Sri Aurobindo: The quiet ﬂow is necessary for permeating the lower parts. The big descents open the way and bring constant reinforcement and the culminating force at the end — but the quiet ﬂow is also needed.  I am glad to hear that these experiences are coming — they are a sign of rapid progress coming. The descent as of a drizzling rain is a very characteristic and well-known way of descent of the higher Consciousness; it brings peace but it also brings all other possibilities of the higher Consciousness too and, as you felt, the seeds of transformation of the physical consciousness — by the coming in it of the seeds of the powers and qualities of the higher Nature.


Sri Aurobindo:   I am very glad that the experience we have been working to bring to you has come with such force and is increasing. It is the concrete descent of the higher consciousness, which once it settles marks always a deﬁnite turning-point in the sadhana.  Even if it does not settle with a full stability at once, yet when it has once come with so much strength, there cannot be the least doubt that it will come more and more till it has done its work and is your permanent consciousness. The shower and drizzle, the hold above the head and in the heart, the envelopment, the ﬂaming of Agni within, the sense of ﬁrmness and solidity, the Peace and security and devotion, the sense of the Mother’s hold are all signs of the descent — eventually it will penetrate everywhere and become something solid and stable occupying the whole consciousness and body.


Sri Aurobindo: The coolness is always a quieting force making for peace.   This coolness [ ] very often comes with the peace from above.  If the passage is felt going up above the head, it means that there is now a direct communication with the higher Consciousness, the necessary opening having been made.


Sri Aurobindo: The coolness comes when the Force descends with peace and harmony into the vital and the body.     A sensation of coolness indicates usually some touch or descent of peace. It is felt as very cold by the human vital because the latter is always in a fever of restlessness.


Sri Aurobindo:   Pleasant coolness or coldness usually indicates a pacifying force bringing down calm or release. Knee to toe = the ﬁeld of physical material consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo:   If the coolness passed into dullness, it may well have been only physical. But perhaps there was an inﬂow, only afterwards came a reaction of the lower inertia which is the physical Nature’s characteristic retort to peace and quietude. When the inertia comes up the old movements which the subconscient is prepared to supply always can mechanically come up with it. In a certain sense this inertia and the peace are the bright and dark counterparts of each other, tamas and — the higher Nature ﬁnding repose in peace, the lower seeking it in a relaxation of energy and a return towards the subconscient, tamas.


Sri Aurobindo:   The coolness is a very common experience, but the cool smell is unusual. Sometimes people get a fragrance but without this close connection — perhaps they do not observe closely.  The feeling of stoniness is very usually a ﬁrst impression in the body of the stillness in the cells which comes with the downﬂow of the Peace.  A sound does sometimes come with a particular descent of the consciousness or force from above.


Sri Aurobindo:   Your experience while going to the lawyers was an opening to the Force from above which, if sudden, is often attended by this kind of loud sound and the sensation of the opening of the head — it is in the subtle body that this opening of the head takes place though the sensation is felt as if physical. The Force came down and went up presided over by the Mother’s forms of Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati and made the movement of ascent and descent (here in the spinal column which is the main channel of the Yogic force passing through the centres) which helps to join the higher with the lower consciousness. As a result came the feeling of identity with myself in your body.


Sri Aurobindo: The cough shows probably some difﬁculty against concentration in the physical mind. The best is not to force concentration, but to remain quiet and call and let things work themselves out through the force of the Mother.  Sometimes the descent comes with great force in order to open something, afterwards it becomes more quiet and normal until the consciousness is ready for a more sustained descent.    There are always alternations in the intensity of the Force at its work.


Sri Aurobindo: It comes with great power and effects something that had to be done; then it is either concealed or retires a little or is felt but from behind a screen as you say, while something comes up that has to be prepared for illumination and then it comes in front again and does what has to be done there. But formerly while the support, help, even the deeper consciousness was always there, as you now rightly feel, yet when a veil fell, then it was all forgotten and you felt as if there was nothing but darkness and confusion. This happens to most sadhaks in the earlier stages. It is a great progress, a decisive advance if, at the time when the Force is working from behind the screen, you feel that it is there, that the help and support, the more enlightened consciousness is there still; this is a second stage in the sadhana.  The third is when there is no screen and the Force and all else are always felt whether actively working or pausing during a transition.


Sri Aurobindo: When a new consciousness comes down, it is not possible at ﬁrst to keep it all the time — the former consciousness has to get accustomed and receive and assimilate it, and that takes time.     It [] may be simply the need of assimilation in the body. To remain quiet for a time after a descent of Force is the best way of assimilating it.


Sri Aurobindo:  If the peace once becomes stable, there is no farther assimilation needed for that, as that means the whole system is sufﬁciently prepared to receive and absorb continuously. There may be periods of assimilation necessary for other things, but these periods need not interrupt the inner status. For instance if Force or Ananda or Knowledge begin to descend from above, there might be interruptions and probably would be, the system not being able to absorb a continuous ﬂow, but the peace would remain in the inner being. Or there might even be something like periods of struggle on the surface, but the inner being would remain calm and still, watching and undisturbed and, if there is knowledge established within, understanding the action. Only for that the whole being vital, physical, material must have become open and receptive to the peace.


Sri Aurobindo: Peace would then go on perhaps deepening and becoming wider and wider, but periods of interruption and assimilation would not be needed.    This feeling of being able to break a stone with the hand or for that matter break the world without anything at all except the force itself, is one that comes especially when the mind and vital have not assimilated the Power. It is the feeling of something extraordinary to them and omnipotent; the idea of breaking or crushing is suggested by the rajas in the vital. Afterwards when quietly assimilated this sensation disappears and only the feeling of calm strength and immovable ﬁrmness remains.


Sri Aurobindo: I mean [] that you need not pull it down, but you should aid its entry by your full aspiration and assent.     This sort of giddiness and weakness and disturbance ought not to take place. When it comes it shows that more Force is being pulled down than is assimilated by the body.


Sri Aurobindo: At such times you ought to rest till the disturbance has passed and there is a proper balance.   It is certainly a mistake to bring down the light by force — to pull it down. The supramental cannot be taken by storm. When the time is ready it will open of itself — but ﬁrst there is a great deal to be done and that must be done patiently and without haste.  That [] sometimes happens when the Force is coming down.


Sri Aurobindo: It must be allowed to pass off as the body becomes more quiet and assimilative.   The swaying motion takes place when the body is not accustomed to the descent; it tries by the movement to assimilate what is coming down.   The swaying is due probably to the body not being habituated to receive the Force — it should cease as soon as the body is accustomed.


Sri Aurobindo: Some have this swaying of the body when the peace or the Force begins to descend upon it, as it facilitates for it the reception.  The swaying ceases usually when the body is accustomed to assimilate the descent.  The peace comes fully at the meditation time because the Mother’s concentration at that time brings down the power of the higher consciousness and one can receive it if one is able to do so. Once it begins to come, it usually increases its force along with the receptivity of the sadhak until it can come at all times and under all conditions and stay longer and longer till it is stable. The sadhak on his side has to keep his consciousness as quiet and still as possible to receive it.


Sri Aurobindo: The Peace, Power, Light, Ananda of the higher spiritual consciousness are there in all veiled above. A certain opening upwards is needed for it to descend — the quietude of the mind and a certain wide concentrated passivity to the descending Inﬂuence are the best conditions for the descent.  What you saw was indeed a sun, — the sun of blue light which is the light of a higher mind than the ordinary human mind.  The sun is the symbol of Light and Truth. This higher spiritual Mind is trying to wake in you, but at the beginning there is always a difﬁculty because the consciousness is not habituated to receive, so there is the sense of pressure deepening sometimes into a feeling of headache or this feeling of the head preparing to split.


Sri Aurobindo: It is nothing but a sensation in the physical created by the inner mind (this part of the head is the seat of the inner mind) trying to open under the touch from above.   Headaches “produced by a pressure from above”, as you put it, are not due to the pressure or produced by it, but produced by a resistance. ’s headaches have nothing to do with Yoga or sadhana.   The pressure [] does not “bring” a resistance.


Sri Aurobindo: “If there were no resistance there would be no headache” is the proper knowledge, not the reverse. So long as you think that it is the pressure that brings the resistance, the very idea will create the resistance. ’s case is not an example either of headache due to resistance or of headache due to pressure — it is due to ordinary physical and psychological causes.


Sri Aurobindo:   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:   Headache is not a sign of the force descending, it is only a result sometimes of some difﬁculty in receiving it. If there is no difﬁculty in receiving, there is no headache. The signs of the force coming are the pressure to be quiet, the sense of peace coming or wanting to come and many others, such as a feeling in the head or body of something coming in like a stream or a current or shower etc.   Pain in the head and physical strain are due to resistance, but pressure and throbbing and electric sensation are only signs of the Force working, not of resistance.


Sri Aurobindo: The sensation of coolness is a very good sign.  The sensations you describe in the crown of the head and the upper part of the forehead are such as one often gets when the higher consciousness or Force is trying to make an open passage through the mind for itself. So it is possibly that that is happening. As for the uneasiness or feebleness there when you talk loudly etc., that also happens at such times. It is because the concentration of energy which is necessary for the inner work is broken and the energies thrown out, exhausting the parts by two inconsistent pullings.


Sri Aurobindo: It is better when any working is going on inside to be very quiet in speech and as sparing as possible.  At other times it does not so much matter.  The ﬁrst condition of progress in sadhana is not to fear, to have trust and keep quiet during an experience. What happened was simply that the Force came down and tried to quiet the mind and hold the body still so that it might work. If you had not feared, that would have happened.


