Sri Aurobindo: But, as often happens, soon after all that is obscure, egoistic, self-centred in the vital being rose up in revolt and created a confused farrago of desires, demands, disappointments, grievances, misapprehensions, false reasonings and especially a wrong attitude of claim and demand which was the entire contradiction of the psychic and spiritual attitude and wholly inconsistent with the right conditions of sadhana. It is this of which your recent letters were full. The forces that use this kind of vital condition for the breaking of a sadhak’s spiritual chances became active and turned all into a drive to go away. Your only chance is to refuse to listen to all these ideas and suggestions and adopt resolutely an attitude of complete self-giving and the refusal of all feelings of desire, claim and ego and all justiﬁcations of these feelings by the vital mind which is full of a false view of things and therefore cannot be trusted even when its reasonings seem to be plausible.  Others before you have entered into this whirl of the vital mind and ego and have gone on justifying it and indulging it.


Sri Aurobindo: The only result was a constant repetition of vital crises sometimes ending in departure and the failure of the sadhana; others by a repeated reaction of their psychic being ﬁnally succeeded in emerging out of the chaos. But we have found that to comply with the claims, demands, clamours, ultimatums of the vital mind in this condition is the worst way to meet the difﬁculty. It only increases the demands, revolts, outbursts of ego and makes the recurrence or continuance of the vital crises endless. You must get out of your head the idea that you have a right to demand this or that from the Mother because she is accepted by you as the Divine and that she is bound to satisfy you and any refusal is an offence and an outrage. The Mother acts and decides in all freedom according to her vision and judgment and she cannot be expected to act according to the desires, opinions or demands of the sadhaks nor can they judge by their minds her reasons or motives,


Sri Aurobindo: for these do not belong to the ordinary consciousness in which the mind moves. For her to obey the dictates of the sadhaks or their claims and desires would be to make her work meaningless and a failure. Apart from that, the basis of this Yoga is self-giving and surrender of the sadhak to the Divine, his acceptance of guidance by a higher consciousness than his own. A reversal of the position, an imposition of the will of the lower consciousness on the Divine or the Guru is not admissible; yet the position you have taken in your letters of demand amounts to that and nothing else. This attitude must cease if you want to get out of your difﬁculty.


Sri Aurobindo: I have tried to make the position clear to you. It is for you to accept or not to accept what I have said; but it is the only way possible for the sadhana.    Once the universality [] is established, there is no longer a secure fortress in the nature for the vital egoism — the walls of it having been broken down. They [] may still attack from outside, but it now lies in the power of the sadhak to prevent their making a settled formation in him any longer.


Sri Aurobindo: What you speak of as your nature, the distrust etc., is not the nature but only a particular turn or habit that has got into it like a crease in a dress. It can be smoothed out of the nature.  Of course it has to be smoothed out, for just as the rajasic ahankara which exalts itself unduly is not good for the sadhana, creating pride, vanity and delusion, so this opposite thing, called often tamasic ahankara, is not good, for it creates difﬁdence, despondency and in some people inertia.


Sri Aurobindo: The tamasic ego is that which accepts and supports despondency, weakness, inertia, self-depreciation, unwillingness to act, unwillingness to know or be open, fatigue, indolence, do-nothingness.  Contrary to the rajasic it says, “I am so weak, so obscure, so miserable, so oppressed and ill-used — there is no hope for me, no success, I am denied everything, I am unsupported — how can I do this, how can I do that, I have no power for it, no capacity, I am helpless; let me die; let me lie still and moan,” etc. etc. Of course not all that at once or in every case; but I am giving the general character of the thing.


Sri Aurobindo: All that [] is the usual play of the vital and the ego. It is the vital that can ﬁnd satisfaction neither in talking with others nor in solitude — it has lost the old satisfaction in talks, but it cannot reconcile itself either to giving up the old attachment — it still feels a tie to it and so cannot get the joy of solitude.  It is the ego that is self-important and makes much of itself, but depression, self-depreciation and the feeling that others do not like or appreciate your company is also a working of the ego.  The ﬁrst is rajasic ego, the second tamasic ego. To be occupied always with oneself and the action of others on oneself is ego.


