Sri Aurobindo: Will you not make an effort and throw off the cloud that has fallen upon you? There is surely something you are not telling us, for nothing has happened to our knowledge that could make you go so far as to refuse food and reject persistently the love and solicitude of the Mother. Will you not tell us what is your reason and relieve your mind of its burden?  You are our beloved child. Nothing should be able to throw a shadow between you and our love.


Sri Aurobindo: Throw off whatever shadow there is. I ask you to take your food as usual. Speak to the Mother; turn to us once more; call back the happiness and the sunshine.  It is quite unnecessary to say all your thoughts to and it would not be good either. It is only to the Mother and myself that you can say freely all that is in you, not to anybody else.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no reason why the Mother’s force should not be able to work in you as in others.  I have no ideas about the matter, no mental decisions; when the time comes, the Mother and I will know what is to be done and do it according to the Truth.   Yes.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is our joint or united presence in the manifestation.     I am always with the Mother — it was therefore quite natural that you should feel the double blessing.


Sri Aurobindo:    The Mother and myself stand for the same Power in two forms — so the perception in the dream was perfectly logical. IshwaraShakti, Purusha-Prakriti are only the two sides of the one Divine (Brahman).


Sri Aurobindo:   It is a very common experience — that of the identity between myself and the Mother (the perception that we are one) expressed in the fusing of the two images.  Yes, she is the executive power and must have the right arm free for action. The symbolism which puts her on the left side belongs to the Ignorance. In the Ignorance she is on the left side, not free in her action, all is a wrong action or half result.


Sri Aurobindo: For the supramental work the true symbol is the Mother on the right side.    The tiger is some force that appears hostile. If you face it with the Mother’s name, the hostile force disappears and in its place come two Powers (the children) from myself (the blue light) and the Mother (the white light). It is probably an image of the vital under the inﬂuence of the psychic.


Sri Aurobindo: At ﬁrst it is inhabited by the tiger (anger, passion, desire etc.) — but as soon as the psychic inﬂuence masters it, that disappears and it is replaced by the Divine Children calling you to the Divine.     It is the ﬂower of the new creation, so it is natural that you see us there.   The dream was an indication of what the Mother and myself are and represent — I do not think that it is necessary to say more than that.


Sri Aurobindo: It indicates that the fulﬁlment of what we stand for is the Divine Love and Ananda.     That is obviously psychic.


Sri Aurobindo: Necessarily, Mother can manifest in many other forms besides her physical one, and though I am rather less multitudinous, I can also. But that does not mean that you can take any gentleman for me or any she for her. Your dream-self has to develop a certain discrimination. That discrimination cannot go by signs and forms, for the vital beggars can imitate almost anything, it must be intuitive.


Sri Aurobindo: Well, it is quite natural that I should like to write rather about the Mother than about myself. But I suppose you refer to the experience with the photograph — it can be had of course with mine also, but it comes more easily with the Mother’s because her physical contact with the sadhaks is closer than mine.  The feeling of being a child comes often when there is the psychic inﬂuence behind.


Sri Aurobindo: What do you mean by concrete? It is concrete there just as the Abyssinian or Spanish wars are concrete here.     I think I had better write it and you can communicate to her.


Sri Aurobindo: It was an experience in a conscious dream in which she was becoming as if unconscious and her body was benumbed and then felt my hand on her forehead, the weight felt not only there but as if something was crushing her whole body, particularly a distinct pressure on the 3rd or 4th rib on the right side. The numbness was still there when she opened her eyes. She thinks it was my hand because of the weight, the strength of it. She wants to know also about our presence, how it comes, whether we are conscious of the call or it is only our Force that is working which is everywhere without the necessity of our personal knowledge.  This is the answer.


Sri Aurobindo: “As to the dream, it was not a dream but an experience of the inner being in a conscious dream state,.  The numbness and the feeling of being about to lose consciousness are always due to the pressure or descent of a Force to which the body is not accustomed, but feels strongly. Here it was not the physical body that was being directly pressed, but the subtle body, the in which the inner being more intimately dwells and in which it goes out in sleep or trance or in the moment of death. But the physical body in these vivid experiences feels as if it were itself that was having the experience; the numbness was the effect on it of the pressure.


Sri Aurobindo: The pressure on the whole body would mean a pressure on the whole inner consciousness, perhaps for some modiﬁcation or change which would make it more ready for knowledge or experience; the 3rd or 4th rib would indicate a region which belongs to the vital nature, the domain of the life-force, some pressure for a change there.  The strength of the hand, the weight would not necessarily indicate that it was mine — for it was an experience not of the physical hand or in the physical body, but in the subtle realms of the being and there the Mother’s touch and pressure might well be stronger and heavier than mine. The Mother does not remember the date, but one night about that period she was thinking strongly about her and putting a pressure for the removal of some obstacle to a spiritual opening. It is possible that this was what produced the experience. If it was myself, it must have been at a time when I was concentrating and sending the force to different people, but I remember nothing precise.


Sri Aurobindo: I have often thought of her of course and sent a Force to help her.  It is not necessary for us always to be physically conscious of the action, for it is often carried out when the mind is occupied with outward things or when we sleep. The Mother’s sleep is not sleep but an inner consciousness, in which she is in communication with people or working everywhere. At the time she is aware, but she does not carry all that always into her waking consciousness or in her memory. A call would come in the occupied waking mind as the thought of the person coming — in a more free or in a concentrated state as a communication from the person in question; in concentration or in sleep or trance she would see the person coming and speaking to her or herself going there.


Sri Aurobindo: Besides that wherever the Force is working, the Presence is there.”    It is quite normal in dream to see the Mother or myself with another appearance than the present. These dreams are experiences on the vital plane where forms are not so rigid as in the physical world.  Yoga is union with the Divine, sadhana is what you do in order to unite with the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: You have to get away from the ordinary human consciousness and get into touch with the divine Consciousness.  For that call always on the Mother, open yourself to her, aspire and pray for her Force to work in you so as to make you ﬁt — reject desire, restlessness, disturbances of the mind and vital. Dhyana means to make the mind and vital quiet and concentrate in aspiration for the Mother’s Peace, the Mother’s Presence, her Light, Force and Ananda.  It is only by constantly aspiring to the Mother’s light and force that you can make true and steady progress. It is only by the constant repetition and persistence of the Mother’s light and force that the habit of disturbance and lack of organisation can diminish and ﬁnally disappear.


Sri Aurobindo: Only so can the lower being be prepared and the decisive descent of the Truth and Light be ﬁnally made possible.     The Mother’s Peace is above you — by aspiration and quiet selfopening it descends. When it takes hold of the vital and the body, then equanimity becomes easy and in the end automatic.


Sri Aurobindo:   The ﬁtness comes with the aspiration.     But it is not by that this sadhana is given or carried on.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only those who are capable by aspiration and meditation on the Mother to open and receive her action and working within that can succeed in this Yoga.     Let the power of the Mother work in you, but be careful to avoid any mixture or substitution, in its place, of either a magniﬁed ego-working or a force of Ignorance presenting itself as Truth. Aspire especially for the elimination of all obscurity and unconsciousness in the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: To be in contact with the Mother’s Light and Force is the one important thing (fundamental) to which you must aspire. For this the psychic feeling is the indispensable condition; for it is through the psychic that this contact becomes easy and natural.  It gives the psychic basis. Once the basis is there ﬁrmly established the rest can be done according to need and it will be much better done, because then there will be the safety from hostile attack and the right guidance.  The ﬁre is the purifying psychic ﬁre.


Sri Aurobindo: Offering to the psychic ﬁre is not contrary to the worship of the Mother. To purify all in the psychic ﬁre rather than throw the obscurities and resistance on the Mother is obviously the right way.  What you say of sadhana is true. Sadhana is necessary and the Divine Force cannot do things in the void but must lead each one according to his nature to the point at which he can feel the Mother working within and doing all for him. Till then the sadhak’s aspiration, self-consecration, assent and support to the Mother’s workings, his rejection of all that comes in the way is very necessary — indispensable.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is quite true that aspiration, rejection and the remembrance of the Mother and surrender to her and union with her consciousness are the main means of the sadhana. It is also true that to seek the supramental for oneself by one’s own means is a folly; that I have said from the beginning and emphasised it recently more and more. It is true also that to make the union with the Divine the cardinal aim and all the rest subsidiary and a consequence of it, not to seek progress, experiences, etc. for their own sake or for the sake of the ego is the proper attitude for the sadhak. It is true ﬁnally that meditation, vision and almost all else in the Yoga can be misused if the sadhak is self-centred, egoistic and obscure.


Sri Aurobindo: But that does not mean that meditation, vision etc. are of no use and should be avoided in the sadhana.  The theory that once you remember the Mother always, everything you do ﬂows from the Divine and therefore it does not matter what you do is rather a dangerous one. It may end by giving sanction instead of rejection to many things that ought to go out of the nature.   As for living a free outer life it cannot be said that that is good for everybody at every stage any more than living a retired life is good for everybody or at every stage.


Sri Aurobindo: The disadvantage of a free jolly outward social life without restrictions is that one becomes entirely or mostly externalised and that all sorts of vital interchanges are part of it which can hamper the inner growth or the total self-consecration to the Divine. The disadvantage of too complete a retirement is that it makes the person one-sided and shut up in himself, subjective, without the stabilising contact with earth and consequently with the danger of morbidity and self-delusion. A middle path with the rule of living more and more within, standing back from outward things but not throwing them aside, looking at them with a new consciousness, a new view and acting on them from this inner consciousness is the best way. But there is need for some at some stages to minimise outward contacts without abolishing them during part of the process of this shifting of the consciousness. No absolute rule can be laid down in this matter.