Sri Aurobindo: But your terror made the mind and body resist and get the impression that they were being tortured or in danger. The feeling of the tough body and great force like a hand upon it is quite usual in this kind of experience and does not terrify the sadhak, but brings a great joy and release. In future you must try to be quiet and not have any fear or imagination of danger. Naturally when you thought that you could not bear it, the Force withdrew as you are not ready to receive.  The descent of Light etc. is always impermanent at ﬁrst.


Sri Aurobindo: First the Peace and Force and Light have to be settled in the mind, then in the vital (heart, navel and below) and the physical. The desires etc. will then have been pushed out into a kind of environmental consciousness from which they try to return and must be driven out from there also. This will create a ﬁrm basis for the rest of the sadhana.    He is to be congratulated on the victory in the matter of sex — it is very important to have that when the intense deﬁnitive experiences are beginning.


Sri Aurobindo: For if once the actual penetrative descent is felt, the less the higher consciousness is met by the sex force the better, for then a dangerous mixture may take place or else a struggle which is better avoided.  The description of the Power he feels — which is obviously the true thing — is very accurate — it is so, like rain or a fall of snow, that it often comes at ﬁrst. I take it from his use of the word “around”, that it is an enveloping power that he feels. It does not begin for all in the same way — some only feel it above their heads occasionally descending on them and entering.  It [] is probably a passing symptom of the attempt of peace to come down.


Sri Aurobindo: I have heard from several in the ﬁrst stages that the body was disinclined or felt unable to move about. It is of course an unnecessary reaction — the body wants to translate the pressure for inner immobility into an outward immobility.     There is no connection between the descent of Peace and depression.


Sri Aurobindo: Inertia there may be if the physical being feels the pressure for quietude but turns it into mere inactivity — but that cannot be called exactly a descent — at least not a complete one, since the physical does not share in it.   By the descent the inertia changes its character. It ceases to be a resistance of the physical and becomes only a physical condition to be transformed into the true basic immobility and rest.   You need not worry about that [].  When there is a strong inward tendency, the body not being yet conscious enough to share the experience in a waking state tries to assimilate the descending forces through sleep.


Sri Aurobindo: This is a common experience. When it has assimilated enough, it will be more ready.  That [] might apply to a sending out of the new waves upon the old sea, i.e. an attempt to transform the world. But the problem here is of self-transformation.  Mixture comes by the old waves pressing in again; one has to prevent or get rid of the mixture.


Sri Aurobindo: But the decisive movement is the descent of the things from above — when that becomes complete, then the being depends on the Above not on the Around. If the waves from the Around try to get in, it is they who are transformed (or rejected automatically), the roles are reversed.  If the habit of the ordinary nature is not any obstacle to the descent, then what is the need of sadhana? What prevents the whole higher consciousness from coming down and changing you into a superman in one second? It is because the things of the lower nature offer an obstinate resistance that long sadhana is necessary.


Sri Aurobindo:   An uneasiness of that kind is always due to a resistance somewhere — something that remains closed and does not open when it is touched by the Force. It is due probably not so much to yourself as to other conﬂicting inﬂuences that are acting upon you.


Sri Aurobindo:   If one brings down more force or light than some part of the being is ready for and that part resists — or if there is a struggle between descending and adverse forces in the body, then these things [] can take place.     The feeling of resistance [] may be the result of the effort at response.


Sri Aurobindo: When there is the free ﬂow there is neither effort nor resistance.   The experience of the action in the three centres is perfectly all right (the opening to the higher consciousness and its characteristic action and results already beginning there) except for the pains which mean a resistance. These experiences are quite sound and according to the divine schedule. But the pain at the bottom of the neck indicates that in trying to pass from mind to higher vital towards the heart, the Consciousness encountered an obstruction. However that too is in the day’s work.


Sri Aurobindo: It will be overcome in due time. So nothing to grumble — there at least.  The concentration is all right — since it is proceeding so well, the concentration in the higher centres should continue, but as the consciousness comes down or to help its coming down to the vital centres, more concentration in the heart may be necessary hereafter.   What usually comes is a descent of the Divine Power to work upon the nature and prepare it for the Divine Presence in the heart. There is much in human nature that has to be changed before it can hold what descends — incapacity and limitation of the mind, insufﬁcient purity in the heart and elsewhere, restlessness etc.


Sri Aurobindo: To contain the descent a quiet mind and pure heart are needed. That is why there is the restlessness and sense of incapacity in her. That is a quite common experience. If she wants to go farther, she must aspire for calm, peace, purity, etc. in the mental and emotional being and allow what is descending to establish it in her.   It must be the vital-physical that is in action.


Sri Aurobindo: It is under the pressure of the Force that the resistance recedes lower and lower down and manifests so as to have the pressure brought there also speciﬁcally for its expulsion.     The Power that is above your head has not only to be in connection with you, but to occupy the consciousness with its inﬂuence.  The restlessness is due to a resistance of the lower consciousness which is not accustomed to the process by which this is done and probably feels uneasy — as you say you feel everything unsure.


Sri Aurobindo: The body becoming unreal and all of one seeming to disappear are very usual results of the higher consciousness taking hold of the mind and they are very good signs — so too the sensation spreading from the head to the body is probably only the Power coming in. There should be no apprehension, for these things are quite normal in the transforming process. Probably the sense of unsureness is due to the part of the nature which founds itself on the body consciousness and feels nothing sure or solid except the body. In the new consciousness on the contrary what will be felt as sure and solid is the wide spiritual consciousness not limited by the body, in which the body is only a small circumstance hardly felt, an instrument only. The losing all consciousness must also be due to the consciousness going entirely inside as soon as the restlessness is forgotten or is no longer active.


Sri Aurobindo:   That is good progress. As for the resisting part, there is for a long time a resistance from some layer of the physical — one layer opens, another beneath remains obscure. But if the pressure from above is continuous, the resistance gets exhausted at last.  The stillness of which you speak in the meditation is a very good sign.


Sri Aurobindo: It comes usually in that pervading way when there has been sufﬁcient puriﬁcation to make it possible. On the other side, it is itself the beginning of the laying of the foundations of the higher spiritual consciousness.    You speak of a struggle () beginning when the Force comes down, but such a result is not inevitable — it is not necessary that the progress should be through a struggle. That rather takes place before the Force is there in the being, while one is still making efforts to open oneself to it or when it is still pressing from above or has taken up something of the nature but not the whole.


Sri Aurobindo: When the Force is there at work, the imperfections and weaknesses of the nature will necessarily arise for change, but one need not ﬁght with them; one can look on them quietly as a surface instrumentation that has to be changed. It is not with “indifference” that one has to look at them, for that might mean inertia, a want of will or push or necessity to change; it is rather with detachment. Detachment means that one stands back from them, does not identify oneself with them or get upset or troubled because they are there, but rather looks on them as something foreign to one’s true consciousness and true self, rejects them and calls in the Mother’s Force into these movements to eliminate them and bring the true consciousness and its movements there. The ﬁrm will of rejection must be there, the pressure to get rid of them, but not any wrestling or struggle.  When you felt the Force, the concentration, the peace, it meant evidently the true consciousness coming; that could not produce the restlessness at night.


Sri Aurobindo: If the restlessness were the result of the Force coming, it would follow that the more the Force comes down, the more the restlessness must increase. But that would be absurd and is not the case. What happened was simply that with the Force came a beginning of the inner or spiritual peace; in the nerves the old restlessness which was lying dormant rose up as a resistance, trying as all these habitual things of the nature do to prolong itself. As the peace enters the vital and the nervous being, these things naturally diminish and are eliminated. One has only to remain quiet and detached and let the Force in its working bring in the peace there also.


Sri Aurobindo: If the difﬁculty persists, you will let us know so that we may see to it.  The danger of the mental forces is that when the higher consciousness descends they tend (unless there is a deep silence) to become active in the consciousness for forming ideas of a mental type which can always be misapplied. First, there should be a basis of entire calm, peace and silence — if there is activity, it should be that of a knowledge coming down and the mind silent receiving it accurately. This you can easily have, provided the mind is quiet.  The danger of the vital is that of taking hold of love, Ananda, the sense of Beauty and using it for its own purposes, for vital human relations or interchange or else some kind of mere enjoyment of its own.


Sri Aurobindo:   The wideness is that of the higher consciousness, golden being the colour of the light of Truth, and the Cow is the symbol of the Light of the higher consciousness descending, turning all into the Truth light.  The state of wideness and of quietude unaffected by anything that happens is the natural result of the descent which you saw in this ﬁgure. The impartial condition towards work or not work is also a result of this descent. Usually it is the vital that pushes to work and without this vital push one can do very little.


Sri Aurobindo: When the higher consciousness descends into the mind and vital, this push becomes silent, but the faculty of work remains, — afterwards when the new consciousness is settled it takes up the work and carries it on with another force which replaces the push of the vital and is much greater.    In the ﬁrst condition you are receiving through the mind and it is drawn back upon itself to receive the Presence and grow in the Light and Power from above. The body or external consciousness is probably not sharing in its outward-going parts, there is no effectuating energy for any work other than what the external consciousness is habituated to do.  In the second the vital is receiving directly and transforming immediately into kinetic energy; for it is the direct reception by the vital or else the active participation of the vital in the Light, Power or Ananda that makes externalisation, effectuation, all kinds of work and action possible and easy.


