Sri Aurobindo: The experiences you have are a good starting-point for realisation. They have to develop into the light of a deeper state in which there will be the descent of a higher consciousness into you. Your present consciousness in which you feel these things is only a preparatory one — in which the Mother works in you through the cosmic power according to your state of consciousness and your karma and in that working both success and failure can come — one has to remain equal-minded to both while trying always for success. A surer guidance can come even in this preparatory consciousness if you are entirely turned towards her alone in such a way that you can feel her direct guidance and follow it without any other inﬂuence or force intervening to act upon you, but that condition is not easy to get or keep — it needs a great one-pointedness and constant singleminded dedication. When the higher consciousness will descend, then a closer union, a more intimate consciousness of the Presence and a more illumined intuition will become possible.


Sri Aurobindo:   The stream which you feel coming down on the head and pouring into you is indeed a current of the Mother’s Force; it is so that it is often felt; it ﬂows into the body in currents and works there to liberate and change the consciousness. As the consciousness changes and develops, you will begin yourself to understand the meaning and working of these things.


Sri Aurobindo:   Something is growing in you, but it is all inside — still if there is the steady persistence it is bound to come out. For instance, this white dazzling light with currents, it is a sure sign of the Force (the Mother’s) entering and working in the, but it came to you in sleep — that is to say, in the inner being, still behind the veil. The moment it came out, the dryness would disappear.


Sri Aurobindo: What the Mother did was to light the ﬁre within — if you did not feel it, it must be because the outer covering has not yet allowed it to come through into the outer consciousness. But something in the inner being must have kept it and opened more widely — that is shown by your experience in sleep, for that was evidently an action of the Mother in the inner being. The descent of this current in the spine is always a descent of the Mother’s Force working in the centres to open them; the strong force of the current which you felt is an evident proof that the wider opening is there. You have only to persist and the effects both of the ﬁre and the force will come out in the surface consciousness — for always there is a preparatory work behind the veil in the inner being before the veil thins or disappears and all the working can be done with the participation of the outer consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother’s force can come down quite nicely and gently — there is no need of palpitations, giddiness or nausea for that.  This is the meaning of your experiences:  (1) The power of the Divine Mother from above is descending upon you and the pressure you feel on your head and the workings of which you are aware are hers.  Put yourself completely into her hands, have entire conﬁdence, observe carefully and accurately all that happens and write that here. There is no need of special instructions since what is needed is being done for you.


Sri Aurobindo: (2) The ﬁrst pressure was on your mind. The centres of the mind are (a) the head and above it, (b) the centre of the forehead between the eyes, (c) the throat and the vital mental (emotional) and sensational mind centres from the breast downward. It is this latter which is the ﬁrst of which you became aware.  The action of the Power was to widen these two parts of you and raise them up towards the lowest centre of the higher consciousness above your head, so that hereafter they might both be consciously governed from there and that these might both move in a wide universal consciousness not limited by the body.  (3) The other, the restless one of which you became aware, is the vital being, the being of desire and life-movement.


Sri Aurobindo: The work of the Power has been directed towards quieting the restless movements and making it wide in consciousness as with the Mind. The large body you felt was the vital body, not the physical,.  (4) The basis of your Sadhana must be silence and quiet, .  You must remain and grow always more and more deeply quiet and still both in yourself and in your attitude to the world around you. If you can do this, the sadhana is likely to go on progressing and enlarging itself with a minimum of trouble and disturbance.


Sri Aurobindo: Never mind your family difﬁculties and say nothing to your people. Go on quietly trusting to the Power that is at work in you.     It is the pressure of Mother’s force.


Sri Aurobindo: If you keep quiet and don’t resist, then instead of being uneasy, it will make you happy.    The pressure is that of the Mother’s force. When there is a resistance, you feel the pressure. When the resistance is cleared away, there is the lightness and ease.


Sri Aurobindo:   This weight or pressure on the head is always the sign that the Mother’s Force is in contact with you and pressing from above to envelop your being and enter the Adhar and pervade it — usually passing by degrees through the centres on its way downward.  Sometimes it comes ﬁrst as Peace, sometimes as Force, sometimes as the Mother’s consciousness and her presence, sometimes as Ananda.  When you lost it before, it must have been due either to some uprising of vital imperfections in yourself or an attack from outside.


Sri Aurobindo: Of course the pressure need not always be there, but if things take the ordinary course, it usually recurs or else continues until the Adhar is open and there is no further obstacle to the descent of the higher consciousness.   You can write to him that the pressure he feels on his head is the pressure of the Mother’s force (the force of the higher consciousness) preparing an opening through the three upper centres (brahmarandhra, base of sahasradala; inner mind centre in the forehead; and the heart or psychic-emotional centre). The feeling in the spine is due to a very slight ﬂow of the current of the Shakti from above — the spine being the base of all the centres and the channel through which the Force tends most easily to ﬂow from one centre to another (Sahasradala = the centre where the human or mental and the higher or spiritual consciousness meet).


Sri Aurobindo: I was speaking of your case only — it was not my intention to say that the Mother never uses pressure. But pressure also can be of various kinds. There is the pressure of the Force when it is entering the mind or vital or body — a pressure to go faster, a pressure to build or form, a pressure to break and many more.  In your case if there is any pressure it is that of help or support or removal of an attack, but it does not seem to me that that can properly be called pressure.  It expresses her general action in the world.


Sri Aurobindo: She strikes at the Asuras, she strikes also at everything that has to be got rid of or destroyed, at the obstacles to the sadhana etc. I may say that the Mother never uses the Mahakali power in your case nor the Mahakali pressure.    These things refer to beginners who are not open and have not a ﬁt Adhar, yet want to do the sadhana.  Your body is not weak and you have considerable vital strength.


Sri Aurobindo: Moreover you have the openness to the Force and the habit of receiving it, and there is no reason why there should be any upsetting by the Force. It is not the Force, but the suggestion of these vital Forces that produces the upsetting.    The feeling of the vibration of the Mother’s force around the head is more than a mental idea or even a mental realisation, it is an experience. This vibration is indeed the action of the Mother’s Force which is ﬁrst felt above the head or around it, then afterwards within the head.


Sri Aurobindo: The pressure means that it is working to open the mind and its centres so that it may enter.  The mind-centres are in the head, one at the top and above it, another between the eyes, a third in the throat. That is why you feel the vibration around the head and sometimes up to the neck, but not below. It is so usually, for it is only after enveloping and entering the mind that it goes below to the emotional and vital parts (heart, navel, etc.) — though sometimes it is more enveloping before it enters the body.


Sri Aurobindo: Is it so difﬁcult to have faith and conﬁdence in the Mother? Even with a little of that attitude, the descent was taking place in you.    If you want to get back your faith and keep it, you must ﬁrst quiet your mind and make it open and obedient to the Mother’s force. If you have an excited mind at the mercy of every inﬂuence and impulse, you will remain a ﬁeld of conﬂicting and contrary forces and cannot progress.


Sri Aurobindo: You will begin to listen to your own ignorance instead of the Mother’s knowledge and your faith will naturally disappear and you will get into a wrong condition and a wrong attitude.     Put your faith in the Divine Shakti, set your mind at rest and let the Mother’s Force work.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is no reason to be discouraged. Three years is not too much for the preparation of the nature and it is usually through ﬂuctuations that it gradually grows nearer to the point where a continuous progress becomes possible. One has to cleave ﬁrmly to the faith in the Mother’s working behind all appearances and you will ﬁnd that that will carry you through.


Sri Aurobindo: Not at all. A wonderful Yogic poise and power would usually bring self-reliance rather than faith and surrender. It is the simple people who do the latter most easily.   Yes.


Sri Aurobindo: No. The Purusha often holds back and lets the other beings consent or reject in his place.   Make the central surrender. The Mother’s Force will do the rest.


Sri Aurobindo: In this process of the descent from above and the working it is most important not to rely entirely on oneself, but to rely on the guidance of the Guru and to refer all that happens to his judgment and arbitration and decision. For it often happens that the forces of the lower nature are stimulated and excited by the descent and want to mix with it and turn it to their proﬁt. It often happens too that some Power or Powers undivine in their nature present themselves as the Supreme Lord or as the Divine Mother and claim the being’s service and surrender. If these things are accepted, there will be an extremely disastrous consequence. If indeed there is the assent of the sadhak to the Divine working alone and the submission or surrender to that guidance, then all can go smoothly.


Sri Aurobindo: This assent and a rejection of all egoistic forces or forces that appeal to the ego are the safeguard throughout the sadhana. But the ways of Nature are full of snares, the disguises of the ego are innumerable, the illusions of the Powers of Darkness, Rakshasi Maya, are extraordinarily skilful; the reason is an insufﬁcient guide and often turns traitor; vital desire is always with us tempting to follow any alluring call. This is the reason why in this Yoga we insist so much on what we call — rather inadequately rendered by the English word surrender.  If the heart centre is fully opened and the psychic is always in control, then there is no question; all is safe. But the psychic can at any moment be veiled by a lower upsurge.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only a few who are exempt from these dangers and it is precisely those to whom surrender is easily possible. The guidance of one who is himself by identity or represents the Divine is in this difﬁcult endeavour imperative and indispensable.    Nothing is impossible if the nature of the psychic being is awake and leading you with the Mother’s consciousness and force behind it and working in you.  Allow a quiet and steady will to progress to be settled in you; learn the habit of a silent, persistent and thorough assimilation of what the Mother puts into you.