Sri Aurobindo:   Never heard of this 12 years affair or of any certiﬁcate. Perhaps in European occultism there are noviciates, stages, ordeals, grades etc. In India the Guru gives a mantra as soon as he accepts a disciple and tells him to go ahead with it.


Sri Aurobindo: We have no mantra except the Mother’s name. But usually we give work, tell them to aspire, reject, open to the Mother. I don’t know whether you call that the practical course. Anyhow people have got into difﬁculties here even without any practical course, most while doing their “twelve years” and in some cases we have had to push them into active sadhana as the only way to control the lower forces and get them out of it.


Sri Aurobindo: What things? I ﬁnd only a small minority doing anything at all except gossiping, discussing, quarrelling, complaining etc. etc. A certain number do the aspiration, rejection, Motherward turn — but nothing more. They have enough difﬁculty with that even.  How are they to develop it without any sadhana?


Sri Aurobindo: Just by sitting still? No one has it to start with.    The effort demanded of the sadhak is that of aspiration, rejection and surrender. If these three are done the rest is to come of itself by the Grace of the Mother and the working of her force in you.


Sri Aurobindo: But of the three the most important is surrender of which the ﬁrst necessary form is trust and conﬁdence and patience in difﬁculty.  There is no rule that trust and conﬁdence can only remain if aspiration is there. On the contrary, when even aspiration is not there because of the pressure of inertia, trust and conﬁdence and patience can remain. If trust and patience fail when aspiration is quiescent, that would mean that the sadhak is relying solely on his own effort — it would mean, “Oh, my aspiration has failed, so there is no hope for me. My aspiration fails, so what can Mother do?”


Sri Aurobindo: On the contrary, the sadhak should feel, “Never mind, my aspiration will come back again. Meanwhile I know that the Mother is with me even when I do not feel her; she will carry me even through the darkest period.” That is the fully right attitude you must have. To those who have it depression can do nothing; even if it comes it has to return bafﬂed. That is not tamasic surrender.


Sri Aurobindo: Tamasic surrender is when one says, “I won’t do anything; let Mother do everything. Aspiration, rejection, surrender even are not necessary. Let her do all that in me.” There is a great difference between the two attitudes.  One is that of the shirker who won’t do anything, the other is that of the sadhak who does his best, but when he is reduced to quiescence for a time and things are adverse, keeps always his trust in the Mother’s force and presence behind all and by that trust bafﬂes the opposition force and calls back the activity of the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo:   It depends on yourself — if there is a strong aspiration and quiet persistence, it can be done soon.  There is not much spiritual meaning in keeping open to the Mother if you withhold your surrender. Self-giving or surrender is demanded of those who practise this Yoga, because without such a progressive surrender of the being it is quite impossible to get anywhere near the goal.


Sri Aurobindo: To keep open means to call in her Force to work in you, and if you do not surrender to it, it amounts to not allowing the Force to work in you at all or else only on condition that it will work in the way you want and not in its own way which is the way of the Divine Truth. A suggestion of this kind is usually made by some adverse Power or by some egoistic element of mind or vital which wants the Grace or the Force, but only in order to use it for its own purpose, and is not willing to live for the Divine Purpose, — it is willing to take from the Divine all it can get, but not to give itself to the Divine. The soul, the true being, on the contrary, turns towards the Divine and is not only willing but eager and happy to surrender.  In this Yoga one is supposed to go beyond every mental idealistic culture. Ideas and ideals belong to the mind and are half-truths only; the mind too is, more often than not, satisﬁed with merely having an ideal, with the pleasure of idealising, while life remains always the same, untransformed or changed only a little and mostly in appearance.


Sri Aurobindo: The spiritual seeker does not turn aside from the pursuit of realisation to mere idealising; not to idealise, but to realise the Divine Truth is always his aim, either beyond or in life also — and in the latter case it is necessary to transform mind and life which cannot be done without surrender to the action of the Divine Force, the Mother.  To seek after the Impersonal is the way of those who want to withdraw from life, but usually they try by their own effort, and not by an opening of themselves to a superior Power or by the way of surrender; for the Impersonal is not something that guides or helps, but something to be attained and it leaves each man to attain it according to the way and capacity of his nature.  On the other hand by an opening and surrender to the Mother one can realise the Impersonal and every other aspect of Truth also.  The surrender must necessarily be progressive.


Sri Aurobindo: No one can make the complete surrender from the beginning, so it is quite natural that when one looks into oneself, one should ﬁnd its absence. That is no reason why the principle of surrender should not be accepted and carried out steadily from stage to stage, from ﬁeld to ﬁeld, applying it successively to all the parts of the nature.     It is necessary if you want to progress in your sadhana that you should make the submission and surrender of which you speak sincere, real and complete.


Sri Aurobindo: This cannot be as long as you mix up your desires with your spiritual aspiration. It cannot be as long as you cherish vital attachment to family, child or anything or anybody else. If you are to do this Yoga, you must have only one desire and aspiration, to receive the spiritual Truth and manifest it in all your thoughts, feelings, actions and nature. You must not hunger after any relations with anyone. The relations of the sadhaka with others must be created for him from within, when he has the true consciousness and lives in the Light.


Sri Aurobindo: They will be determined within him by the power and will of the Divine Mother according to the supramental Truth for the divine life and the divine work; they must not be determined by his mind and his vital desires. This is the thing you have to remember.   Your psychic being is capable of giving itself to the Mother and living and growing in the Truth; but your lower vital being has been full of attachments and sanskaras and an impure movement of desire and your external physical mind was not able to shake off its ignorant ideas and habits and open to the Truth. That was the reason why you were unable to progress, because you were keeping up an element and movements which could not be allowed to remain; for they were the exact opposite of what has to be established in a divine life.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother can only free you from these things, if you really want it, not only in your psychic being, but in your physical mind and all your vital nature. The sign will be that you no longer cherish or insist on your personal notions, attachments or desires, and that whatever the distance or wherever you may be, you will feel yourself open and the power and presence of the Mother with you and working in you and will be contented, quiet, conﬁdent, wanting nothing else, awaiting always the Mother’s will.    However hard the ﬁght, the only thing is to ﬁght it out now and here to the end.  The trouble is that you have never fully faced and conquered the real obstacle.


Sri Aurobindo: There is in a very fundamental part of your nature a strong formation of ego-individuality which has mixed in your spiritual aspiration a clinging element of pride and spiritual ambition. This formation has never consented to be broken up in order to give place to something more true and divine. Therefore, when the Mother has put her force upon you or when you yourself have pulled the force upon you, this in you has always prevented it from doing its work in its own way. It has begun itself building according to the ideas of the mind or some demand of the ego, trying to make its own creation in its “own way”, by its own strength, its own sadhana, its own tapasya.  There has never been here any real surrender, any giving up of yourself freely and simply into the hands of the Divine Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: And yet that is the only way to succeed in the supramental Yoga.  To be a Yogi, a Sannyasi, a Tapaswi is not the object here. The object is transformation, and the transformation can only be done by a force inﬁnitely greater than your own; it can only be done by being truly like a child in the hands of the Divine Mother.   You can write to her brieﬂy — telling her that the life of sansar is in its nature a ﬁeld of unrest — to go through it in the right way one has to offer one’s life and actions to the Divine and pray for the peace of the Divine within. When the mind becomes quiet, one can feel the Divine Mother supporting the life and put everything into her hands — these are the ﬁrst things to do, if she wants to have peace.


Sri Aurobindo:   In these moods the thoughts that assail you are so much out of focus! The essence of surrender is not to ask the Mother before doing anything — but to accept whole-heartedly the inﬂuence and the guidance, when the joy and peace come down to accept them without question or cavil and let them grow, when the Force is felt at work to let it work without opposition, when the Knowledge is given to receive and follow it, when the Will is revealed to make oneself its instrument. It is also, no doubt, to accept the guidance and control of the Guru who is at least supposed to know better than oneself what is or is not the Truth and the way to the Truth. All that is nothing very terrible, it is simple common sense.


Sri Aurobindo: As to the particular kind of control you speak of, it is not imposed on anybody; it is only a few in the Asram who at all follow any such rule. whom you mention would not have dreamed a year or two ago of asking the Mother before doing anything; if he does so now, it is not because the Mother told him to do so or “imposed” it on him, but because he felt the need for it for his sadhana. The Mother never imposed any rule on; he made his own rule of life of his own accord according to his own perception of the best way for him to concentrate and took the sanction of the Mother.  You yourself were told by the Mother that you had no need to do what was trying to do in this respect at that time of her own motion — that for each it was only when he felt the need that he should do it. I do not see therefore why you should fear so much for your liberty — when in the whole Asram of 120 people there are hardly half a dozen who follow any such rule of strict external surrender.


Sri Aurobindo: And I cannot understand what you mean by the reproach that we have made some people stiff and speechless. Who are they? , ,? As far as I know, they are quite indefatigable and eloquent or ﬂuent talkers.


Sri Aurobindo: I am guiltless of the crime you charge against me.  Another thing let me correct. It is not at all correct to say that we — in this instance the Mother, never warned and of their deterioration — they were warned and plainly warned and also of the inﬂuences from outside the Asram to which they were succumbing. The Mother had even foreseen from the beginning that this might happen and put them on their guard in due time.  If they fell, it was because they preferred to follow their lower nature and side with the lower forces.