Sri Aurobindo:  The opening of the vital mind (or any part) does not mean that the vital mind is absolutely open or wholly converted so that there shall never again be any darkness or ignorance or error or resistance or anything else but the higher consciousness there. It only means that the higher consciousness is able to come down there and work and establish something of itself there — as has been done in the thinking mind. Each plane, one after the other, has to open initially in that way down to the physical. So long as this initial opening is not made in all the parts, there can be no complete and ﬁnal descent of the higher consciousness anywhere. If the nervous being and other physical parts are not open, even the thinking mind cannot be ﬁnally open, for it can be affected by resistance, darkness etc. from below.


Sri Aurobindo: If the vital mind is open, that does not mean that it is open so wholly that it is already divine and is not feeling pride or other wrong movements.  As for the nervous being, it is part of the physical consciousness, below the physical mind and not above it — the nerves are part of the body.     The attitude which he describes, if he keeps it correctly, is the right one.


Sri Aurobindo: It brought him at ﬁrst the beginning of a true experience, the Light (white and golden) and the Force pouring down from the Sahasradala and ﬁlling the system; but when it touched the vital parts it must have awakened the prana energies in the vital centres (navel and below) and as these were not pure, all the impurities arose (anger, sex, fear, doubt etc.) and the mind became clouded by the uprush of impure vital forces. He says that all this is now subsiding, the mind is becoming calm and in the vital the impulses come but do not remain. Not only the mind but the vital must become calm; these impulses must lose their force of recurrence by rejection and puriﬁcation. Entire purity and peace must be established in the whole; it is only then that he will have a safe and sure basis for further progress.  The reason why the force ﬂows out of him must be because he allows himself to become too inertly passive and open to everything.


Sri Aurobindo: One must be passive only to the Divine Force, but vigilant not to put oneself at the mercy of all forces. If he becomes passive when he tries to see God in another person, he is likely to put himself at the disposal of any force that is working through that person and his own forces may be drained away towards the other. It is better for him not to try in this way; let him aspire for the Peace and Strength that come from above and for entire purity and open himself to that Force only. Such experiences as the feeling of the Divine everywhere (not in this or that person only) will then come of themselves.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is when the true contact and the Light and Force can be steadily brought down (including the lower vital and body) that the basis and organisation [] can be founded and settled.  This is a very great progress — to be able to receive the higher consciousness while doing external things with the physical mind and body — it shows that the physical consciousness is fast opening. What you feel is indeed the Grace coming down and bringing the higher divine or spiritual consciousness with it with all that is there. All that (peace, power, Ananda) will develop afterwards more clearly.


Sri Aurobindo:   It [] brings light, consciousness, force, Ananda into the cells and all the physical movements. The body becomes conscious and vigilant and performs the right movements, obeying the higher will or else automatically by force of the consciousness that has come into it. It becomes more possible to control the functionings of the body and set right anything that is wrong, to deal with illness and pain etc. A greater control comes over the actions of the body and even over happenings to it from outside, e.g. minimising of accidents and small mishaps.


Sri Aurobindo: The body becomes a more effective instrument for work. It becomes possible to minimise fatigue. Peace, happiness, strength, lightness in the whole physical system. These are the more obvious and normal results which grow as the consciousness grows, but there are many others that are possible. There is also the unity with the earth-consciousness, the constant sense of the Divine in the physical, etc.


Sri Aurobindo: It is, of course, not easy to make the physical entirely conscious in this way — for it is the seat of unconsciousness and obscurity and inertia — but a partial and sufﬁciently effective introduction of the higher consciousness can be established as a basis and the rest of the ground conquered as its force increases in the body.    Your recent experiences are of considerable importance: the triple condition of the being, the sense of the Divine everywhere, that of the Divine Child in the universe. The last two are selfevident in their signiﬁcance. As to the triple condition it indicates the proper direction of the realisation of the sadhana in three parts of the being.


Sri Aurobindo: The mind has to merge in the one inﬁnite consciousness of the silent self which will then envelop the whole being; the heart has by adoration and love and surrender to live in the dynamic Divine and be its dwelling place; the vital and physical (below the navel) have to be the instruments of the Divine Will, instruments pure, surrendered, expressing nothing but that Will.  The Blue Light coming below the level of the Muladhara means that it has entered into the physical (physical mental, physical vital, material) consciousness. The two main obstacles here are the mechanical mind with its memories and desires of the past and the most outward sex movements; these have to be overcome (especially the mechanical mind, for the other may be easily overcome if not supported by the vital proper) for the Light to possess all the physical consciousness. It is probably why it rose so strongly when the Light came to these parts.


Sri Aurobindo: That is to say, [ ] the Power is still working on the physical consciousness (the mechanical mind and the subconscient) to bring stillness there. Sometimes the stillness comes but not complete, sometimes the mechanical mind reasserts itself. This oscillation usually takes place in a movement of the kind. Even if there is a sudden or rapid transforming shock or downrush, there has to be some working out of this kind afterwards — that at least has always been my experience. For most, however, there comes, ﬁrst, this slow preparatory process.


Sri Aurobindo:  It is not a question only of the force working — but of the force descending into the body. The force descends in order to establish quietude, peace, light or whatever else comes from the higher consciousness. When the force comes only to do some work it comes and goes after doing its work. But this is a question of establishing something in the mind, vital and body.   It [] depends on the condition of the body or rather of the physical and the most material consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: In one condition it is tamasic, inert, unopen and cannot bear or cannot receive or cannot contain the force; in another rajas predominates and tries to seize on the dynamism, but wastes and spills and loses it; in another there is receptivity, harmony, balance and the result is a harmonious action without strain or effort.     Probably the accumulated Force became more than the physical being could receive. When that happens, the right thing to do is to widen oneself (one can learn to do it by a little practice).


Sri Aurobindo: If the consciousness is in a state of wideness, then it can receive any amount of Force without inconvenience.    It was the descent of the higher consciousness not only into the mind but the whole body and the whole being. That is what you must get ﬁxed in you, having it not only as a descent but as your normal consciousness. Of course that does not happen in a day (except in rare cases).


Sri Aurobindo: The descent repeats itself until it is strong enough to hold the whole body.    What will happen when the supramental consciousness takes hold of the body fully, can be decided only by the descent itself — there must be no premature attempt to do it or decide it with the Mind, before the Descent is an accomplished reality — for that would only retard the Descent and perhaps spoil the body.  It [] can come into the physical consciousness direct in the sense that the rest can remain passive, but it must pass through the subtle to reach the material.


Sri Aurobindo:    All experiences that penetrate the centres are recorded in the body and seem to be the body’s experiences, but one has to distinguish between the reﬂection of the experiences there and the experiences that belong to the physical body consciousness itself. It is a matter of consciousness and ﬁne discernment. There is no absolute law about the time.


Sri Aurobindo:   It can be a rushing of Force into the subtle body which the physical records and feels the effect. When Force descends into the head it means that it has come down into the mind, when it is felt in the heart it means it has entered into the emotional vital, when it is in the Muladhara and below it means it is acting on the physical consciousness. The centres are all in the subtle body although there are corresponding parts in the gross physical.


Sri Aurobindo:   I spoke [] only of the fact that what one feels recorded in the physical body may be actually taking place only in the subtle body. Whether in a particular case it is that or a direct experience in the physical body also, is a matter to be seen in each case. One must distinguish for oneself which it is.


Sri Aurobindo:   Any reﬂection or outﬂowing [] from the subtle body into the physical would also be felt as tangible.    Why “mere” record? If you think the experiences in the subtle body are feeble vague things, you are mistaken — they can be quite as intense, swift, palpable, massive as those of the body.


Sri Aurobindo: It [] is the approach of the higher consciousness to the subconscient through the psychic and vital which are the connecting links. Without the vital the action would not be complete, without the psychic it would not be possible.     I do not see what is your difﬁculty.


Sri Aurobindo: That there is a divine force asleep or veiled by Inconscience in Matter and that the Higher Force has to descend and awaken it with the Light and Truth is a thing that is well known; it is at the very base of this Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: The ways of the Divine are not like those of the human mind or according to our patterns and it is impossible to judge them or to lay down for Him what He shall or shall not do, for the Divine knows better than we can know. If we admit the Divine at all, both true reason and bhakti seem to me to be at one in demanding implicit faith and surrender.   To understand divine movements one must enter into the divine consciousness; till then faith and surrender are the only right attitude. How can the mind judge what is beyond all its measures?  The less pet ideas are petted and cherished, the better for the supramental Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: The mind is always building up ideas, some of which are wrong, some a mixture of truth and error, some true in their way, but true only in a certain ﬁeld or in certain conditions or for some people, and it proceeds not only to make “pets” of them, but to try to impose them as universal and absolute truths or general standards which everybody must follow. The mind is a rigid instrument: it ﬁnds it difﬁcult to adapt itself to the greater plasticity of the play of life or the freedom of the play of the Spirit. It wants to catch hold of either or both of these spontaneous powers and cut them into its own measures. It poses as the mediator and interpreter between life and the spirit; but it knows neither; it only knows itself and its own constructions out of life and its own deformations or half reﬂections of the truth of the Spirit. Only the supermind can be a true mediator and interpreter.


Sri Aurobindo: But if you want the supramental Light, you must not tie yourself to mental ideas, but draw back from them and observe them with an impartial equality in the silence of the spirit. When the supramental Light touches them, it will put them in their place and ﬁnally replace them by the true truth of things.  For the human thinking mind there are always many sides to everything and it decides according to its own bent or preference or its habitual ideas or some reason that presents itself to the intellect as the best. It gets the real truth only when something else puts a higher light into it — when the psychic or the intuition touches it and makes it feel or see.   It is very usual for intuitive suggestions to come like that and the mind to disregard them.


