Sri Aurobindo: But the vital has intervened somehow with its demand and dissatisfaction, so there has been this obstruction and inability to progress. This thing often happens in the sadhana and one must have the power either to reject it dynamically or else to remain detached until it has exhausted itself. Then the true movement begins again.


Sri Aurobindo: Inertia or anything else must be felt as separate, not part of one’s real self which is one with the Divine.  You cannot expect a persistent inertia like that to disappear in three days because you make some kind of a beginning of effort to resist it.    The inertia of the physical consciousness is always a difﬁcult thing to eliminate — it is that, more even than any vital resistance, which keeps all the movements of the ignorance recurring even when the knowledge is there and the will to change. But this difﬁculty has to be faced and overcome by an equal perseverance in the will of the sadhak.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a steady ﬂame that must burn, as steady as the obstruction is obstinate. Do not therefore be discouraged by the persistence of the obstruction of the ignorance.  The persistence of your own will to conquer with the Mother’s force supporting it will come to the end of the resistance.    I don’t know of any effective outward means of getting rid of it [].


Sri Aurobindo: Some, in hours when they cannot do sadhana, spend the time in other occupations — reading, writing or working — and do not try at all to concentrate. But I suspect what you need is more strength in the body.     It is quite true that physical exercise is very necessary to keep off the tamas.


Sri Aurobindo: I am glad you have begun it and I trust you will keep it up.  Physical tamas in its roots can be removed only by the descent and the transformation, but physical exercise and a regular activity of the body can always prevent a tamasic condition from prevailing in the body.     There should be no yielding to the tamas.


Sri Aurobindo: In spite of it one should always go on quietly and persistently with the sadhana — otherwise one may be overweighed by the inertia of the physical consciousness from which the tamas comes.   The physical always is more tamasic than the rest of the being and does not respond easily. Moreover this is a time of struggle between the higher forces and the resisting forces on the material plane, it is therefore a time when intense attacks on that plane are possible. One has to be on one’s guard and keep the true Force always round one as a protecting Power.   The adverse forces feel that there is something in you that is discountenanced and restive because of the continuance of the inertia and they hope that by pressing more and more they will create a revolt.


Sri Aurobindo: What is important for you in these circumstances is to make your faith, surrender and samata absolute. That is as great and essential a progress as to have high experiences, etc.   Fatigue like this in the course of the sadhana may come from various reasons.  (1) It may come from receiving more than the physical is ready to assimilate.


Sri Aurobindo: The cure is then a quiet rest in conscious immobility receiving the forces but not for any other purpose than the recuperation of the strength and energy.  (2) It may be due to the passivity taking the form of inertia — inertia brings the consciousness down towards the ordinary physical level which is soon fatigued and prone to tamas. The cure here is to get back into the true consciousness and rest there, not in inertia.  (3) It may be due to mere overstrain of the body — not giving it enough sleep or repose. The body is the support of the Yoga, but its energy is not inexhaustible and needs to be husbanded; it can be kept up by drawing on the universal vital Force but that reinforcement too has its limits.


Sri Aurobindo: A certain moderation is needed even in the eagerness for progress — moderation, not indifference or indolence.    Exactly. “The body felt fatigue” — that is what I mean by the habit of tamas. The body cannot bear the continuous experience, it feels it as a strain.


Sri Aurobindo: That is the case with most sadhaks. But in your case the obstacle seems to develop a great intensity when it comes. I have already told you the means of getting rid of it, but it cannot be done in a day because it is a ﬁxed habit of the nature and a ﬁxed habit takes time to remove. But it can be done in not too long a time provided you don’t get disturbed when it comes and deal with it ﬁrmly and steadily.  For the giddiness, it may be that in concentration you go partly out of your body; then, if you get up and move before the whole consciousness has come back, there is just such a giddiness as you describe.


Sri Aurobindo: You can observe in future and see whether it is not this that happens. One has to be careful not to move after deep concentration or trance, till there is the full consciousness in the body.  Yes, this is the time when you have to persist till you are quite settled in the inner consciousness and the persistence of the silence and peace is a sign that it is now possible. When one feels this kind of silence, peace and wideness, one may be sure that it is that of the true being, the real self, penetrating into the mind and vital and perhaps also the physical consciousness (if it is complete). The restlessness of the physical is probably due to the peace and silence having touched the physical but not yet penetrated the material or body consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: The old restlessness is there in the body struggling to remain, although it cannot invade either mind or vital or even in a general way the physical consciousness as a whole. If the peace descends there, this restlessness will disappear.    This is a form that the resistance in the physical easily and often takes — a restlessness of discomfort in the nervous system. When it is in the legs, it means that it is the most material part of the consciousness that is the seat of the trouble.


Sri Aurobindo: Since it has come up, it ought to be thrown out for good. Probably this part has become sufﬁciently conscious to feel the greater pressure when Mother comes down, but not enough to be able to receive and assimilate it, hence the uneasiness and resistance. If so, it should go of itself with a little more opening there.


Sri Aurobindo: Insist always on the quietude, the peace, the consciousness of the force. Persistently reject the restlessness; it comes always because the physical has the habit of receiving it, accepting it as its own real nature. Always deny it, always reject the unrest; gradually if not immediately, the physical will follow your will and change its habit and its notions.  It is obviously because of the past impressions and the habitual movement of consciousness connected with them [ ]. In the physical being the power of past impressions is very great, because it is by the process of repeated impressions that consciousness was made to manifest in matter — and also by the habitual reactions of consciousness to these impressions, what the psychologists, I suppose, would call behaviour.


Sri Aurobindo: According to one school consciousness consists only of these things — but that is the usual habit of stretching one detail of Nature to explain the whole of her.    It is really, I think, the physical consciousness that is responsible []. It is forgetful and obscure and repeats always the old habitual movements even when the mind has abandoned them and the vital is quite willing to abandon them. But when the physical receives the old vibration, the lower vital is affected and responds — otherwise it would be merely a vibration and there would be no danger of its being accepted or affecting the conduct.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is nobody who is free from difﬁculties, even those who seem the most advanced have them, and all have this obstinacy of the habitual movements in the physical consciousness which recur always in spite of the mind’s knowledge and do not want to cease or change. It is only by perseverance in aspiration or will that this difﬁculty can disappear.   The opening of the physical and subconscient always takes a long time as it is a thing of habits and constant repetitions of the old movements, obscure and stiff and not plastic, yielding only little by little.


Sri Aurobindo: The physical mind can be more easily opened and converted than the rest, but the vital physical and material physical are obstinate. The old things are always recurring there without reason and by force of habit. Much of the vital physical and most of the material are in the subconscience or dependent on it. It needs a strong and sustained action to progress there.   It [] can only be done by being very quiet and opening oneself continually to the force.


Sri Aurobindo: The physical needs a very, and action, because it is a thing of inertia and habits. The vehemence of force and struggle which suits the vital, does not act so successfully here. It is a steady opening to the Force, a quiet but unwavering insistence on Faith and the Truth that is to be that is in the end effective.    It is not that something is always “wrong” within you but that there is still in the subconscient physical being a part that was accustomed to respond very strongly to the vibrations of these thoughts and feelings and can still respond.


Sri Aurobindo: Usually you would not allow them to come up at all in thought or feeling form, — it would only manifest as a depression of the body or fatigue — or, if it came, you would get over it at once and the vibrations would sink down and disappear. But in the atmosphere heavily surcharged with this invasion of the ordinary consciousness there is a lessened elasticity in the physical consciousness and they were able to rise. This is an exceedingly common experience.  One has to detach oneself from these still weak parts and regard them as if a detail in the machinery that has to be set right. In your case also your nervous (vital physical) being is exceedingly conscious and sensitive and anything wrong in the atmosphere affects it more than it would most of the others.


Sri Aurobindo:  It was certainly not because the Mother was different to you from other days or pushed you to a distance, but because you came rather shut up in that part of your physical being which is still shrinking from the Light. It is this part which was always fundamentally responsible for all your bad passages and painful moments even when the direct difﬁculty was higher up. Its nature is to cling to the old habitual preyogic consciousness and to shut up doors and windows against the help that is offered and lament in the darkness when it has felt itself hurt. This is a thing that everybody must get rid of who wants to progress.


Sri Aurobindo: Do not go on identifying yourself with this part and calling it yourself. Get back into your inner being and look at this only as a small though obstinate part of the nature that has to change.  For apart from its insistence there is no reason why your way should enter into a desert. It should enter into a wideness of liberation — open to the calm and peace and power and light of a consciousness that is wider than the personal and into which the ego can happily disappear.


Sri Aurobindo:   The physical changes slowly always — its nature is habit — so it is only by constant descents [ ] that gradually its substance gets changed and it becomes accustomed to the higher condition.     The obstacle or wall of bondage which you feel is simply that of the habits of the ordinary physical consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: It is so with all, — the ordinary vital nature with its ego, desire, passions, disturbances, and the ordinary physical nature with its strong habits and outwardness are the chief obstacles that have to be overcome in the nature. When they fall quiet, then it is easier to enter into the true consciousness and unite with the Mother. But they are not accustomed to quietness and as soon as it is felt they want to come out of it and resume their ordinary movements.  But this will go when the inner has sufﬁciently gained on the outer to dominate it. The inner things will grow and come out more and more as you feel the inner faith growing until they are strong enough to rule the outer conduct.