Sri Aurobindo: This is the sound way to advance.     As for the Mother’s force, when one receives it the best is to be quiet till it is assimilated; afterwards it is all right, not lost by outward movements or mixing.


Sri Aurobindo: A very important qualiﬁcation.  If the meditation brings poise, peace, a concentrated condition or even a pressure or inﬂuence, that go on in the work, provided one does not throw it away by a relaxed or dispersed state of consciousness. That was why the Mother wanted people not only to be concentrated at pranam or meditation but to remain silent and absorb or assimilate afterwards and also to avoid things that relax or disperse or dissipate too much — precisely for this reason that so the effects of what she put on them might continue and the change of attitude the Maharshi speaks of will take place. But I am afraid most of the sadhaks have never understood or practised anything of the kind — they could not appreciate or understand her directions.  When you cannot meditate, remain quiet and call in the Mother’s Peace or Force.


Sri Aurobindo:   By the feeling of it or the result.  You can’t order anything to the Mother’s force; the Mother’s force is the manifestation of the Mother herself.  You think the Mother’s force has nothing to do with action or that it is too feeble to act? Or what?


Sri Aurobindo: What is a force meant for but to act?    These are the two difﬁculties, one of the vital dissatisfaction and restlessness, the other of the inertia of the physical consciousness which are the chief obstacles to the sadhana. The ﬁrst thing to do is to keep detached from them, not to identify yourself mentally with these movements — even if you cannot reject them — next to call on the Mother’s force quietly but steadily for it to descend and make the obstacles disappear.


Sri Aurobindo:   What is still restless in the vital has to quiet down for the peace of mind to be even and constant. It has to be controlled, but only control will not be enough. The Mother’s Power has to be called always.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is no method in this Yoga except to concentrate, preferably in the heart, and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness; one can concentrate also in the head or between the eyebrows, but for many this is a too difﬁcult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is a beginning of experience.  The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be.  For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.


Sri Aurobindo:   When these attacks of illness come, remain quiet and call on the Mother’s Force to remove them.


Sri Aurobindo: To stand separate and not let the mind be overcome, is the ﬁrst step. The next is to learn how to call down the Mother’s Force whenever the attack comes, so that the attack may be pushed away at once or at least very soon before it can affect the outer vital and the body. If that can be done, the body will recover very soon with the inﬂow of the forces.


Sri Aurobindo: What you should do is to have conﬁdence and try to remain always conﬁdent and cheerful. If you feel depressed call for the Mother’s Force to remove the depression. If you fall ill, call the Mother’s Force to cure you. When you work call the Mother’s Force to support you and do the work through you.  Do not allow yourself to be troubled or discouraged by any difﬁculties, but quietly and simply open yourself to the Mother’s force and allow it to change you.


Sri Aurobindo:   When you decided to tell the Mother, it had the effect of opening something in your physical consciousness and the Mother’s Force acted. It often happens so — the action of the Mother’s Force depends on a certain power of receptivity in the mind or vital or body — and openness is the ﬁrst necessary condition for the receptivity.    Open yourself to the Mother’s Force and aspire — in time you will become one with the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo:   The vital defects and difﬁculties are the same in all and also the shortcomings of the mind. One has to open in faith and conﬁdence to the Divine; the Mother’s Force will gradually put everything right.


Sri Aurobindo:   I wrote so because the action of the sadhana does not depend on the Mother alone, but also on the attitude, will and openness of the sadhak. That is a well-known fact of the spiritual life which everybody is supposed to know. The Mother’s Force can do everything only when there is a real and true and complete surrender and openness to the Mother. All these things have been written again and again and it ought not to be necessary to repeat it to each one as if it were a new and unheard-of idea.


Sri Aurobindo: No. To make people ill in order to improve or perfect them is not Mother’s method. But sometimes things like headache come because the brain either tries too much or does not want to receive or makes difﬁculties. But these Yogic headaches are of a special kind and after the brain has found out the way to receive or respond, they don’t come at all.


Sri Aurobindo:   If one remains in full conﬁdence in the Mother and psychically open, then the Mother’s force will do all and one has only to give consent and keep oneself open and aspire.     It is no use giving way to depression or self-distrust, they are only obstacles to the change you want and which the Mother is working at in you.


Sri Aurobindo: The suggestions which raise these things are always one-sided and exaggerated and one ought not to listen to them. It is not by his own strength or good qualities that anyone can attain to the divine change; there are only two things that matter, the Mother’s force at work and the sadhak’s will to open to it and trust in her working. Keep your will and your trust and care nothing for the rest — they are only difﬁculties that all meet in their sadhana.   The Peace and Force come down, but the nervous weakness also rises up and resists and counteracts their inﬂuence and prevents them from settling in the being. That is because your mind assents to the nervous weakness, accepts its suggestions as true, is full of apprehensions and doubts, believes even that it is the Force which creates the nervous trouble.


Sri Aurobindo: If you fear the action of the Force, how can the Force do its work?    It is certain that one’s own effort is necessary, though one cannot do the sadhana by one’s own effort alone. The Mother’s Force is needed, but the sadhak must open himself to it, reject what opposes the Force, put his full sincerity, aspiration, will power into the sadhana. It is only when all is open and there is the full surrender that the Divine Power takes up the sadhana so entirely that personal effort is no longer necessary.


Sri Aurobindo: But that cannot happen at an early stage — one must go on opening oneself, consecrating oneself, making the surrender till that later stage comes. This has been explained in the book.    Open what is closed. The Mother does not withhold her force from anyone — it is there for all in abundance.


Sri Aurobindo: Her pleasure is in giving her force, not in withholding it. But if you keep your mind ﬁlled with thoughts of this kind, about and others, and your needs and grievances, you shut yourself up in that and there is no room for the higher consciousness and its force to come in.  What is needed is to proﬁt by the discovery and get rid of the impediment. The Mother did not merely point out the impediment; she showed you very expressly how to do it and at that time you understood her, though now (at the time of writing your letter to me) the light which you saw seems to have been clouded by your indulging your vital more and more in the bitter pastime of sadness. That was quite natural, for that is the result sadness always does bring.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the reason why I object to the gospel of sorrow and to any sadhana which makes sorrow one of its main planks (, revolt,). For sorrow is not, as Spinoza pointed out, a passage to a greater perfection, a way to Siddhi; it cannot be, for it confuses and weakens and distracts the mind, depresses the vital force, darkens the spirit. A relapse from joy and vital elasticity and Ananda to sorrow, self-distrust, despondency and weakness is a recoil from a greater to a lesser consciousness, — the habit of these moods shows a clinging of something in the vital to the smaller, obscurer, dark and distressed movement out of which it is the very aim of Yoga to rise.  It is therefore quite incorrect to say that the Mother took away the wrong key with which you were trying to open the faery palace and left you with none at all. For she not only showed you the true key but gave it to you.


Sri Aurobindo: It was not a mere vague exhortation to cheerfulness she gave you, but she described exactly the condition felt in the right kind of meditation — a state of inner rest, not of straining, of quiet opening, not of eager or desperate pulling, a harmonious giving of oneself to the Divine Force for its working, and in that quietude a sense of the Force working and a restful conﬁdence allowing it to act without any unquiet interference. And she asked you if you had not experienced that condition and you said that you had and knew it very well. Now that condition is the beginning of psychic opening and, if you have had it, you know what the psychic opening is; there is of course much more that afterwards comes to complete it but this is the fundamental condition into which all the rest can most easily come. What you should have done was to keep the key the Mother gave you present in your consciousness and apply it — not to go back and allow sadness and a repining view of the past to grow upon you. In this condition which we term the right or psychic attitude, there may and will be call, prayer, aspiration.


Sri Aurobindo: Intensity, concentration will come of themselves, not by a hard effort or tense strain on the nature.  Rejection of wrong movements, frank confession of defects are not only not incompatible, but helpful to it; but this attitude makes the rejection, the confession easy, spontaneous, entirely complete and sincere and effective. That is the experience of all who have consented to take this attitude.  I may say in passing that consciousness and receptivity are not the same thing; one may be receptive, yet externally unaware of how things are being done and of what is being done. The Force works, as I have repeatedly written, behind the veil; the results remain packed behind and come out afterwards, often slowly, little by little, until there is so much pressure that it breaks through somehow and forces itself upon the external nature.


Sri Aurobindo: There lies the difference between a mental and vital straining and pulling and a spontaneous psychic openness, and it is not at all the ﬁrst time that we have spoken of the difference.  The Mother and myself have written and spoken of it times without number and we have deprecated pulling and straining and advocated the attitude of psychic openness. It is not really a question of the right or the wrong key, but of putting the key in the lock in the right or the wrong way, — either, because of some difﬁculty, you try to force the lock turning the key this way and that with violence or conﬁdently and quietly give it the right turn and the door opens.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes; that is one kind of pulling — its effect is to blind and confuse the consciousness. But there is also a pulling for right things which is not bad in itself, and most people use — e.g. for Light, Force, Ananda. But it brings more reactions than a quiet opening to the Divine.   That is not what is meant by pulling.


Sri Aurobindo: When one is open and too eager and tries to pull down the force, experience etc. instead of letting it descend quietly, that is called pulling. Many people pull at the Mother’s forces — trying to take more than they can easily assimilate and disturbing the working.  What things? The vital confusion and desires? It is entirely false to say that these things come from the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: They come from the lower Nature and its darkness and ignorance. The Mother’s Force is the lower Nature, it is the Power of the Divine Truth and Light working upon the lower Nature to drive out the confusion and falsehood and desire from it and to transform everything into the Truth and Light.  It is equally false to say “so there is nothing to do but wait”.  There is something to do and I have repeatedly told you what it is — I have told you not to go down into the lower vital unless you can go there with the Mother’s Force and Light supporting you.  If you are pushed or fall into the lower vital confusion, then to remain quiet (not discussing or consenting to whirl round in the lower vital chaos), to reject the vital suggestions and experiences and open yourself calling down the Mother’s Force to change this part of the being.