Sri Aurobindo: The Divine can lead, he does not drive. There is an internal freedom permitted to every mental being called man to assent or not to assent to the Divine leading — how else can any real spiritual evolution be done?  If there is so serious an obstacle to your going forward, it consists only of two things, your vital depressions and your mental doubts which make you challenge even the experiences you have and belittle any progress you make. Never have we told you to be stiff and gloomy and speechless — on the contrary we have pressed upon the other side. Other obstacles or difﬁculties there are, but they could be overcome if these two things were out of the way or rejected and inoperative.


Sri Aurobindo: If I constantly encourage you, it is not because I see you deteriorating and want to hide it — I see nothing of the kind, — but because I have faith in your capacities and see the nobler behind all outward weakness. I would not speak what I know to be false — that much credit you can give me.  P. S. What put this into your head that you are regarded as an untouchable and a bad inﬂuence? If every man who had difﬁculties were so regarded, the whole Asram would be an asylum of untouchables.


Sri Aurobindo:   The best way is to live in the psychic being, for that is always surrendered to the Mother and can lead the others in the right way. For control one has to centralise somewhere — some do it in the mind or above the mind, others do it in the heart and through the heart in the psychic centre.


Sri Aurobindo: Now that you are here, try to enter into the higher ways of the sadhana. Withdraw from the vital and its demands and desires, make the inner heart and the psychic being your centre and seek union with the Mother’s consciousness through self-giving and surrender.   You have to make your vital single-pointed towards the Mother, peaceful, without demands and desires, aspiring only for surrender and to be one with the Mother’s consciousness and ﬁlled with her.


Sri Aurobindo: I can only say — it is your vital you have to change. Make it perfectly straight and clear and pure. Make it free from all selfishness, blindness, insincerity, anger, abhiman, self-indulgence, vital desire — and give it as a pure offering to the Mother.   The body as well as all else came from the Mother and has to be surrendered to her as an instrument. That is all that is needed.


Sri Aurobindo:  Surrender means to look to the Divine Mother only — to reject all desires and do only her will, not to insist on one’s own ideas and preferences, but to ask for her Truth only, to obey and follow her guidance, to open oneself and become aware of her Force and its workings and to allow those workings to change the nature into the divine nature.     Yes, but it is not enough that the lower vital should put itself into the Mother’s hands.


Sri Aurobindo: The whole physical and subconscient and everything else must do likewise.   Put all before the Mother in your heart so that her Light may work on it for the best.     This is the best possible kind of concentration.


Sri Aurobindo:    It is the true attitude so to leave all to the Mother and trust entirely in her and let her lead you on the path to the goal.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is then a of surrender. But the surrender must be to the Mother — not even to the Force, but to the Mother herself.  There is no need of all this complication. If the psychic manifests, it will not ask you to surrender to it, but to surrender to the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo:   I had said that the human vital does not like to be controlled or dominated by another and I said that that also was a reason why sadhaks found it difﬁcult to surrender to the Mother. For the vital wants to afﬁrm its own ideas, impulses, desires, preferences and to do what it likes, it does not want to feel another force than that of its own nature leading or driving it; but surrender to the Mother means that it must give up all these personal things and allow her Force to guide and drive it in the ways of a higher Truth which are not its own ways: so it resists, does not want to be dominated by the Truth Light and the Mother’s Force, insists on its own independence and refuses to surrender.  These ideas of breakdown and personal frustration are again wrong suggestions and the dissatisfaction with yourself is as harmful almost as dissatisfaction with the Mother would be.


Sri Aurobindo: It prevents the conﬁdence and courage necessary for following the path of the sadhana. You must dismiss these suggestions from you.    Frequently when I put a strong suggestion or pressure upon you, your inner being becomes conscious of it and something of it comes to your surface perceptions; but also, usually, your external mind, which is always busy and active trying to take a hand in everything, gives it a wrong turn or twist.  What I wanted you to do was (1) to surrender wholly to the Mother, sincerely, simply and without any reserves of the ego, (2) to become conscious of the habitual defects of your external being and reject them, (3) to open these obscure parts to the light and change their movement.


Sri Aurobindo: This was the twist — the mental turn of giving up all reserve — interpreted not as a complete surrender to the Divine Shakti, but as giving yourself up to anything that came, which might very well be a wrong movement of the lower vital Nature or even a hostile force.  I have repeatedly said that this kind of passivity is not the meaning of surrender. You cannot surrender at the same time to the Divine Shakti and to the movements of the lower cosmic Nature. To allow everything as her movement is to contradict the very sense and object of this Yoga. To surrender to the Mother means that you stop giving yourself to these other forces.


Sri Aurobindo: Therefore discrimination (by the psychic feeling and the seeing conscious mind, more even than by the thinking part) and rejection are necessary accompaniments and helps to consecration and surrender.   Naturally, with this wrong turn, the ﬁrst result was that certain things in you to which the mind had refused free outward play but of which you had not been sufﬁciently conscious or else not able to reject from your nature got their chance and manifested in a very extravagant manner.  It is the receptivity to the Mother’s presence and her forces.


Sri Aurobindo: Aspiration, quietude, widening of oneself to receive, rejection of all that tries to shut you to the Divine.  You have to be vigilant and see that there is no movement of disturbance, desire, ego.  That shows itself at once — when you feel the divine peace, equality, wideness, light, Ananda, Knowledge, strength, when you are aware of the Mother’s nearness or presence or the working of her Force, etc., etc. If any of these things are felt, it is the opening — the more are felt, the more complete the opening.


Sri Aurobindo: By aspiration, by consent of the being to the workings of the Divine Force, by the descent and working of that Force.     That is the ﬁrst step towards opening.


Sri Aurobindo:   By faith and surrender in a quiet mind.


Sri Aurobindo: To be open is simply to be so turned to the Mother that her Force can work in you without anything refusing or obstructing her action. If the mind is shut up in its own ideas and refuses to allow her to bring in the Light and the Truth, if the vital clings to its desires and does not admit the true initiative and impulsions that the Mother’s power brings, if the physical is shut up in its desire, habits and inertia and does not allow the Light and Force to enter in it and work, then one is not open. It is not possible to be entirely open all at once in all the movements, but there must be a central opening in each part and a dominant aspiration or will in each part (not in the mind alone) to admit only the Mother’s workings, the rest will then be progressively done.   To remain open to the Mother is to remain always quiet and happy and conﬁdent, not restless, not grieving or desponding, to let her force work in you, guide you, give you knowledge, give you peace and Ananda.


Sri Aurobindo: If you cannot keep yourself open, then aspire constantly but quietly that you may be open.  Everyone who is turned to the Mother is doing my Yoga. It is a great mistake to suppose that one can “do” the Purna Yoga — i.e. carry out and fulﬁl all the sides of the Yoga by one’s own effort. No human being can do that. What one has to do is to put oneself in the Mother’s hands and open oneself to her by service, by bhakti, by aspiration; then the Mother by her light and force works in him so that the sadhana is done.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a mistake also to have the ambition to be a big Purna Yogi or a supramental being and ask oneself how far have I got towards that. The right attitude is to be devoted and given to the Mother and to wish to be whatever she wants you to be. The rest is for the Mother to decide and do in you.


Sri Aurobindo: Write to him that he can begin sadhana, if he feels truly the call. He need do nothing at ﬁrst but sit in meditation for a short time every day and try to open himself to the Mother’s power, aspiring for the opening, for a true change of consciousness, for peace, purity and strength to go through the sadhana, for her protection against all difﬁculties and errors and for an always increasing devotion. Let him see ﬁrst if he can thus successfully open himself.


Sri Aurobindo: You write always as if all opening must be to the confused mental and vital movements, thoughts, voices etc. That is not so. You can be open in all your being, but to the Mother alone, to the Divine alone and to nothing else.  When the consciousness is ﬁlled with the Mother’s force, then there is the condition you speak of as felt in the head — a solid block, compact, silent, free from all random thoughts and movements. But this can be felt not only in the head, but in all the body and also in all the consciousness above, around and below the body.


Sri Aurobindo: When it is like that then all foreign intrusions are either automatically excluded or if they come, easily observed and rejected as not one’s own and not the Divine’s. One feels full of the Divine, full of the Mother’s force and presence so that nothing else can enter and misuse the mind, the vital or the body.    The Truth for you is to feel the Divine in you, open to the Mother and work for the Divine till you are aware of her in all your actions. The physical presence here is not enough; there must be this consciousness of the divine presence in your heart and the divine guidance in your acts.


Sri Aurobindo: This the psychic being can easily, swiftly, deeply feel if it is fully awake; once the psychic has felt it, it can spread to the mental and vital also.    The advantage of being in the psychic consciousness is that you have the right awareness and its will being in harmony with the Mother’s will, you can call in the Mother’s Force to make the change. Those who live in the mind and the vital are not so well able to do this; they are obliged to use mostly their personal effort and as the awareness and will and force of the mind and vital are divided and imperfect, the work done is imperfect and not deﬁnitive. It is only in the Supermind that Awareness, Will, Force are always one movement and automatically effective.


Sri Aurobindo:  You have only to aspire, to keep yourself open to the Mother, to reject all that is contrary to her will and to let her work in you — doing also all your work for her and in the faith that it is through her force that you can do it. If you remain open in this way the knowledge and realisation will come to you in due course.   Keep yourself open to the Mother in the right attitude of surrender and you will receive from her gradually all that you need within you.   It is very good. By remaining psychically open to the Mother, all that is necessary for work or sadhana develops progressively, that is one of the chief secrets, the central secret of the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo:  There is no part of you that is not open, but you have to make the opening always wider and the reception more complete; but that too will be done progressively if you remember and call the Mother’s force at all times and remain conﬁdent, vigilant and devoted, as you have been and are.    Sri Aurobindo says in reply to your letter that you can meditate on the Mother in the heart and call on her — remember her and dedicate or offer to her all your life and thoughts and actions. If you like you can make a japa of her name.