Sri Aurobindo: The obstacles you feel, the surging up of old things and repetition of restlessness etc. are due to this strength of habit of the physical nature — it lives by repeating always the same things and the same movements to which it has been accustomed in the past. The inner inﬂuence as it comes out will more and more create for it new habits of thought and feeling and action and it will then dwell ﬁrmly in these and not in the things of the old nature.    The habit in the physical is obstinate and seems unchangeable because it always recurs — even when one thinks it is gone. But it is not really unchangeable; if the physical mind detaches itself, stands separate, refuses to accept it, then the habit in the physical begins to lose its force of repetition.


Sri Aurobindo: Sometimes it goes slowly, sometimes (but this is less frequent) it stops suddenly and recurs no more.     Yes; that [] also is the fault of the physical consciousness. It is obsessed by the idea that “what is” must be, — that the habit of things cannot be altered.


Sri Aurobindo: This inevitability it extends not only to what is but to what it merely thinks of as a fact — it lays itself open inertly to every suggestion or possibility that seems to be justiﬁed by the habit of things. It is the main obstacle to the material change.    As I have said, the response of the physical mind or vital to these forces is a habit. You get upset as soon as they touch either and lose control over yourself.


Sri Aurobindo: The concentration in the heart is the way to get rid of them, but there must also be a detachment of the consciousness so that it can stand back from the attack and feel separate from it.     The response-giving mechanism is like that [] in everybody. It is not by something shocking but by something enlarging and uplifting that it can get out of its rut of habit.


Sri Aurobindo:   Habits are difﬁcult to overcome. If any have to be got rid of, one must be very persistent and vigilant and not yield or let them have their way. It is only when one does that for a very long time that they go.


Sri Aurobindo:   The physical always ﬁnds it difﬁcult to take up a new attitude.  It is only by training and discipline that it can be made to do so.


Sri Aurobindo: I meant [] that instead of forgetting it must be trained to remember and ﬁx the right movements of consciousness and right states — by repetition, by enforcing again and again, by teaching it to reject persistently and at once the wrong states and wrong movements.   In the puriﬁcation of the physical nature, more even than in the rest, it is not safe to assume that there will be no more attacks of old forces or habits of the nature — till the thing is actually and unmistakably done. One must remain vigilant till there is the full siddhi. For in the physical, habit, memory, mechanical response have an immense power of survival — therefore a return of old vibrations or formations is always possible. Only when there is the full puriﬁcation and transformation is there the perfect security.


Sri Aurobindo: As for the feeling of being driven, compelled, that is quite usual when it is the physical nature that is being dealt with; there is no need to be upset or think it cannot be got over. The physical is the slave of certain forces which create a habit and drive it through the mechanical force of the habit. So long as the mind gives consent, you do not notice the slavery; but if the mind withdraws its consent, then you feel the servitude, you feel a force pushing you in spite of the mind’s will. It is very obstinate and repeats itself till the habit — the inner habit revealing itself in the outward act — is broken. It is like a machine which once set in motion repeats the same movement.


Sri Aurobindo: You need not be alarmed or distressed; a quiet persistent aspiration will bring you to the point where the habit breaks and you are free.    What you describe is what the Gita means by the realisation that all action is done by the Prakriti. You feel it mechanical because you are in the physical consciousness where all is mechanism.  On the mental and vital plane one can have the same experience, but of the actions as a play of forces.


Sri Aurobindo: What is lacking at present to you is the other side of the experience, viz. that of the silent Atman or else of the witness Purusha calm, tranquil, free, pure and undisturbed by the play of the Prakriti. It tries to come and you are on the point of going into it, but the tendency of externalisation is still too strong. This tendency took you when you came down into the physical — for it is the nature of the ordinary physical consciousness to precipitate itself into the action of the external personality. You have to get back the power of the internal consciousness, above as Atman, below as Purusha ﬁrst witness and then master of the nature.  It is inevitable that in the course of the sadhana all sorts of conditions should come through which one is led towards the fullness of the true consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: You are now, as are most, in the physical consciousness and its principal difﬁculty is externalisation and this covering up of the active experience so that one does not know what is going on inside or feels as if nothing were going on. When that happens, it means that something has come up, some part or layer of the physical, which needs to be worked on and, when that has been done, — it may take longer or shorter, — the conscious active inner experience recommences. The muteness in the mind is not a bad thing in itself, it is a favourable condition for the working.  Also what you describe as taking place in the head, must be the working of the Force there, — it sometimes gives the impression of a headache. There must be a working in the physical mind to get rid of some difﬁculty or else to prepare it better for the admission of what comes from above.


Sri Aurobindo: It is necessary to have a great patience — so as to go through these conditions and not get apprehensive or restless — and a conﬁdence that all difﬁculties will be overcome.    The push to externalisation must be rejected always — it is a way the physical consciousness has of slipping out of the condition of concentrated sadhana. To keep in the inner consciousness and work from it on the external being till that also is ready is very necessary when the work of change is being specially directed towards the physical consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo:   As for the going within, the pull of the physical consciousness is always outward and even when experiences are going on and the sadhana in full activity, it is the physical resistance that prevents the sadhak from being all the time in the inner consciousness.  This resistance disappears altogether only when one reaches an advanced stage of the sadhana. This resistance is now specially active in the Asram because the force is working on the physical and all that is contrary there has to be met and eliminated. But you have before this several times gone inside and felt the touch of the psychic, so that is bound to resume as soon as the physical difﬁculty is sufﬁciently cleared away from the consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: The thoughts and feelings expressed in your letter are born of the depression and have no truth in themselves apart from it.  Your being here does not in the least take up space that could be occupied by “better” sadhaks. For a good sadhak there will always be a place in one way or another. The incapacity which you discover in yourself is simply the resistance of the habitual external and physical nature, which everyone has and which none, however good a sadhak, has yet been able to transform radically, because it is the last thing to change, and its resistance is acute just now because it is against this that the power of the sadhana is now pressing so that the change may come. When this part presents itself it always tries to appear as something unalterable, incapable of change, impervious to the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: But it is not really so and one must not be deceived by this appearance.  As for the fear of madness, it is only a nervous impression which you should throw away. It is not vital weakness that leads to such upsettings — it is an obscurity and weakness in the physical mind accompanied by movements of an exaggerated vital nature (e.g. exaggerated spiritual ambition) which are too strong for the mind to bear. That is not your case. You have had long experience of inner peace, wideness, Ananda, an inner life turned towards the Divine and one who has had that ought not to speak of general incapacity, whatever the difﬁculties of the external nature, — difﬁculties common in one form or another to all.


Sri Aurobindo:   I have not the slightest doubt that you can do the sadhana if you cleave to it — not certainly on your own unaided strength, for nobody can do that, but by the will of the psychic being in you aided by the Divine Grace. There is a part in the physical and vital consciousness of every human being that has not the will for it, does not feel the capacity for it, distrusts any hope or promise of a spiritual future and is inert and indifferent to any such thing. At one period in the course of the sadhana this rises up and one feels identiﬁed with it. That has happened in you now, but along with an attack of ill health and nervous indisposition which has turned this passage through the obscure physical into a dark and intense trouble.


Sri Aurobindo: With enough sleep and a quieting of the nerves and return of physical energy that ought to disappear and it would be possible to bring the Light and Consciousness down into this obscure part. An intense concentration bringing struggle is not what is needed, but a very quiet attitude of selfopening. Not any effort of sadhana just now, but the recovery of tranquillity and ease is what is wanted at present to restore the opening of the nature.    The feeling of inability is just the thing you have to reject.


Sri Aurobindo: It is true only of the physical material consciousness and it is true of everybody in the physical consciousness, because that is something very inert and all that it can do is open itself, remain quiet and receive the Inﬂuence. But there is no inability in the rest of the being: it can will and reject. If confusion and obscurity come, it is not bound to accept them, — it can open to the true Force and throw them away; it can keep itself open even when the forces of confusion throw themselves upon it.  Only the concentration also must be quiet and steady, — not struggling and restless.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is not because you cannot recover the true attitude, but because you admit in part of your mind the false suggestion of your inability that this mixed condition lasts longer than it should.  It is part of your physical consciousness that keeps the memory of the old movements and has the habit of admitting them and thinking them inevitable. You must insist with the clearer part of your consciousness on the true Truth, rejecting always these suggestions and feelings, till this obscure part also is open and admits the Light.


Sri Aurobindo: As to what has happened in your sadhana, it is that you have allowed yourself to fall into a groove of the physical mind and of the external vital nature and got ﬁxed in a persistent or constantly recurrent repetition of the ideas and feelings which they present to you — feelings of settled disappointment and discouragement and pessimism about yourself and your spiritual future, and ideas — or, if you will allow me to call them so, notions — which come to the support of these feelings and sustain them. The result of this is to shut you up against the contact and spiritual inﬂuence and help you were once feeling or beginning to feel from us. It also shuts you up against your own deeper self and sterilises your personal effort. An accident of this kind is common enough in the path of spiritual effort, and the ﬁrst thing to be done to get rid of its effects is to throw away resolutely the persistent ideas and feelings which keep you in the groove. I do not know whether you can return to the former condition, for it is seldom that one can go back to a point in the past; but it is always possible for you to go forward, recovering the force for propulsion of what you then gained and have certainly still within you assimilated in your inner being. If you want to carry on some part of the Yoga by your active efforts and aspiration, there is no reason why you should not ﬁnd back that capacity; but the ﬁrst effort to be made is to reject persistently, fully and tenaciously — not for two or three days, but always, so long as they insist or return — these disabling thoughts and feelings which hamstring all hope and faith in you, not to accept them, not to justify them, not to give them by your acquiescence the right to go on harping on the same note always of discouragement, incapacity and failure.