Sri Aurobindo: Instead of that you begin “experiencing” the chaos and trying to follow every jump and whirl in it and speculating about it with the result that you get falsehoods like these two — the falsehood that “these things too come from the Mother” and the falsehood that “there is nothing to do but wait” and you consent to them!  When will you learn to remember and follow the plain instructions I have given you instead of believing in the ignorant mind and the confused suggestions of this vital chaos?    The Mother does not make people commit mistakes; it is the Prakriti that makes them do it — if the Purusha does not refuse his consent. The Mother here is not this lower Prakriti, but the Divine Shakti and it is her work to press on this lower Nature to change.


Sri Aurobindo: You can say that under the pressure, the Prakriti stumbles and is unable to reply perfectly and makes mistakes.  But it is not the Mother who makes you do wrong movements or does the wrong movements in you — if you think that, you are in danger of justifying the movements or their continuance.   One has only to be perfectly sincere, not to justify one’s own desires and faults by the mind’s reasonings, to look impartially and quietly at oneself and one’s movements and to call on the Mother’s Light — then gradually one will begin to discern everything in that light. Even if it cannot be done perfectly at once, the judgment and feeling will get clearer and surer and a right consciousness of these things will be established.  All these questions are met by my answer.


Sri Aurobindo: One cannot be perfect in discrimination at once or in rejection either. The one indispensable thing is to go on trying sincerely till there comes the full success. So long as there is complete sincerity, the Divine Grace will be there and assist at every moment on the way.


Sri Aurobindo: There are two cosmic Forces — one the higher Cosmic Shakti which is a form of the Mother, the other a Power of the Ignorance. You have not to open to the latter, only to the Mother.     And what does the carelessness come from?


Sri Aurobindo: It is because the habit of the lower nature makes you forget. That is an action of the lower forces. It is only by the higher force meeting the lower forces and its pressure on them (this is the contact) that the habit of forgetfulness disappears.    As for the Asuric forces, their movement is part of the ordinary cosmic movement in the Ignorance, but Mother is not here to encourage that movement, but to bring down the higher Truth in which they have no place.


Sri Aurobindo: If then she moves the hostile Forces to act against her and her work and the sadhaks (which they are quite ready enough to do of themselves), it would mean that she is working against herself and trying to frustrate her own purpose in being here! Such an action would be absurd in the extreme.  No, the gunas are there and not quiescent — for they are the instrumentation. If the force and the inner consciousness are very strong then there is a tendency for the rajas to become like some inferior form of tapas and the tamas to become more like a kind of inert shama. That is how the transformation begins, but usually it is very slow in its process.


Sri Aurobindo: When you can receive the Mother’s peace in the mind and heart, it will act on the vital also and calm it. Once the vital is calm then force can be there in it and give it strength.  There is no intention of test or ordeal. But for the Mother’s force to act certain conditions are necessary. There must be a certain acceptance, a will steady and persistent to reject what comes in the way of her action and to receive her force alone.


Sri Aurobindo: But why should you be always thinking about or others?  You have very little to do with now, and it is no use thinking only of the past. Leave him to the Mother to deal with and forget all that.    If ego-sense comes back upon you so strongly, it must be because something in you admits it.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother’s force is there always and can help you to get rid of these things, but you on your part must with faith and sincerity accept the Mother and put yourself entirely on her side so as to make it possible for the Force to work with effect. When bad thoughts come, you must reject them, not assent to them in your mind, not give voice to them in your speech, not believe in them or their suggestions.  These things cannot vanish in a day, but if you do like that, they will diminish and lose their power to lay strong hold of you and disturb you, and in the end they will disappear.


Sri Aurobindo: It is true that it is the Mother’s Force that aspires in you, but if the personal consciousness does not give its assent, then the Force does not work. If the personal consciousness ceaselessly looks for the Divine and assents to the working, then aspiration and the working of the Force becomes also ceaseless.  It is dangerous to think of giving up “all barrier of discrimination and defence against what is trying to descend” upon you. Have you thought what this would mean if what is descending is something not in consonance with the divine Truth, perhaps even adverse? An Adverse Power could ask no better condition for getting control over the seeker.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only the Mother’s Force and the divine Truth that one should admit without barriers.  And even there one must keep the power of discernment in order to detect anything false that comes masquerading as the Mother’s Force and the divine Truth, and keep too the power of rejection that will throw away all mixture.  Keep faith in your spiritual destiny, draw back from error and open more the psychic being to the direct guidance of the Mother’s light and power. If the central will is sincere, each recognition of a mistake can become a stepping-stone to a truer movement and a higher progress.   It can only be done by discrimination, care, sincerity, a constant control with regard to the mind’s movements and the growth of a certain kind of psychic tact which detects any mental imitation or false suggestion of its being the Mother’s.


Sri Aurobindo:  There is only one rule for all these things — to watch oneself closely so as to detect these things always when they show themselves, to reject them always and persistently when seen, to aspire always for their removal, to call always the Force of the Mother to help to remove them. But the most entirely effective thing is if you can feel the Force of the Mother working in you and support its action always.


Sri Aurobindo: To support its action means that one must recognise the Mother’s force when it acts and distinguish it from other egoistic or ignorant forces and give assent to the one and refuse the others. It is again a general rule — its application each sadhaka has to see for himself.    The Mother’s Force may do everything but one has to become more and more conscious of one’s own being and nature and what is below in it.  It is not a question of mental judgment, — that is of little use in these matters, — but of the consciousness feeling and seeing.


Sri Aurobindo: Supermind is not organised in the lower planes as the others are. It is only a veiled inﬂuence. Otherwise the supramental realisation would be easy.


Sri Aurobindo: That is the ideal condition when the Force is the true Force only — but there is too much mixture in the nature for that to be possible at this stage of sadhana.     I have said that it gets mixed with the action of the present mind, vital and body. That is inevitable since it has to work upon them.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only after the transformation that it can be fully the Mother’s Force with no mixture of the separate personality. If the Divine Force in all its perfection without mixture were to act from the beginning, not taking any account of the present nature, then there would be no sadhana, only a miraculous substitution of the Divine for the human without any reason or process.  It is not altogether the way — if the mind is active it is more difﬁcult to become aware of what the Mother is bringing. It is not thoughts she brings, but the higher light, force etc.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes — not know with the mind only, but to feel them and see them with the inner experience.    Plenty of people progress rapidly without understanding what the Force is doing — they simply observe and describe and say “I leave all to the Mother.” Eventually the knowledge and understanding come.  If the material consciousness is open, feels the Mother’s Force working in it and responds, then it is ready.


Sri Aurobindo:   It can be there in all the atoms of the body since all is secretly conscious.


Sri Aurobindo: For the Mother’s Force to work fully in the body, the body itself and not only the mind must have faith and be open.     Aspire and concentrate for the puriﬁcation and illumination of the vital. The vital once clear with the Mother’s Light and Force in it, it will be easier for the Force to work on the body.


Sri Aurobindo:   That is very good. It is the Force and Presence of the Mother from above that comes down like that into the body — ﬁrst in the head and chest and afterwards into the whole body. It is the ﬁrst fundamental experience of the sadhana from which all the rest begins — for until it comes all else is only preparation. Very often it takes people years to bring it into the body, and with most it comes only by degrees.


Sri Aurobindo: That it should come in a mass like that and even down to the chest shows that what I told you was true — that once you get free from the old obstacles that were obstructing you, you can have the Yoga experiences as well as anyone else here.     That has still to be seen. It is most probably the tapas heat; the question is whether it is turned partially in the body into fever.


Sri Aurobindo:  It is quite true that the Mother has been putting a constant pressure of her Force to help you in overcoming this illness. I am very glad you have been so vividly aware of it. We do not think it is correct that the Mother can only take the pain away but cannot replace the organs in their right place. This also is possible for the spiritual Force to effect in time. But it is desirable that you should not allow any inner condition of yours which makes the working easy to yield to one like those you speak of which would make it difﬁcult by allowing the old forces to return.


Sri Aurobindo: Even if that happens, the Mother will still work of course to restore the previous condition until the thing is set right. But a continuous openness is very desirable.    Mother is not opposed to your going to Madras for treatment if you feel it necessary; but she is not at all sure that it will result in a radical cure — it may or it may not and, if it does not, it may return worse; so neither can she recommend your going. It depends on your own decision.


Sri Aurobindo: The illness has no doubt a physical cause, but there is associated with it a strong resistance to the Force — which is evidently seated in the subconscient, since you are not aware of it. This is shown by the fact that after Mother put a concentrated force there yesterday, the whole thing returned more violently after an hour’s relief. That is always a sign of a violent and obstinate resistance somewhere. It is only if this is overcome or disappears that complete relief can come.  Your experiences related in the letter were quite sound and very good.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no delusion about the Force working in the body, but there are evidently points where there is still much resistance. The body consciousness has many parts and many different movements and all do not open or change together.  Also the body is very dependent on the subconscient which has to be cleared and illumined before the body can be free from adverse reactions.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother’s Force is always pouring down — your body must now forget its habit of depression or sadness. Let the happiness come into it also.    It is the usual course, but some work is always being done in the inner parts at all times, because they are interdependent.  The inherent strength of the body does not do things like that.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the Mother’s force that does it, when one calls and opens oneself. Even people who never did Yoga and are conscious of nothing, get cured like that without knowing the reason or feeling the way in which it was done. The Force comes from above or in descending it envelops and comes from without inside or it comes out from inside after descending there. When you are conscious of the play of the Forces, then you feel the working.


