but yet at the same time there is a fundamental silence or quietude.


Sri Aurobindo: Both are necessary in the development of the inner being. The absolutely silent state, which is one of lightness, voidness and release, prepares the other and supports it when it comes.   The passive silence is that in which the inner consciousness remains void and at rest, not making any reaction on outer things and forces.  The active silence is that in which there is a great force that goes out on things and forces without disturbing the silence.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is on the Silence behind the cosmos that all the movement of the universe is supported.  It is from the Silence that the peace comes; when the peace deepens and deepens, it becomes more and more the Silence.  In a more outward sense the word silence is applied to the condition in which there is no movement of thought or feeling etc., only a great stillness of the mind.  But there can be an action in the Silence, undisturbed even as the universal action goes on in the cosmic Silence.


Sri Aurobindo: The Divine Will works in all things — it may work out anything whatever. The Divine Grace comes in to help and save.     If you would know what is the Divine Grace, it is necessary ﬁrst to realise that it is something which contradicts the law of the world, for it is outside its normal rule and not of its nature.


Sri Aurobindo: There is here something which does not seem to govern at all the cosmic action, but only to intervene, and yet it is always there; an element without which this universe would be either a tremendous machine or a fortuitously and yet inexorably ordered chance. For to our observation all here is a process, a mechanism of Ignorance and Inconscience manifesting a precarious consciousness distressed by a nostalgia of Truth that exists somewhere and yet seems to be unseizable and unrealisable, — a mechanism of Law that controls a frightening whirl of Forces, a mechanism of implacable justice measuring things by a mysterious and to us unintelligible balance, a mechanism of evolution with matter and inconscience as its starting point, a precarious  and groping life and consciousness as its highest realised term and as its ﬁnal uncertain poise some possibility of the Divine .


Sri Aurobindo: Our senses can discover no visible presence of the Divine, our intellect can do without any idea of its intervention — but it is another experience than that of the intellect and the senses which once it is there will no longer let us escape from the Presence or refuse to see the intervening Will or Grace.   This world is a world of Ignorance and by Ignorance a world of strife, seeking, error and suffering. We start by knowing nothing and have to learn everything; because our knowledge is a mixture of truth and falsehood and our will constantly mistaken when not perverted, we stumble at every step and pay the price of experience in pain and grief and sorrow. It would seem as if nothing could save us but thought and knowledge translated into right will and action and it is that for which man by his intellect is seeking and yet by his intellect he has never found it and it looks as if by his intellect he would never ﬁnd it.


Sri Aurobindo: Then there is probably something else beyond the intellect which alone can give him the Light — something beyond his mind and greater than himself — a Grace that intervenes, the law of a supernormal Light and Will, a help, an opening from above.     I should like to say something about the Divine Grace — for you seem to think it should be something like a Divine Reason acting upon lines not very different from those of human intelligence.  But it is not that.


Sri Aurobindo: Also it is not a universal Divine Compassion either, acting impartially on all who approach it and acceding to all prayers. It does not select the righteous and reject the sinner.  The Divine Grace came to aid the persecutor (Saul of Tarsus), it came to St. Augustine the proﬂigate, to Jagai and Madhai of infamous fame, to Bilwamangal and many others whose conversion might well scandalise the puritanism of the human moral intelligence; but it can come to the righteous also — curing them of their self-righteousness and leading to a purer consciousness beyond these things. It is a power that is superior to any rule, even to the Cosmic Law — for all spiritual seers have distinguished between the Law and Grace. Yet it is not indiscriminate — only it has a discrimination of its own which sees things and persons and the right times and seasons with another vision than that of the Mind or any other normal Power.