Sri Aurobindo: You can call to her to purify your being and change your nature.  Or you can concentrate to call down from above you (where it always is) ﬁrst her calm and peace, then her power and light and her ananda. It is always there above the head — but superconscient to the human mind — by aspiration and concentration it can become conscient to it and the adhar can open to it so that it descends and enters into mind, life and body.    There is no meaning in such a question.


Sri Aurobindo: Those who follow the Yoga here are accepted by the Mother — for “accepted” means “admitted into the Yoga, accepted as disciples”. But the progress in the Yoga and the siddhi in the Yoga depend on the degree to which there is the opening.   Keep open to the Mother — throw away the faults and defects of character you can change of yourself — allow the Mother’s power to work in you — then these difﬁculties can be made to disappear, the mind will open.   To be open to the Mother, you should be open both within and without. You should be perfectly frank and tell her everything — do not shrink from showing to her candidly all that is within you.


Sri Aurobindo: That will at once enable you to be completely open and her also to help you fully.   Keep yourself open, remember the Mother always — call for her help and guidance in your work. You must get into a condition in which not only the calmness remains always but the sadhana is going on all the time in work and rest as well as in meditation.    No, it is not enough to be in the Asram — one has to open to the Mother and put away the mud which one was playing with in the world.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is a mistake to exercise the mind about these things and try to arrange them with the ordinary mind. It is by conﬁdence in the Mother that the opening needed will come when your consciousness is ready. There is no harm in arranging your present work so that there will be time and energy for some meditation, but it is not by meditation alone that what is needed will come.


Sri Aurobindo: It is by faith and openness to the Mother.    Openness is not always complete from the ﬁrst — a part of the being opens, other parts of the consciousness remain still closed or half open only — one has to aspire till all is open. Even with the best and most powerful sadhak the full opening takes time; nor is there anyone who has been able to abandon everything at once without any struggle. There is no reason to feel therefore that if you call, you will not be heard — the Mother knows the difﬁculties of human nature and will help you through.


Sri Aurobindo: Persevere always, call always and then after each difﬁculty there will be a progress.    As for poise or mode — that you need not trouble yourself about.  An entire faith, opening, self-giving to the Mother are the one condition necessary throughout.


Sri Aurobindo: That is only true if one can open oneself to the Mother. To be here and shut up to it and under another control does not help.    That is what must be done. Trust in the Mother and will only to be open to her always and as quietly conﬁdent as may be.


Sri Aurobindo: The work to be done is too great for the outer mind to understand how it is to be done; it is only by growing light and experience that one day it begins to understand — it is also too great and difﬁcult for it to do by itself, — it can only help the Power that is working by its readiness, aspiration, faith, quietude. But in no sadhak are these things constant — the aspiration gets suspended, the faith wavers, the quietude is disturbed or shaken — but still the Mother is there at work and one has only to persevere, — ﬁnally the perseverance will be justiﬁed by the result.  To give up is the one thing one must never do.


Sri Aurobindo: That the mind is turning away more and more from outward things and the will to be turned wholly to the Mother is growing is very good, for that is the ﬁrst necessity. The condition of being so turned and wholly open can then more easily develop. The two minutes’ ﬂash of opening showed you how it will come; for it comes like that, by glimpses at ﬁrst of brief duration, but afterwards it grows in hold and duration till it is ready for permanence. It is a new birth in the nature and so it can’t come all at once, but once begun it grows till it is perfect. Of course the more quiet the consciousness can remain in a steady way, the more the condition is favourable for this to be.


Sri Aurobindo:   The ﬁrst thing one has to be careful not to do, is not to shut oneself in any way to the Mother. If one conceals what is happening in one from the Mother, something gets shut up. It is the mistake has been making. Formerly she was quite open and unreserved and whenever there came a difﬁculty she got the full help.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother has told her to be perfectly open and hide nothing; if she does that, she will soon recover.  The Mother can not only know everything but do everything if she decides to do so — but if she did, where would be the sadhana? All would be only puppets moving in her hands.  There are certain conditions which the sadhak must satisfy, and the Divine veils his power and knowledge so that the sadhak may have the occasion to love and will and think and act and grow into the true consciousness.  As for writing, the Mother has no time any longer, that is why she leaves it to me.


Sri Aurobindo: formerly used to tell the Mother to take full rest and not wear herself out etc. — how is it now she weeps because the Mother does not write? Her former attitude was the true one — she was in the psychic consciousness and always with the Mother’s presence close to her.   In meditation you must call on the Mother and concentrate on the call in your heart till you feel an opening to her or some inner contact with her.    If you cannot meditate, pray.


Sri Aurobindo: Offer all you do to the Mother and pray to her to take control of your actions and your nature.   Love and worship. What is needed is to get a full opening in which you will become conscious of the Mother. These things will bring the opening.


Sri Aurobindo: Only, even if it takes time, you must not get depression, despair or revolt — for these things get into the way of the opening.   The whole thing is to keep yourself open to the Mother. The preparation of the nature for the decisive experiences always takes time and should be a continuous self-opening without discouragement or impatience for immediate results.   Conﬁdence in the Mother followed by a full opening to her is the best way.   The Mother is never far from you.


Sri Aurobindo: If you keep open, you will always feel her with you.   Keep open to the Mother’s peace and joy — by living in it you will come to live in her.    Yes, but it must be done with your inner assent and you must take the right attitude and openness to the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo:   By thinking less and less of oneself and more and more of the Divine.   By quieting the mind and vital, by concentrating more on the Mother and by calling for her Force to enter and work in the being.  It is because one receives mental and vital inﬂuences from others and some of these are harmful.


Sri Aurobindo: When the psychic being comes in the front.  The ordinary way is to read and study or to observe and try to understand all things; the sadhak’s way is to open his mind to the light from above.  If an adverse Force comes, one has not to accept and welcome its suggestions, but to turn to the Mother and refuse to turn away from her. Whether one can open or not, one has to be loyal and faithful.


Sri Aurobindo: Loyalty and ﬁdelity are not qualities for which one has to do Yoga; they are very simple things which any man or woman who aspires to the Truth ought to be able to accomplish.  The infant in the Mother’s arms is the symbol of the psychic being. The soul in direct touch with the divine Truth is hidden in man by the mind, the vital being and the physical nature (  of the Taittiriya Upanishad); one may practise Yoga and get illuminations in the mind and the reason, power and all kinds of experiences in the vital, even physical siddhis, but if the true soul-power behind and the psychic nature do not come into the front , nothing genuine has been done. In this Yoga, the psychic being is that which opens the rest of the nature to the true supramental light and ﬁnally to the supreme Ananda.


Sri Aurobindo: If the soul is awakened, if there is a new birth out of the mere mental, vital and physical into the psychic consciousness, then the Yoga can be done; otherwise (by the mere power of the mind or any other part) it is impossible. It is this new birth, this awakening of the psychic consciousness, that the Mother is offering in the vision.  If the golden Purusha refuses it, it must be because he is bound by some kind of attachment, probably to mere “knowledge”. In that case, he is not very consistent; for it was he who demanded surrender to the Mother and now he rejects the very heart and meaning of the surrender. Probably this repeated experience is an indication of the principal difﬁculty in the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: If there is refusal of the psychic new birth, a refusal to become the child new born from the Mother, owing to attachment to intellectual knowledge or mental ideas or to some vital desire, then there will be a failure in the sadhana. Only if it is accepted, can his coming and doing sadhana here be fruitful.    Keep yourself open to the Mother’s Force, but do not trust all forces. As you go on, if you keep straight, you will come to a time when the psychic becomes more predominantly active and the Light from above prevails more purely and strongly so that the chance of mental constructions and vital formations mixing with the true experience diminishes.


Sri Aurobindo: As I have told you, these are not and cannot be the supramental Forces; it is a work of preparation which is only making things ready for a future Yoga-siddhi.    No. Awakening is a different thing, it means the conscious action of the psychic from behind. When it comes to the front it invades the mind and vital and body and psychicises their movements.


Sri Aurobindo: It comes best by aspiration and an unquestioning and entire turning and surrender to the Mother. But also it sometimes comes of itself when the Adhar is ready.     The inner being does not open except by sadhana or by some psychic touch on the life.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes, it is by quieting the mind that you will become able to call the Mother and open to her. The soothing effect was a touch from the psychic — one of the touches that prepare the opening of the psychic with its gift of inner peace, love and joy.


Sri Aurobindo: Get rid of these dissatisfactions, they prevent the permanent psychic opening.    What the psychic always feels is “What the Mother does is for the best”, and it accepts all with gladness.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the vital part of the heart that is easily touched by the suggestions.     The direct opening of the psychic centre is easy only when the ego-centricity is greatly diminished and also if there is a strong bhakti for the Mother. A spiritual humility and sense of submission and dependence is necessary.


Sri Aurobindo: There is only one thing needed to make anyone ﬁt for the Mother’s grace — it is a perfect sincerity and a truthful openness to the Mother in all the being.     It depends not only on the will of the Mother but on the sincerity of the sadhak. I do not see that you have any sincere will to do Yoga or to change.


Sri Aurobindo:   By sincerity Mother meant being open to no inﬂuence but the Divine’s only. Now, if the whole being were sincere in that sense even to every cell of the body, what could prevent the most rapid transformation? People cannot be like that, however much the enlightened part of them may want to, because of the nature of the Ignorance out of which the ordinary Prakriti has been built — hence the necessity of a long and laborious working.