Sri Aurobindo: The ideas by which you justify them are, I repeat, notions only of the physical mind, not true things — e.g. the notion that you understand a given idea (intellectually accepting or not accepting is another matter); for it is perfectly certain that your thinking intelligence is quite trained enough to understand anything that is put before it. It is only the physical mind that is limited even in the most intelligent and opens up pits of stupidity or at least larger or smaller spaces of blank non-understanding in the face of unaccustomed ideas or a new line of possible experience or anything else either alien to the mind’s habits or unwelcome to something in the vital parts. I suppose we have all had experience of this incapable element in our nature, and if one ﬁxes oneself in it, it can make even things that would ordinarily be easy for us seem difﬁcult things and things difﬁcult seem impossible. But why should a mind trained to think allow this poorer part of itself to dominate it? So with the other notions.


Sri Aurobindo: There is nothing anyone else can do in the way of Yoga that you cannot do if you have the ﬁxed will to do it; some things may take a longer time because of past training, habits, mental associations but there is nothing impossible, too difﬁcult, no inherently insuperable obstacle.    It [] is one of the suggestions of the external physical consciousness that are ﬁlling the atmosphere just now. I explain that to you in the answers below.  You used to have dreams on the vital plane also long ago in which you passed through dangerous forests and wildernesses amid perils of land and water and wild beasts etc., but you reached safely under the Mother’s protection where you were going.


Sri Aurobindo: I remember your writing some to me. Also there have been dreams of difﬁcult passages ending in the arrival on the true open way. Only these dreams you are having now indicate the difﬁculty of the passage through the physical (and no longer through the vital) consciousness — but the common element is that you are under the Mother’s protection and reach the way at the end. This is quite natural because what everybody is passing through now are the difﬁculties of the physical and subconscient nature; but the Mother’s protection is the same here as in the past stages of the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the doubt that most or many are raising now in the Asram.  “Where am I? Where am I going? Am I really doing the Yoga? It seems to me I am getting nothing.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no progress anywhere.  All is dry and mechanical. What is the use of being here?” These are the thoughts that have been moving about in the atmosphere of the Asram and when you get such thoughts, it means that they are coming to you as suggestions from the atmosphere. If they are in the minds of any of those you move with, it is natural they should try to enter you, but even otherwise they can come to you, just as people catch cold because the germs are in the atmosphere.


Sri Aurobindo: Your attitude is all right, but evidently you have allowed your mind to be clouded by the suggestions of which I have spoken above. The feeling of having lost all one had is one of them; the feeling that all is mechanical and uninteresting and it is no use being here is another. Of course they are all false.   When one listens to the suggestions, then things begin to like that.


Sri Aurobindo: These suggestions are natural to the ignorant physical or body consciousness in human nature, just as suggestions of vital passion and disturbance are natural to the ignorant vital consciousness in human nature. You had vital reactions but you did not allow them to overcome you or make you think yourself unﬁt for the Yoga, because you relied upon the Mother and did not yield to the contrary vital Force. Here also you will have to have constant reliance on the Mother and reject the suggestions of the physical consciousness in the atmosphere when they come.  Your suggestion that I am telling you things that are untrue in order to encourage you is the usual stupidity of the physical mind — if it were so, it is not you who would be unﬁt for the Yoga, but myself who would be unﬁt to be in the search for the Divine Truth anybody’s guide. For one can lead through lesser to greater Truth, but not through falsehood to Truth.


Sri Aurobindo: As for your ﬁtness or unﬁtness for the Yoga, it is not a question on which your physical mind can be an unerring judge — it judges by the immediate appearance of things and has no knowledge of the laws that govern consciousness or the powers that act in Yoga. In fact the question is not of ﬁtness or unﬁtness but of the acceptance of Grace. There is no human being whose physical outer consciousness — the part of yourself in which you are now living — is ﬁt for the Yoga. It is by grace and enlightenment from above that it can become capable and for that the necessity is to be persevering and open it to the Light. Everybody when he enters the physical consciousness has the same difﬁculty and feels as if he were unﬁt, obscure and nothing done, nothing changed in him since he began the Yoga; he is apt to forget then all that has happened before or to feel as if he had lost it or as if it had all been unreal or untrue.


Sri Aurobindo: I suppose that is why you object to my phrase about your having gone so far. I meant that you had had openings in your thinking mind and heart and higher vital and experiences also and had seen very lucidly the condition of your own being and nature and had by that got so far that these parts were ready for the spiritual change — what remains is the physical and outer consciousness which has to be compelled to accept the necessity of change. That is no doubt the most difﬁcult part of the work to be done, but it is also the part which, if once done, makes possible the total change of the being and nature. I therefore said that having gone so far it would be absurd to turn back now and give up because this resists — it always resists in everybody and very obstinately too. That is no reason for giving up the endeavour.


Sri Aurobindo: It is this consciousness that has expressed itself in your letter — or the obscure part of it which clings to its old attitude.  It does not want to fulﬁl the sadhana unless it can get by it the things it wanted. It wants the satisfaction of the ego, “selffulﬁlment”, appreciation, the granting of its desires. It measures the Divine Love by the outward favours showered upon it and looks jealously to see who gets more of these favours than itself, then says that the Divine has no love for it and assigns reasons which are either derogatory to the Divine or, as in your letter, self-depreciatory and a cause for despair. It is not in you alone that this part feels and acts like that, it is in almost everybody.


Sri Aurobindo: If that were the only thing in you or the others, then indeed there would be no possibility of Yoga. But though it is strong, it is not the whole — there is a psychic being and a mind and heart inﬂuenced and enlightened by it which has other feelings and another vision of things and aim in sadhana. These are now covered in you by the upsurgence of this part which has to change. It is tamasic and does not want to change, does not want to believe unless it can be done by reassuring the vital ego.  But there is nothing new in all that — it is part of human nature and has always been there, hampering and limiting the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: Its existence is no reason for despair — everyone has it and the sadhana has to be done in spite of it, in spite of the mixture it brings till the time comes when it has to be deﬁnitely converted or rejected. It is difﬁcult to do it, but perfectly possible. These things I know and realise and it is therefore that I insist on your persevering and encourage you to go on; it is not my statement of the position that is untrue, it is the view of it taken by this obscure part of your being that is unsound and an error.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the instinctive (not mental) will in the outer being that is blind — the inner mind knows and understands and when it comes out it enlightens the rest so that all is clear. But the outer being readmits the darkness and confusion through a wrong movement of the vital or through an inert acceptance of the obscurity of the ignorant physical consciousness and the knowledge gets darkened over. But it is there and has only to come out again. The physical consciousness is constitutionally ignorant — it may be made to understand, but it goes on forgetting and feeling as if it had never known — till the Force and Light ﬁnally get hold of it and then it forgets no more.  These feelings are the usual attitude of the physical consciousness left to itself towards the Divine — a complete Agnosticism and inability to experience.


Sri Aurobindo: The knowledge of the impersonal Divine by itself does not affect the material facts of earth or at least need not. It only produces a subjective change in the being itself and, if it is complete, a new vision and attitude towards all things immaterial or material. But the complete knowledge of the Divine can produce a change in material things, for it sets a Force working which ends by acting even upon these material things that seem to the physical consciousness so absolute, invincible and unchangeable.  In a certain part of the physical consciousness and in the subconscious there is always the human and animal fear of death and of anything that has to do with death. It is from there that these dreams are rising along with the fear felt by those parts of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: These things rise up in order to be rejected and the mind is rejecting them; for all fear must go and there must be in the physical the full conﬁdence in the Divine.  If you want to do Yoga, you must take more and more in all matters, small or great, the Yogic attitude. In our path that attitude is not one of forceful suppression, but of detachment and equality with regard to the objects of desire. Forceful suppression (fasting comes under the head) stands on the same level as free indulgence; in both cases, the desire remains; in the one it is fed by indulgence, in the other it lies latent and exasperated by suppression. It is only when one stands back, separates oneself from the lower vital, refusing to regard its desires and clamours as one’s own, and cultivates an entire equality and equanimity in the consciousness with respect to them that the lower vital itself becomes gradually puriﬁed and itself also calm and equal.


Sri Aurobindo: Each wave of desire as it comes must be observed, as quietly and with as much unmoved detachment as you would observe something going on outside you, and must be allowed to pass, rejected from the consciousness, and the true movement, the true consciousness steadily put in its place.    About food, tea etc. the aim of Yoga is to have no hankerings, no slavery either to the stomach or the palate. How to get to that point is another matter — it depends often on the individual.  With a thing like tea, the strongest and easiest way is to stop it.


Sri Aurobindo: As to food the best way usually is to take the food given you, practise non-attachment and follow no fancies. That would mean giving up the Sunday indulgence. The rest must be done by an inner change of consciousness and not by external means.    It is a mistake to neglect the body and let it waste away; the body is the means of the sadhana and should be maintained in good order.


Sri Aurobindo: There should be no attachment to it, but no contempt or neglect either of the material part of our nature.  In this Yoga the aim is not only the union with the higher consciousness but the transformation (by its power) of the lower including the physical nature.  It is not necessary to have desire or greed of food in order to eat. The Yogi eats not out of desire, but to maintain the body.   That [] is rather an excessive feeling.


Sri Aurobindo: One should eat for maintenance of the body without attaching any other importance, but without repulsion.    The vital of most people is of this kind [ ], except in a few who are indifferent to sex or to food desire or to both, by temperament and nature. There is always something in the lower vital which is recalcitrant and takes a pleasure in following its own way and disregarding the higher dictate, and there are always external forces hostile to the Yoga which try to take advantage of its obscurities, revolts and weaknesses. Neither neglect this turn of the nature (food desire) nor make too much of it; it has to be dealt with, puriﬁed and mastered but without giving it too much importance.