Sri Aurobindo: A state of Grace is prepared in the individual often behind thick veils by means not calculable by the mind and when the state of Grace comes then the Grace itself acts. There are these three powers: (1) the Cosmic Law, of Karma or what else; (2) the Divine Compassion acting on as many as it can reach through the nets of the Law and giving them their chance; and (3) the Divine Grace which acts more incalculably but also more irresistibly than the others.  The only question is whether there is something behind all the anomalies of life which can respond to the call and open itself with whatever difﬁculty till it is ready for the illumination of the Divine Grace — and that something must be not a mental and vital movement but an inner somewhat which can well be seen by the inner eye. If it is there and when it becomes active in front, then the Compassion can act, though the full action of the Grace may still wait attending the decisive decision or change; for this may be postponed to a future hour, because some portion or element of the being may still come between, something that is not yet ready to receive.   Each mind can have its own way of approaching the supreme Truth


Sri Aurobindo: and there is an entrance for each as well as a thousand ways for the journey to it. It is not necessary to believe in the Grace or to recognise a Godhead different from one’s highest Self — there are ways of Yoga that do not accept these things. Also for many no form of Yoga is necessary — they arrive at some realisation by a sort of pressure of the mind or the heart or the will breaking the screen between it and what is at once beyond it and its own source. What happens after the breaking of the screen depends on the play of the Truth on the consciousness and the turn of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no reason therefore why ’s realisation of his being should not come in its own way by growth from within, not by the Divine Grace if his mind objects to that description, but let us say by the spontaneous movement of the Self within him.  For, as to this “Grace”, we describe it in that way because we feel in the inﬁnite Spirit or Self of existence a Presence or a Being, a Consciousness that determines — that is what we speak of as the Divine, — not a separate Person, but the one Being of whom our individual self is a portion or a vessel. But it is not necessary for everybody to regard it in that way. Supposing it is the impersonal Self of all only, yet the Upanishad says of the Self and its realisation, “This understanding is not to be gained by reasoning nor by tapasya nor by much learning, but whom this Self chooses, to him it reveals its own body.” Well, that is the same thing as what we call the Divine Grace, — it is an action from above or from within independent of mental causes which decides its own movement.


Sri Aurobindo: We can call it the Divine Grace; we can call it the Self within choosing its own hour and way to manifest to the mental instrument on the surface; we can call it the ﬂowering of the inner being or inner nature into selfrealisation and self-knowledge. As something in us approaches it or as it presents itself to us, so the mind sees it. But in reality, it is the same thing and the same process of the being in Nature.  I could illustrate my meaning more concretely from my own ﬁrst experience of the Self, long before I knew even what Yoga was or that there was such a thing, at a time when I had no religious feeling, no wish for spiritual knowledge, no aspiration beyond the mind, only a contented agnosticism and the impulse towards poetry and politics. But it would be too long a story, so I do not tell it here.


Sri Aurobindo:  It is not indispensable that the Grace should work in a way that the human mind can understand, it generally doesn’t: it works in its own “mysterious” way. At ﬁrst usually it works behind the veil, preparing things, not manifesting. Afterwards it may manifest, but the sadhak does not understand very well what is happening. Finally, when he is capable of it, he both feels and understands or at least begins to do so.


Sri Aurobindo: Some feel and understand from the ﬁrst or very early; but that is not the ordinary case.    “The ordinary action of the Divine is a constant intervention within the actual law of things” — that may or may not be but is not usually called the Divine Grace. The Divine Grace is something not calculable, not bound by anything the intellect can ﬁx as a condition — though ordinarily some call, aspiration, intensity of the psychic being can awaken it, yet it acts sometimes without any apparent cause even of that kind.  Without the Grace of the Divine nothing can be done, but for the full Grace to manifest the sadhak must make himself ready.


Sri Aurobindo: If everything depends on the Divine intervention, then man is only a puppet and there is no use of sadhana, and there are no conditions, no law of things — therefore no universe, but only the Divine rolling things about at his pleasure. No doubt in the last resort all can be said to be the Divine cosmic working, but it is through persons, through forces that it works — under the conditions of Nature. Special intervention there can be and is, but all cannot be special intervention.


Sri Aurobindo: The Divine Grace and Power can do everything, but with the full assent of the sadhak. To learn to give that full assent is the whole meaning of the sadhana. It may take time either because of ideas in the mind, desires in the vital or inertia in the physical consciousness, but these things have to be and can be removed with the aid or by calling in the action of the Divine Force.    There are three main possibilities for the sadhak — (1) To wait on the Grace and rely on the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: (2) To do everything himself like the full Adwaitin and the Buddhist. (3) To take the middle path, go forward by aspiration and rejection etc. helped by the Force.     Everything should be for the sake of the Divine, this [ ] also.