Sri Aurobindo: One who is free from ego does not trouble about these things.  In Yoga one must be unattached and indifferent to these things, concerned only with Sadhana and the Divine and towards others the attitude must be one of quiet goodwill without any demand or expectation. If one can’t arrive at this yet, one must always endeavour to arrive at that and not feed the lower vital movement by brooding on these other things.  To depend on letters from me for getting free from depression will only create a habit of depression, demand for a tonic in the shape of a letter, then again depression, tonic and revival and the circle will go on. It is only by a resolute will to get rid of the vital and the ego through their reactions that you can keep yourself open to the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: Success may take time, but the steady will and aspiration must be there.    In spite of the outbreak of temper and violence with regard to the boy I do not think it can be said that you have not changed at all or made any progress. There are three obstacles that one has to overcome in the vital and they are very difﬁcult to overcome, lust (sexual desire), wrath and rajasic ego. I think you have progressed much in all three.


Sri Aurobindo: Even in regard to anger, the outbreaks are surely less common, less overpowering and longcontinued than they were before. It has been so much in your vital nature that you have to be on your guard against ﬁts like these coming back; you have also to overcome excitement and violence of speech; but if you persevere without being discouraged, the freedom will come. Rajasic ego is the ground of the others. I think your idea about is good for this purpose. If you can accustom yourself to do as scrupulously work not attractive to you as you do what attracts you and to do it in accordance with the ideas and standards of another, not insisting on your own, that should be an excellent discipline for the rajasic ego and bring into the vital a greater power of self-giving and peace.


Sri Aurobindo:   Do you mean to say that you never had any rajasic element in you? There is not a human being who has not got it in him so long as he is not divinised in his vital. What were all the vital suggestions coming to you so insistently always except appeals to the rajasic ego? When you threw out sex, jealousy, vanity, etc. what were you throwing out but the rajasic ego?


Sri Aurobindo: What was the demand at the pranam or the disturbance caused there but a movement of the rajasic ego? Some of these things you threw out successfully — others still kept a response.    So long as you had fully the attitude of surrender, the rajasic ego could only take the form of suggestions from outside, uprisings from the subconscient. It was suppressed in the vital.


Sri Aurobindo: When the inertia rose and the energy of will receded, it began to try to come in again.     These [] are the feelings of the tamasic ego — the reaction to a disappointment in the rajasic ego.  Mingled with the true attitude and experience or running concurrently along with it was a demand of the vital, “What I am having now, I must always have, otherwise I can’t do sadhana; if I ever lose that, I shall die” — whereas the proper attitude is, “Even if I lose it for a time, it will be because something in me has to be changed in order that the Mother’s consciousness may be fulﬁlled in me not only in the self but in every part.”


Sri Aurobindo: The lower forces attacked at this weak point, made demands through the vital and brought about a state of inertia in which what you had clung to seemed to be lost, went back behind the veil. So came the tamasic reaction of the ego, “What is the use of living, I prefer to die.” Obviously it is not the whole of you  that says it, it is a part in the disappointed vital and tamasic physical. It is not enough that the active demands should be broken and removed; for this also is a passive way of demand, “I can’t have my demands; very well, I abdicate, don’t want to exist.”


Sri Aurobindo: That must disappear.     Tamas and tamasic ego are implied in each other. When one yields to tamas, one indulges the tamasic ego.


Sri Aurobindo: The ego-centric man feels and values things as they affect him.  “Does this please me or displease, give me gladness or pain, ﬂatter my pride, vanity, ambition or hurt it, satisfy my desires or thwart them?” etc. The unegoistic man does not look at things like that. He looks to see what things are in themselves and would be even if he were not there, what is their meaning, how they ﬁt into the scheme of things — or else he feels calm and equal, refers everything to the Divine, or if he is a man of action how they will serve the work that has to be done or the life of the world or the cause he serves etc. etc. There can be many points of view which are not ego-centric.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is true about living and doing all for oneself, but that is the nature of man, he is centred in his ego, ego-centric, and does all for his ego; even his love and liking is mostly based on ego. All that has to be changed and all has to be centred in the Divine, done for the Divine Mother. It is the work of the sadhana to get that done.


Sri Aurobindo: The silence, the growth of the psychic and all else is meant to bring about that — but it cannot be done all at once. When the consciousness is ready, then the psychic love, the impulse for self-giving begins to open out in the heart and the change is made — more and more till there is the complete self-giving.     But in what way do they [] belong to the Divine, so long as the ego appropriates and uses them for its own purposes?