Sri Aurobindo: It is because the mind is too accustomed to follow its own process and cannot recognise or have conﬁdence in the intuition when it comes. The mind has to learn to look at these things when they come and give them value if experience conﬁrms their truth.     Yes, the active mind in people with a very intellectual turn can be an obstacle to the deeper more silent spiritual movement.


Sri Aurobindo: Afterwards when it is turned into the higher thought (intuitive or overmental) it becomes on the contrary a great force.     The intuitive perception or discrimination is self-sufﬁcient — it does not need any reasoning or process of thought to justify it.  The intellectual depends on data and steps, even if the steps are hurried over or the data rapidly seized and swallowed into the intelligence.


Sri Aurobindo:   It [] is when, instead of seeing things as they appear to the external mind and senses, one begins to see things about them with a subtler physical mind and sense — e.g. seeing intuitively what is to be done, how to do it, what the object (even so-called inanimate objects) wants or needs, what is likely to happen next (or sometimes sure to happen), what forces are at play on the physical plane etc. etc.  Even the body becomes intuitively conscious in this way, feels without being told by the mind what it has to do, what it has to avoid, what is near it or coming to it (though unseen) etc. etc.   The heart has its intuitions as well as the mind and these are as true as any mental perceptions.


Sri Aurobindo: But neither all feelings nor all mental perceptions nor all rational conclusions can be true.  There are different kinds of knowledge. One is inspiration, i.e. something that comes out of the Knowledge planes like a ﬂash and opens up the mind to the Truth in a moment. That is inspiration. It easily takes the form of words as when a poet writes or a speaker speaks, as people say, from inspiration.


Sri Aurobindo:   The pure inspiration and conception is something quite different  [] — it comes from deep within or from high above. This is the lower vital mind at work making formations.


Sri Aurobindo: When the calmness is there all sorts of things may rise on the surface — they have not to be accepted, but simply looked at. In time the calmness will be so developed as to quell the vital and outer mind also and in that complete quietude the true perceptions will come.  Most people begin with the power [] working in the mind — it is only when the mind and vital have been changed to some extent that the psychic is ready to come forward.   The chief obstacle in you is the mind. If you can quiet your mind and give the psychic being a chance, that will be your spiritual salvation.


Sri Aurobindo: Your mind is inordinately active, too full of questionings, too shrewd, worldly and practical, too much given to doubt and self-defence. All that is very useful in worldly life, it helps to bring success, but it is not the way to succeed in Yoga. No doubt in Yoga, the critical rational mind (self-critical as well as critical of things outside you) is an element that has its value so long as the true inner discrimination does not come; but of itself it cannot carry you on the way, it will only make your progress slow and stumbling. There must be something in you that will open itself directly to the Truth and Light. The unregenerated vital being of man cannot do that because it demands of the higher Power that it shall satisfy the vital desires, demands, ambitions, vanity, pride, etc., before it will accept the Truth.


Sri Aurobindo: The unillumined mind also cannot do it because it refuses to recognise the Truth unless the Truth ﬁrst satisﬁes its own judgments, ideas, opinions, critical or conventional standards, — unless in a word the Truth consents to narrow itself into the moulds of the mind’s own ignorance. It is the psychic being alone that turns to the Truth directly, feels it instinctively behind all appearances and in spite of all disguises, accepts it without any egoistic demand or condition, is ready to serve it without reserve or refusal. It is the psychic being also that can at once feel and reject all imitations of the Truth, all shows, all pretences.    In the West the physical mind is too dominant, so that the psychic does not so easily get a chance — except of course in exceptional people.


Sri Aurobindo:  It is the thoughts of the outer mind that have to be refused, the suggestions and ideas that end by disturbing the sadhana.  There are also a number of thoughts of all kinds that have no interest, but which the mind is accustomed to allow to come as a habit, mechanically, — these sometimes come up when one tries to be quiet. They must be allowed to pass away without attending to them until they run down and the mind becomes still; to struggle with them and try to stop them is no use, there must be only a quiet rejection. On the other hand if thoughts come up from within, from the psychic, thoughts of the Mother, of divine love and joy, perceptions of truth etc., these of course must be permitted, as they help to make the psychic active.   When it [] is at the heart, it is probable that the psychic or at least the psychic mental thought is replacing the ordinary mental.


Sri Aurobindo: Yogic thought comes from two sources, the psychic behind the heart and the higher consciousness from above the head.     Your nature has always been very self-centred and the mind active — in such a nature it is easier for the higher mind to act than for the psychic.  It is necessary ﬁrst to found the higher consciousness in the mind and heart.


Sri Aurobindo: To deal with the lower nature before that means to fall into the struggle and confusion and disorder of the vital, for it all comes up. With the mind and heart prepared, one can deal with the vital without all that superﬂuous trouble.   So long as the mind is not entirely transformed, that is, penetrated and changed by the spiritual consciousness, things from below can always run into it more or less and dim the vision of the higher levels. If you can keep the vision always, even though dimmed, it is already a great progress.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is only one sadhana for all parts, not a separate mental sadhana, vital sadhana or physical sadhana — but the action of the sadhana is applied sometimes separately to each part; sometimes on the contrary the action is on the mental and vital together, or vital and physical together, or all three together. But it is the same sadhana always.  Intellect is part of Mind and an instrument of half-truth like the rest of the Mind.


Sri Aurobindo:   Intellectual activities are not part of the inner being — the intellect is the outer mind.    Its [] function is to reason from the perceptions of the mind and senses, to form conclusions and to put things in logical relation with each other. A well-trained intellect is a good preparation of the mind for greater knowledge, but it cannot itself give the Yogic knowledge or know the Divine — it can only have ideas about the Divine, but having ideas is not knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: In the course of the sadhana intellect has to be transformed into the higher mind which is itself a passage towards the true knowledge.   It is no use trying to decide the things of the Spirit by the power and in the light of the intellect. The intellect can only reason and infer and its reasonings are partial and its inferences vitiated by error. One has to awaken the divinations in the soul, the psychic being, and wait for a higher knowledge which comes from above.  It is not safe to listen to or be inﬂuenced by the mental of other sadhaks.


Sri Aurobindo: The Yoga aims at union with the Divine which will bring a spiritual oneness with other sadhaks, but a oneness in the Divine, in the Truth, not in the ignorance of the mind and the vital.   It is not by intellect that one can progress in the Yoga, but by psychic and spiritual receptivity — as for knowledge and true understanding it grows in sadhana by the growth of the intuition, not of the physical intellect.   The intellect can be as great an obstacle as the vital when it chooses to prefer its own constructions to the Truth.


Sri Aurobindo: What you have said is perfectly right. To see the Truth does not depend on a big intellect or a small intellect. It depends on being in contact with the Truth and the mind silent or quiet to receive it. The biggest intellects can make errors of the worst kind and confuse Truth and falsehood, if they have not the contact with Truth or the direct experience.


Sri Aurobindo:  The intellect of most men is extremely imperfect, ill trained, half developed — therefore in most the conclusions of the intellect are hasty, ill founded and erroneous or, if right, right more by chance than by merit or right working. The conclusions are formed without knowing the facts or the correct or sufﬁcient data, merely by a rapid inference and the process by which it comes from the premisses to the conclusion is usually illogical or faulty — the process being unsound by which the conclusion is arrived at, the conclusion also is likely to be fallacious. At the same time the intellect is usually arrogant and presumptuous, conﬁdently asserting its imperfect conclusions as the truth and setting down as mistaken, stupid or foolish those who differ from them. Even when fully trained and developed, the intellect cannot arrive at absolute certitude or complete truth, but it can arrive at one aspect or side of it and make a reasonable or probable afﬁrmation; but untrained, it is a quite insufﬁcient instrument, at once hasty and peremptory and unsafe and unreliable.   Intellectual statements about these things do not lead very far, for the basis of true statement is a consciousness which sees things not as the mind sees them but with a direct inner view, and unless one enters into that consciousness itself, it is difﬁcult really to understand the intellectual statement.


Sri Aurobindo: It is by sadhana only that one can enter into that consciousness in which one sees the divine reality behind things.     The point is that people take no trouble to see whether their intellect is giving them right thoughts, right conclusions, right views on things and persons, right indications about their conduct or course of action. They have their idea and accept it as truth or follow it simply because it is idea.


Sri Aurobindo: Even when they recognise that they have made mistakes of the mind, they do not consider it of any importance nor do they try to be more careful mentally than before. In the vital ﬁeld people know that they must not follow their desires or impulses without check or control, they know that they ought to have a conscience or a moral sense which discriminates what they can or should do and what they cannot or should not do; in the ﬁeld of intellect no such care is taken. Men are supposed to follow their intellect, to have and assert their own ideas right or wrong without any control; the intellect, it is said, is man’s highest instrument and he must think and act according to its ideas. But this is not true; the intellect needs an inner light to guide, check and control it quite as much as the vital. There is something above the intellect which one has to discover and the intellect should be only an intermediary for the action of that source of true Knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo:  There is no reason why one should not receive through the thinking mind, as one receives through the vital, the emotional and the body. The thinking mind is as capable of receiving as these are, and, since it has to be transformed as well as the rest, it must be trained to receive, otherwise no transformation of it could take place.  It is the ordinary unenlightened activity of the intellect that is an obstacle to spiritual experience, just as the ordinary unregenerated activity of the vital or the obscure stupidly obstructive consciousness of the body is an obstacle. What the sadhak has to be specially warned against in the wrong processes of the intellect is, ﬁrst, any mistaking of mental ideas and impressions or intellectual conclusions for realisation; secondly, the restless activity of the mere mind,, which disturbs the spontaneous accuracy of psychic and spiritual experience and gives no room for the descent of the true illuminating knowledge or else deforms it as soon as it touches or even before it fully touches the human mental plane.