Sri Aurobindo: As for leaving the result to the Divine, it depends on what you mean by the phrase. If it implies dependence on the Divine Grace and equanimity and patience in the persistent aspiration, then it is all right. But it must not be extended to cover slackness and indifference in the aspiration and endeavour.   There is nothing unintelligible in what I say about strength and Grace.


Sri Aurobindo: Strength has a value for spiritual realisation, but to say that it can be done by strength only and by no other means is a violent exaggeration. Grace is not an invention, it is a fact of spiritual experience. Many who would be considered as mere nothings by the wise and strong have attained by Grace; illiterate, without mental power or training, without “strength” of character or will, they have yet aspired and suddenly or rapidly grown into spiritual realisation, because they had faith or because they were sincere. I do not see why these facts which are facts of spiritual history and of quite ordinary spiritual experience should be discussed and denied and argued as if they were mere matters of speculation. Strength, if it is spiritual, is a power for spiritual realisation; a greater power is sincerity; the greatest power of all is Grace.


Sri Aurobindo: I have said times without number that if a man is sincere, he will go through in spite of long delay and overwhelming difﬁculties. I have repeatedly spoken of the Divine Grace. I have referred any number of times to the line of the Gita: “I will deliver thee from all sin and evil, do not grieve.”  Your experience about the meditation is common enough — I  used to have it or analogous things hundreds of times.


Sri Aurobindo: I suppose it is to teach us ﬁrst that grace is more effective than tapasya and, secondly, that either equanimity or a cheerful spontaneous happy self-opening is as effective, to say the least, as the grimmest wrestling for a result. But it would be dangerous to assume from that that no tapasya and no endeavour is needful — for that might very well mean inertia. I have seen too that very often a long tapasya with doubtful results prepares the moment of grace and the spontaneous downﬂow. All which seem to be contradictions, but are not in a whole view of things .


Sri Aurobindo:   What says about tapasya is of course true. If one is not prepared for labour and tapasya, control of the mind and vital, one cannot demand big spiritual gains — for the mind and vital will always ﬁnd tricks and excuses for prolonging their own reign, imposing their likes and dislikes and staving off the day when they will have to become obedient instruments and open channels of the soul and spirit. Grace may sometimes bring undeserved or apparently undeserved fruits, but one can’t demand Grace as a right and privilege — for then it would not be Grace.


Sri Aurobindo: As you have seen one can’t claim that one has only to shout and the answer must come. Besides I have always seen that there has been really a long unobserved preparation before the Grace intervenes and, also, after it has intervened one has still to put in a good deal of work to keep and develop what one has got — as it is in all other things — until there is the complete siddhi.  Then of course labour ﬁnishes and one is in assured possession.  So tapasya of one kind or another is not avoidable.  You are right again about the imaginary obstacles.


Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord! what mountains of them you have piled up on the way — a regular Abyssinia. It is why we always express depreciation of mental constructions and vital formations — because they are the defence works mind and vital throw up against their capture by the Divine. However the ﬁrst thing is to become conscious of all that as you have now become, — the next thing is to be ﬁrm in knocking it all down and making a, a foundation of calm, peace, happy openness for the true building.  I have surely never said that you should not want the Divine Response.


Sri Aurobindo: One does Yoga for that. What I have said is that you should not expect or insist on it at once or within an early time.  It can come early or it can come late, but come it will if one is faithful in one’s call — for one has not only to be sincere but to be faithful through all.


Sri Aurobindo: If I deprecate insistence, it is because I have always found it creates difﬁculties and delays — owing to a strain and restlessness which is created in the nature and despondencies and revolts of the vital when the insistence is not satisﬁed. The Divine knows best and one has to have trust in His wisdom and attune oneself with His will. Length of time is no proof of an ultimate incapacity to arrive — it is only a sign that there is something in oneself which has to be overcome and if there is the will to reach the Divine it can be overcome.  Suicide solves nothing — it only brings one back to life with the same difﬁculties to be faced in worse conditions. If one wishes to escape from life altogether, it can only be by the way of complete inner renunciation and merging oneself in the Silence of the Absolute or by a bhakti that becomes absolute or by a karmayoga that gives up one’s own will and desires to the will of the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: I have said also that the Grace at any moment act suddenly, but over that one has no control, because it comes by an incalculable Will which sees things that the mind cannot see. It is precisely the reason why one should never despair, — that and also because no sincere aspiration to the Divine can fail in the end.  Face all these things [] quietly and ﬁrmly with perseverance in the endeavour of the sadhana. Trust ﬁrmly in the Divine Grace and the Divine Grace will not fail you.