Sri Aurobindo: There are two ways of conquering it — one of detachment, learning to regard food as only a physical necessity and the vital satisfaction of the stomach and the palate as a thing of little or no importance; the other is to be able to take without insistence or seeking any food given and to ﬁnd in it (whether pronounced good or bad by others) the equal, not of the food for its own sake, but of the universal Ananda. But the latter comes usually only when one can live in the cosmic consciousness or rise into the Overmind — and for this you are not yet ready. So the ﬁrst way is the one you should keep in view.


Sri Aurobindo: Do not trouble your mind about food. Take it in the right quantity (neither too much nor too little), without greed or repulsion, as the means given you by the Mother for the maintenance of the body, in the right spirit, offering it to the Divine in you; then it need not create.    It is much better to eat the meal in silence or at any rate in quietness.  It is the attachment to food, the greed and eagerness for it, making it an unduly important thing in the life, that is contrary to the spirit of Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: To be aware that something is pleasant to the palate is not wrong; only one must have no desire nor hankering for it, no exultation in getting it, no displeasure or regret at not getting it. One must be calm and equal, not getting upset or dissatisﬁed when the food is not tasty or not in abundance — eating the ﬁxed amount that is necessary, not less or more. There should be neither eagerness nor repugnance.  To be always thinking about food and troubling the mind is quite the wrong way of getting rid of the food-desire. Put the food element in the right place in the life, in a small corner, and don’t concentrate on it but on other things.


Sri Aurobindo:  The attachment to good food must be given up as also the personal attachment to position and service; but it is not indispensably necessary for that purpose to take to an ascetic diet or to give up all means of action such as money and service.  The Yogin has to become in this sense that he feels that nothing belongs to him but all to the Divine and he must be ready at any time to give up all to the Divine. But there is no meaning in throwing away everything in order to be externally  without any imperative cause.  The ﬁrst thing to be attained about eating, is to get rid of the greed of food, the attachment and desire, — to take it only as a need of the body, to think little of it and not to allow it to occupy a big place in the life; also to be satisﬁed with what you get, not to hanker. At the same time sufﬁcient food should be taken, avoiding either deﬁciency or excess; an excessive coercion or  in this respect (as opposed to reasonable control) often brings a reaction.


Sri Aurobindo: One should go steadily, but not try to get too much done at once.     As for Sannyasis and food, Sannyasis put a compulsion on their desires in this and other matters — they take ascetic food as a principle; but this does not necessarily kill the greed for food, it remains compressed and, if the compulsion or principle is removed, it can come up again stronger than before — for compression without removal often increases the force of these things instead of destroying them.


Sri Aurobindo:   Not to eat as the method of getting rid of the greed of food is the ascetic way. Ours is equanimity and non-attachment.


Sri Aurobindo: These things [] still rise in you because they have been for so long prominent difﬁculties and, as far as the ﬁrst is concerned, because you gave it much justiﬁcation from the mind at one time. But if the inner consciousness is growing like that they are sure to go. Only if they rise, don’t give them harbourage. Perhaps with regard to the greed for food, your attitude has not been quite correct. Greed for food has to be overcome, but it has not to be given too much thought.


Sri Aurobindo: The proper attitude to food is a certain equality. Food is for the maintenance of the body and one should take enough for that — what the body needs; if one gives less the body feels the need and hankers; if you give more, then that is indulging the vital.  As for particular foods the palate likes, the attitude of the mind and vital should be, “If I get, I take; if I don’t get, I shall not mind. ” One should not think too much of food either to indulge or unduly to repress — that is the best.


Sri Aurobindo:  One does not need to get a hatred for food in order to get rid of the greed for food. On the other hand, to develop dislike for certain things may help to reject them — but that too is not always the cure, for they may remain in spite of the dislike.     It is true that the greed of food, the desire of the palate are very strong in a great many if not most of the sadhaks; this is one of the things that they take as natural and seem not at all anxious to get it out of them.


Sri Aurobindo: I do not think it is active in you; what you felt must have come in from the others, — for very often one feels the things that are in the atmosphere and one must be careful to distinguish that from one’s own feeling.     As to taking tea or food there [], you must always remember that to be governed by these desires is not at all an ideal condition. But if you have the impulse and are not able easily and naturally to reject it, you can take on condition you scrupulously inform the Mother both of the act and of the movement and state of mind accompanying it.


Sri Aurobindo: Also often the desire may not be yours, but may come on you from outside, imposed on you silently or otherwise by suggestion by the others; you must learn to see when it is like that and then you must reject it. Your aspiration must be for an inner change so that there will be no longer any need to indulge the desires, because they will no longer have a hold on you.  You must learn to watch yourself and know what is the true nature and source of the movements in you and report them carefully — as in fact you had begun to do when you ﬁrst had the psychic opening and could see the movements in you or many of them at least very clearly.    Of course — the vital is insatiable.


Sri Aurobindo: There are only two things that interfere with it [] — the limitations of the body and the disapprobation of the mind — but the latter is not always there. There is also of course the possibility of the psychic interfering, but to that the vital becomes pervious only at a certain stage. It is therefore the body that is the only check for most people.


Sri Aurobindo: These complaints about food are of long standing with many — they come from the animal man and will go on so long as the sadhaks identify themselves with the physical animal in them.  As regards the progress you have made, I do not think you have given us an exaggerated impression of it; it seems to be quite real. It is no part of this Yoga to suppress taste, altogether; so, if you found the ice-cream pleasant, that does not by itself invalidate the completeness of your progress. What is to be got rid of is vital desire and attachment, the greed of food, being overjoyed at getting the food you like, sorry and discontented when you do not have it, giving an undue importance to it, etc. If one wants to be a Yogin, it will not do to be like the ordinary man to whom food, sex and gain are nine-tenths of life or even to keep in any of these things the reactions to which vital human nature is prone.


Sri Aurobindo: Equality is here the test as in so many other matters.  If you can take the Ashram food with satisfaction or at least without dissatisfaction, that is already a sign that attachment and predilection are losing their old place in the nature.     Taste is no more a guilty thing than sight or hearing.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the desire that it awakens that has to be thrown away.  It is possible to get rid of taste like Chaitanya, for it is something that depends on the consciousness and so inhibition is possible. In hypnotic experiments it is found that suggestion can make sugar taste bitter or bitter things sweet. Berkeley and physiology are both right. There is a certain usually ﬁxed relation between the consciousness in the palate and the of the food, but the consciousness can alter the relation if it wants or inhibit it altogether.


Sri Aurobindo: There are Yogis who make themselves insensitive to pain also and that too can be done by hypnosis.  Another method is to ﬁnd all things good to the taste without attachment to any.    No — it [] is not a bondage, if there is no attachment. Taste is natural and quite permissible so long as one is not the slave of the palate.


Sri Aurobindo: Certainly, the enjoyment of taste can be offered up.  I don’t know that there is any fruit of eating in the sense of the phrase in the Gita.  This [] is due to an acute consciousness and sensitiveness of the physical being, especially the vital physical. The sense of being fed by smell has become thereby very acute — the feeding by smell is a well known thing, and there is the Sanskrit proverb, , “smell is a half eating”. But this by itself would not produce the uneasiness, which must be due to an acute physical sensitiveness to the mass of ordinary human reactions concentrated about the food, greed etc. which ﬁll the atmosphere.


Sri Aurobindo: It does not look as if more than a very few of the sadhaks were free (even they mainly, not wholly) from these reactions; most seem to accept them as quite normal and proper in a life of Yoga!!  It is good for the physical to be more and more conscious, but it should not be overpowered by the things of which it becomes aware or badly affected or upset by them. A strong equality and mastery and detachment must come in the nerves and body as in the mind, which will enable the physical to know and contact these things without feeling any disturbance; it should know and be conscious and reject and throw away the pressure of the movements in the atmosphere, not merely feel them and suffer.  I suppose you have become aware of the principle of hunger in the vital physical. It is not really either by satisfying it or forcibly denying it that it will go — it is by putting a will on it to change and bringing down a higher consciousness that it can change.


Sri Aurobindo:  To suppress hunger like that is not good, it very often creates disorders. I doubt whether fatness or thinness of a healthy kind depends on the amount of food taken — there are people who eat well and remain thin and others who take only one meal a day and remain fat. By underfeeding (taking less than the body really needs) one may get emaciated, but that is not a healthy state. The doctors say it depends mostly on the working of certain glands.


Sri Aurobindo: Anyhow the important thing is now to get the nervous strength back.  As for the liver also eating little does not help, very often it makes the liver sluggish so that it works less well. What is recommended for liver trouble is to avoid greasy food and much eating of sweets and that is also one way of avoiding fat. But to eat too little is not good — it may be necessary in some stomach or intestinal illness, but not for the ordinary liver trouble.


Sri Aurobindo:  This feeling of not being able to eat and of eating being unnecessary is a sort of suggestion that is coming to several people.  It should be rejected and cleared out of the system as it may lead to weakening of the body by taking insufﬁcient food. Often one does not feel weak at ﬁrst, a vital energy comes which supports the body, but later on the body weakens. This feeling may sometimes come when one is going much inside and there is no insistence on the bodily needs; but it should not be accepted. If it is rejected, it is likely to disappear.