Sri Aurobindo: There are also of course the usual vices of the intellect, — its leaning towards sterile doubt instead of luminous reception and calm enlightened discrimination; its arrogance claiming to judge things that are beyond it, unknown to it, too deep for it by standards drawn from its own limited experience; its attempts to explain the supraphysical by the physical or its demand for the proof of higher and occult things by the criterions proper to Matter and to mind in Matter; others also too many to enumerate here. Always it is substituting its own representations and constructions and opinions for the true knowledge. But if the intellect is surrendered, open, quiet, receptive, there is no reason why it should not be a means of reception of the light or an aid to the experience of spiritual states and to the fullness of an inner change.  The intellect is made up of imaginations, perceptions, inferences.  The pure reason is quite another thing, but only a few are able to use it.


Sri Aurobindo: As for knowledge, — in Yoga it comes ﬁrst from the higher mind, but even that does not see the whole Truth, only sides of it.     Pure reason deals with things in themselves, ideas, concepts, the essential nature of things. It lives in the world of ideas.


Sri Aurobindo: It is philosophic and metaphysical in its nature.  All depends on the meaning you attach to words used — it is a matter of nomenclature. Ordinarily one says a man has intellect if he can think well — the nature and process and ﬁeld of the thought do not matter. If you take intellect in that sense, then you can say that intellect has different strata and Ford belongs to one stratum of intellect, Einstein to another — Ford has a practical and executive business intellect, Einstein a scientiﬁc discovering and theorising intellect. But Ford too in his own ﬁeld theorises, invents, discovers.


Sri Aurobindo: Yet would you call Ford an intellectual or a man of intellect? I would prefer to use for the general faculty of mind the word intelligence. Ford has a great and forceful practical intelligence, keen, quick, successful, dynamic. He has a brain that can deal with thoughts also, but even there his drive is towards practicality. He believes in rebirth (metempsychosis), for instance, not for any philosophic reason, but because it explains life as a school of experience in which one gathers more and more experience and develops by it.


Sri Aurobindo: Einstein has on the other hand a great discovering scientiﬁc intellect, not like Marconi a powerful practical inventive intelligence for the application of scientiﬁc discovery. All men have of course an “intellect” of a kind, all for instance can discuss and debate (for which you say rightly intellect is needed); but it is only when one rises to the realm of ideas and moves freely in it that you say, “This man has an intellect.” Address an assembly of peasants, you will ﬁnd if you give them scope that they can put to you points and questions which may often leave the parliamentary debater panting. But we are content to say that these peasants have much practical intelligence.  The power to discuss and debate is, as I say, a common human faculty — and habit.


Sri Aurobindo: Perhaps it is here that man begins to diverge from the animal; for animals have much intelligence — many animals and even insects — even some rudimentary power of practical reasoning, but so far as we know, they don’t meet and put their ideas about things side by side or sling them at each other in a debate, as even the most ignorant human can do and very animatedly does. There too is the beginning of intellect — for the reasons you allege. Also for the reason that it is a common faculty of the race, it can be specialised, so much so that a man whom it is dangerous to cross in debate in the ﬁeld of literature or of science or of philosophy may yet make a fool of himself and wallow contentedly in a quagmire of blunders and fallacies if he discusses politics or economy or, let us say, spirituality or Yoga. His only salvation is the blissful depth of his ignorance which prevents him from seeing what a mess he has made.


Sri Aurobindo: Again a man may be a keen legal or political debater, — the two very commonly go together, — yet no intellectual. I admit that a man must have some logical intellect to debate well. But after all the object of debate is to win, to make your point and you may do that even if your point is false; success, not truth, is the aim of debate. So I admit what you say, but with reservations.  I agree also that labels are unsatisfactory — even when applied to less developed persons; what we really do is to pick out something prominent and label with that as if it were all the person.


Sri Aurobindo: But classiﬁcation is impossible without that and man’s intellect is driven always to classify, ﬁx distinctions, set apart with a label. The philosophers have pointed out that Science does that too rigidly and in doing so cuts falsely across the truth of Nature. But if we don’t do that, we can’t have any Science.


Sri Aurobindo: asked me the question and I answered it on the basis of the current meaning of “intellect” and “intellectual”. People in ordinary speech do not make any distinction between intellect and intelligence, though of course it is quite true that a man may have a good or even a ﬁne intelligence without being an intellectual. But ordinarily all thinking is attributed to the “intellect”; an intellectual therefore is a man whose main business or activity it is to think about things — a philosopher, a poet, a scientist, a critic of art and literature or of life, are all classed together as intellectuals. A theorist on economy and politics is an intellectual, a politician or a ﬁnancier is not, unless he theorises on his own subject or is a thinker on another.  ’s distinction is based on those I have made here, but these distinctions are not current in ordinary speech, except one or two and those even in a very imperfect way.


Sri Aurobindo: If I go by these distinctions, then the intellectuals will no longer be called intellectuals but thinkers and creators — except a certain class of them. An intellectual or intellectual thinker will then be one who is a thinker by his reason or mainly by his reason — e.g. Bertrand Russell, Bernard Shaw, Wells etc. Tagore thinks by vision, imagination, feeling or by intuition, not by the reason — at least that is true of his writings. C. R. Das himself would not be an intellectual; in politics, literature and everything else he was an “intuitive” and “emotive” man. But, as I say, these would be distinctions not ordinarily current.


Sri Aurobindo: In ordinary parlance Tagore, Das and everybody else of the kind would all be called intellectuals. The general mind does not make these subtle distinctions: it takes things in the mass, roughly and it is right in doing so, for otherwise it would lose itself altogether.  As for barristers etc., a man to succeed as a barrister must have legal knowledge and the power to apply it. It is not necessary that he should be a thinker even in his own subject or an intellectual. It is the same with all professional men — doctors, engineers etc. etc.: they may be intellectuals as well as successful in their profession, but they need not be.


Sri Aurobindo: P. S. Argument properly speaking needs some power of logical intellect; but it can be specialised in a certain line. The power of arguing does not by itself make a man an intellectual.   ’s main grievance with respect to the intellectuals is that he is cut off from all discussion of mental things and mental stimulus and so his mental energies are becoming atrophied. But a man who has a mental life ought surely not to be dependent on others for it, since that life is found within — there ought to be springs within that ﬂow by their own force.


Sri Aurobindo: If the intellectual [] will always have a greater wideness and vastness [], how can we be sure that he will have an equal fervour, depth and sweetness with the emotional man?  It may be that will remain wider and  will remain deeper in heart.     Please do not confuse the higher knowledge and mental knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: The intellectual man will be able to give a wider and more orderly expression to what higher knowledge he gets than the ; but it does not follow he will have more of it.  He will have that only if he rises to an equal width and plasticity and comprehensiveness of the higher knowledge planes. In that case he will replace his mental by his above-mental capacity. But for many intellectuals, so-called, their intellectuality may be a stumbling block as they bind themselves with mental conceptions or stiﬂe the psychic ﬁre under the heavy weight of rational thought. On the other hand I have seen comparatively uneducated people expressing higher knowledge with an astonishing fullness and depth and accuracy which the stumbling movements of their brain could never have allowed one to suppose possible.


Sri Aurobindo: Therefore why ﬁx beforehand by the mind what will or will not be possible when the Above-mind reigns? What the mind conceives as “must be” need not be the measure of the “will be”. Such and such a may turn out to be a more fervent God-lover than the effervescent emotional man; such and such an emotionalist may receive and express a wider knowledge than his intellect or even the intellect of the intellectual man could have harboured or organised. Let us not bind the phenomena of the higher consciousness by the possibilities and probabilities of a lower plane.


Sri Aurobindo: An unintellectual mind cannot bring down the Knowledge?  What then about Ramakrishna? Do you mean to say that the majority of the sadhaks here who have not learned logic and are ignorant of philosophy will never get Knowledge?    Ramakrishna was an uneducated, nonintellectual man, yet his expression of knowledge was so perfect that the biggest intellects bowed down before it.


Sri Aurobindo: This [] is what we call the activity of the mind, which always comes in the way of the concentration and tries to create doubt and dispersion of the energies. It can be got rid of in two ways, by rejecting it and pushing it out, till it remains as an outside force only — by bringing down the higher peace and light into the physical mind.     It is the Light or the Force which comes from beyond the mind that keeps the mind truly concentrated.


Sri Aurobindo: Otherwise the mind is naturally restless, unﬁxed, constantly changing from one thing to another.    Then for the tumultuous activity of the mind which prevents your concentration. But that or else a more tiresome obstinate grinding mechanical activity is always the difﬁculty when one tries to concentrate and it takes a long time to get the better of it. That or the habit of sleep which prevents either the waking concentration or the conscious samadhi or the absorbed and all-excluding trance which are the three forms that Yogic concentration takes.