Sri Aurobindo:   The best possible way [] is to allow the Divine Grace to work in you, never to oppose it, never to be ungrateful and turn against it — but to follow it always to the goal of Light and Peace and unity and Ananda.  As for withdrawal of Grace, it might be said that few are those from whom the Grace withdraws, but many are those who withdraw from the Grace.   If the will of the individual is towards perdition, if his ego becomes hostile to the Divine, then the Divine is not bound to show him a Grace he does not want at all and kicks at.  What you describe in your letter as the response of the Divine would not be called that in the language of Yogic experience — this feeling of greater peace, light, ease, trust, difﬁculties lessening, certitude would rather be called a response of your own nature to the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: There is a Peace or a Light which is the response of the Divine, but that is a wide Peace, a great Light which is felt as a presence other than one’s personal self, not part of one’s personal nature, but something that comes from above, though in the end it possesses the nature — or there is the Presence itself which carries with it indeed the absolute liberation, happiness, certitude. But the ﬁrst responses of the Divine are not often like that — they come rather as a touch, a pressure one must be in a condition to recognise and to accept, or it is a voice of assurance, sometimes a very “still small voice”, a momentary Image or Presence; a whisper of Guidance sometimes, — there are many forms it may take. Then it withdraws and the preparation of the nature goes on till it is possible for the touch to come again and again, to last longer, to change into something more pressing and near and intimate. The Divine in the beginning does not impose himself — he asks for recognition, for acceptance. That is one reason why the mind must fall silent, not put tests, not make claims — there must be room for the true intuition which recognises at once the true touch and accepts it.


Sri Aurobindo: The question you have put raises one of the most difﬁcult and complicated of all problems and to deal with it at all adequately would need an answer as long as the longest chapter of  I can only state my own knowledge founded not on reasoning but on experience that there is such a guidance and that nothing is in vain in this universe.  If we look only at outward facts in their surface appearance or if we regard what we see happening around us as deﬁnitive, not as processes of a moment in a developing whole, the guidance is not apparent; at most we may see interventions occasional or sometimes frequent. The guidance can become evident only if we go behind appearances and begin to understand the forces at work and the way of their working and their secret signiﬁcance. After all, real knowledge — even scientiﬁc knowledge — comes by going behind the surface phenomena to their hidden process and causes. It is quite obvious that this world is full of suffering and afﬂicted with transience to a degree that seems to justify the Gita’s description of it as “this unhappy and transient world”,.


Sri Aurobindo: The question is whether it is a mere creation of Chance or governed by a mechanic inconscient Law or whether there is a meaning in it and something beyond its present appearance towards which we move. If there is a meaning and if there is something towards which things are evolving, then inevitably there must be a guidance — and that means that a supporting Consciousness and Will is there with which we can come into inner contact. If there is such a Consciousness and Will, it is not likely that it would stultify itself by annulling the world’s meaning or turning it into a perpetual or eventual failure.  This world has a double aspect. It seems to be based on a material Inconscience and an ignorant mind and life full of that Inconscience; error and sorrow, death and suffering are the necessary consequence.


Sri Aurobindo: But there is evidently too a partially successful endeavour and an imperfect growth towards Light, Knowledge, Truth, Good, Happiness, Harmony, Beauty, — at least a partial ﬂowering of these things. The meaning of this world must evidently lie in this opposition; it must be an evolution which is leading or struggling towards higher things out of a ﬁrst darker appearance. Whatever guidance there is must be given under these conditions of opposition and struggle and must be leading towards that higher state of things. It is leading the individual, certainly, and the world, presumably, towards the higher state, but through the double terms of knowledge and ignorance, light and darkness, death and life, pain and pleasure, happiness and suffering; none of the terms can be excluded until the higher status is reached and established. It is not and cannot be, ordinarily, a guidance which at once rejects the darker terms or still less a guidance which brings us solely and always nothing but happiness, success and good fortune.