Sri Aurobindo:  When I spoke about the inability to eat being a suggestion, I meant a suggestion to the body consciousness itself, not to your mind. When such suggestions come, they produce physical effects of this kind, instead of the idea of not eating there comes a sort of inability to eat.   The absence of hunger and thirst and the eating only for maintenance of the body without any feeling of having eaten is a state that sometimes comes when one is living more and more in the inner being and less in the body.  What is necessary is to take enough food and think no more about it, taking it as a means for the maintenance of the physical instrument only. But just as one should not overeat, so one should not diminish unduly — it produces a reaction which defeats the object — for the object is not to allow either the greed for food or the heavy tamas of the physical which is the result of excessive eating to interfere with the concentration on the spiritual experience and progress.


Sri Aurobindo: If the body is left insufﬁciently nourished, it will think of food more than otherwise.     Too much eating makes the body material and heavy, eating too little makes it weak and nervous — one has to ﬁnd the true harmony and balance between the body’s need and the food taken.


Sri Aurobindo:   It depends on what you can digest. If you can digest, there is no harm in taking more since you feel hungry. All these things depend upon what is the true need of the body and that may differ in different cases according to the constitution of the body, the amount of work done or exercise taken. It is possible that you have reduced your food too much — so you can try taking more.


Sri Aurobindo:   But it is quite natural. Exercise is always supposed to increase the appetite as the body needs more food to restore the extra expense of energy put out. Normally the more physical work  the body has to do the more food it needs.


Sri Aurobindo: On the other hand mental work requires no increase of food — that has been ascertained scientiﬁcally by experiment. Hunger may increase by other causes, but when it coincides with the taking up of play or physical exercise of a strenuous character, that is sufﬁcient to explain it.    If the [] pains are strong, you can abstain from work for a day or two till they have subsided. Of course if you feel that you suffer from anything else but liquid food, that settles the question — you can take liquid food only and if you take liquid food only then you will not be strong enough to work.


Sri Aurobindo: But usually the thought takes a big part in determining these things — the mind has the impression that any solid food will hurt and the body follows — so naturally as a result any solid food does begin to hurt.    The mental or vital vigour does not or need not depend on the food — it is the physical that after a time begins to get strained if there is not sufﬁcient nourishment.


Sri Aurobindo: One can bring down the strength [], but it is also necessary to see that the body has sufﬁcient food, sleep and rest  — absence of these things strains the nerves and if the nerves are strained the body feels fatigue, becomes weakened.   It is possible there was a suppression or underfeeding — you were several times even proposing to eat still less and the Mother did not approve. When there is this suppression I have always noticed that there comes for a time a strong eagerness or necessity for eating largely as if the body were taking its compensation for the past want.


Sri Aurobindo:   If these [] are done as moral virtues, they need not bring a spiritual state. It is only when they are observed as a spiritual discipline that they help — most of them, at least. A man may eat little and have no spirituality — but if he practises it as a means of self-mastery to get rid of the greed of food, then it helps.


Sri Aurobindo: It is better to be careful in these matters of food etc., as in the stage through which your sadhana is passing there is a considerable sensitiveness in the vital physical part of the being and it may be easily disturbed by a wrong impact or a wrong movement like overfeeding.   When the physical consciousness has been sensitivised, too rich or heavy food becomes offensive to it.    It is true that as one reaches an advanced age a diminished diet may become desirable.  I have myself fasted ﬁrst for 10 days and then 23 days just to see what it was like and how far one could live without food, and certain things like that.


Sri Aurobindo: I found that it was no good. To take with equanimity whatever comes (or does not come) seemed to me more the thing than any violent exercises like that.     I think it is not safe to admit any suggestion of not eating — sometimes it opens the door for the non-eating force to take hold of the mind and there is trouble.


Sri Aurobindo: That comes easily because the inner being of course does not need any food and this nonneed is attempted to be thrown by some forces on the body also which is not under the same happy law. It is better to allow the condition [] to grow in intensity until it can last even through the meal and after. I suppose it is not really the meal that disturbs but the coming out into the outer consciousness which is a little difﬁcult to avoid when one goes to eat; but that can be overcome in time.


Sri Aurobindo: You must not let that movement [] go too far.  It is one of the dangers of the sadhana, because of the ascetic turn of Yoga in the past that as experiences come the suggestion comes that food or sleep etc. are not necessary and also there may come an inclination in the body not to eat or not to sleep.  But if that is accepted the results are often disastrous.


Sri Aurobindo: It is no more to be accepted than the inertia itself.    To make your sadhana depend upon not eating is to make a great mistake. When people fast like that, they get into an abnormal condition and can easily mistake imaginations and delusions for true experiences. Much fasting in the end weakens the nervous system.


Sri Aurobindo: So you must drop this habit of not eating for days together. For Yoga it is a mistake to eat too much but a mistake also to eat nothing or too little. If you eat too much, you become heavy and tamasic; if you fast or eat too little, you excite the vital energies and ﬁnally overexcite them, but at the same time you weaken the body and the nerves; both are bad for sadhana. You should eat regularly a moderate but sufﬁcient amount of food; it is only if there is illness or disturbance of digestion that a low diet or not eating sometimes becomes necessary, but fasting even for the purpose of resting the stomach should not last more than a day.  For your sadhana you have to use, not outward means like this, but quietness, sincere peaceful aspiration, openness to the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is a fact that by fasting, if the mind and the nerves are solid or the will force dynamic, one can get for a time into a state of inner energy and receptivity which is alluring to the mind and the usual reactions of hunger, weakness, intestinal disturbance, etc. can be wholly avoided. But the body suffers by diminution and there can easily develop in the vital a morbid overstrained condition due to the inrush of more vital energy than the nervous system can assimilate or coordinate. Nervous people should avoid the temptation to fast; it is often accompanied or followed by delusions and a loss of balance.


Sri Aurobindo: Especially if there is a motive of hunger-strike or that element comes in, as it did in your case, fasting becomes perilous, for it is then an indulgence of a vital movement which may easily become a habit injurious and pernicious to the sadhana. Even if all these reactions are avoided, still there is no sufﬁcient utility in fasting, since the higher energy and receptivity ought to come not by artiﬁcial or physical means but by intensity of the consciousness and strong will for the sadhana.    I never heard of it []; but it is just the way to get the wrong realisation. The nerves get into an excited tense condition (when they do not collapse) and invent realisations or open to a wrong Force.


Sri Aurobindo: At least that often happens.   The idea of giving up food is a wrong inspiration. You can go on with a small quantity of food, but not without food altogether, except for a comparatively short time. Remember what the Gita says, “Yoga is not for one who eats in excess nor for one who abstains from eating altogether.” Vital energy is one thing — of that one can draw a great amount without food and often it increases with fasting; but physical substance, without which life loses its support, is of a different order.


Sri Aurobindo: If at any time it became possible to renew the body without food and that proved necessary for the Yoga, the Mother and I would be the ﬁrst to do it. So keep to your established diet and do not get impatient with Nature.   The transformation to which we aspire is too vast and complex to come at one stroke; it must be allowed to come by stages.  The physical change is the last of these stages and is itself a progressive process.  The inner transformation cannot be brought about by physical means either of a positive or a negative nature.


Sri Aurobindo: On the contrary, the physical change itself can only be brought about by a descent of the greater supramental consciousness into the cells of the body. Till then at least the body and its supporting energies have to be maintained in part by the ordinary means, food, sleep, etc. Food has to be taken in the right spirit, with the right consciousness; sleep has to be gradually transformed into the Yogic repose. A premature and excessive physical austerity () may endanger the process of the sadhana by establishing a disturbance and abnormality of the forces in the different parts of the system. A great energy may pour into the mental and vital parts, but the nerves and the body may be overstrained and lose the strength to support the play of these higher energies.


Sri Aurobindo: This is the reason why an extreme physical austerity is not included here as a substantive part of the sadhana.  There is no harm in fasting from time to time for a day or two or in reducing the food taken to a small but sufﬁcient modicum; but entire abstinence for a long period is not advisable.  I think the importance of sattwic food from the spiritual point of view has been exaggerated. Food is rather a question of hygiene and many of the sanctions and prohibitions laid down in ancient religions had more a hygienic than a spiritual motive. The Gita’s deﬁnitions seem to point in the same direction — tamasic food, it seems to say, is what is stale or rotten with the virtue gone out of it, rajasic food is that which is too acrid, pungent etc., heats the blood and spoils the health, sattwic food is what is pleasing, healthy etc.


Sri Aurobindo: It may well be that different kinds of food nourish the action of the different gunas and so indirectly are helpful or harmful apart from their physical action. But that is as far as we can conﬁdently go. What particular eatables are or are not sattwic is another question and more difﬁcult to determine. Spiritually, I should say that the effect of food depends more on the occult atmosphere and inﬂuences that come with it than on anything in the food itself. Vegetarianism is another question altogether; it stands, as you say, on a will not to do harm to the more conscious forms of life for the satisfaction of the belly.


Sri Aurobindo: As to the question of practising to take all kinds of food with equal rasa, it is not necessary to practise nor does it really come by practice. One has to acquire equality within in the consciousness and as this equality grows one can extend it or apply it to the various ﬁelds of the activity of the consciousness.     Those who are ready to give up animal food, should certainly do so.


Sri Aurobindo: The others can do it when they are ready.      It is rather certain kinds of food that are supposed to increase it [] — e.g. meat, onions, chillis etc.


Sri Aurobindo:  It [] is an aphrodisiac — has a strong effect on the sex centre.      If it [] is once only in some months it can’t be harmful for the body.


Sri Aurobindo: For the sadhana what is harmful is taking to satisfy desire, fancy, impulse — it is not the thing in itself.     There is no sin at all in eating these things [ ]. The only objection to eating much onions is that it is supposed to stimulate not tamoguna but rajas, but there are other foods not forbidden that do that.