Sri Aurobindo: It is quite the right way. It is very good that you are learning to use the Force.     As you suffer from ill-health, Mother presses the nourishment of the divine strength and health into your physical being, renewing its substance with that.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes, Mother had worked before, but wrong information coming across the working creates a confusion so that it is no longer possible to say what is the result of the working. Of course if the wrong information came at the beginning, it would be still worse. It is very necessary that information given should be correct.


Sri Aurobindo:   Of course it can, but on condition of faith or openness or both.  Even a mental suggestion can cure cancer — with luck, of course, as is shown by the case of the woman operated on unsuccessfully for cancer, but the doctors lied and told her it had succeeded.  Result, cancer symptoms all ceased and she died many years afterwards of another illness altogether.


Sri Aurobindo:  It may operate but not through every T, D and H, at ﬁrst at least.  At ﬁrst it will be no doubt like that if it is to be the true Force, but  when once it is settled in the earth-consciousness a more general use of supraphysical force for healing may become possible.  It is not always necessary either that the rapport you speak of should be conscious. Cou´e for instance was in rapport with the Mother without knowing it — she told me of his getting something of the force and of the beginning of his work long before he was known to anyone (of course she did not know his name but she described him and his work in such a way that the identiﬁcation was evident).


Sri Aurobindo:   spoke to the Mother about’s pain on the same day — so it is not necessary to suppose an automatic effect of the letter itself. But such an automatic effect does often take place either immediately after writing or when the letter enters the Mother’s atmosphere.    I never have opinions — except for the purpose of writing or conversation. To the eye of the Yogin all opinions are true and all are false.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only realities and results that matter. The Mother’s force is a reality and the cure is a result — the medicine is perhaps a phenomenal link between the two.    It was precisely out of solicitude for you because the suffering of insomnia and the spasms had been excessive that I proposed to you to take the help of treatment. It is a fact of my experience that when the resistance in the body is too strong and persistent, it can help to take some aid of physical means as an instrumentation for the Force to work more directly on the body itself; for the body then feels itself supported against the resistance from both sides, by means both physical as well as supraphysical.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother’s force can work through both together.    Sunday Pranams are not the only way of receiving Force, one can do it at any time by opening to receive in a quiet concentration.  If you can do that, any illness can be cured either at once or, if it is chronic, in time. That should be done in any case.


Sri Aurobindo: But where there is not the full openness, medical treatment can help as an auxiliary. If you like to consult, he may be able to understand better your case than by second hand and you can see whether you would care to try any remedies he suggests.  It is possibl


Sri Aurobindo: e for her to be cured, but only if she has sufﬁcient and complete faith and can receive the force of the Mother. If she can put herself into the true contact, she will cure.     As to what your other friend asks, it is quite possible for him to receive where he is without coming here if he has the adoration of the Mother in his heart and an intense call.


Sri Aurobindo:   “” the Divine Force which is the force of the Mother — that was what I wrote, I believe.  How many Mothers are there?  Who is this some universal Mother? How many of these some universal Mothers are there?


Sri Aurobindo: Have you not put him by the photograph and his letter in connection with us? Has he not turned in this direction? Has he not met and been impressed by him — a third channel of contact?  That is quite sufﬁcient to help him to a contact if he has the faith and the Yogic stress in him.


Sri Aurobindo: I don’t know whether Mother is sending force in the accepted sense; I haven’t asked her. In any case anyone can receive the force who has faith and sincerity, whose psychic being has begun to wake and who opens himself, — whether he knows or not that he is receiving. If even imagines that he is receiving, that may open the way to a real reception, — if he it, why question his feeling? He is certainly trying hard to change and that is the ﬁrst necessity; if one tries it can always be done, in more or less time.


Sri Aurobindo:  What happens in such cases is that when someone is accepted, the Mother sends out something of herself to him and this is with him wherever he goes and is always in connection with her being here. So when he does anything like what you did in this case with faith and bhakti, it reaches, through that emanation of herself which is with him, the Mother’s consciousness inner or outer and the Force goes in return for the result.  It is the Mother’s energy that comes down into the vital and physical for those who are open.    You must be able to ﬁnd the Mother in work and action as well as in concentration and silence.


Sri Aurobindo: It is quite possible even if there is the silence within you and no restless movement, to move and act and do all that is needful. It is in fact when all within is silent, free from desire and with no restless movement that the Mother’s force can act best and do things in the right way. You should aspire to the Mother for the right force to act and do work and ﬁnd her in the work and action.


Sri Aurobindo: If there is the full surrender in the work and you feel it is the Mother’s and that the Mother’s force is working in you, then fatigue does not come.     If it is, you can always do that, provided you realise that it depends on the instrument whether the Mother’s force works fully or not.  If you think all your actions come from the Mother, then of course it will have that effect — the actions come from Prakriti.


Sri Aurobindo: Work is a different matter, for it is the Mother’s work you are doing.     It is too much to say that. What you say amounts only to some glimpse of the cosmic Force behind all the actions.


Sri Aurobindo:   Everybody is in the Mother, but one must become conscious of that, not of the work only.


Sri Aurobindo: The feeling that all one does is from the Divine, that all action is the Mother’s is a necessary step in experience, but one cannot remain in it — one has to go farther. Those can remain in it who do not want to change the nature, but only to have the experience of the Truth behind it. Your action is according to universal Nature and in that again it is according to your individual nature, and all Nature is a force put out by the Divine Mother for the action of the universe. But as things are it is an action in the Ignorance and the ego; while what we want is an action of the divine Truth unveiled and undeformed by the Ignorance and the ego.


Sri Aurobindo: So when you feel that your actions are all done by the force () of the Mother, that is a true experience. But the will of the Mother ( ) is that all you do should be done not by her force in Nature as now, but her own direct force in the Truth of her nature, the higher divine Nature. So also it was correct, what you thought afterwards, that unless there is this change, the experience that all you do is done by her will cannot be altogether true. So it will not be permanent till then. For if it were permanent now, it might keep you in the lower action as it does many and prevent or retard the change.


Sri Aurobindo: What you need as a permanent experience now is that of the Mother’s Force working in you in all things to change this ignorant consciousness and nature into her divine consciousness and nature.  It is the same with the truth about the instrument. It is true that each being is an instrument of the cosmic Shakti, therefore of the Mother. But the aim of the sadhana is to become a conscious and perfect instrument instead of one that is unconscious and therefore imperfect. You can be a conscious and perfect instrument only when you are no longer acting in obedience to the ignorant push of the lower nature, but in surrender to the Mother and aware of her higher Force acting within you.


Sri Aurobindo: So here too your intuition was perfectly true.  But all this cannot be done in a day. So you are once more right in not being anxious or uneasy. One must be vigilant, but not anxious and uneasy, . The Mother’s Force will act and bring the result in its own time — provided one offers all to her and aspires and is vigilant, calling and remembering her at all times, rejecting quietly all that stands in the way of the action of her transforming Force.


Sri Aurobindo: Your second view of this was more from the right angle of vision than the ﬁrst. To say that it is not I who have to act, so I need not mind, is to say too much — one has to act in so far as one has to aspire, offer oneself, assent to the Mother’s working, reject all else, more and more surrender.  All else will be done in time; there is no need for anxiety or depression or impatience.    So long as one is not conscious of the Force working through one, one is moved by the Prakriti.


Sri Aurobindo: The Prakriti may be used sometimes by the Divine for some work to be done, but that is not what is meant in the Yoga by being an “instrument”.  I do not know to what you refer as regards, — his poetry was inspired by us and he felt it and it certainly helped several people; to that extent he was an effective instrument for the work so long as he was in the right attitude. Naturally, it is for the work that one can be an instrument, not for things like sex which have nothing to do with the Yoga or the work. But the real instrumentality begins when the consciousness of the Force working begins within.   One begins to feel a double consciousness, one an inner being within which is always dedicated, spontaneously and silently full of the devotion to the Mother or aware of her Force working or of her presence or all these together and another the outer through which the work is done.


Sri Aurobindo:  It is not necessary to fall into inertia, but one always comes into a less intensity of consciousness during work unless one has established in work the conscious contact with the Mother’s Force and is aware of that during the work or unless one has developed a double consciousness, the inner concentrated, the outer doing the work.     It is the Mother’s force, naturally.


Sri Aurobindo:    It is only when work and action are done in that way, without insistence on one’s personal ideas and personal feelings but only for the Divine’s sake without thought of self that work becomes fully a sadhana and the internal and the external nature can arrive at a harmony. It makes it more possible for the inner being to take up and enlighten the outer action and grow conscious of the Mother’s force behind it guiding it in its works.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is the Mother’s Force that has to work through the sadhak, not the sadhak who has to work through the Mother’s Force.  The ﬁrst stage is when one works with the outer energy, but there is an inner consciousness supporting it which relies wholly on the Mother. The second is when there is an inner consciousness and force which uses the outer instruments — the outer energy being quiescent or else a part only of the inner — while this inner consciousness knows that the force is the Mother’s or feels the Mother’s presence in it: there are different experiences in this respect. The third is when all is the Mother’s Force working.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is no need to ask which is the better as they are not mutually exclusive. It is the mind that regards them as opposites.  The psychic being can offer the act while the nature is passive to the Force (the ego being expunged or having withdrawn) and feels the Mother’s Force doing the act and her Presence in it.