Sri Aurobindo: Its main concern is with the growth of our being and consciousness, the growth towards a higher self, towards the Divine, eventually towards a highest Light, Truth and Bliss; the rest is secondary, sometimes a means, sometimes a result, not a primary purpose.  The true sense of the guidance becomes clearer when we can go deep within and see from there more intimately the play of the forces and receive intimations of the Will behind them. The surface mind can get only an imperfect glimpse. When we are in contact with the Divine or in contact with an inner knowledge and vision, we begin to see all the circumstances of our life in a new light and can observe how they all tended without our knowing it towards the growth of our being and consciousness, towards the work we had to do, towards some development that had to be made, — not only what seemed good, fortunate or successful but the struggles, failures, difﬁculties, upheavals.  But with each person the guidance works differently according to his nature, the conditions of his life, his cast of consciousness, his stage of development, his need of farther experience.


Sri Aurobindo: We are not automata but conscious beings and our mentality, our will and its decisions, our attitude to life and demand on it, our motives and movements help to determine our course; they may lead to much suffering and evil, but through it all, the guidance makes use of them for our growth in experience and consequently the development of our being and consciousness.  All advance by however devious ways, even in spite of what seems a going backwards or going astray, gathering whatever experience is necessary for the soul’s destiny. When we are in close contact with the Divine, a protection can come in which helps or directly guides or moves us; it does not throw aside all difﬁculties, sufferings or dangers, but it carries us through them and out of them — except where for a special purpose there is need of the opposite.  It is the same thing though on a larger scale and in a more complex way with the guidance of the world-movement. That seems to move according to the conditions and laws or forces of the moment through constant vicissitudes, but still there is something in it that drives towards the evolutionary purpose, although it is more difﬁcult to see, understand and follow than in the smaller and more intimate ﬁeld of the individual consciousness and life.


Sri Aurobindo: What happens in a particular juncture of the world-action or the life of humanity, however catastrophical, is not ultimately determinative. Here too one has to see not only the outward play of forces in a particular case or at a particular time but also the inner and secret play, the far-off outcome, the event that lies beyond and the Will at work behind it all.  Falsehood and Darkness are strong everywhere on the earth and have always been so and at times they seem to dominate; but there have also been not only gleams but outbursts of the Light.  In the mass of things and the long course of Time, whatever may be the appearances of this or that epoch or moment, the growth of Light is there and the struggle towards better things does not cease. At the present time Falsehood and Darkness have gathered their forces and are extremely powerful; but even if we reject the assertion of the mystics and prophets since early times that such a condition of things must precede the Manifestation and is even a sign of its approach, yet it does not necessarily indicate the victory — even temporary — of the Falsehood.


Sri Aurobindo: It merely means that the struggle between the Forces is at its acme.  The result may very well be the stronger emergence of the best that can be; for the world-movement often works in that way. I leave it at that and say nothing more.  All the world, according to Science, is nothing but a play of Energy — a material Energy it used to be called, but it is now doubted whether Matter, scientiﬁcally speaking, exists except as a phenomenon of Energy.


Sri Aurobindo: All the world, according to Vedanta, is a play of a power of a spiritual entity, the power of an original consciousness, whether it be Maya or Shakti, and the result an illusion or real. In the world so far as man is concerned we are aware only of mind energy, life energy, energy in matter; but it is supposed that there is a spiritual energy or force also behind them from which they originate. All things, in either case, are the results of a Shakti, energy or force. There is no action without a Force or Energy doing the action and bringing about its consequence. Farther, anything that has no Force in it is either something dead or something unreal or something inert and without consequence.


Sri Aurobindo: If there is no such thing as spiritual consciousness, there can be no reality of Yoga, and if there is no Yoga force, spiritual force, Yoga Shakti, then also there can be no effectivity in Yoga. A Yoga consciousness or spiritual consciousness which has no power or force in it, may not be dead or unreal but it is evidently something inert and without effect or consequence. Equally a man who sets out to be a Yogi or Guru and has no spiritual consciousness or no power in his spiritual consciousness — a Yoga force or spiritual force — is making a false claim and is either a charlatan or a self-deluded imbecile; still more is he so if having no spiritual force he claims to have made a path others can follow. If Yoga is a reality, if spirituality is anything better than a delusion, there must be such a thing as Yoga force or spiritual force.  It is evident that if spiritual force exists, it must be able to produce spiritual results — therefore there is no irrationality in the claim of those sadhaks who say that they feel the force of the Guru or the force of the Divine working in them and leading towards spiritual fulﬁlment and experience.