Sri Aurobindo: Self-giving in fact means a change from egocentricity to God-centricity; also such a giving as would lead to a change of the whole base of the consciousness.   Your nature like that of almost everybody has been largely ego-centric and the ﬁrst stages of the sadhana are with almost everybody ego-centric. The main idea in it is always one’s own sadhana, one’s own endeavour, one’s own development, perfection, siddhi. It is inevitable for most, for without that personal endeavour there would not be sufﬁcient will or push to bring about the ﬁrst necessary changes. But none of these things — development, perfection or siddhi — can really come in any degree of completeness or unmixed ﬁnality until this ego-centric attitude changes into the God-centric, until it becomes the development, perfection, siddhi of the Divine Consciousness, its will and its instrumentation in this body — and that can only be when these things become secondary, and bhakti for the Divine, love for the Divine, oneness with the Divine in consciousness, will, heart and body, become the sole aim — the rest is then only the fulﬁlment of the Divine Will by the Divine Power.


Sri Aurobindo: This attitude is never difﬁcult for the psychic, it is its natural position and feeling, and whenever your psychic was in front, you had it in your central consciousness. But there were the outer mind, vital and physical that brought in their mixture of desire and ego and there could be no effective liberation in life and action till these were liberated. The thinking mind and higher vital can accept without too much difﬁculty, but the difﬁculty is with the lower vital and physical and especially with the most external parts of them ; for these are entirely creatures of habit, recurring movement, an obstinate repetition of the same movement always. This habit is so blind and obstinate and persistent as to seem almost invincible, especially when it is used at a juncture like this by the Forces of Ignorance as their last refuge or point of attack.


Sri Aurobindo: But the apparent invincibility is not true. The most ego-centric can change and do change by the psychic principle becoming established in the external nature. That it can be done only by the Divine Grace and Power is true (that is true of all spiritual change) — but with the full consent of the being. As it was done in the inner being, so it can be done in the outer; give the adhesion of your full will and faith and, whatever the difﬁculty, it will be done.


Sri Aurobindo:   Obviously one must not get egoistic about it [], but withdrawal from the outer or lower consciousness into the inner is not in itself an egoistic movement. If it were so, all sadhana would be egoism and to be always social and on the surface would be the only thing!  The form of ego has to be dissolved, it has not to be replaced by a bigger ego or another kind of ego. It has to be replaced by the true being which feels itself, even though individual, yet one with all and one with the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo:  The egoism of the instrument can be as dangerous or more dangerous to spiritual progress than the egoism of the doer. The ego-sense is contrary to spiritual realisation, so how can any kind of ego be a thing to be encouraged? As for the magniﬁed ego, it is one of the most perilous obstacles to release and perfection.  There should be no big I, not even a small one.


Sri Aurobindo: What is meant by the magniﬁed ego is that when the limits of the ordinary mind and vital are broken, one feels a far vaster and more powerful consciousness and unlimited possibilities, but if one ties all that to the tail of one’s own ego, then one becomes a thousand times more egoistic than the ordinary man.  The greatness of the Divine becomes an excuse and a support for one’s own greatness and the big I swells itself to ﬁll not only the earth but the heavens. That magniﬁcation of the ego is a thing to be guarded against with a watchful care.


Sri Aurobindo:   What you say about the ahankara of the instrument is true — it is one of the most sticky of the ego’s self-deceptions and there are few who can detect it soon or get easily clear of it. I think I can congratulate you on your becoming aware of it at so early a stage. There are some who do not discover it even after ten or twenty years of sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes — these [ ] are small signs or little forms of the ego of the instrument — not very serious, but often rather sticky. There is a bigger kind of egoism which is not so common which can rise into a kind of megalomania: “I, I am instrument — how great an instrument I am — through me all will be done”, — there are three or four who have had that in a distressingly acute form, secretly or openly; often it ends by their going away to do great things outside — great things which somehow do not get done.   The Divine is there in all men, so the Divine and the ego do live together. But the Divine is veiled by the ego and manifests in proportion as the ego, then recedes and disappears.