Sri Aurobindo:   Efface the stamp of ego from the heart and let the love of the Mother take its place. Cast from the mind all insistence on your personal ideas and judgments, then you will have the wisdom to understand her. Let there be no obsession of self-will, ego-drive in the action, love of personal authority, attachment to personal preference, then the Mother’s force will be able to act clearly in you and you will get the inexhaustible energy for which you ask  and your service will be perfect.


Sri Aurobindo: To go entirely inside in order to have experiences and to neglect the work, the external consciousness, is to be unbalanced, onesided in the sadhana — for our Yoga is integral; so also to throw oneself outward and live in the external being alone is to be unbalanced, one-sided in the sadhana. One must have the same consciousness in inner experience and outward action and make both full of the Mother.     There should be not only a general attitude, but each work should be offered to the Mother so as to keep the attitude a living one all the time.


Sri Aurobindo: There should be at the time of work no meditation, for that would withdraw the attention from the work, but there should be the constant memory of the One to whom you offer it. This is only a ﬁrst process; for when you can have constantly the feeling of a calm being within concentrated in the sense of the Divine Presence while the surface mind does the work, or when you can begin to feel always that it is the Mother’s force that is doing the work and you are only a channel or an instrument, then in place of memory there will have begun the automatic constant realisation of Yoga, divine union, in works.     Those who do work for the Mother in all sincerity, are prepared by the work itself for the right consciousness even if they do not sit down for meditation or follow any particular practice of Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not necessary to tell you how to meditate; whatever is needful will come of itself if in your work and at all times you are sincere and keep yourself open to the Mother.   The Mother does not think that it is good to give up all work and only read and meditate. Work is part of the Yoga and it gives the best opportunity for calling down the Presence, the Light and the Power into the vital and its activities; it increases also the ﬁeld and the opportunity of surrender.  It is not enough to remember that the work is the Mother’s — and the results also. You must learn to feel the Mother’s force behind you and to open to the inspiration and the guidance.


Sri Aurobindo: Always to remember by an effort of the mind is too difﬁcult; but if you get into the consciousness in which you feel always the Mother’s force in you or supporting you, that is the true thing.   The Mother refuses to relieve you of all work — work is a necessary part of this Yoga. If you do not do work and spend all the time in “meditation”, you and your sadhana will lose all hold of realities; you will lose yourself in uncontrolled subjective imaginations such as those you are now allowing to control you and lead you into actions — like your absenting yourself from Pranam, becoming fanciful and irregular in your taking of food, coming to the Mother at a wrong time and place under the imagination that she has called you — actions dictated by error and false suggestion and not by Truth. It is by doing work for the Mother with surrender to her, with obedience to her expressed will, without fancies and vital self-will that you can remain in touch with the embodied Mother here and progress in the Yoga. Mere subjective experiences without control by us will not lead you to the Truth and may lead you far from it into sheer confusion and error.


Sri Aurobindo: If you do not want to do the B. D. [] account and letter work, you can take up the work of keeping the gate daily from 12 to 2; but it is better if you combine this gate work with the typing of letters whenever needed. If you do not want to do the gate work, then you must go on with the work you now have. If you take the gate work only, you must hand over the typewriter to the B. D. so that it may continue to be used for the work you were doing up till now.  I must warn you that by withdrawing into a one-sided subjective existence within and by pushing away from you all touch with physical realities, you are running into a wrong path and imperilling your sadhana. What happens to sadhaks who do this is that they make a mental Formation and put it in place of the true embodied Mother here, and then under its inspiration they begin to lose touch with her and disobey her and follow the false suggestions of their mental Formation.


Sri Aurobindo: The ﬁrst thing it does is to instigate them not to write to her, not to come to Pranam, not to act as regards food, work etc. on the lines laid down by her, to disobey her — as you have disobeyed her with regard to coming to Pranam this morning. Another very bad sign of this false condition is when they feel not in touch with the Mother when they meet her in the body and guided only by some disembodied Mother in their own egoistic consciousness — that is a sure sign that a Falsehood is getting into their sadhana. As regards their way of life, they do not wish to do like the others, but to have a special way of life of their own, governed by some Imagination within them. All this you must stop. You must come to Pranam regularly, take your food regularly, sleep regularly, do the work given you conscientiously, following the lines laid down for this Asram by the Mother, and through a right consciousness in this life you must realise her Truth in the physical existence.


Sri Aurobindo: Your unwillingness to come to the Pranam because that would interrupt some subjective experience is altogether out of place. No experience in formal meditation, not a hundred experiences together can be worth the touch of the Mother in the Pranam. If you had the psychic being in front in the physical or even in the heart and the vital, you would feel that at once.  Moreover, these experiences are not supramental as you seem to imagine. The supramental Truth could never stand behind such errors as you are making now.


Sri Aurobindo: Moreover to get the supramental Light is not so easy as you fancy; I have warned again and again the sadhaks against the error of thinking they are already in possession of the supermind or in touch with it. One has to go through a long and patient development through many lower stages of consciousness before one can be even within measurable distance of the supermind.  All attachment and self-indulgence are dangerous — attachment and self-indulgence in subjective experiences and remote “meditations”, pushing aside the Truth in objective life is as dangerous as any other. Draw back from these errors and get back into the true balance of the sadhana. If you want the psychic in the physical, you cannot get it by merely sitting in meditation and having abstract experiences; you can get it only by seeking it in physical life and action, by work for the Mother, obedience and surrender in work to the Mother who is present in her own body here.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is the difﬁculty of being calm and surrendered in action and movement; when there is no action and one is simply sitting still, it is easy to be quiet.   By rejecting ego and desire and living and working for the Divine alone.


Sri Aurobindo: No; they do not get transformed at all.     If they do it in the right spirit, then it may be sufﬁcient for them, as it will bring the rest — because of the spirit in which they do it.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a matter of idiosyncrasy — there are some who cannot get anything by meditation, so that work or bhakti is their only resource.     It is not the descent of the higher or divine forces that upsets a sadhak, it is his acceptance of forces of falsehood through ambition, vanity, desire to be a great Yogi or an attachment to his experiences without regard to their truth or their source.  It is not well to spend the whole time or the greater part of the time in meditation unless one is very strong in mind — for one gets into a habit of living in an inner world entirely and losing touch with external realities — this brings in a onesided inharmonious movement and may lead to disturbance of balance.


Sri Aurobindo: To do both meditation and work and dedicate both to the Mother is the best thing.     That depends on the physical mind. It has to learn to stop listening to itself and following its own ideas and to call seriously and persistently for the inspiration of the Mother — your physical mind has to become a portion of hers, answering at once and accurately to whatever comes from her.


Sri Aurobindo:  He has to learn to consecrate his work and feel the Mother’s power working through it. A purely sedentary subjective realisation is only a half realisation.     Work for the Mother done with the right concentration on her is as much a sadhana as meditation and inner experiences.


Sri Aurobindo:   For the Mother’s power to work and bring down by the proper stages the higher consciousness. Also for the system to be more and more ﬁt — quiet, egoless, surrendered.    It is not our experience that by meditation alone it is possible to change the nature, nor has retirement from outward activity and work much proﬁted those who have tried it; in many cases it has been harmful.


Sri Aurobindo: A certain amount of concentration, an inner aspiration in the heart and an opening of the consciousness to the Mother’s presence there and to the descent from above are needed. But without action, without work the nature does not really change; it is there and by contact with men that there is the test of the change in the nature. As for the work one does, there is no higher or lower work; all work is the same provided it is offered to the Mother and done for her and in her power.  You have probably taken too much work on yourself by adding to the rest accounts, etc. That was not necessary.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no reason why you should not do a normal amount and have time and energy for meditation as well. If you wish, however, to change, Mother may consider it, though she does not just now see how to arrange.   This [] happens when the work is always associated with the Mother’s thought, done as an offering to her, with the call to do it through you. All ideas of ego, all association of egoistic feelings with the work must disappear.  One begins to feel the Mother’s force doing the work; the psychic grows through a certain inner attitude behind the work and the adhar becomes open both to the psychic intuitions and inﬂuences from within and to the descent from above.


Sri Aurobindo: Then the result of meditation can come through the work itself.   Just as you give yourself through work to the Mother doing all for her, so there is an inner giving or consecration. Ordinarily the mind and vital live for themselves, want this or that, seek after it and feel dissatisﬁed and unfulﬁlled if they do not get it.  But when they give themselves, this ceases. Whatever the Mother does with them that they accept — ask for nothing, rely on her entirely, live for her will and not for their desires.


Sri Aurobindo: Then they begin to be empty of their old selves and old movements, ﬁll with the presence of the Mother, the will of the Mother, the workings of the Mother — that becomes all their life.    As it stands, it has no meaning. What Mother must have said is “Why do you make any separation between me and work?” It is she who is doing the work, she is there in it, so it is a mistake to make an opposition between concentration on her and the work.


Sri Aurobindo: Her presence is there in both.    This state of mind, described in your letter, must be due to a tension created by an urge in the psychic to make a complete surrender to the Mother and some obstruction in the vital mind and surface intellect. This mind supports the obstruction by an excessive self-depreciation (not well-founded as a sound and just self-examination would be) and a questioning of all you do so that you can see only defects and wrong motives. That creates unrest, doubt and strain and hampers your sadhana and prevents the psychic impulse from acting freely.