Sri Aurobindo:   I think onions can be described as rajaso-tamasic in their character. They are heavy and material and at the same time excitant of certain strong material-vital forces. It is obvious that if one wants to conquer the physical passions and is still very much subject to the body nature and the things that affect it, free indulgence in onions is not advisable. It is only for those who have risen above the body consciousness and mastered it and are not affected by these things that it does not at all matter; for them the use of this or that food or its disuse makes no difference.


Sri Aurobindo: At the same time I must say that the abstinence from rajasic or tamasic foods does not of itself assure freedom from the things they help to stimulate. Vegetarians, for instance, can be as sensual and excitable as meat-eaters; a man may abstain from onions and yet be in these respects no better than before.   It is a change of consciousness that is effective and this kind of abstention helps that only in so far as it tends to create a less heavy and more reﬁned and plastic physical consciousness for the higher will to act upon. That is something, but it is not all; the change of consciousness can come even in spite of non-abstinence.


Sri Aurobindo: Onions are allowed here because the palate of the sadhaks demands something to give a taste to the food. We do not insist on these details, or make an absolutely strict rule, as the stress here is more on the inward change, the outward coming as its result. Only so much is insisted on as is essential for organisation and inner and outer discipline and to point the way to an indispensable self-control. It is pressed on all that the greed of the palate has to be conquered, but it has to be done in the last resort from within, as also the other passions and desires of the lower nature.


Sri Aurobindo:  Betel is anaesthetic, depressive and yet with a certain toxic effect — that is why it is prohibited.  Whatever is done without purpose is a useless and wrong movement.  Eating things from outside is not safe either from the physical or from the spiritual point of view.  It is the habit in the subconscient material that feels an artiﬁcial need created by the past and does not care whether it is harmful or disturbing to the nerves or not. That is the nature of all intoxications (wine, tobacco, cocaine etc.), people go on even after the deleterious effects have shown themselves and even after all real pleasure in it has ceased because of this artiﬁcial need (it is not real).


Sri Aurobindo: The will has to get hold of this subconscient persistence and dissolve it.     Smoking is only a morbid craving of physical desire — there is no other reason for people doing it. Smoking is tamasic and prevents control of mind.


Sri Aurobindo:   These intoxicants [] put one in relation with a vital world in which such things [] exist.  This is not a Yoga in which physical austerities have to be done for their own sake. Sleep is necessary for the body just as food is.


Sri Aurobindo: Sufﬁcient sleep must be taken, but not excessive sleep. What sufﬁcient sleep is depends on the need of the body.    The loss of sleep must not be there. In this Yoga we insist on regular sleep, rest, food, because then the balance can be kept between the strength of the body and the force of all that comes into it from above.


Sri Aurobindo: Otherwise the body is not able to keep and hold what comes — there is disturbance and loss of the right poise and balance.    The ﬁrst thing I tell people when they want not to eat or sleep is that no Yoga can be done without sufﬁcient food and sleep (see the Gita on this point). This is not Gandhi’s asram or a miracle-shop. Fasting and sleeplessness make the nerves morbid and excited and weaken the brain and lead to delusions and fantasies.


Sri Aurobindo: The Gita says Yoga is not for one who eats too much or sleeps too much, neither is it for one who does not eat or does not sleep, but if one eats and sleeps suitably —  — then one can do it best. It is the same with everything else. How often have I said that excessive retirement was suspect to me and that to do nothing but meditate was a lopsided and therefore unsound sadhana.    I must ask you to remember what I told you about sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: If you want to do the sadhana here, you must sleep well and eat well. If you try to stop sleeping or eating or unduly diminish sleep and food, you will weaken the body and excite the vital and wrong and excited and exaggerated movements will come into you. Remember this in future.    There are stories told of people living without sleep or food — living without sleep has happened, but it came by an abnormal condition in the person which cannot be brought at will.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no instance of anyone living without food, — none that is to say which is beyond doubt — but that also may be possible — but here also it must depend on some abnormal condition which cannot be brought at will.  It is not a right method to try to keep awake at night; the suppression of the needed sleep makes the body tamasic and unﬁt for the necessary concentration during the waking hours.  The right way is to transform the sleep and not suppress it, and especially to learn how to become more and more conscious in sleep itself. If that is done, sleep changes into an inner mode of consciousness in which the sadhana can continue as much as in the waking state, and at the same time one is able to enter into other planes of consciousness than the physical and command an immense range of informative and utilisable experience.   By not sleeping enough you weaken the forces of the physical consciousness and so the physical basis of the sadhana is less strong than it should be.


Sri Aurobindo: It gets more open to the forces of inertia.     Is that all your sleep []? If so, it is far too little.


Sri Aurobindo: If you do not sleep enough, the body and the nervous envelope will be weakened and the body and the nervous envelope are the basis of the sadhana.     I am glad the peace is coming back at last and I trust it will increase and push out these other things. But how is it, — you have not been taking proper rest?


Sri Aurobindo: Rest is absolutely necessary for the body and still more for the nervous system; not only for working but for sadhana rest to the body and the nerves is essential. If you allow them to be strained and tired, they will not be able to adapt themselves readily for the required change, all sorts of things, confusion, suggestions etc. are likely to come into a tired nervous system. They too must be strong and at peace.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the want of sleep itself that brings the symptoms of uneasiness. The action of the Sadhana cannot of itself bring this kind of reaction, it is only if the body gets strained by want of sleep, insufﬁcient food, overwork or nervous excitement that there are these things. It is probably because the nerves are strung in the daytime and you do not relax into ease that it is difﬁcult to sleep.


Sri Aurobindo: One can assimilate [] in sleep also. Remaining awake like that is not good, as in the end it strains the nerves and the system receives wrongly in an excited way or else gets too tired to receive.


Sri Aurobindo: You should have continuous sleep at night and sufﬁcient — otherwise you will feel sleepy in the day which will be a hindrance to work.     Sleep is necessary; this kind of broken rest is not good. It is the consciousness in sleep itself that has to change.


Sri Aurobindo:   Such pressure [] only comes (1) when the body needs sleep, not having had enough or because enough rest is not given, (2) when it wants to recuperate after illness or strong fatigue, (3) when there is a pressure from above which the physical consciousness or part of it replies to by trying to go inside.


Sri Aurobindo: Take care to rest enough. You must guard against fatigue as it may bring relaxation and tamas. To rest well is not tamas, as some people suppose; it can be done in the right consciousness to maintain the bodily energy — like the of the strenuous Hathayogin.


Sri Aurobindo: Both for fevers and for mental trouble sleep is a great help and its absence very undesirable — it is the loss of a curative agency.  The ordinary period of sleep most people give themselves is 8 hours. In bad health (I am not speaking of acute illness) it can extend to 9. 12 hours is excessive unless one is seriously ill or recovering from illness or else has underslept for a long time and the body is making up arrears of needed sleep.


Sri Aurobindo:  8 hours [] at night is all right, the additional 2 hours is probably necessitated by the bad sleep you were having before.  The body recoups itself in this way. That is why it is a mistake to take too little sleep — the body gets strained and has to recoup itself by abnormal sleep afterwards.   The normal allowance of sleep is said to be 7 to 8 hours except in advanced age when it is said to be less. If one takes less (5 to 6 for instance) the body accommodates itself somehow, but if the control is taken off it immediately wants to make up for its lost arrears of the normal 8 hours.


Sri Aurobindo: So often when one has tried to live on too little food, if one relaxes, the body becomes enormously rapacious for food until it has set right the credit and loss account. At least it often happens like that.    It must be the want of sleep that keeps your nervous system exposed to weakness — it is a great mistake not to take sufﬁcient sleep. 7 hours is the minimum needed.


Sri Aurobindo: When one has a very strong nervous system, one can reduce it to 6, sometimes even 5 — but it is rare and ought not to be attempted without necessity.      The feeling that you have in the morning proves that you need more sleep, so it is not wise to cut it short to the minimum as that in the end tells on the body.


Sri Aurobindo: It is better to continue the sleep when you feel sleepy. 7 hours is not too much for sleep.     5 hours [] is quite insufﬁcient.


Sri Aurobindo: Six is the absolute minimum, it can go up to seven hours.      It is not possible to do at once what you like with the body.


Sri Aurobindo: If the body is told to sleep only 2 or 3 hours, it may follow if the will is strong enough — but afterwards it may get exceedingly strained and even break down for want of needed rest. The Yogis who minimise their sleep , succeed only after a long tapasya in which they learn how to control the forces of Nature governing the body.  In sleep one very commonly passes from consciousness to deeper consciousness in a long succession until one reaches the psychic and rests there or else from higher to higher consciousness until one reaches rest in some silence and peace. The few minutes one passes in this rest are the real sleep which restores — if one does not get it, there is only a half rest.


Sri Aurobindo: It is when you come near to either of these domains of rest, that you begin to see these higher kind of dreams.     A long unbroken sleep is necessary because there are just ten minutes of the whole into which one enters into a true rest — a sort of Sachchidananda immobility of the consciousness — and that it is which really restores the system. The rest of the time is spent ﬁrst in travelling through various states of consciousness towards that and then coming out of it back towards the waking state.


Sri Aurobindo: This fact of the ten minutes true rest has been noted by medical men, but of course they know nothing about Sachchidananda!    This feeling of having enough sleep [] and after sleeping again of not having had enough is not unusual.  It might be inferred that the ﬁrst sleep is really enough and the second is a tamasic sleep which leaves the body unrested. Some doctors say that there are about ten minutes of rest which are the true sleep and all the rest is only a process of getting into the ten minutes and getting out again — for these ten minutes are difﬁcult to arrive at.