Sri Aurobindo:   Of course; but most do not ﬁnd it easy to take the Mother as their all.


Sri Aurobindo: What is meant by sincere sadhana? In the Mother’s deﬁnition of sincere, it means “opening only to the Divine Forces”, i.e. rejecting all the others even if they come.  When they descend, it is by the soul’s aspiration and the Mother’s grace.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother’s grace is there always; open yourself to it in quietude and conﬁdence.    What is all this nonsense? The grace of the Mother does not withdraw; open yourself and you will feel it.


Sri Aurobindo:    The presence whose fading he regrets can only be felt if the inner being continues to be consecrated and the outer nature is put into harmony or at least kept under the touch of the inner spirit. But if he does things which his inner being does not approve , this condition will be inevitably tarnished and, each time, the possibility of his feeling the presence will diminish.


Sri Aurobindo: He must have a strong will to puriﬁcation and an aspiration that does not ﬂag and cease, if the Mother’s grace is to be there and effective.   To practise Yoga implies the will to overcome all attachments and turn to the Divine alone. The principal thing in the Yoga is to trust in the Divine Grace at every step, to direct the thought continually to the Divine and to offer oneself till the being opens  and the Mother’s force can be felt working in the Adhara.


Sri Aurobindo:   What do you mean “by the consent”? The Mother’s Grace comes down by the Mother’s will. The Purusha can accept or reject the Grace.


Sri Aurobindo: The more one develops the psychic, the more is it possible for the Grace to act.    Both general and special.


Sri Aurobindo: You have only to keep yourself open and whatever you need and can receive at the moment will come.    It is so — if the sadhaks had been different in their reaction to the Mother’s grace, the work in the physical would have been much easier and less perilously subject to hostile attacks; perhaps it would have been done by now.  Make yourself quiet and open — have complete conﬁdence and you will feel the Mother’s presence with you.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is by the constant remembrance that the being is prepared for the full opening. By the opening of the heart the Mother’s presence begins to be felt and by the opening to her Power above the Force of the higher consciousness comes down into the body and works there to change the whole nature.   The Divine Mother is everywhere and at all times she is with you. If one opens and becomes conscious, then one can feel her presence.


Sri Aurobindo: It is because the nature is ignorant, full of itself and its desires that one cannot feel the presence. If one turns from self and desires and lives inwardly and outwardly for the Divine, then one begins to feel the divine Presence.     The condition you describe is a very good one and it is evident from it that you opened sincerely to the Mother when you met her.


Sri Aurobindo: Keep that sincere opening always and eventually a state of peace and joy and the sense of the Mother’s presence will become permanent.   Let the vital and the heart open always to the Mother’s presence — the true source of peace.  The Mother is always there with you. You have only to throw away the forces of Ignorance to feel her with you always.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is said that the Mother is always present and looking at you.  That does not mean that in her physical mind she is thinking of you always and seeing your thoughts. There is no need of that, since she is everywhere and acts everywhere out of her universal knowledge.  Yes, quite right.


Sri Aurobindo:   Including what Lloyd George had today for breakfast or what Roosevelt said to his wife about their servants? Why should the Mother “know” in the human way all such happenings on the physical plane? Her business in her embodiment is to know the working of the universal forces and use them for her work; for the rest she knows what she needs to know, sometimes with her inner self, sometimes with her physical mind. All knowledge is available in her universal self to her, but she brings forward only what is meant to be brought forward so that the work may be done.


Sri Aurobindo:   No. It is perhaps how some part of the vital or physical consciousness ﬁgured it. But the path is not a desert nor are you alone, since the Mother is with you.


Sri Aurobindo:   The Mother is always with you. The vital has its desires and therefore does not believe in the Mother’s presence. You have to call down the Mother’s Force into it to remove its doubts and desires.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother is always with you. Put your faith in her, remain quiet within and do with that quietude what has to be done. You will become more and more aware of her constant Presence, will feel her action behind yours and the burden of your work will no longer be heavy on you.


Sri Aurobindo: If by physically you mean corporeally, in her visible tangible material body, it is obvious that it cannot be. When you asked Mother the question she did not understand you to mean that — she said she could be present everywhere, and she meant, of course, in her consciousness. It is the consciousness and not the body that is the being, the person; the body is only a support and instrument for the action of the consciousness. Mother can be personally present in her consciousness. The universal presence of course is always there and the universal and personal are two aspects of the same being.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is the feeling of the physical or outward being which is by its ignorance unable to feel the Mother’s nearness.  The Mother is always near and within, it is only the obscurity of mind and vital that do not see or feel it. That is a knowledge which the mind ought to hold ﬁrmly.  Live always as if you were under the very eye of the Supreme and of the Divine Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: Do nothing, try to think and feel nothing that would be unworthy of the Divine Presence.    The constant presence of the Mother comes by practice; the Divine Grace is essential for success in the sadhana, but it is the practice that prepares the descent of the Grace.  You have to learn to go inward, ceasing to live in external things only, quiet the mind and aspire to become aware of the Mother’s workings in you.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is a matter, ﬁrst, of the constant activity of the psychic and secondly of the conversion of the physical and its openness to inner supraphysical experience. Apart from the vital and its disturbances the physical is the chief difﬁculty in establishing a continuity of Yogic consciousness and experience. If the physical is thoroughly transformed — opened and conscious — then stability and continuity become easy.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is quite necessary to realise the Mother in her formless presence and not only in her form.    But I do not see why you call the feeling sentimental or think that your sense of the presence of the Mother in the heart-beats etc. was unreal. It was your psychic being that suggested it to you and the response showed that the consciousness was ready.


Sri Aurobindo: Mother felt that something was happening in you and felt that it was the beginning of a realisation — she was encouraging it and did not discourage. If it had been a wrong or vital movement she would not have felt like that.    It is a veil which disappears when the Mother’s working as well as her presence is consciously felt at all times.


Sri Aurobindo: One can feel the Divine Consciousness impersonally as a new consciousness only. The Mother’s Presence is something more — one feels herself there present within or above or enveloping one or all these together.    The feeling of the Mother’s Presence or nearness does not depend on whether you write or do not write. Many who write often do not feel it, some who write seldom feel her always close.


Sri Aurobindo:   I meant that one can feel the divine consciousness as an impersonal spiritual state, a state of peace, light, joy, wideness without feeling in it the Divine Presence. The Divine Presence is felt as that of one who is the living source and essence of that light etc., a Being therefore, not merely a spiritual state. The Mother’s Presence is still more concrete, deﬁnite, personal — it is not that of Someone unknown, of a Power or Being, but of one who is known, intimate, loved, to whom one can offer all the being in a living concrete way.


Sri Aurobindo: The image is not indispensable, though it helps — the presence can be inwardly felt without it.    There is no such necessary precedence as that ﬁrst one must feel the Presence and then only can one feel oneself the Mother’s; it is more often the increase of the feeling that brings the Presence.  For the feeling comes from the psychic consciousness and it is the growth of the psychic consciousness that makes the constant Presence at last possible. The feeling comes from the psychic and is true of the inner being — its not being yet fulﬁlled in the whole does not make it an imagination; on the contrary, the more it grows the more is the likelihood of the whole being fulﬁlling this truth; the inner takes more and more possession of the outer consciousness and remoulds it so as to make it a truth there also.


Sri Aurobindo: This is the constant principle of action in the Yogic transformation — what is true within comes out and takes possession of the mind and heart and will and through them prevails over the ignorance of the outer members and brings the inner truth out there also.      What stands in the way is the recurring circle of the old mixture.


Sri Aurobindo: To break out of that is very necessary to arrive at an inner Yogic calm and peace not disturbed by these things. If that is established, it will be possible to feel in it the Mother’s Presence, to open to her guidance, to get, not by occasional glimpses but in a steady opening and ﬂowering, the psychic perception and the descent of the spiritual Light and Ananda. For that help will be with you.


Sri Aurobindo: It is quite right and part of the right consciousness in sadhana that you should feel drawn in your heart towards the Mother and aspire for the vision and realisation of her presence. But there should not be any kind of restlessness joined to this feeling. The feeling should be quietly intense. It will then be easier for the sense of the presence to come and to grow in you.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes. It is the result of the pressure put by the Mother to see and do things in the true light. What you feel coming down is the true consciousness with the presence and action of the Mother.    It is the Mother’s touch that you feel upon you — and that indicates her presence.


Sri Aurobindo: In the state of the consciousness it is the Force working on the system which brings what is needed or aspired to, peace or light or happiness and the psychic opening.  Peace, quiet, followed by a happy state and a psychic opening is what you need — let that grow always.   Certainly very few seem to realise what a possibility has been given them here — all has been turned into an opportunity for the bubbling of the vital or the tamas of the physical rather than used for the intended psychic and spiritual purpose.


Sri Aurobindo: I was not speaking of any particular thing — but the whole spiritual possibility due to the Mother’s presence here. Very few realise what that means and even those who have some idea of it take little advantage and allow their lower nature to block the progress.  The forces can always be there so long as there is not the transformation of the whole nature. They manifest themselves whenever they can. But if the Presence of the Mother can always be felt vividly and continuously, then one need not be troubled by their endeavours; one can face and repel them in the full consciousness of the Mother’s grace and protection.