Sri Aurobindo: But it is surely ignorance of Yoga, its processes and its difﬁculties that makes you feel desperate and pronounce yourself unﬁt for ever because of this quite ordinary obstacle.  The insistence of the ordinary mind and its wrong reasonings, sentiments and judgments, the random activity of the thinking mind in concentration or its mechanical activity, the slowness of response to the veiled or the initial touch are the ordinary obstacles the mind imposes just as pride, ambition, vanity, sex, greed, grasping of things for one’s own ego are the difﬁculties and obstacles offered by the vital. As the vital difﬁculties can be fought down and conquered, so can the mental. Only one has to see that these are the inevitable obstacles and neither cling to them nor be terriﬁed or overwhelmed because they are there. One has to persevere till one can stand back from the mind as from the vital and feel the deeper and larger mental and vital Purushas within one which are capable of silence, capable of a straight receptivity of the true Word and Force as of the true silence.


Sri Aurobindo: If the nature takes the way of ﬁghting down the difﬁculties ﬁrst, then the ﬁrst half of the way is long and tedious and the complaint of the want of the response of the Divine  arises. But really the Divine is there all the time, working behind the veil as well as waiting for the recognition of his response and for the response to the response to be possible.


Sri Aurobindo: If the thoughts are not regarded as one’s own, it should become possible to look at them from a silent mind, detached and separate from the thoughts.    It is more difﬁcult to separate oneself from the mind when it is active than from the body. It is quite possible however for one part of the mind to stand back and remember the Mother and receive her presence and the force while the other is busy with the work. Meanwhile what you are doing is the right way.


Sri Aurobindo: Remember always that whatever the difﬁculties the Mother’s love is with you and will lead you through.  The ﬁrst necessity is not to allow yourself to be upset by this difﬁculty []. It is one that often occurs, for these imaginations come easily to the human mind, but they can be got rid of in time, and even in a comparatively short time if one faces them with calm resolution, detachment and patience. It is simply a habit that has taken hold of the mind — it can be dissolved and cease to recur.  It will help if you can cease to regard them as creations of your own mind — they are not, they are foreign matter thrown on it from outside.


Sri Aurobindo: The physical mind which they attack has to learn to see and feel them as something foreign and refuse to accept them. Then they will go. For that you will receive my help and the Mother’s. Keep yourself inwardly conﬁdent and open, all will be done.


Sri Aurobindo: The mind does not record things as they are, but as they appear to it. It catches parts, omits others; afterwards the memory and imagination mix together and make a quite different representation of it.  The mind has to be remoulded and changed, but in a deﬁnite way, becoming more and more full of the Light and Truth. In that way it will begin to take on a luminous consistency and become “stronger and stronger till it is dependable”. A mere confused instability is not the right way.


Sri Aurobindo: When the confusion comes, you should remain quiet, reject it and call in the Mother’s light and force.    Who does not feel the confusion or ignorance somewhere in himself so long as the full light and the true force have not come?  Your mistake is to be always thinking about the confusion and struggling with it, dwelling on it, magnifying it by thinking about it, treating it as if it were the only thing real and true. When you feel the force, turn to the force and let it act — it is that force and not you or your brooding and struggles that can get rid of the confusion and darkness.


Sri Aurobindo: What is the use of examining whether your faith and conﬁdence are of the “true” kind or not? To feel the force, be quiet, let it act is all that is needed.    If you can stand back from all this [] and observe calmly and clearly and precisely, this confusion of voices ought to stop. It is only a part of the mind that is like that.


Sri Aurobindo: But you get absorbed by this part and then it looks as if it were the whole mind that is confused. If you stand back from it and observe it with your mind, then this small part will lose its power to confuse.  It is simply the habit of the mind when troubles come to worry about them. You must train your mind to remain calm and equal when troubles come — to do the thing that has to be done and rely on the Divine Power.  In the mind there is always a certain haste to seize quickly at what is presented to it as the highest Truth.


Sri Aurobindo: That is unavoidable, but the more one is still in mind, the less this will distort things.   The attempt of the mind and vital to seize on the experience is always one of the chief obstacles.    It [] is not any weakness of the will or the result of passivity, but an overhaste of decision upon a mental impulse.  That is the usual movement of the mind — and it is sometimes the fruit of a certain kind of sattwic zeal.


Sri Aurobindo: But owing to the haste there is not sufﬁcient time taken to see the opposite side, the defects of the decision taken, or the possible objection that might be made. Peace is the basis, but into it must come the action of a certain Light from above which shows each thing in its right proportions as a whole — for the mind at its best is incomplete and usually one-sided in its perceptions without the guidance of such a higher Light.   It is necessary to curb the mind’s impatience a little. Knowledge is progressive — if it tries to leap up to the top at once, it may make a hasty construction which it will have afterwards to undo.


Sri Aurobindo: The knowledge and experience must come by degrees and step by step.  It is as you say and there is a certain element of inertia in it; the slowness of the mind and the nature to seize something new to it, the non-distinction between what is true and to be held and what is not true and not to be held, is due to a certain absence of quickness of movement in the being. But each human quality has its advantages and disadvantages. A quick mind is often unstable — it catches but does not keep; or it catches but only superﬁcially and thinks it has got everything when it has got only a little and not enough. A slow mind that takes slowly but holds on to what it has got, can be slow but sure in its movement.


Sri Aurobindo: The disadvantage of it is obstinacy, unwillingness to admit what it should receive, unwillingness to let go what is mistaken. Its advantage is steadiness, a ﬁrm hold when it gets the right thing. Therefore you should not mind if it takes long to absorb and hold the new consciousness — as a matter of fact, to hold takes long with everybody. Once you have got it well established, your nature is likely to hold it ﬁrmly. As for the lack of discrimination, that is only in the physical and lower vital mind — within you there is something that can discriminate, the psychic.


Sri Aurobindo: The only thing is to get it out and keep it in front. When you had the psychic state or rather a touch of it from time to time, you saw things very clearly. When the psychic state ﬁxes itself, that discrimination also will become a part of the nature.  Don’t accept and hug and dandle these [] ideas. Everybody has thoughts opposing each other — it is the very nature of mind — one has to draw back from all that and ﬁx on the straight things alone that lead to the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: The rest one must treat as external rubbish.    Many things are bad only in the way people look at them. Things which you consider all right, other people call bad; what you think to be bad, others ﬁnd quite natural.


Sri Aurobindo:   As for facts each mind always arranges them in its own way.  It is a well-known phenomenon which psychologists constantly emphasise that each mind arranges facts according to its own impressions, predilections, convenience and, while this may be partly done with a conscious twist, conscious omissions and additions, it is quite or as often and more often done without any wilful intentions and by a sort of subconscious selection in the mental hinterland. That is why no three witnesses of an incident can give the same account of it — unless of course they have talked it over together — each tells a different story.  People are exceedingly silly — but I suppose they can’t help themselves.


Sri Aurobindo: The more I observe humanity, the more that forces itself upon me — the abysses of silliness of which its mind is capable.  What the Mother spoke of was not self-analysis nor dissection.  Analysis and dissection are mental things which can deal with the inanimate or make the live dead — they are not spiritual methods. What the Mother spoke of was not analysis, but a seeing of oneself and of all the living movements of the being and the nature, a vivid observation of the personalities and forces that move on the stage of our being, their motives, their impulses, their potentialities — an observation quite as interesting as the seeing and understanding of a drama or a novel — a living vision and perception of how things are done in us which brings also a living mastery over this inner universe. Such things become dry only when one deals with them with the analytic and ratiocinative mind, not when one deals with them thus seeingly and intuitively as a movement of life.


Sri Aurobindo: If you had that observation (from the inner spiritual, not the outer intellectual and ethical viewpoint), then it would be comparatively easy for you to get out of your difﬁculties; for instance you would ﬁnd at once where this irrational impulse to ﬂee away came from and it would not have any hold upon you. Of course, all that can only be done to the best effect when you stand back from the play of your nature and become the Witness-Control or the Spectator-ActorManager. But that is what happens when you take this kind of self-seeing posture.    You stick to your intellectual-ethical version of the inner selfvision?


Sri Aurobindo: Dry? policeman? criminal? Great Lord! If it were that, it would cease to be self-vision at all — for in the true self-vision there is no policemanship and no criminaldom at all. All that belongs to the intellectual-ethical virtue-and-sin dodge which is only a mental construction of practical value for the outward life but not a truth of real inner values. In the true self-vision we see only harmonies and disharmonies and set the wrong notes right and replace them by the true notes.


Sri Aurobindo: But I say that for the sake of truth, not to persuade you to start the self-vision effort; for if you did with these ideas of it, you would inevitably start it on the policeman basis and get into trouble. Besides, evidently, you prefer in the Yoga to be the piano and not the pianist, which is all right but involves total self-giving and the intervention of the supreme musician and harmonist. May it be so.  I am glad to know that your vital has been frightened into acquiescence in self-giving — even if only by the imaginary horror of being obliged to become the policeman of yourself. But to explain why these contradictions existed in you one has to have recourse to this very business of harmonies and disharmonies and the inner knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: You were in fact a piano played on by several pianists at a time each with his own different musical piece to play! In plain words and without images, every man is full of these contradictions because he is one person, no doubt, but made up of different personalities — the perception of multiple personality is becoming well-known to psychologists now — who very commonly disagree with each other. So long as one does not aim at unity in a single dominant intention, like that of seeking and self-dedication to the Divine, they get on somehow together, alternating or quarrelling or muddling through or else one taking the lead and compelling the others to take a minor part — but once you try to unite them in one aim, then the trouble becomes evident. One element wanted the Divine from the ﬁrst, another wanted music, literature, poetry, a third wanted life at its best, a fourth wanted life — well, not at its best. Finally there was another element which wanted life not at all, but was rather disgusted with it and wanted either a better (diviner) life or something better than life.