Sri Aurobindo: Whether it is so or not in a particular case is a personal question, but the statement cannot be denounced as incredible and manifestly false because such things cannot be. Farther, if it be true that spiritual force is the original one and the others are derivative from it, then there is no irrationality in supposing that spiritual force can produce mental results, vital results, physical results. It may act through mental, vital or physical energies and through the means which these energies use, or it may act directly on mind, life or matter as the ﬁeld of its own special and immediate action.  Either way is possible. In a case of cure of illness, someone is lying ill for two days, weak, suffering from pains and fever; he takes no medicine but ﬁnally asks for cure from his Guru; the next morning he rises well, strong and energetic.


Sri Aurobindo: He has at least some justiﬁcation for thinking that a force has been used on him and put into him and that it was a spiritual power that acted. But in another case medicines may be used, while at the same time the invisible force may be called for to aid the material means, for it is a known fact that medicines may or may not succeed — there is no certitude. Here for the reason of an outside observer (one who is neither the user of the force nor the doctor nor the patient) it remains uncertain whether the patient was cured by the medicines only or by the spiritual force with the medicines as an instrument. Either is possible, and it cannot be said that because medicines were used, therefore the working of a spiritual force is incredible and demonstrably false. On the other hand it is possible for the doctor to have felt a force working in him and guiding him or he may see the patient improving with a rapidity which, according to medical science, is incredible.


Sri Aurobindo: The patient may feel the force working in himself bringing health, energy, rapid cure. The user of the force may watch the results, see the symptoms he works on diminishing, those he did not work upon increasing till he does work on them and then immediately diminishing, the doctor working according to his unspoken suggestions, etc. etc. until the cure is done. (On the other hand he may see forces working against the cure and conclude that the spiritual force has to be contented with a withdrawal or an imperfect success.) In all that the doctor, the patient or the user of force is justiﬁed in believing that the cure is at least partly or even fundamentally due to the spiritual force. Their experience is valid of course for themselves only, not for the outside rationalising observer.


Sri Aurobindo: But the latter is not logically entitled to say that their experience is incredible and must be false.   Another point. It does not follow that a spiritual force must either succeed in all cases or, if it does not, that proves its nonexistence. Of no force can that be said.


Sri Aurobindo: The force of ﬁre is to burn, but there are things it does not burn; under certain circumstances it does not burn even the feet of the man who walks barefoot on red-hot coals. That does not prove that ﬁre cannot burn or that there is no such thing as force of ﬁre, Agni-shakti.  I have no time to write more; it is not necessary either. My object was not to show that spiritual force must be believed in, but that the belief in it is not necessarily a delusion and that this belief can be rational as well as possible.


Sri Aurobindo: The invisible Force producing tangible results both inward and outward is the whole meaning of the Yogic consciousness. Your question about Yoga bringing merely a feeling of Power without any result was really very strange. Who would be satisﬁed with such a meaningless hallucination and call it Power? If we had not had thousands of experiences showing that the Power within could alter the mind, develop its powers, add new ones, bring in new ranges of knowledge, master the vital movements, change the character, inﬂuence men and things, control the conditions and functionings of the body, work as a concrete dynamic Force on other forces, modify events, etc. etc., we would not speak of it as we do. Moreover, it is not only in its results but in its movements that the Force is tangible and concrete.


Sri Aurobindo: When I speak of feeling Force or Power, I do not mean simply having a vague sense of it, but feeling it concretely and consequently being able to direct it, manipulate it, watch its movement, be conscious of its mass and intensity and in the same way of that of other perhaps opposing forces; all these things are possible and usual by the development of Yoga.  It is not, unless it is supramental Force, a Power that acts without conditions and limits. The conditions and limits under which Yoga or sadhana has to be worked out are not arbitrary or capricious; they arise from the nature of things. These including the will, receptivity, assent, self-opening and surrender of the sadhak have to be respected by the Yoga-force — unless it receives a sanction from the Supreme to override everything and get something done — but that sanction is sparingly given.  It is only if the supramental Power came fully down, not merely sent its inﬂuences through the Overmind, that things could be very radically altered in this respect — and that is why my main effort is directed towards that object — for then the sanction would not be rare!