Sri Aurobindo: No doubt can remain if there is the realisation of the Divine Consciousness and the Mother’s Presence. Imperfections may remain in the outer being, but they do not trouble the inner being and can be got rid of quietly.    In your letters you say always that the Mother has withdrawn from you and you think she does it deliberately because of some fault or defect in your nature. This is an error.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother is always present with you; she does not withdraw. But if you believe otherwise, if you always expect her to withdraw, it will cloud your perception and prevent you from realising her presence. On the contrary, have the faith that, whether you feel it or not, her presence and her protection are always there. When old feelings or attachments rise from the subconscient, call her force and light in to clear all that is obscure, for they are there always ready to act. Do not admit any thoughts or ideas that lead to despondency or any kind of tamas.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is quite true that if the consciousness remains always centred in the Mother, then there would be no place for any kind of obscuration or disturbance; but that is not easy for the human mind and vital to get at once. One has to go on perseveringly till one has reached it.  The quickness with which the consciousness changes is a feature of the ordinary action of the physical consciousness when it is active and not inert.


Sri Aurobindo: But many of the things you now feel (of which you speak in your letters), e.g. the idea of the Mother’s presence and her regard on you, the reference in what you think and do to her with the idea of her approval or disapproval, are signs that the psychic is acting in your lower vital and physical mind and increasing its rule over their movements.  The forms that came before your eyes are sometimes glimpses of the things on other planes, sometimes symbols; e.g., the golden water, golden tree, rising moon. At certain stages of the inner opening such things come in great number before the inner vision. The feet of which you saw the golden footprints must have been the Mother’s in one of her divine forms descending from the higher plane. The pricking and the heat are both of them signs of an action of the Force taking place within and so affecting the body.


Sri Aurobindo: The psychic relations I spoke of are those which men form in life which help the power of the psychic to grow and prepare it for the time when it will be ready to come forward and govern the mind, vital and body instead of allowing the mind or the vital to lead the rest. There is a difference between the psychic and the self. The self is the Atman above which is one in all, remains always wide, free, pure, untouched by the action of life in its ignorance. Its nature is peace, freedom, light, wideness, Ananda.


Sri Aurobindo: The psychic () is the individual being which comes down into life and travels from birth to birth and feels the experiences and grows by them till it is able to join itself with the pure Atman above.  An emanation. How can her physical body be seen in a dream experience?


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother when she works in the supra-physical levels goes out in a different emanation to each sadhak.    Yes. Or rather something of her is always with you.  Good Lord!


Sri Aurobindo: you don’t expect her mind to be a factual encyclopaedia of all that is happening on all the planes and in all the universes? Or even on this earth — e.g. what Lloyd George had for dinner yesterday?   Questions of consciousness of course she always knows even with her outermost physical mind. Material facts she can know but is not bound to do it. The matter however is too complex for answer in a short space.


Sri Aurobindo: What would be true to say, is that she can know if she concentrates or if her attention is called to it and she decides to know.  I often know from her what has happened before it is reported by anyone. But she does not care to do that on a general scale.  It is the emanation of the Mother that is with each sadhak all the time. In former days when she was spending the night in a trance actively working in the Asram, she brought back with her the knowledge of all that was happening to everybody.


Sri Aurobindo: Nowadays she has no time for that.  In this respect the Mother is guided by her intuitions which tell her which ﬂower is needed at the moment or helpful. Sometimes it is accompanied by a perception of a particular state of consciousness, sometimes by that of a material fact; but only the bare fact, usually — e.g. it would not specify that it was hot khichari that was cooked or how or came in. Not that that is impossible, but it is unnecessary and does not happen unless needed.  In this case it was a general hint with no special reference to khichari.


Sri Aurobindo:   I am not aware of any emanations of mine. As for the Mother’s, they are not there for protection, but to support the personal relation or contact with the sadhaka and to act so far as he will allow them to act.    It is terribly difﬁcult to write of these things, for you are all as ignorant as blazes about these things and misunderstand at every step.


Sri Aurobindo: The Emanation is not a deputy, but the Mother herself. She is not bound to her body, but can put herself out (emanate) in any way she likes. What emanates, suits itself to the nature of the personal relation she has with the sadhak which is different with each, but that does not prevent it from being herself. Its presence with the sadhak is not dependent on his consciousness of it. If everything were dependent on the surface consciousness of the sadhak, there would be no possibility of the divine action anywhere; the human worm would remain the human worm and the human ass the human ass for ever and ever.


Sri Aurobindo: For if the Divine could not be there behind the veil, how could either ever become conscious of anything but their wormhood and asshood even throughout the ages?  With the Mother, the emanation helping — which is its business.  If the mind of the person is very clear, yes: otherwise it may be only the substance that comes or a part of the thought or some general idea.


Sri Aurobindo: Mother acted on her inner perception about the whole affair; she does not act only on the outer facts but on what she feels or sees lying behind them.      What you write about is true.


Sri Aurobindo: She does not realise that Mother knows all these things by other means and any information given to her only adds certain physical precisions to what she knows already.  How can she be open when she has such ideas against the Mother? They must necessarily shut her up to the Mother’s inﬂuence.  Mother has written to her that had said nothing and that she knew things about, independently of any information, from’s inner being itself which comes to her constantly and tells her or shows her what is in the nature.  The Mother besides sees things in vision and receives the thoughts of the sadhaks at Pranam and other times.


Sri Aurobindo: Only the Mother never acts on these supraphysical intimations, unless there is a physical conﬁrmation like the letter itself in this case.  For nobody would understand her action — the sadhaks living in the physical mind would state her action unfounded and those affected would deny loudly — as many have done in the past — their secret thoughts, feelings and actions. I tell you all this in conﬁdence so that you may understand what is the real cause of Mother’s letters to.    It would not be worthwhile.


Sri Aurobindo: Mother can see what people are doing by images received by her in the subtle state which corresponds to sleep or concentration or by images or intimations received in the ordinary state; but much even of what comes to her automatically like that is unnecessary and to be always receiving everything would be intolerably troublesome as it would keep the consciousness occupied with a million trivialities; so that does not happen. What is more important is to know their inner condition and it is this chieﬂy which comes to her.  The image and the Presence are not the same. One can feel the Presence without seeing the image. But to produce the results you speak of, the Presence in the heart is not sufﬁcient, there must be Presence in the whole consciousness and the Force of the Mother governing all the action of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo:   Why should it be exceptional to see the Sun and Moon on each side or to feel the Mother’s presence everywhere around? There are plenty of sadhaks who have had these or equivalent experiences. What would be exceptional is to feel the Mother’s presence like that always. But occasional experiences like these many have had.


Sri Aurobindo: No, it is not subjective merely. By your meditating near them, you have been able to enter through them into communion with the Mother and something of her presence and power is there.    Your experience about the photograph was a very ﬁne and true experience. The Mother’s presence can be felt through the photograph by one who regards it with devotion towards her.


Sri Aurobindo: It was her true presence that was there, her subtle physical presence and all you felt was true. It shows that your physical mind is opening to the true consciousness. It is quite sure that this will grow and the remnants of the old movements are bound to disappear.  That is what should always be done. If, instead of yielding to the depression and confusion when they come, you immediately remembered and turned to the Mother, calling the Light and Force, remembering the Divine, rejecting everything else, then these lapses would diminish and light would come into the whole nature.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is the outer nature that is obscure and when it is at ease, feels no necessity of remembering the Mother — when the difﬁculty comes, then it feels the necessity and remembers. But the inner being is not like that.


Sri Aurobindo:   These are the usual weaknesses of the human nature when it makes relations with human beings — there are always these clashes and difﬁculties and turmoil in the vital. If you want to be free from them, do what we have already told you — look on all with a kindly feeling, as children of the Mother, but without any special relation and without any expectation from anybody. Yoga demands an equanimity of mind towards all things and persons.


Sri Aurobindo: What you have seen as the thing to do is quite correct. To remember the Mother always and to offer up to her all that comes is just the thing to do. There must come a condition in which you live within in the psychic consciousness with the feeling of the Mother’s constant presence, while all the outer activities go on only on the surface and the Mother’s Force acts on them to change them into more and more true psychic and spiritual action. The way you speak of is the best for bringing about that condition. Offer all to the Mother in complete conﬁdence and do not be troubled or anxious about the difﬁculties that rise, but go on calmly and patiently till they pass.


Sri Aurobindo:  Remember the Mother and, though physically far from her, try to feel her with you and act according to what your inner being tells you would be her will. Then you will be best able to feel her presence and mine and carry our atmosphere around you as a protection and a zone of quietude and light accompanying you everywhere.    It is quite possible for you to do sadhana at home and in the midst of your work — many do so. What is necessary at the beginning is to remember the Mother as much as possible, to concentrate on her in the heart for a time every day, if possible thinking of her as the Divine Mother, to aspire to feel her there within you, offer her your works and pray that from within she may guide and sustain you.


Sri Aurobindo: This is a preliminary stage which often takes long, but if one goes through it with sincerity and steadfastness, the mentality begins little by little to change and a new consciousness opens in the sadhak which begins to be aware more and more of the Mother’s presence within, of her working in the nature and in the life or of some other spiritual experience which opens the gate towards realisation.  The Mother’s presence is always there; but if you decide to act on your own — your own idea, your own notion of things, your own will and demand upon things, then it is quite likely that her presence will get veiled; it is not she who withdraws from you, but you who draw back from her. But your mind and vital don’t want to admit that, because it is always their preoccupation to justify their own movements. If the psychic were allowed its full predominance, this would not happen; it would have felt the veiling, but it would at once have said, “There must have been some mistake in me, a mist has arisen in me,” and it would have looked and found the cause.   It is when you live in the psychic that there is this feeling — but the psychic commands at present only a part of the mind and vital — it does not yet control the most external parts, that is why you do not feel it when in the Mother’s physical presence.