Sri Aurobindo: Perhaps you get your ten minutes before the ﬁrst waking. The difﬁculty is that the length of sleep seems important and that by the habit of less the nerves continually seem to get strained — at least I have seen that with many. If that can be overcome then so much sleep might not be requisite.    According to a recent medical theory one passes in sleep through many phases until one arrives at a state in which there is absolute rest and silence — it lasts only for ten minutes, the rest of the time is taken up by travelling to that and travelling back again to the waking state.


Sri Aurobindo: I suppose the ten minutes sleep can be called in the Brahman or Brahmaloka, the rest is or passage through other worlds (planes or states of conscious existence). It is these ten minutes that restore the energies of the being, and without it sleep is not refreshing.  According to the Mother’s experience and knowledge one passes from waking through a succession of states of sleep consciousness which are in fact an entry and passage into so many worlds and arrives at a pure Sachchidananda state of complete rest, light and silence; afterwards one retraces one’s way till one reaches the waking physical state. It is this Sachchidananda period that gives sleep all its restorative value. These two accounts, the scientiﬁc and the occult-spiritual, are practically identical with each other.


Sri Aurobindo: But the former is only a recent discovery of what the occult-spiritual knowledge knew long ago.  People’s ideas of sound sleep are absolutely erroneous. What they call sound sleep is merely a plunge of the outer consciousness into a complete subconscience. They call that a dreamless sleep; but it is only a state in which the surface sleep consciousness which is a subtle prolongation of the outer still left active in sleep itself is unable to record the dreams and transmit them to the physical mind. As a matter of fact the whole sleep is full of dreams.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only during the brief time in which one is in the Brahmaloka that the dreams cease.  The sleep before 12 is supposed to be the best.   To sleep without a burdened stomach is obviously more healthy, both psychologically and physically.


Sri Aurobindo: I don’t think the lack of sleep when it comes is due to want of work; for even those who do no work at all, get good sleep. It is something else; but it must be got over.     It is restlessness in you which prevents you from keeping still inwardly or outwardly.


Sri Aurobindo: To sleep well the vital and physical and mind also must learn how to relax themselves and be quiet.     Obviously — it [] threw you into a tamasic consciousness and consequently the sleep was heavy in a gross subconsciousness and the fatigue was the result.


Sri Aurobindo:   You should not jump up from sleep. Rise quietly and take a little time. You must give time for the consciousness to come back fully into the body.  Many people can’t stand afternoon sleep.


Sri Aurobindo: But when it is more refreshing, it is because it is lighter than the night sleep — one does not go so deep down to the subconscient.    According to the old Ayurvedic shastra “sleep by day impairs the vitality”; but there are conditions in which the rule may not apply. It is however true that these [] dreams do easily occur during sleep by day and the dreams themselves come in a state of deep subconscient relaxation, tamasic inertia when the system can be touched by any subconscient suggestion or inﬂuence.  Sadhana can go on in the dream or sleep state as well as in the waking.


Sri Aurobindo:  Once one is in full sadhana, sleep becomes as much a part of it as waking.     If the sleep becomes conscious even for a time, then experience and sadhana of itself can go on in the sleep state and not only in the waking condition.


Sri Aurobindo:    It is usually only if there is much activity of sadhana in the day that it extends also into the sleep state.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is no reason at all why intensity of sadhana should bring insufﬁcient sleep.


Sri Aurobindo: If you feel the need of sleep you ought to sleep. The pressure of sadhana should not be allowed to become excessive.     It [] may possibly be due to the attempt of the higher consciousness to descend then.


Sri Aurobindo: It sometimes produces this effect of sleepiness on the body, for the physical attempts to go inside to meet the descending consciousness and if it is not accustomed to enter into one of the higher samadhis on such occasions, the going inside translates itself to the physical as sleep. The exercise may have contributed, of course, by its reaction on the body.  In sleep one easily loses the consciousness of the day, because of the lapse of the physical being into the subconscient. You have to get the power to reestablish it when you wake.


Sri Aurobindo:   Sleep, because of its subconscient basis, usually brings a falling down to a lower level, unless it is a conscious sleep; to make it more and more conscious is the one permanent remedy: but also until that is done, one should always react against this sinking tendency when one wakes and not allow the effect of dull nights to accumulate. But these things need always a settled endeavour and discipline and must take time, sometimes a long time. It will not do to refrain from the effort because immediate results do not appear.   It often, even usually happens that after sleep — not the sleep of meditation, but the ordinary sleep — one ﬁnds one’s consciousness has gone down.


Sri Aurobindo: It is no use getting distressed by that; one has to remain quiet and call back the higher consciousness.     The consciousness in the night almost always descends below the level of what one has gained by sadhana in the waking consciousness — unless there are special experiences of an uplifting character in the time of sleep or unless the Yogic consciousness acquired is so strong in the physical itself as to counteract the pull of the subconscient inertia. In ordinary sleep the consciousness in the body is that of the subconscient physical, which is a diminished consciousness, not awake and alive like the rest of the being.


Sri Aurobindo: The rest of the being stands back and part of its consciousness goes out into other planes and regions and has experiences which are recorded in dreams such as that you have related. You say you go to very bad places and have experiences like the one you narrate; but that is not a sign, necessarily, of anything wrong in you. It merely means that you go into the vital world, as everybody does, and the vital world is full of such places and such experiences. What you have to do is not so much to avoid at all going there, for it cannot be avoided altogether, but to go with full protection until you get mastery in these regions of supraphysical Nature. That is one reason why you should remember us and open to the Force before sleeping; for the more you get that habit and can do it successfully, the more the protection will be with you.


Sri Aurobindo:   The difﬁculty of keeping the consciousness at night happens to most — it is because the night is the time of sleep and relaxation and the subconscient comes up. The true consciousness comes at ﬁrst in the waking state or in meditation, it takes possession of the mental, the vital, the conscious physical, but the subconscious vital and physical remain obscure and this obscurity comes up when there is sleep or an inert relaxation.  When the subconscient is enlightened and penetrated by the true consciousness, this disparity disappears. The Pishachic woman that tried to enter [] is the false vital impure Shakti — and the voice that spoke was that of his psychic being.


Sri Aurobindo: If he keeps his psychic being awake and in front, it will always protect him against these dark forces as it did this time.   The sleep you describe in which there is a luminous silence or else the sleep in which there is Ananda in the cells, these are obviously the best states. The other hours, those of which you are unconscious, may be spells of a deep slumber in which you have gone out of the physical into the mental, vital or other planes. You say you were unconscious, but it may simply be that you do not remember what happened; for in coming back there is a sort of turning over of the consciousness, a transition or reversal, in which everything experienced in sleep except perhaps the last happening of all or else one that was very impressive, recedes from the physical awareness and all becomes as if a blank. There is another blank state, a state of inertia, not truly blank, but heavy and unremembering; but that is when one goes deeply and crassly into the subconscient; this subterranean plunge is very undesirable, obscuring, lowering, often fatiguing rather than restful, the reverse of the luminous silence.


Sri Aurobindo:   To get rid of the subconscient in sleep, the proper way is not to diminish sleep, for that only overstrains the body and helps the lower forces to trouble it. The right way is to change gradually (it cannot be done all of a sudden) the character of the sleep.  At night when one sinks into the subconscient after being in a good state of consciousness, we ﬁnd that state gone and we have to labour to get it back again.


Sri Aurobindo: On the other hand, if the sleep is of the better kind, one may wake up in a good condition. Of course, it is better to be conscious in sleep, if one can.   It is better to go to sleep and make it a discipline to become conscious in your sleep. Sleep may be only a habit, but it is a necessary habit at present and the thing to do is not to suppress, but to transform it into a conscious inner state.   You must not try to avoid sleep at night — if you persist in doing that, the bad results may not appear immediately, but the body will get strained and there will be a breakdown which may destroy what you have gained in your sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: If you want to remain conscious at night, train yourself to make your sleep conscious — not to eliminate sleep altogether, but to transform it.    Sleep cannot be replaced, but it can be changed; for you can become conscious in sleep. If you are thus conscious, then the night can be utilised for a higher working — provided the gets its due rest; for the object of sleep is the body’s rest and the renewal of the vital-physical force. It is a mistake to deny to the body food and sleep, as some from an ascetic idea or impulse want to do — that only wears out the physical support and, although either the Yogic or the vital energy can long keep at work an overstrained or declining physical system, a time comes when this drawing is no longer so easy nor perhaps possible.


Sri Aurobindo: The body should be given what it needs for its own efﬁcient working.  Moderate but sufﬁcient food (without greed or desire), sufﬁcient sleep, but not of the heavy tamasic kind, this should be the rule.   To keep yourself awake is not permissible — it depresses the body in the end and excites the brain and leads to an unquiet and unbalanced consciousness. The body needs sufﬁcient rest in order to be able to bear the pressure of sadhana.  You can pray or will before sleeping to be conscious in sleep, and you can get your waking mind full of the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: That is the best way. But you must not expect to be able to succeed all at once. First, the sleep-mind must become conscious of what it is doing in sleep; only afterwards can you determine what it is to do there.    In the sleep what holds the body is the subconscient — and the subconscient acts according to the already formed present habits or else the impressions left by past thoughts, feelings, memories, activities.


Sri Aurobindo: If the thought of the Mother and her force and working are ﬁxed in the conscious hours, then it will be easier to bring it into the subconscient.     As for asserting one’s will in sleep it is simply a matter of accustoming the subconscient to obey the will laid upon it by the waking mind before sleeping. It very often happens for instance that if you ﬁx upon the subconscient your will to wake up at a particular hour in the morning, the subconscient will obey and you wake up automatically at that hour.