Sri Aurobindo: It was this element evidently that created the and in the struggle between that and the life-partisans, a black element stole in (not one of the personalities, but a formation, a dark intrusion from outside), which wanted to turn the whole thing into a drama or tragedy of despair — despair of life but despair of the Divine also. That has to be rejected, the rest changed and harmonised. That is the only true explanation of the whole difﬁculty in your nature.  There is no possibility of doing this Yoga, if one cannot give himself to the Divine Power and trust to its workings. If one lives only in the mind and its questioning and ideas, it is not possible.


Sri Aurobindo: The test of capacity is to be able to quiet the mind, to feel a greater Divine Power at work in one, the Power of the Mother, and to be able to trust to it and aid its workings by the rejection of all that contradicts them in the nature.     To quiet your mind means to stop thinking about the things that disturb you and let the peace and power manifest themselves and work. The “living inside” will come of itself in that case — that is to say, you will feel the inner peace and the consciousness that comes with it more and more as yourself and all else as something outer and superﬁcial.


Sri Aurobindo:   How can the mind ﬁnd out or decide what is the right thing to do for your sadhana? The more it is active in that way, the more confusion there will be. In sadhana the mind has to be quiet, ﬁxed in aspiration towards the Divine — the true experience and change will come in the quietude of the mind from within and from above.


Sri Aurobindo: It is also a mistake to take quietude for callousness. If you are no longer disturbed by what people say or do, then that is a great progress. If you have no abhiman against the Mother, that also is surely very desirable. Abhiman, disturbance etc. may be signs of life, but of a vital, not of the inner life. They must quiet down and give room for the inner life.


Sri Aurobindo: At ﬁrst the result may be a neutral quiet, but one has often to pass through that to arrive at a more positive new consciousness. When the mind thus falls quiet the thoughts of the past, all sorts of repetitive or mechanical thoughts begin to rise up — these come from the physical mind or the subconscient. One has to refuse them and let them pass away, aspiring for the complete mental quietude in which the new consciousness can reveal itself little by little.   Remain ﬁrm and quiet with the right will in you and let the Force do its work.


Sri Aurobindo: That will may not bear recognisable fruit at once, but adhere to it and the fruit will come.   You should not belittle the inner quietness by calling it a foolish kind of quietness — quietness in itself, knowing or unknowing, is to be valued, for it means that even in the midst of confusion a basis has still been kept. The understanding is at present covered over by a remnant of the old ignorance and confusion, but if a fundamental quietude is maintained or remains of itself, that will make it easier for this recurrence to pass.   As for the thought of your mother, it is always a symbol in your consciousness of the old nature and the old life — that is why it gets force when the confusion comes.


Sri Aurobindo: Remain ﬁrm and the cloud will pass and the true consciousness reassert itself with more ﬁrmness and vigour.    Not to allow the mind to bubble up with all sorts of ideas and feelings etc. but to remain quiet and learn to think and feel only what is true and right.  Activity of the physical mind is not a new thing that needs to take root.


Sri Aurobindo: It has been there very well rooted since you began your human evolution in the primaeval forests.    What you have now seen and describe in your letter is the ordinary activity of the physical mind which is full of ordinary habitual and constantly recurrent thoughts and is always busy with external objects and activities. What used to trouble you before was the vital mind which is different, — for that is always occupied with emotions, passions, desires, reactions of all kinds to the contacts of life and the behaviour of others. The physical mind also can be responsive to these things but in a different way — its nature is less that of desire than of habitual activity, small common interests, pains and pleasures.


Sri Aurobindo: If one tries to control or suppress it, it becomes more active.  To deal with this mind two things are necessary, (1) not so much to try to control or ﬁght with or suppress it as to stand back from it: one looks at it and sees what it is but refuses to follow its thoughts or run about among the objects it pursues, remaining at the back of the mind quiet and separate; (2) to practise quietude and concentration in this separateness, until the habit of quiet takes hold of the physical mind and replaces the habit of these small activities. This of course takes time and can only come by practice. What you propose to do is therefore the right thing.   The mechanical movements are always more difﬁcult to stop by the mental will, because they do not in the least depend upon reason or any mental justiﬁcation but are founded upon association or else a mere mechanical memory and habit.


Sri Aurobindo:  This mechanical putting out of the thoughts happens to everybody at all times and it is especially strong in the physical mind — one has not to be upset by it, but go on quietly drawing the mind in, for if one does that, the obstacle after a time will diminish and one can then remain inside with the greater part of the consciousness, even if there are some wandering thoughts.  So long as there is interest in outward things this can only be done for short periods, — but if there is not any strong interest, then the habit becomes purely mechanical and it can be got over in a shorter time. Its entire disappearance comes only when there is a complete silence in the being, but even before complete disappearance, one can arrive at a point when, in spite of it, one can go inside at will and remain there.   This going out of the mind and this siege of thoughts is a difﬁculty which everybody has to meet for a time or often when he wants to concentrate within. You should not allow it to depress you or make you hopeless or lead you to think that there is some special disability in you from which others do not suffer.


Sri Aurobindo: One has to keep one’s poise, recognise it as an inherent difﬁculty of the nature of mind (physical mind), one which has to be overcome and will be overcome in time. In that way one feels the pressure of these obstacles less and gets over it sooner than if one gets distressed or upset by them or takes them for a sign of incapacity for the Yoga.    It is the usual ﬁt and the same round of thoughts mechanically repeated that you always get in these ﬁts. These thoughts have no light in them and no truth, for the physical mind which engenders this routine wheel of suggestions is shut up in surface appearances and knows nothing of deeper truth or the things of the spirit.


Sri Aurobindo: There is plenty of “increment”, but with this superﬁcial part of the physical mind it is not likely or possible that you can see it. Your impression of the dwindling light is also an impression of this mind natural to it especially in its periods of darkness; for that matter when the periods of darkness come to any sadhak they always seem darker than before; that is the nature of the darkness, to give that impression always. It is also quite according to the rule of these reactions that it should have come immediately after a considerable progress in bhakti and the will to surrender in the inner being — for it comes from the spirit of darkness which attacks the sadhak whenever it can, and that spirit resents ﬁercely all progress made and hates the very idea of progress and its whole policy is to convince him by its attacks and suggestions that he has made none or that what progress he has made is after all null and inconclusive.  The laws of this world as it is are the laws of the Ignorance and the Divine in the world maintains them so long as there is the Ignorance — if He did not, the universe would crumble to pieces,, as the Gita puts it. There are also, very naturally, conditions for getting out of the Ignorance into the Light.


Sri Aurobindo: One of them is that the mind of the sadhak should cooperate with the Truth and that his will should cooperate with the Divine Power which, however slow its action may seem to the vital or to the physical mind, is uplifting the nature towards the Light. When that cooperation is complete, then the progress can be rapid enough; but the sadhak should not grudge the time and labour needed to make that cooperation fully possible to the blindness and weakness of human nature and effective.  All the call for faith, sincerity, surrender is only an invitation to make that cooperation more easily possible. If the physical mind ceases to judge all things including those that it does not know or are beyond it, like the deeper things of the spirit, then it becomes easier for it to receive the Light and know by illumination and experience the things that it does not yet know. If the mental and vital will place themselves in the Divine Hand without reservation, then it is easier for the Power to work and produce “tangible” effects.


Sri Aurobindo: If there is resistance, then it is natural that it should take more time and the work should be done from within or as it might appear underground so as to prepare the nature and undermine the resistance. It seems to me that the demand for patience is not so terribly unreasonable.   It [] can come only by farther development and the activity of another kind of knowledge communicating itself to the physical and taking up gradually the functions of the mind in all its parts.  The unsteadiness you speak of is the nature of the human physical mind — almost everybody has it, for the physical mind goes after all sorts of outward things. To ﬁx the consciousness within, to keep it concentrated on the Divine alone is a great difﬁculty for all, it is what makes sadhana a thing for which long time and a slow development of the consciousness is usually necessary, at ﬁrst at any rate.


Sri Aurobindo: So that need not discourage you. In your inner vital there is plenty of strong will and deep down in your psychic there is the true aspiration and love which come up when the psychic is active and will eventually possess the whole nature.    It is quite natural that the unsteadiness of the physical mind should interfere with the settling of full and constant quietude and faith — it always does with everybody, but that does not mean that this quietude and faith will not or cannot settle in the nature. All that I meant was that you should try to get a constant will for that quietude, so that when the restlessness or unsteadiness come across, your will to quiet might meet it or soon reappear and dispel the disturbance.


Sri Aurobindo: That would make the elimination of the restlessness or impatience easier; but in any case the Mother’s force is there working behind the variations of the surface consciousness and it will bring you through them.  The experiences you had were renewed glimpses of the psychic working that is going on all the time even when there is no sign of it on the surface. The golden sword was the sword of Truth which will destroy the difﬁculties.    Of course it is difﬁcult to be withdrawn inwardly, difﬁcult especially for the physical mind and consciousness with which you are now in contact.


Sri Aurobindo: But that is not peculiar to you, — as in the other things, it is a general difﬁculty of human nature. The instability of which you speak is also a usual characteristic of the external mind and vital. But you have the capacity to do it as recent experiences have shown; the capacity will grow, for as the psychic develops that develops and the inability or instability of the physical consciousness becomes less pressing.    Diabetes or any other physical illness cannot be a cause of absence of concentration.