Sri Aurobindo: You should do your work simply in the conﬁdence that it is accepted and appreciated by the Mother, as indeed it is, — for your work has been very good and helpful to her. Let the psychic movement express itself simply and spontaneously in action without allowing the outer mind to interfere; that would very likely release the tension and then your sadhana could proceed in a quiet cheerfulness, conﬁdent of its own truth and the Mother’s loving acceptance.  He should carry on his work and do all things else in the right consciousness, offering all he does to the Mother and keeping in inner touch with her. All work done in that spirit and with that consciousness becomes Karmayoga and can be regarded as part of his sadhana.   What you received and kept in the work is indeed the true basic consciousness of Karmayoga — the calm consciousness from above supporting and the strength from above doing the work, with that the Bhakti which feels it to be the Mother’s consciousness present and working.


Sri Aurobindo: You know now by experience what is the secret of Karmayoga.  The conditions for following the Mother’s will are to turn to her for Light and Truth and Strength, to aspire that no other force shall inﬂuence or lead you, to make no demands or conditions in the vital, to keep a quiet mind ready to receive the Truth but not insisting on its own ideas and formations, — ﬁnally, to keep the psychic awake and in front, so that you may be in constant contact and know truly what her will is; for the mind and vital can mistake other impulsions and suggestions for the Divine Will, but the psychic once awakened makes no mistake.  A perfect perfection in working is only possible after supramentalisation; but a relative good working is possible on the lower planes if one is in contact with the Divine and careful, vigilant and conscious in mind and vital and body. That is a condition, besides, which is preparatory and almost indispensable for the supramentalisation.   Observe yourself so that nothing passes without being conscious of it.


Sri Aurobindo: Do not allow yourself to be moved by the forces of nature without the inner consent. Obey the Mother’s will always; let your consent or refusal to the movement of forces be in consonance with her Truth.   The will can be made one with the Mother’s by establishing a constant contact of the consciousness with hers.   It means the whole — with the psychic as the base.


Sri Aurobindo: At ﬁrst one must put one’s will in unison with the Mother’s will knowing that it is an instrument only and that it is the Mother’s will behind that alone can give the result. Afterwards, when one becomes conscious fully of the Mother’s force working within, then the personal will is replaced by the divine.  Establish the Divine Consciousness (the Mother’s consciousness) in you and the Divine Law will ﬂow from that.  Demands should not be made. What you receive freely from the Mother helps you; what you demand or try to impose on her is bound to be empty of her force.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother deals with each person differently according to his true need (not what he himself fancies to be his need) and his progress in the sadhana and his nature.  For you the most effective way to get the strength you need would be to do the work conscientiously and scrupulously, allowing nothing to interfere with its exact discharge. If you did that, opening yourself at the same time to the Mother in your work, you would receive more constantly the grace and would come to feel her power doing the work through you; you would thus be able to live constantly with the sense of her presence.  If on the contrary you allow your fancies or desires to interfere with your work or are careless and negligent, you interrupt the ﬂow of her grace and give room for sorrow and uneasiness and other foreign forces to enter into you. Yoga through work is the easiest and most effective way to enter into the stream of this sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo:   Even the most purely physical and mechanical work cannot be properly done if one accepts incapacity, inertia and passivity.  The remedy is not to conﬁne yourself to mechanical work, but to reject and throw off incapacity, passivity and inertia and open yourself to the Mother’s force. If vanity, ambition and self-conceit stand in your way, cast them from you. You will not get rid of these things by merely waiting for them to disappear.


Sri Aurobindo: If you merely wait for things to happen, there is no reason why they should happen at all. If it is incapacity and weakness that oppose, still, as one opens oneself truly and more and more to the Mother’s force, the strength and capacity necessary for the work will be given and will grow in the adhar.   It is owing to the good psychic condition in which you are that this lightness and power of work comes into you; for then you are open to the Mother’s Force and it is that that works in you, so that there is no fatigue. You felt the fatigue formerly the work was over because your vital was open and the vital energy was the instrument of the work, but the body consciousness was not quite open and had some strain. This time the physical seems to have opened also.


Sri Aurobindo:   In the ordinary condition of the body if you oblige the body to do too much work, it can do with the support of vital force. But as soon as the work is done, the vital force withdraws and then the body feels fatigue. If this is done too much and for too long a time, there may be a breakdown of health and strength under the overstrain. Rest is then needed for recovery.


Sri Aurobindo: If however the mind and the vital get the habit of opening to the Mother’s Force, they are then supported by the Force and may even be fully ﬁlled with it — the Force does the work and the body feels no strain or fatigue before or after. But even then, unless the body itself is open and can absorb and keep the Force, sufﬁcient rest in between the work is absolutely necessary.  Otherwise although the body may go on for a very long time, yet in the end there can be a danger of a collapse.  The body can be sustained for a long time when there is the full inﬂuence and there is a single-minded faith and call in the mind and the vital; but if the mind or the vital is disturbed by other inﬂuences or opens itself to forces which are not the Mother’s, then there will be a mixed condition and there will be sometimes strength, sometimes fatigue, exhaustion or illness or a mixture of the two at the same time.  Finally, if not only the mind and the vital, but the body also is open and can absorb the Force, it can do extraordinary things in the way of work without breaking down.


Sri Aurobindo: Still, even then rest is necessary. That is why we insist on those who have the impulse of work keeping a proper balance between rest and labour.  A complete freedom from fatigue is possible, but that comes only when there is a complete transformation of the law of the body by the full descent of a supramental Force into the earth-nature.  It is only by an inner development that you can remember in the midst of work. Meanwhile offer all your work inwardly to the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo:   One starts by a mental effort — afterwards it is an inner consciousness that is formed which need not be always of the Mother because it is always conscious of her.


Sri Aurobindo: It can be done when you become the witness detached from the mental actions and not involved in them, not absorbed in them as the mental doer or thinker.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes, it is a very good progress and the ﬁrst step towards the right use of the Power for action.     Many ﬁnd it easy to think of the Mother when working; but when they read or write, their mind goes off to the thing read or written and they forget everything else.


Sri Aurobindo: I think that is the case with most. Physical work on the other hand can be done with the most external part of the mind, leaving the rest free to remember or to experience.  Whatever work you do, take it as the Mother’s and offer it to the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: All that is done in me by Nature, I offer wholeheartedly for transformation to Thee, O Mother.    There is no question of getting an answer. It is simply to offer the actions to the Mother and call her Force to guide or do what is necessary.  It would be dangerous to take every “inner prompting” as if it were a prompting or initiation of action from the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: What seems an inner prompting may come from anywhere, any Force good or bad seeking to fulﬁl itself.  One may have ego about the work even if the work itself comes from the Mother. The ego of the instrument is one of the things against which there must be special care in the Yoga.  When one is doing the work, usually the urge of the force that works and the preoccupation of doing it and getting it done or the pleasure of doing it are sufﬁcient and the mind does not think of anything else. Afterwards the sense of “I did it” comes up.


Sri Aurobindo: With some however the ego is active during the work itself.    Of course it is a way. But one has still to be careful about the ego. Even people who sincerely think they are doing only the Mother’s will are yet actuated by ego without knowing it.


Sri Aurobindo: Crimson light indicates the manifestation of love in the material atmosphere.   When you write, you put yourself probably in contact with the Mother’s forces — these lights of different colours are the play of her forces.    There are various lights around the Mother indicating the forces that come from her. White is her own characteristic light, the pale blue is mine, — the golden, dark blue and others correspond to various other forces.


Sri Aurobindo:   It must have been a special force working. The blue light is the characteristic force as the white is of the Mother, but we are not limited to that, the other forces and therefore the other lights are also ours.


Sri Aurobindo:  All the lights are put out by the Mother from herself.   It means the impression of the Name with its power in some part of the being — (vital mental).    The lights are the Mother’s Powers — many in number. The white light is her own characteristic power, that of the Divine Consciousness in its essence.


Sri Aurobindo: That was quite right. The contact with the Light must create peace.  (1) The Mother’s consciousness (white) is not only peace, but Light and Power.  (2) When one gets into contact with the Light above the mind, the ﬁrst result should be peace in the mind.  (3) Whatever Power of the Light descends should descend into the peace of the mind without disturbing it.


Sri Aurobindo: (4) If you pull down the Light into an active mind, then the action of the Light may get deformed and may be used by the mind in a wrong way, with confusion and disturbance or for purposes and movements that are those of an inferior consciousness and not those of the Truth.  (5) There cannot be any real incompatibility between the Mother’s consciousness and contact with the Light above.    The Mother’s special colour is white, but all the other colours are hers also.


Sri Aurobindo:    The white light is the Mother’s light and it is always around her.    The pale blue light is my light — white light is the Mother’s (sometimes gold also).


Sri Aurobindo: People generally see either the white or both the white and the pale blue around her.    The white Light around the Mother is the Mother’s own light — that of the Divine Consciousness. Many nowadays are able to see it around her when she is on the roof. One can also see all objects in this light — it means that the light has descended here and is ﬂoating around everything.


Sri Aurobindo:   The white Light is the Mother’s light. Wherever it descends or enters, it brings peace, purity, silence and the openness to the higher forces. If it comes below the navel, that means that it is working in the lower vital.


Sri Aurobindo:   The Mother’s white light is the light of the Divine Consciousness; you are living more and more under it and it is that that is liberating you.    What you saw in vision was a supraphysical body of the Mother made probably of her white light which is the light of the Divine Consciousness and Force that stands behind the universe.