Sri Aurobindo:   If you feel the Mother’s presence for the greater part of the day, it means that it is your psychic being that is active and feels like that — for without the activity of the psychic it would not be possible. Therefore your psychic being is there and not at all far off.


Sri Aurobindo: What you feel is not imagination. You have been going more and more into the psychic consciousness deep within you. When one is in the psychic, one begins to feel the presence of the Mother always with one and this becomes more and more frequent, constant, vivid and real as the psychic develops its power. This presence is felt in different ways by different sadhaks, but it is a true experience of the sadhana. It is what we mean when we say that the sadhak must come to feel always the presence of the Mother in his heart or within him.


Sri Aurobindo: For in fact she is there always, only her presence is veiled by the ordinary movements of the mind, vital and physical, but when these become quiet and the psychic unveils itself, then one feels the presence of the Divine within.   He must go into himself and ﬁnd the presence of the Divine Mother within and the psychic behind the heart and from there the knowledge will come and also the power to dissolve the inner obstacles.     It is good that you have come out of the bad condition.


Sri Aurobindo: It is true that before the darshan or at that time attacks are apt to be violent — for the forces that oppose are very conscious and use their whole strength to spoil the darshan if they can. What has to be gained is the constant prominence of that part which is always aware of the Mother — it is of course the psychic — for that though it can be covered over for the time being cannot be misled by the contrary suggestions. Once it is awake, it always reemerges from obscuration — that is the guarantee of the ﬁnal arrival at the goal, but if it can be maintained in front or even consciously felt behind in all conditions, then the stages of the way also become comparatively safe and can be passed with greater ease and security.


Sri Aurobindo:   You had the psychic condition there and that means a coming of the inﬂuence of the psychic being to the front.  It is when there is a complete psychic opening within that there is the presence within. The Presence in front means that it was with you, but had still to enter within.  That does happen, but usually only when the psychic is in full activity.


Sri Aurobindo:   It [] follows naturally the presence in the waking state, but it takes a little time.  It is for most people not easy to feel the Mother’s presence with the work — they feel as if they are doing the work, the mind getting busy and not having the right passivity or quietude.  You write  psychic being .


Sri Aurobindo: But your psychic being is already awakened, if it were not, you would not have these experiences. The inner being which you feel in union with the Mother is the psychic being. As you probably have not quite understood what I wrote to you, it might be better if you show Nolini my letter and ask him to explain to you the difference between the three layers  of the being about which I have spoken in the letter — (1) The inmost psychic being which is now awakened in you.  (2) The external being which you feel doing work while the inner (psychic) is in union with the Mother.  (3) The inner mental, vital and physical consciousness which connects the two, but of which you are not as yet conscious.


Sri Aurobindo:   No — that is itself a union with her — to feel the Divine Presence above or in you and moving you.


Sri Aurobindo: It is going on all right. The more the union with the Mother increases, the better for the sadhana.    I suppose they are trying to feel the Mother’s presence, so if they get some sort of feeling of nearness, they call it union. But of course that is only a step towards union.


Sri Aurobindo: Union is much more than that.     What is most important is the change of consciousness of which this feeling of oneness is a part. The going deep in meditation is only a means and it is not always necessary if the great experiences come easily without it.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes, that is the true basis. In the perfect equality wholly united with the Mother — so the higher consciousness can be lived and brought even into the outermost parts of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo:   What Mother meant was this that when there is a certain opening of the heart, you ﬁnd that there was always the eternal union there (the same that you experience always in the Self above).     It is the gratitude to the Divine that it indicates — which will come as the soul opens to the Light and Truth and gets the experience and the joy of union with the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: In the Yogic consciousness one is not only aware of things, but of forces, not only of forces, but of the conscious being behind the forces. One is aware of all this not only in oneself but in the universe. There is a force which accompanies the growth of this new consciousness and at once grows with it and helps it to come about and to perfect itself. This force is the Yoga shakti.  It is here asleep and coiled up in all the centres of our inner being (chakras) and is at the base what is called in the Tantras the Kundalini Shakti.


Sri Aurobindo: But it is also above us, above our head as the Divine Force — not there coiled up, involved, asleep, but awake, scient, potent, extended and wide; it is there waiting for manifestation and to this Force we have to open ourselves — to the power of the Mother. In the mind it manifests itself as a divine mind-force or a universal mind-force and it can do everything that the personal mind cannot do; it is then the Yogic mindforce. When it manifests and works in the vital or physical in the same way, it is then apparent as a Yogic life-force or a Yogic body-force. It can awake in all these forms, bursting outwards and upwards, extending itself into wideness from below; or it can descend and become there a deﬁnite power for things; it can pour downwards into the body, working, establishing its reign, extending into wideness from above, link the lowest in us with the highest above us, release the individual into a cosmic universality or into absoluteness and transcendence.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is the Divine Force which works to remove the ignorance and change the nature into the divine nature.     When I speak of the Mother’s force, I do not speak of the force of Prakriti which carries on things in the Ignorance but of the higher Force of the Divine that descends from above to transform the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: All are not open to the Force. never was in the least degree and there are others who shut themselves up in their own self-will or their own formations, ideas or desires. If there is no opening, the Force may act for a long time without response — and if there is an insufﬁcient opening then the progress will be slow and chequered by great difﬁculties.


Sri Aurobindo: Let nothing and nobody come between you and the Mother’s force. It is on your admitting and keeping that force and responding to the true inspiration and not on any ideas the mind may form that success will depend. Even ideas or plans which might otherwise be useful, will fail if there is not behind them the true spirit and the true force and inﬂuence.


Sri Aurobindo: The illnesses you have are the signs of the resistance of your physical consciousness to the action of the Divine Power.  If you cannot advance in your sadhana, it is because you are divided and do not give yourself without reserve. You speak of surrendering everything to the Mother but you have not done even the one thing which she asked of you and which you have promised more than once. If after having called the action of the Divine Force, you allow other inﬂuences to prevail, how can you expect to be free from obstruction and difﬁculties?


Sri Aurobindo: It is to be assumed that you are capable of the change since you are here in the presence and under the protection of the Mother. The pressure and help of the Mother’s Force is always there. Your rapidity of progress depends upon your keeping yourself open to it and rejecting calmly, quietly and steadily all suggestions and invasions of other forces. Especially the nervous excitement of the vital has to be rejected; a calm and quiet strength in the nervous being and the body is the only sound basis. It is there for you to receive, if you open yourself to it always.


Sri Aurobindo:   The Mother’s Force is working in all alike, according to their capacity they will receive it and it will work in them; if there is any difference, it is their own nature that makes it.   This restless mind and unquiet vital are not peculiar to you; they are the human nature from which every sadhak starts. What you have to get is the Mother’s force and grace bringing with it deliverance, peace and Ananda which you say you from time to time experience. That in the beginning does come only for a short time, but as you persist in the path, it increases in frequency and stays longer until it can be made a permanent experience.


Sri Aurobindo: It is this that will cure the defects of which you complain.     If it is, then you will have no difﬁculty.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not a question of mental wish but of capacity and whether all the parts of the being are ready and can retain it. If everybody were containing the constant action of the Mother’s force, the sadhana would be ﬁnished by now and the siddhi complete.     That can be only when all is ready.


Sri Aurobindo: The system has ﬁrst to be accustomed to the Force working.     All has to be done by the working of the Mother’s force aided by your aspiration, devotion and surrender.


Sri Aurobindo:   The Mother has already given you orally the answer to your letter and the directions you asked for. As she told you, your concentration should be in the heart centre and all the rest — the rising above the head etc. — should come of itself in the natural process of the sadhana. Through the heart you will get the closer and closer touch of the Mother and the working of her Force in the whole being.   It is a symbol of the harmony that can be brought out of the human nature in spite of its present imperfection when one gives it the true touch, that is, puts it under the true psychic inﬂuence.


Sri Aurobindo: Always keep open to the Mother’s Force — let the inner consciousness develop — only that will help and deliver from all difﬁculties as the openness in the physical grows in you.     They are unable for two reasons: (1) because they yield to despair and gloom and the illusion of impotence, (2) because they try only with their own strength and do not care or know how to call in the working of the Mother’s force.


Sri Aurobindo: Persevere in spite of the ﬂuctuations. The Mother’s force is at work, even when the thick wall is there, so that there may be no wall in future.     The Mother’s Force is not only above on the summit of the being.


Sri Aurobindo: It is there with you and near you, ready to act whenever your nature will allow it. It is so with everybody here.     It is not necessary to ask for Power.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the Mother’s Force that must work in the being and if it is there, all necessary power will come.    It acts by awakening the inner consciousness gradually or swiftly, by replacing the principle of ego-service by the principle of service of the Divine, by making him watch his actions and see his own defects and pushing him to rectify them, by establishing a connection between his consciousness and the Mother’s consciousness, by preparing his nature to be taken up more and more by the Mother’s consciousness and force, by giving him experiences which make him ready for the major experiences of Yoga, by stimulating the growth of his psychic being, by opening him to the Mother as the Universal Being, etc. etc. Naturally it acts differently in different persons.  There has always been too much reliance on the action of your own mind and will — that is why you cannot progress.


Sri Aurobindo: If you could once get the habit of silent reliance on the power of the Mother — not merely calling it in to support your own effort — the obstacle would diminish and eventually disappear.     You should not rely on anything else alone, however helpful it may seem, but chieﬂy, primarily, fundamentally on the Mother’s Force. The Sun and the Light may be a help, and will be if it is the true light and the true Sun, but cannot take the place of the Mother’s Force.