Sri Aurobindo: For the Law of the Truth would be at work not constantly balanced by the law of the Ignorance.  Still the Yoga-force is always tangible and concrete in the way I have described and has tangible results. But it is invisible — not like a blow given or the rush of a motor car knocking somebody down which the physical senses can at once perceive.  How is the mere physical mind to know that it is there and working? By its results?


Sri Aurobindo: but how can it know that the results were that of the Yoga-force and not of something else? One of two things it must do. Either it must allow the consciousness to go inside, to become aware of inner things, to believe in and experience the invisible and the supraphysical, and then by experience, by the opening of new capacities it becomes conscious of these forces and can see, follow and use their workings just as the scientist uses the unseen forces of Nature. Or one must have faith and watch and open oneself and then it will begin to see how things happen ; it will notice that when the Force was called in, there began after a time to be a result, — then repetitions, more repetitions, more clear and tangible results, increasing frequency, increasing consistency of results, a feeling and awareness of the Force at work — until the experience becomes daily, regular, normal, complete.


Sri Aurobindo: These are the two main methods, one internal, working from in outward, the other external, working from outside and calling the inner force out till it penetrates and is sensible in the exterior consciousness.  But neither can be done if one insists always on the extrovert attitude, the external concrete only and refuses to join to it the internal concrete — or if the physical Mind at every step raises a dance of doubts which refuses to allow the nascent experience to develop. Even the scientist carrying out a new experiment would never succeed if he allowed his mind to behave in that way.    Concrete?


Sri Aurobindo: what do you mean by “concrete”? It [] has its own concreteness; it can take a form (like a stream for instance) of which one is aware and can send it quite concretely in whatever “direction” or on whatever object one chooses.  This is a statement of fact about the power inherent in spiritual consciousness. What I was speaking of was a willed use of any subtle force (it may be spiritual or mental or vital) to secure a particular result at some point in the world. Just as there are waves of unseen physical forces (cosmic waves etc.) or currents of electricity, so there are mind waves, thought currents, waves of emotion, e.g. anger, sorrow, etc., which go out and affect others without their knowing whence they come or that they come at all — they only feel the result.


Sri Aurobindo: One who has the occult or inner senses awake can feel them coming and invading him.  Inﬂuences good or bad can propagate themselves in that way; that can happen without intention, automatically, but also a deliberate use can be made of them. There can also be a purposeful generation of force, spiritual or other. There can be too the use of the effective will or idea acting directly without the aid of any outward action, speech or other instrumentation which is not concrete in that sense, but is all the same effective.


Sri Aurobindo:   Leave aside the question of Divine or undivine, no spiritual man who acts dynamically is limited to physical contact — the idea that physical contact through writing, speech, meeting is indispensable to the action of the spiritual force is self-contradictory, for then it would not be a spiritual force. The spirit is not limited by physical things or by the body. If you have the spiritual force, it can act on people thousands of miles away who do not know and never will know that you are acting on them or that they are being acted upon — they only feel that there is a force enabling them to do things and may very well suppose it is their own great energy and genius.


Sri Aurobindo: The fact that you don’t feel a force does not prove that it is not there. The steam-engine does not feel a force moving it, but the force is there. A man is not a steam-engine? He is very little better, for he is conscious only of some bubbling on the surface which he calls himself and is absolutely unconscious of all the subconscient, subliminal, superconscient forces moving him. (This is a fact which is being more and more established by modern psychology though it has got hold only of the lower forces and not the higher, so you need not turn up your rational nose at it.)


Sri Aurobindo: He twitters intellectually (= foolishly) about the surface results and attributes them all to his “noble self”, ignoring the fact that his noble self is hidden far away from his own vision behind the veil of his dimly sparkling intellect and the reeking fog of his vital feelings, emotions, impulses, sensations and impressions.  So your argument is utterly absurd and futile. Our aim is to bring the secret forces out and unwalled into the open so that instead of getting some shadows or lightnings of themselves out through the veil or being wholly obstructed, they may “pour down” and “ﬂow in a river”. But to expect that all at once is a presumptuous demand which shows an impatient ignorance and inexperience. If they begin to trickle at ﬁrst, that is sufﬁcient to justify the faith in a future downpour.