Sri Aurobindo:   The important experience is that of the white ray in the heart — for that is a ray of the Mother’s light, the white light, and the illumining of the heart by this light is a thing of great power for this sadhana. The intuitions she speaks of are a sign of the inner consciousness growing in her — the consciousness which is necessary for Yoga.    It [] is always there in the inner Purusha.


Sri Aurobindo:   That means the light of the divine consciousness (the Mother’s Consciousness, white light) in the vital. Blue is the higher mind, gold the divine Truth. So it is the vital with the light of the higher mind and the divine Truth in it emanating the Mother’s light.  (a) It [] means the essential Force of the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: (b) The diamond light proceeds from the heart of the Divine Consciousness and it brings the opening of the Divine Consciousness wherever it goes.  (c) The Mother’s descent with the diamond light is the sanction of the Supreme Power to the movement in you.  (d) The Mother’s diamond light is a light of absolute purity and power.  (e) The diamond light is the central consciousness and force of the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother’s light is white — especially diamond white. The Mahakali form is usually golden, of a very bright and strong golden hue.     The diamond is the symbol of the intensest light of the Mother’s consciousness, so your visions indicate that you saw her full of that light and radiating it.


Sri Aurobindo: Other jewels must be symbols of other forces, the ruby indicating power in the physical.   The diamond is the symbol of the Mother’s consciousness; the colour depends on the particular force which her consciousness puts forth upon you at the moment.     The diamond is the symbol of the Mother’s light and energy — the diamond light is that of her consciousness at its most intense.


Sri Aurobindo: The golden Light is the light of the Divine Truth on the higher planes above the ordinary mind — a light supramental in origin.  It is also the light of Mahakali above the mind. The golden light is also often seen emanating from the Mother like the white Light.    The line of golden light is a line of the light of the higher Divine Truth encircling the Akash of the heart and the diamond mass is the Mother’s light pressing into that Akash.


Sri Aurobindo: It is therefore a sign of these powers working on the psychic-emotional centre.    It depends on the shade of the yellow. If it is golden white it comes from above the mind and the combination suggests the Maheshwari-Mahakali power. Higher Mind colour is pale blue.


Sri Aurobindo: Of course you can see it. Nowadays it is visible to many.    Many see light around the Mother. The light is there always.


Sri Aurobindo:   No. One can always see white Light around the Mother, for it is her light, always there.


Sri Aurobindo: If seeing the Mother’s Light is a mistake or a mental or vital formation, then the realisation of the Divine and all spiritual experience can be questioned as a mental or vital formation or mistake and all Yoga becomes impossible.     People see all kinds of lights around the Mother when she walks on the roof. They are all the ﬂowing out of different forces.


Sri Aurobindo: If it was like the moonlight in appearance it would be the spiritual force.     What people see around the Mother is ﬁrst her aura, as it is called nowadays, and secondly the forces of Light that pour out from her when she concentrates, as she always does on the roof for instance. (Everybody has an aura — but in most it is weak and not very luminous, in the Mother’s aura there is the full play of lights and powers.)


Sri Aurobindo: People do not see it usually because it is a subtle physical and not a gross material phenomenon. They can see only on two conditions, ﬁrst if they develop sufﬁcient subtle sight, secondly if the aura itself begins to become so strong that it affects the sheath of gross matter which conceals it. The Mother has certainly no idea of making people see it — it is of themselves that one after another, some 20 or 30 in the Asram, I believe, have come to see. None of them are big Yogis, some of them are mere beginners. It is certainly one of the signs that the higher Force (call it supramental or not) is beginning to inﬂuence Matter.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is not an obstruction — it is simply a question of the growth of the inner senses. It has no indispensable connection with spiritual progress. There are some very far on the path who have very little of this kind of vision if any — on the other hand sometimes it develops enormously in mere beginners who have as yet had only very elementary spiritual experiences.


Sri Aurobindo: There is always light around the Mother which the eyes can see if the inner vision opens. There are also many beings that are around her.  The Mother makes an invocation or aspiration and stands till the movement is over. Yesterday she passed for some time beyond the sense of the body and it is perhaps this that made you see in that way.


Sri Aurobindo: That she has brought down and planted Bhakti, I suppose.  It is a symbol of the descent of Divine Love.    What do you mean by real? It was the form of Mother in a dream experience.


Sri Aurobindo: Imagination applies only to the waking mind.    If false forces take the form of the Mother, it will be with some bad object. If there is no attack or wrong suggestion, you need not suppose that it is false forces that have done it.  Of course it is always possible that something in your own consciousness has constructed a dream about the Mother or put her ﬁgure there when she herself was not there.


Sri Aurobindo: That happens when it is only a dream, a number of ideas and memories etc. of the mind put together and not an experience on another plane.     The Mother is always in a concentrated consciousness in her inner being — so it is quite natural that you should see like that.


Sri Aurobindo: The signiﬁcance is plain — it refers to the difﬁculty in seeing the Mother within you because of the darkness in Nature and the Mother herself holds the light ﬁrst so that you can see her and then so that the light can fall on you — a symbol of selfknowledge. It is a sort of promise for the sadhana.    It indicates an aspiration and an action for realisation in the external nature and not only in the inner being. When it is an inner action or action of another plane one can see the Mother in any of her forms, but for realisation in the physical her appropriate form is that which she wears here.


Sri Aurobindo:   Rose is the colour of psychic love — the horse is dynamic power.  So the rosy coloured horse means that the Mother was bringing with her the dynamic power of psychic love.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is a vision from the plane of mind (not ordinary, but higher mind). It indicates the descent of the Mother with her light of purity and Truth (white and golden) into Matter.     The temple is the Mother’s consciousness into which you enter by sadhana (as in your other experience described today you entered into the world of the Mother’s consciousness and saw things from there) and you come out of it when you turn to something outward but can ascend again at will once you have been there.


Sri Aurobindo:  The black Kali form is a manifestation on the vital plane of Mahakali — but Mahakali herself in the Overmind is golden.  What you saw was the Mother herself in her body of light with the Mahakali power in her, but not the actual form of Mahakali.     Good — it is the opening of the physical consciousness to the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo:   It was probably the subconscient physical that you saw — that would explain the shadowy character; the stone indicates the material Nature.   You seem to have ascended into a plane of the Higher Spiritualised Mind with a descent into it of Maheshwari bringing the power of the Divine Truth. The result in the physical consciousness was a perception of the One Consciousness and Life in all things and an illumination of the cells of the body with the golden light of the higher Truth.


Sri Aurobindo:   It may be so — as Jesus was a child of the Divine Mother.    It must mean that that was the force which she was offering to you or else which you needed from her.


Sri Aurobindo:   That would be an experience rather than a realisation. A realisation would be of the Mother’s presence within, her force doing the work — or of the Peace or Silence everywhere, of universal Love, universal Beauty or Ananda etc. etc. Visions come under the head of experiences, unless they ﬁx themselves and are accompanied by a realisation of which they are as it were the support — e.g. the vision of the Mother always in the heart or above the head etc.


Sri Aurobindo:   The lights represent forces — I suppose you saw some force of Ananda coming down.


Sri Aurobindo: It was the psychic light, I suppose, and the Mother in it.     There is nothing to explain. It was what you describe.


Sri Aurobindo: At once the raising of the consciousness to a higher plane and the descent of that into the physical.     There was no trying — it came down.  All that is the silliness of the physical mind which thinks itself very clever in explaining away the inner feeling or perception.


Sri Aurobindo: What else do you expect the ﬁrst touches to be?  These things are at least a proof that the inner mind and vital are trying to open to supraphysical things. But if you belittle it at once the moment it starts how can it ever develop?    I don’t think it was another inﬂuence.


Sri Aurobindo: It reads like a very genuine experience.    It is not a woman. A woman does not radiate and is not surrounded by rays either. Probably a Sun Goddess or a Shakti of the inner Light, one of the Mother’s Powers.


Sri Aurobindo:   Obviously the Holy Woman was the Mother herself in a supraphysical form. It was natural that she should not like questions — the Mother does not like mental questions very much at any time and least of all when she is giving meditation as she was doing in this experience. It is rather funny to ask “why” (your eternal why) higher powers should be given. People do not question the gifts of the Shakti or demand reasons for her giving them, they are only too glad to get them.


Sri Aurobindo: Trance within trance of course, since your sadhana was going on in the trance, according to the ways of trance. It is also in this way that it can go on in conscious sleep.    It is not quite clear what this number 3 means in this connection.  Possibly it is the aspiration for the Divine’s love in the three parts of the being.


Sri Aurobindo:   The lotus you saw above the Mother’s head was the highest centre of the embodied consciousness (where it communicates with the higher Truth) fully open with the golden light of the divine Truth pouring upon it and ﬁlling it. It is that full opening which the Mother was bringing down and which has to happen eventually in the sadhak.


Sri Aurobindo: Simply the presence of the Mother in the physical consciousness.  Red is the colour of the physical.     Rocks = the physical (most material) being.


Sri Aurobindo: An opening in the material making room for the formation of the spiritual consciousness there.  Stone image of Shiva = the realisation of the silent Self or Brahman there (peace, silence, wideness of the Inﬁnite, purity of the witness Purusha).  Out of this silence emerges the Divine Shakti concentrated for the transformation of the material.   Sunlight = Light of Truth.


Sri Aurobindo:   Serpents are energies — those of the vital are usually evil forces and it is these that are usually seen by people. But favourable or divine forces are also imaged in that form — e.g., the Kundalini Shakti is imaged in the form of a serpent. Serpents turning over or round the Mother’s head would rather recall the Shivamurti and would mean numberless energies all ﬁnally gathered up into one inﬁnite energy of which they are the aspects.