Sri Aurobindo:   Quietude ﬁrst; with it conﬁdence in the Mother’s Force that is working on you. When the physical mind is obliged to be quiet, it has this impression of inactivity and dullness at ﬁrst.  When it opens more and more to the Force, that impression will disappear.


Sri Aurobindo: If you give consent to the Mother’s working alone, then it cannot.  It is not always an attempt. One receives the thoughts and feelings of the others without any attempt or intention of theirs, because they are in the atmosphere.


Sri Aurobindo: The depression has come upon you because you accepted the thought that you were not doing what you should and not using the chance Mother had given you. Such thoughts should never be indulged for they open the door to depression and depression opens the door to the old movements; they used to come formerly from the idea that you were unﬁt, now it is this idea that you are not doing all you ought to do. As a matter of fact you have been progressing with a surprising rapidity for the last days at a rate that we ourselves did not expect from you.  But whether the progress is rapid or slow, the attitude should always be an entire faith and reliance on the Mother; just as you do not think that the progress was the result of your own effort or merit, but of your taking the right attitude of reliance and the Mother’s force working, so you should not think that any slowness or difﬁculty was due to your own demerit but only seek to keep this attitude of reliance and let the Mother’s Force work, — slowly or rapidly does not matter.  The dream was again one of these experiences of test or ordeal on the vital plane which you have been having — here it was the test of temptation by power, comfort, riches, attractive things, as it was formerly the test by fear, difﬁculty, trouble.


Sri Aurobindo: The evidence of all these tests is that your inner being is perfectly ready and free to go unwaveringly to the goal. There is nothing there that is wrong or defective.   Keep the reliance steady in your heart and do not allow selfdistrust, depression or sadness to invade you from outside.


Sri Aurobindo: There are two ways of doing Yoga, one by knowledge and one’s own efforts, the other by reliance on the Mother. In the last way one has to offer one’s mind and heart and all to the Mother for her Force to work on it, call her in all difﬁculties, have faith and bhakti. At ﬁrst it takes time, often a long time, for the consciousness to be prepared in this way and during that time many difﬁculties can come up, but if one perseveres a time comes when all is ready, the Mother’s Force opens the consciousness fully to the Divine, then all that must develop develops within, spiritual experience comes and with it the knowledge and union with the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: You say after several years you have not changed your nature.  I only wish the external nature were so easy to transform that it could be done in a few years. You forget also that the real problem — to get rid of the pervading ego in this nature — is a task you have seriously tackled only a short time ago. And it is not in a few months that that can be done. Even the best sadhaks ﬁnd after many experiences and large changes on the higher planes that here much remains to be done.


Sri Aurobindo: How do you expect to get rid of it at once unlike everybody else? A Yoga like this needs patience, because it means a change both of the radical motives and of each part and detail of the nature. It will not do to say, “Yesterday I determined this time to give myself entirely to the Mother, and look it is not done, on the contrary all the old opposite things turn up once more; so there is nothing to do but to proclaim myself unﬁt and give up the Yoga.” Of course when you come to the point where you make a resolution of that kind, immediately all that stands in the way does rise up — it invariably happens. The thing to be done is to stand back, observe and reject, not to allow these things to get hold of you, to keep your central will separate from them and call in the Mother’s Force to meet them.


Sri Aurobindo: If one does get involved as often happens, then to get disinvolved as soon as possible and go forward again. That is what everybody, every Yogi does — to be depressed because one cannot do everything in a rush is quite contrary to the truth of the matter. A stumble does not mean that one is unﬁt, nor does prolonged difﬁculty mean that for oneself the thing is impossible.  The fact that you have to give up your ordinary work when you get depressed does not mean that you have not gained in steadiness — it only means that the steadiness you have gained is not a personal virtue but depends on your keeping the contact with the Mother — for it is her force that is behind it and behind all the progress you can make. Learn to rely on that Force more, to open to it more completely and to seek spiritual progress even not for your own sake but for the sake of the Divine — then you will go on more smoothly.


Sri Aurobindo: Get the psychic opening in the most external physical consciousness. That and not despondency is the lesson you ought to draw from your present adverse experience.  The Force is always around you, for the Mother has put her consciousness there — but it works with especial force when we think of you, and that is what you feel. Your consciousness of it — what you describe of your feeling about it, is quite correct — to become clearly conscious in all parts of the being takes time.


Sri Aurobindo: What is meant by one’s own force? All force is cosmic and the individual is merely an instrument — a certain amount of the force may be stored in him, but that does not make it his own.  There are certain possibilities in the way of the experience.  First there is the faith, or sometimes a mental realisation and this of itself is enough to make one open to the Mother’s force so that it is always available at need or call. Even if one does not feel the Force coming, yet the results are there and visible.


Sri Aurobindo: The next is when one feels oneself like an instrument and is aware of the Energy using it. A third is the contact with the Power above and its descent (spontaneous or at call) into the body — this is the more concrete way of having it, for one physically feels the Force working in one. Finally there is a state of awareness of close contact with the Mother (inward) which brings a similar result.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes, that is how it should happen — but it is difﬁcult so long as the inner being is not conscious and receptive at all times and in all conditions — and it is difﬁcult and takes time to establish such a condition.  What you feel streaming down must be the Mother’s overhead Force. It ﬂows usually from above the head and works at ﬁrst in the mind centres (head and neck) and afterwards goes down into the chest and heart and then through the movement of the whole body.  It is the effect of this working which you must be feeling in the head up to the shoulders. The Force that comes down from above is the one that works to transform the consciousness into that of a higher spiritual being.


Sri Aurobindo: Before that the Mother’s Force works in the psychic, mental, vital and the physical plane itself to support, purify and psychically change the consciousness.    When you began to meditate, you saw the Mother’s face; that is very good, it means that there is an inner connection established.  The absence of the smile does not mean that she is displeased or that you have done anything against her will. At the same time the Mother’s force descended on you, it was the pressure of her Force that you felt on the head and breast — everybody feels in the beginning this pressure — and what you felt in the breast was the working of the Force.


Sri Aurobindo: In the Yoga these are signs of the action of the Yoga and you must observe quietly what happens without getting disturbed, remembering the Mother always and trusting in her action upon you.    Yes. All the parts that have to be changed must widen like that before the higher consciousness can descend into them.  Certainly.


Sri Aurobindo: In a sense, the descent of the higher forces is the Mother’s own descent — for it is she who comes down in them.    It is the descent of the Mother’s Force from above through the spinal cord — it is a well-known movement. There are two or three kinds of descent. One is this touching the base of the centres which rest on the spinal cord.


Sri Aurobindo: Another is through the head into the body going from level to level till the whole body is ﬁlled and opening all the centres of consciousness. Another is a descent enveloping the Adhar from outside.     It can come in anywhere, but the normal way of descent is through the head.


Sri Aurobindo:  When the Peace is established, this higher or Divine Force from above can descend and work in us. It descends usually ﬁrst into the head and liberates the inner mind centres, then into the heart centre and liberates fully the psychic and emotional being, then into the navel and other vital centres and liberates the inner vital, then into the Muladhara and below and liberates the inner physical being. It works at the same time for perfection as well as liberation; it takes up the whole nature part by part and deals with it, rejecting what has to be rejected, sublimating what has to be sublimated, creating what has to be created. It integrates, harmonises, establishes a new rhythm in the nature.  It can bring down too a higher and yet higher force and range of the higher Nature until, if that be the aim of the sadhana, it becomes possible to bring down the supramental force and existence.


Sri Aurobindo: All this is prepared, assisted, farthered by the work of the psychic being in the heart centre; the more it is open, in front, active, the quicker, safer, easier the working of the Force can be. The more love and bhakti and surrender grow in the heart, the more rapid and perfect becomes the evolution of the sadhana. For the descent and transformation imply at the same time an increasing contact and union with the Divine.  That is the fundamental rationale of the Sadhana. It will be evident that the two most important things here are the opening of the heart centre and the opening of the mind centres to all that is behind and above them.


Sri Aurobindo: For the heart opens to the psychic being and the mind centres open to the higher consciousness and the nexus between the psychic being and the higher consciousness is the principal means of the Siddhi. The ﬁrst opening is effected by a concentration in the heart, a call to the Divine to manifest within us and through the psychic to take up and lead the whole nature. Aspiration, prayer, bhakti, love, surrender are the main supports of this part of the Sadhana — accompanied by a rejection of all that stands in the way of what we aspire for. The second opening is effected by a concentration of the consciousness in the head (afterwards, above it) and an aspiration and call and a sustained will for the descent of the divine Peace, Power, Light, Knowledge, Ananda into the being — the Peace ﬁrst or the Peace and Force together. Some indeed receive Light ﬁrst or Ananda ﬁrst or some sudden pouring down of Knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: With some there is ﬁrst an opening which reveals to them a vast inﬁnite Silence, Force, Light or Bliss above them and afterwards either they ascend to that or these things begin to descend into the lower nature. With others there is either the descent, ﬁrst into the head, then down to the heart level, then to the navel and below and through the whole body, or else an inexplicable opening — without any sense of descent — of peace, light, wideness or power or else a horizontal opening into the cosmic consciousness or, in a suddenly widened mind, an outburst of knowledge. Whatever comes has to be welcomed — for there is no absolute rule for all, — but if the peace has not come ﬁrst, care must be taken not to swell oneself in exultation or lose the balance. The capital movement however is when the Divine Force or Shakti, the Power of the Mother comes down and takes hold, for then the organisation of the consciousness begins and the larger foundation of the Yoga.