Sri Aurobindo: There can be no complete possession by the Divine without disappearance of the ego. Any man can be an instrument of the Divine — the thing is to be a perfectly conscious instrument.    Well, it can hardly be that you alone are a chosen instrument.  All who arrive at the realisation in this Yoga will be instruments — it is part of the realisation that the sadhak should turn himself into an instrument of the Divine Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: What you say [] is perfectly correct — I am glad you are becoming so lucid and clearsighted, the result surely of a psychic change. Ego is a very curious thing and in nothing more than in its way of hiding itself and pretending it is not the ego. It can always hide even behind an aspiration to serve the Mother. The only way of getting rid of it is to chase it out of all its veils and corners.  You are right also in thinking that this is really the most important part of your Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: The Rajayogis are right in putting puriﬁcation in front of everything and a preliminary to successful meditation — as I was also right in putting it in front along with concentration in the. You have only to look around you to see that experiences and even realisations cannot bring one to the goal if this is not done — at any moment they can fall owing to the vital still being impure and full of ego.     Yes, that [] is the ﬁrst requisite of a true foundation in the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: It is because people do not realise this and are satisﬁed with experiences, keeping the vital ego, not insisting on an egoless higher consciousness, that there is so much difﬁculty.     Obviously all that must go — it is the old vital egoism of the human being always preoccupied with itself, so that the being cannot give itself simply and unquestioningly to the adoration of the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo:  Yes — it is from looking at things from the ego point of view that there comes all the confusion and trouble and ignorance.  One has to think of the Divine, be still and let the divine consciousness come in and replace the egoistic human — then all that disappears.     All attachment and ego must disappear.


Sri Aurobindo: No temptation of power, for power is given only to do the Divine’s work and the power itself is the Divine’s. No attachment to work, for the work is not the ego’s, but the Divine’s. No attachment or insistence on the fruits, for that too belongs to the Divine and will come when mind and circumstances are ready. It is the same with sadhana.  Only one thing is to be the aim, to be in union and contact with the Divine through love and surrender, — the rest will come out of that, whatever is needed for the manifestation.


Sri Aurobindo:  If the ego is gone and the full surrender is there, then there should be no obstacles [].  If however the rajas of the vital is only quiescent, then its quiescence may bring up the tamas in its place, and that would be the obstacle.


Sri Aurobindo: Only calm in the vital is hardly sufﬁcient [ ]. There must be something throwing out the ego from the vital.     Of course, they [] always resist a pressure to get rid of them — and if one ﬁxes a given time, they are all the more resistant in the hope of creating disappointment and discouragement by the failure to do it in the given time.


Sri Aurobindo:   You cannot expect to drive the ego out of the movements in a short time. What is necessary is to see it quietly without being discouraged by its presence, and by a steady persistent action work it out of the system.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is not possible to get rid of the ego-movements all at once. They have to be worked out of the nature by a constant consciousness and rejection. Even when the central ego has gone, the habitual movements stick for a long time.


Sri Aurobindo:   These things [] either fade slowly out by constant rejection or else they drop off when the higher consciousness gets steadily down into the lower vital and, as it were, swallows it up. A sudden extinction is perhaps possible — at least there are reported cases of it — but usually they linger and go slowly, losing gradually force as if worn out.    For the ego, however insistent it may be, one has to keep one’s eye on it and say no to all its suggestions so that each position it takes up proves to be a fruitless move.


Sri Aurobindo: Treated in that way, it becomes ready for the moment when the psychic has only to give a slight push for it to fall away in each ﬁeld of its activity from its loosened roots. Persevere steadily in the present movement and it cannot fail to be effective.     Ego is not so easy to get rid of.


Sri Aurobindo: It remains not only in spite of work, but in spite of knowledge or bhakti. The disappearance of ego means complete. But even the Yogi who feels his separate being swallowed up in cosmic consciousness or some kind of transcendental consciousness, yet when it comes to outward action and reaction ﬁnds the superﬁcial ego still there. That is why the ascetic has a horror of action and says that without ego it can’t be done. It can, but fully only when even these outermost things are ﬁnally taken up by the higher Consciousness entirely.


Sri Aurobindo:   If you think there is no ego or desire in you, only pure devotion, that shows a great unconsciousness. To be free from ego and desire is a condition which needs a high siddhi in Yoga — even many Yogis of a great spiritual attainment are not free from it.  For a sadhak at your stage of development to think he is free from ego and desire is to blind himself and prevent the clear perception of one’s own nature movements which is necessary for progress towards spiritual perfection.  The Mother does not need to have your writings before her in order to see what is in you.