Sri Aurobindo: This can be extended to other matters. Many have found that by putting a will against sexual dreams or emission on the subconscient before sleeping, there comes after a time (it does not always succeed at the beginning) an automatic action causing one to awaken before the dream concludes or before it begins or in some way preventing the thing forbidden from happening. Also one can develop a more conscious sleep in which there is a sort of inner consciousness which can intervene.   This [] is quite usual. Consciousness in sleep can only be gradually established with the growth of the true consciousness in the waking state.


Sri Aurobindo:  You cannot expect to be conscious at once in sleep: it takes a long time. If you can be always conscious in waking, then it will be easier to be conscious in sleep.   The sleep consciousness can be effectively dealt with only when the waking mind has made a certain amount of progress.


Sri Aurobindo: All dream or sleep consciousness cannot be converted at once into conscious sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: That has to be done progressively. But your power of conscious samadhi must increase before this can be done.     That is all right [].


Sri Aurobindo: It shows that the sadhana is becoming continuous and that you are becoming conscious and using a conscious will in sleep as well as in waking. This is a very important step forward in the sadhana.     You are more conscious in your sleep than in your waking condition.


Sri Aurobindo: This is because of the physical consciousness which is not yet sufﬁciently open; it is only just beginning to open. In your sleep the inner being is active and the psychic there can inﬂuence more actively the mind and vital. When the physical consciousness is spiritually awake, you will no longer feel the trouble and obstruction you now have and will be as open in the waking consciousness as in sleep.  The gap made by the night and waking with the ordinary consciousness is the case with everybody almost (of course, the “ordinary” consciousness differs according to the progress); but it is no use waiting to be conscious in sleep; you have to get the habit of getting back the thread of the progress as soon as may be and for that there must be some concentration after rising.  At night, you have to pass into sleep in the concentration — you must be able to concentrate with the eyes closed, lying down and the concentration must deepen into sleep — that is to say, sleep must become a concentrated going inside away from the outer waking state.


Sri Aurobindo: If you ﬁnd it necessary to sit for a time you may do so, but afterwards lie down, keeping the concentration till this happens.     It [] can certainly have an effect — though not perhaps through the whole sleep — for the sleep passes through many phases or planes and the effect is not likely to survive all these changes of consciousness and domain. It is possible however to get after a time a control and consciousness in the sleep itself.


Sri Aurobindo: As for the subconscient, it can certainly have an effect, but most when there is a precise and positive will put upon the subconscient in the meditation.     You have to start [] by concentrating before you sleep always with a speciﬁc will or aspiration. The will or aspiration may take time to reach the subconscient, but if it is sincere, strong and steady, it does reach after a time — so that an automatic consciousness and will are established in the sleep itself which will do what is necessary.


Sri Aurobindo:   You need not meditate at once [] — but for a few minutes take a concentrated attitude calling the Mother’s presence for the day.  The expression [] was of the psychic plane — and the music was of that domain. Very often coming out of a conscious sleep like that the inner consciousness (which heard the music) lasts for a few seconds even after waking, before it goes back and is entirely covered by the waking mind.


Sri Aurobindo: In that case what was heard or seen in sleep would continue for those few seconds after waking.  It is the waking mind which thinks and wills and controls more or less the life in the waking state. In the sleep that mind is not there and there is no control. It is not the thinking mind that sees dreams etc. and is conscious in a rather incoherent way in sleep. It is usually what is called the subconscient that comes up then.


Sri Aurobindo: If the waking mind were active in the body, one would not be able to sleep.    You are mixing up different things altogether — that is why you cannot understand []. I was simply explaining the difference between the ordinary waking consciousness and the ordinary sleep consciousness as they work in men whether sadhaks or not sadhaks — and it has nothing to do with the true self or psychic being. Sleep and waking are determined not by the true self or psychic being, but by the mind’s waking condition or activity or its cessation — when it ceases for a time, then it is the subconscious that is there on the surface and there is sleep.


Sri Aurobindo: The depression coming on you in sleep must have been due to one of two causes. It might have been the trace left by an unpleasant experience in some disagreeable quarter of the vital world and there are places in plenty of that kind there. It can hardly have been an attack, for that would surely have left a more distinct impression of something having happened, even if there was no actual memory of it; but merely to enter into certain places or meet their inhabitants or enter into contact with their atmosphere can have, unless one is a born ﬁghter and takes an aggressive pleasure in facing and conquering these ordeals, a depressing and exhausting effect. If that is the cause, then it is a question of either avoiding these places, which can be done by an effort of will, once one knows that it is this which happens, or putting around you a special protection against the touch of that atmosphere. The other possible cause is a plunge into a too obscure and subconscient sleep — that has sometimes the effect you describe.


Sri Aurobindo: In any case, do not allow yourself to be discouraged when these things happen; they are common phenomena one cannot fail to meet with as soon as one begins to penetrate behind the veil and touch the occult causes of the psychological happenings within us. One has to learn the causes, note and face the difﬁculty and always react — never accept the depression thrown on one, but react as you did the ﬁrst time. If there are always forces around which are concerned to depress and discourage, there are always forces above and around us which we can draw upon, — draw into ourselves to restore, to ﬁll up again with strength and faith and joy and the power that perseveres and conquers. It is really a habit that one has to get of opening to these helpful forces and either passively receiving them or actively drawing upon them — for one can do either. It is easier if you have the conception of them above and around you and the faith and the will to receive them — for that brings the experience and concrete sense of them and the capacity to receive at need or at will.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a question of habituating your consciousness to get into touch and keep in touch with these helpful forces — and for that you must accustom yourself to reject the impressions forced on you by the others, depression, self-distrust, repining and all similar disturbance.  As for the actual mastery of a situation by occult powers, it can only come by use and experiment — as one develops strength by exercises or develops a process in the laboratory by ﬁnding out through the actual use of a power how it can and ought to be applied to the ﬁeld in which it operates. It is of no use waiting for the strength before one tries; the strength will come with repeated trials. Neither must you fear failure or be discouraged by failure — for these things do not always succeed at once.  These are things one has to learn by personal experiences, how to get into touch with the cosmic forces, how to relate or equate our individual action with theirs, how to become an instrument of the Master Consciousness which we call the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: There is something a little too personal in your attitude — I mean the insistence on personal strength or weakness as the determining factor. After all, for the greatest as for the smallest of us our strength is not our own but given to us for the game that has to be played, the work that we have to do. The strength may be formed in us, but its present formation is not ﬁnal, — neither formation of power nor formation of weakness. At any moment the formation may change — at any moment one sees, especially under the pressure of Yoga, weakness changing into power, the incapable becoming capable, suddenly or slowly the instrumental consciousness rising to a new stature or developing its latent powers. Above us, within us, around us is the AllStrength and it is that that we have to rely on for our work, our development, our transforming change.


Sri Aurobindo: If we proceed with the faith in the work, in our instrumentality for the work, in the Power that missions us, then in the very act of trial, of facing and surmounting difﬁculties and failures, the strength will come and we shall ﬁnd our capacity to contain as much as we need of the All-Strength of which we grow more and more perfect vessels.   Again, about the sleep, it is like that because the ordinary state of sleep is an unconscious condition. One has always dreams throughout the night, but the surface being is then unconscious and records only a few of them that come through and even these it records in an incoherent way. Really one is acting or working on one plane or another throughout sleep except for a few minutes.


Sri Aurobindo: When the inner consciousness grows, then one becomes more and more aware of what is going on, what one is doing and sleep is no longer quite the same thing — for it is more conscious.     They [] simply mean that when they come back, they are not conscious of having dreamed. In the sleep the consciousness goes into other planes and has experiences there and when these are translated perfectly or imperfectly by the physical mind, they are called dreams.


Sri Aurobindo: All the time of sleep such dreams take place, but sometimes one remembers and at other times does not at all remember. Sometimes also one goes low down into the subconscient and the dreams are there, but so deep down that when one comes up there is not even the consciousness that one had dreamed.     All sleep is full of dreams.


Sri Aurobindo: Why should night or day make any difference?  Everybody has dreams in sleep though all do not remember them. In these dreams one goes to all kinds of places in all kinds of worlds and sees and does things there or has experience of what happens there. Some of these dreams have importance and a meaning for the sadhana — most have none or very little.


Sri Aurobindo:   These dreams are not all mere dreams, all have not a casual, incoherent or subconscious building. Many are records or transcripts of experiences on the vital plane into which one enters in sleep, some are scenes or events of the subtle physical plane. There one often undergoes happenings or carries on actions that resemble those of the physical life with the same surroundings and the same people, though usually there is in arrangement and feature some or a considerable difference. But it may also be a contact with other surroundings and with other people, not known in the physical life or not belonging at all to the physical world.


Sri Aurobindo: In the waking state you are conscious only of a certain limited ﬁeld and action of your nature. In sleep you can become vividly aware of things beyond this ﬁeld — a larger mental or vital nature behind the waking state or else a subtler physical or a subconscient nature which contains much that is there in you but not distinguishably active in the waking state. All these obscure tracts have to be cleared or else there can be no change of the Prakriti. You should not allow yourself to be disturbed by the press of vital or subconscient dreams — for these two make up the larger part of dream-experience — but aspire to get rid of these things and of the activities they indicate, to be conscious and reject all but the divine Truth; the more you get that Truth and cling to it in the waking state, rejecting all else, the more all this inferior dream-stuff will get clear.