Sri Aurobindo: There is always a difﬁculty in the beginning to concentrate for more than a short time because it is contrary to the habits of the physical mind. Perseverance is necessary. At the same time there should be a call for the help of the Divine Power above the mind; for if one can open to that, the process can be more rapid.  What you felt was the obscurity of the external physical mind and nature (the centre in the throat is the centre of this external mind). So long as that is there the external nature and action remain as they always were and there is no correspondence between it and the inner spiritual consciousness and experience.


Sri Aurobindo: This cannot disappear by a single experience; a steady will to change is necessary.   It means that the outer physical mind has a certain obscurity in it which impedes the knowledge from coming out. This obscurity is universal in the external physical mind — you feel it more just now because it is in the physical consciousness that the opposition is now centred. It will pass as soon as the Force can descend through the mind and vital and act directly on the physical nature.


Sri Aurobindo:    But that is a common experience — it is extraordinary how long it takes for the simple and right thing to do to dawn on the physical mind.    It is the nature of the physical mind not to believe or accept anything that is supraphysical unless it is enlightened and compelled by the light to do it.


Sri Aurobindo: Do not identify yourself with this mind, do not consider it as yourself but only as an obscure functioning of Nature. Call down the light into it until it is compelled to believe.  Yes, it [] is closely connected with the brain functioning. All these things — irritation, grief, fear etc. etc. — can become entirely discharged of thought content and felt simply as a physical sensation in the cells, not accepted by the thought (even in the physical mind), not shared in by the emotional being — a wave brought from outside into the material body consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo:   These small things of the physical mind [ ] are such as everybody has and they will fall off when the truer wider consciousness comes out. You have the understanding in your mind, but these things persist because they really belong to the smaller vital part and when that part widens, then they will no longer be able to recur. One can discourage them by keeping certain ideas in mind, such as that the things which vex you belong to the nature and can go only with the change of the nature, that one has to do the work well oneself but not be troubled by the defects of others in their work, that a quiet inner will for their doing right is more effective than getting vexed and disturbed by their lapses. But fundamentally it is by the widened consciousness in your mind and vital and physical that you will be quite freed from these small reactions.


Sri Aurobindo: You have only to continue with the Mother’s Force working in you and these things will smooth themselves out hereafter.    These small movements [] are the most difﬁcult of all to change owing to their very smallness and the habit of frequent indulgence as natural and triﬂing everyday movements of life. The best thing to do is to mass the force and light and peace in the mind and higher vital until they can occupy the physical mind even — then through the physical mind, which usually supports more or less these movements, they can be worked on with more success.   It [] was I suppose an idea that came through the physical mind, suggesting the following of a physical utility only and ignoring all other perceptions and motives.


Sri Aurobindo: You must be on your guard against the ideas and suggestions of this physical mind and accept none without discrimination and subjection to a higher light.   The confusion and inertia of which you speak must be in the physical mind which has not yet the Light. It does not matter very much if you keep in touch with the consciousness of the Force working upon you; for such periods of inertia in one part or another, especially in the physical consciousness, come to everybody. If you keep and deepen the quietude and become continuously conscious of the Force, it will itself work these defective states and movements out of the being in time. All depends on that, increasing quietude, increasing consciousness of the Force at work in you.


Sri Aurobindo:  One is either conscious of the power or peace or other force (light, ananda, knowledge, movements of the divine working) or, if not conscious of that, is aware of the results — either of these things is sufﬁcient to show that one is open. To feel the grace descending and yet doubt whether it is not a vital imagination is a folly of the physical mind; a spiritual experience must be accepted as it is; if one questions at every moment whether an experience is an experience or Grace is grace or peace is peace or light is light, one will spend all the time in these useless and fantastic doubts instead of making a quiet and natural progress.    It is the physical mind that would like everything made easy.  Formerly the mental will and the higher vital and the psychic were active, so their consent was sufﬁcient for the lower vital to be kept down or to be inﬂuenced.


Sri Aurobindo: But now it is the physical mind that is active in you and the physical mind gives a value and therefore a power to the lower vital which it did not have before.     What you describe, the insistence of the physical mind and the insistence of the small desire vital, are indeed the two things that still obstruct the sadhana. The mind must give up its insistence on its own ideas and the vital the insistence on satisfying its desires for the full quietude to come and for the permanent opening of the inner experience to realise itself.


Sri Aurobindo: We shall put our Force persistently for the removal of these two difﬁculties till it is done.     No, there is a limit to the resistance [ ]. At any rate a time comes when the fundamental resistance is broken for good and there is only left a dealing with details which is not troublesome.


Sri Aurobindo: It [] can have a very great inﬂuence [ ] by giving it the right attitude and the right way of looking at things so that it supports the emotional being in its aspiration, love and surrender and itself gets interest, faith and insight in the inner truth of things instead of seeing only their outer aspects and following false inferences and appearances. It also helps it to get rid of the narrowness and doubt which are the chief defects of the physical mind.   When the physical mind is disturbed by the vital, it is not easily convinced because its reasoning is supplied to it by the vital which thinks according to its own desires and feelings — unless a great clarity from the psychic or from the thinking mind above comes to the rescue.  It is the psychic consciousness, not perfect but still well developed, that supports some of those whom you mention and makes it easy for them to go on in faith — but it is only after much vital difﬁculty that it developed in them, — and there is no reason why that should not happen speedily in you also.   The psychic if it gets hold of them [ ] can change completely their will and outlook and orientation and open them to the true perception of things and right impulse.


Sri Aurobindo: The mind and higher vital can help much towards that.  There is always a difﬁculty in keeping the physical mind within or silent, because it has been its nature to occupy itself with outward things and it ﬁnds a difﬁculty in accustoming itself to a contrary movement. You must not be depressed by that, but persist in the aspiration and will till it is done. The Mother’s Force will be there to bring it about as soon as possible.


Sri Aurobindo: You have only to allow the consciousness to develop — at ﬁrst there will be mistakes as well as true ideas, but when there is sufﬁcient development and the Mother’s force and knowledge directly working in you, things will become more and more right  — not only so, but you will have the certitude. At present there is still too much of the old physical mind for perceptions to be always right. As the Peace and Force take direct and complete possession of the physical consciousness, this will change and the consciousness develop more surely and with a greater light.   To get rid of the random thoughts of the surface physical mind is not easy.


Sri Aurobindo: It is sometimes done by a sudden miracle, as in my own case, but that is rare. Some get it done by a slow process of concentration, but that may take a very long time. It is easier to have a quiet mind with things that come in passing on the surface, as people pass in the street, and one is free to attend to them or not — that is to say, there develops a sort of double mind, one inner silent and concentrated when it pleases to be so, a quiet witness when it chooses to see thoughts and things, — the other meant for surface dynamism. It is probable in your case that this will come as soon as these descents of peace, intensity or Ananda get strong enough to occupy the whole system.


Sri Aurobindo:   If the peace and silence continue to come down, they usually become so intense as to seize the physical mind also after a time.  First of all, these thought-waves, thought-seeds or thoughtforms or whatever they are, are of different values and come from different planes of consciousness. Even the same thoughtsubstance can take higher or lower vibrations according to the plane of consciousness through which the thoughts come in (e.g., thinking mind, vital mind, physical mind, subconscient mind) or the power of consciousness which catches them and pushes them into one man or another. Moreover there is a stuff of mind in each man and the incoming thought uses that for shaping itself or translating itself (transcribing we usually call it), but the stuff is ﬁner or coarser, stronger or weaker etc. etc. in one mind than in another.


Sri Aurobindo: Also there is a mind-energy actual or potential in each which differs and this mind-energy in its recipience of the thought can be luminous or obscure, sattwic, rajasic or tamasic with consequences that vary in each case.    There is no difﬁculty about explaining [ ]. You are as naive and ignorant as a newborn lamb. That is the way things come, only one does not notice.


Sri Aurobindo: Thoughts, ideas, happy inventions etc. etc.  are always wandering about (in thought waves or otherwise) seeking a mind that may embody them. One mind takes, looks, rejects — another takes, looks, accepts. Two different minds catch the same thought-form or thought-wave, but the mental activities being different make different results out of them. Or it comes to one and he does nothing, then it walks off, crying “O this unready animal!” and goes to another who promptly annexes it and it settles into expression with a joyous bubble of inspiration, illumination or enthusiasm of original discovery or creation and the recipient cries proudly, “I, I have done this.”


Sri Aurobindo: Ego, sir! ego! You are the recipient, the conditioning medium, if you like — nothing more.    That is the silliness of the mind.


Sri Aurobindo: Why should it be impossible to ﬁll up a vacancy? It is easier for things to come into an empty space than into a full one. The error comes from thinking that your thoughts are your own and that you are their maker and if you don’t create thoughts (i.e. think), there will be none. A little observation ought to show that you are not manufacturing your own thoughts, but rather thoughts occur in you. Thoughts are born, not made — like poets, according to the proverb.


Sri Aurobindo: Of course, there is a sort of labour and effort when you try to produce or else to think on a certain subject, but that is a concentration for making thoughts come up, come in, come down, as the case may be, and ﬁt themselves together. The idea that you are shaping the thoughts or ﬁtting them together is an egoistic delusion. They are doing it themselves, or Nature is doing it for you, only under a certain compulsion; you have to beat her often in order to make her do it, and the beating is not always successful. But the mind or nature or mental energy — whatever you like to call it — does this in a certain way and carries on with a certain order of thoughts, haphazard intelligentialities (excuse the barbarism) or asininities, rigidly ordered or imperfectly ordered intellectualities, logical sequences and logical inconsequences, etc. etc. How the devil is an intuition to get in in the midst of that waltzing and colliding crowd?