Sri Aurobindo:   This is simply a symbol of the purity and silence of the higher consciousness which has to be reached by the path of sadhana.  The narrowness symbolises the difﬁculty because one has not to slip to one side or the other, but go straight.


Sri Aurobindo: The cobra is an emblem of Nature-Energy — golden = the higher Truth-Nature — many hoods = many powers. Red is probably a sign of Mahakali power. The cobra covering the head with its hoods is a symbol of sovereignty.


Sri Aurobindo: There is here a general symbolism in the details of the ﬁgure, but it is clearly the same experience [] at its ﬁrst stage in the ﬁrst contact.  Here and in the next it is obviously the Mother here. The staircase is a very usual symbol seen by many and it meant the acceptance and call to the ascent.  By self-opening and an increasing self-giving to the Divine.  All these are visions of the Mother and it agrees with what she felt when she ﬁrst saw you.


Sri Aurobindo:   It was certainly a true dream of the lower vital or perhaps subtle physical plane, where the laziness, indifference, frivolity of the sadhaks is a fact and the chief obstacle to the supramental descent into Matter. Because in your inner physical you were sincere and aspiring, the Mother’s blessing came upon you and removed something there that was in the way. There is no indication in the dream as to what it was, but something in the lower vital or physical connected with this general defect.  Mother said she would try to make you see her because it is not always easy for people to see her even when she is near them.


Sri Aurobindo: It is also easier to see with eyes shut than with eyes open — though this too is possible — because it is a sight within you that has to open in order to see her. It is not necessary to call her for any ﬁxed number of hours. It is enough if you love her always, remember her often, sit every day a little time before her photograph and call her.  You must never doubt that Mother loves you and you need never weep for that, for her feelings towards you cannot and will not change.  Of course you can take the photographs given to you by the Mother and keep them with you there.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is not that because the Mother loves you she can show herself to your physical eyes at a distance. The physical eyes of men are not made so as to see in that way. It becomes possible only after long sadhana. First one sees with the eyes closed, because that is easier.


Sri Aurobindo: When one is accustomed to see with the eyes closed, then afterwards it becomes more possible to see with the eyes open. So you should not be too eager to see at once in the more difﬁcult way. It will come in the end, if you want it, but it does not come at once. Don’t mind if it takes time. You must grow ﬁrst more and more able to feel the Mother near you; that you can do by thinking of her and calling her often.


Sri Aurobindo: Then seeing will be more easy.     Do not mind about the time that it will take — one can’t ﬁx the time of these things beforehand. When you feel the Mother’s presence more and more, when you begin to see her with the inner sight, then it can come.


Sri Aurobindo: It is better not to speak of the Mother to your friends — they do not know her, therefore they can take no interest in her.  The more you live close to the Mother in yourself, the less you will need to speak of her to others.    To see you must be more quiet within — then after a little the sight begins to come. An inner sight opens, one begins to see what the outward senses cannot see — and it is then possible to see the Mother there.


Sri Aurobindo: The golden light is the promise of the higher knowledge. For the coming of that knowledge the silence of the frontal exterior mind is necessary.   Very good.  All that you write on this page is entirely sound and accurate; it shows that you are getting the knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: Most in fact of the day’s experiences are signs of the true consciousness coming. The Mother’s consciousness with the wideness of the light, the white light in the vital, the golden light in the silence of the outer mind, the change in the vital, the quiet and natural trust and conﬁdence are all signs and circumstances of this opening to the true consciousness. As you say, there must be established the ﬁxing of this consciousness. The constant openness of part of the mind to the higher light will bring the silence of the whole mind and it is in the silent mind that the true knowledge will come — and indeed it has begun already to come. The change you note in the vital must also continue.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes — one aspiration to live in the Mother’s light and force which bring the true knowledge and the true power. If that aspiration is fulﬁlled, then all else needed can be fulﬁlled — all the other lights can be contained in the Divine Light.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes, that is the attitude you have to keep. If it is kept, then there will be no disturbance or only a superﬁcial unease. The experience itself was that of the descent of the Mother’s light of Divine Consciousness into domains of being which are ignorant or inconscient and obscure. The Mother herself has descended into these domains and moved through them to bring light there.


Sri Aurobindo: What you felt was an opening of the psychic being in your heart and the perceptions that came to you were perfectly true. The reaction you speak of does often come after an experience. But if the depression can be avoided, emptiness does not matter. Up to a certain stage the nature needs after an experience a quiescent period to assimilate experience. One has then not to be depressed but to remain quiet waiting and aspiring for more experience, more opening, a more continuous ﬂow of the truth.


Sri Aurobindo:   The Mother “manifesting” in you is an ambiguous expression — it is the Mother’s consciousness, the higher consciousness with the light, strength that has to come down in each sadhak, with the Mother’s presence always there. Along with this experience there must have been an attempt at surrender or an initial answer in the lower vital, but as a reaction the nervous disturbance came back — the old lower vital nature not being ready to give up possession reasserted its disturbances which were about to abate.    Probably you became aware of some part of your being which feels united with the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is very good. You are right about the subconscient and environmental, — for it is there that the inﬂuence must fall so that the consciousness may go upward and spread itself out widely in a free peace, light and joy connecting them down to the subconscient with the higher consciousness. It is then that the loss of the ego in the Mother’s consciousness becomes possible.


Sri Aurobindo:   That is quite correct. In many however it descends in a mass through the whole head and not in a current through the Brahmic hole.   The experience of a concrete presence of the Mother in the photograph and the immediate effect on the health are things of the subtle physical acting on the physical mind and body — such things can happen only when the physical consciousness has begun to open — that is why I said it was a sign. Of course the full effects of the spiritual experiences can only come when the whole consciousness is entirely open and receives and responds to them.


Sri Aurobindo: The presence of the Mother in all can be felt when one begins to have the widening of the consciousness in which it is not shut up in the personal self and the body but is extended everywhere. That comes usually with the descent of the higher consciousness from above. But one can also feel a beginning of it through the opening of the psychic. Then of course anger and jealousy do not remain — they fall away from the sense of spiritual oneness.   She has not related them to us.


Sri Aurobindo: But there is nothing improbable in it. It means simply that she externalised her inner vision and experience so as to see through the physical eyes also, but it was the inner vision that saw and the inner hearing that heard, not the physical sight or hearing. That is common enough. It does not indicate an “advanced” sadhana, whatever that phrase may mean, but only a special faculty.  These things are extremely common among those who practise Yoga everywhere.


Sri Aurobindo: In the Asram the sadhaks are too intelligent, sceptical and matter of fact to have much of that kind of experience. Even those who might develop it are repressed by the outward-mindedness and physical-mindedness that dominates the atmosphere.   The experience you had in your sleep was that of going into the vital world and meeting there one of the hostile vital beings who wished to menace or attack you, but could not attack you because of your call on the Mother. There are two things that must be acquired in these passages through the vital world — ﬁrst this immediate call on the Mother’s protection and, second, the throwing away of all fear. To those who do not fear them, these beings or forces can do nothing — in any meeting or conﬂict with them the Mother’s name is a sure protection even if some fear should come.


Sri Aurobindo: The other experience was due to your mind dwelling in the state of the Mother’s constant presence and its results. What you say is true, about these results, but it is not easy for the mind or vital or physical consciousness to get or keep the Mother’s conscious presence — it is only the psychic that keeps it easily.  So the thought brought down a pressure from above and a concentration within in the heart with a healing there and a pain of the yearning within followed by its sweetness. This pain is that of the psychic sorrow or perhaps rather of the psycho-vital sorrow and yearning — for the psychic sorrow itself is usually sweet and not painful.   To see all in the Mother and the Mother in all is a necessary experience in the Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no reason why it should not happen.    This kind of vital coming to the Mother all the sadhaks have in their sleep and dreams, if they are a little conscious there. Even those who are not sadhaks or others who do not know her come, but they are not aware of it. The vital plane is a supraphysical plane — the vital moves about in its own plane and is not limited by the physical mind or its consciousness or experience.


Sri Aurobindo:  It may be for any object or without any speciﬁc object — there is no rule in such matters.   To have that is very important — to get into something wider than the I as a man — into one’s own cosmic Self and universal consciousness — in the Mother.   It may have been that the Mother conveyed something to you.  At this moment she does not remember.


Sri Aurobindo:  When one has equality, discrimination and sufﬁcient Yogic experience — otherwise any voice may be mistaken for the Mother’s.  If it is the Mother’s voice; but you have to be sure of that.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the discriminating mind or the psychic that tells.  No, to hear and recognise the Mother’s voice within is not so easy.  There is no rule.


Sri Aurobindo: One hears the voice or the thought speaking inwardly and one answers inwardly. Only it is not always safe for the sadhak if there is any insincerity of ego, desire, vanity, ambition in him — for then he may construct a voice or thought in his mind and ascribe it to the Mother and it will say to him pleasing and ﬂattering things which mislead him. Or he may mistake some other Voice for the Mother’s.  Visions and voices are not meant for creating faith; they are effective only if one has faith already.


Sri Aurobindo: What do you mean by progress? The Mother spent many years entering the occult worlds and learning all that was to be learnt there. All that time she was making no progress? She sees things always when she goes into trance. Her capacity is a thing of no value?


Sri Aurobindo: Because a great number of people don’t know how to use these faculties or misuse them or give them excessive value or nourish their ego by them, does it follow that the faculties themselves have no Yogic use or value?    Even by itself, it is a progress in the development of the consciousness though it may not carry with it any spiritualisation of the nature.    I do not know what you mean by practical sadhana.