Sri Aurobindo: If your writings show ego and desire, and they certainly do, it is because they are there without your perceiving it and express themselves without your intending it. What the surface mind thinks and intends is one thing and what is behind the thoughts and actions is another thing. A man’s surface mind shapes its own idea of oneself and one’s nature in an entire self-ignorance. The ﬁrst thing one has to do to get rid of this ignorance is to draw back from the surface mind and get into contact with the psychic which does not allow such delusions and shows one clearly the truth about one’s movements.   Even if there is no consciousness of ego in the higher parts where oneness of all things has been realised, it does not follow that in the lower parts ego has been abolished.


Sri Aurobindo: It can on the contrary become very strong and the actions can be very egoistic even while the mind is thinking “I have no ego.”    Of course, such suggestions [ ] are meant to wake the ego. I suppose they persist because they still have a hope of waking the ego. Even when one is quite free, all kinds of suggestions can come.


Sri Aurobindo: One either takes no notice of them or else gives a glance to see whether there is any fragment of ego still lurking somewhere.  But what is this ego of which you speak? Everybody has the ego and it is impossible to get rid of it altogether except by two things — the opening of the psychic within and the descent of a wider ego-free consciousness from above. The psychic being opening does not get rid of the ego at once but puriﬁes it and offers it and all the movements to the Divine, so that one becomes unegoistic through self-giving and surrender. At the same time the nature opens above and the wider ego-free consciousness comes down and ego disappears and by the power of the psychic you know your own true being which is a portion of the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: This is what has to happen, but it cannot happen in so short a time. Do not be always thinking of the vital movements and the ego — you have seen them and know that they are, it is enough. Concentrate rather in the heart on the opening there; concentrate persistently and aspire persistently and do not mind if it takes time. Call in any way, even if you cannot call yet deeply — then the deeper call will come.


Sri Aurobindo: It is possible [] if your consciousness associates itself with the action; then at least one can get rid of its major action and leave only minor traces.  To get rid of the ego altogether however comes usually only by the descent of Consciousness from above and its occupation of the whole being aided of course by the rule of the psychic in the nature.   I think you still give an exaggerated importance and attention to the ego and other elements that are interwoven in the nature of humanity and cannot be entirely got rid of except by the coming of a new consciousness which replaces them by higher movements. If one rejects centrally and with all sincerity the ego and rajas, their roots get loosened and sattwa can prevail in the nature, but the expulsion of all ego and rajas cannot be done by the will and its effort. After a certain stage of preparation therefore one must stress more on the positive side of the sadhana than on the negative side of rejection, — though this of course must remain to help the other.


Sri Aurobindo: Still what is important is to develop the psychic within and bring down the higher consciousness from above. The psychic as it grows and manifests detects immediately all wrong movements or elements and at the same time supplies almost automatically the true element or movement which will replace them — this psychic process is much easier and more effective than that of a severe tapasya of puriﬁcation. The higher consciousness in descending brings peace and purity into all the inner parts; the inner being separates itself from the imperfect outer consciousness and at the same time the peace that comes carries in it a power which can throw out what contradicts the peace and purity. Ego can then slowly or swiftly but surely disappear — rajas and tamas change into their divine substitutes.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is rather a wider than a higher consciousness that is necessary for the liberation from the ego. Going high is necessary of course, but by itself it is not sufﬁcient.    Without persistent rejection it [ ] cannot be done.


Sri Aurobindo: Going up into the self liberates the higher parts but the ego remains in the lower parts. The most effective force for this liberation is the psychic control along with steady rejection.    The sense of ego can disappear into that of the Self or the Purusha but that of itself does not bring about the disappearance of the old ego reactions in the Prakriti. The Purusha has to get rid of these by a process of constant rejection and remoulding.


Sri Aurobindo: The remoulding consists in throwing everything into a consecration to the Mother and doing all for her without regard to oneself, one’s desires, opinions, vital reactions as if they were the things to be fulﬁlled. This is most easily done if the psychic being becomes quite awake.   Without the liberation of the psychic and the realisation of the true Self the ego cannot go, both are necessary. If there is no consciousness of the Self how can the ego disappear? The psychic can be liberated by love and devotion, but I was speaking of a case in which it is not so liberated, and the realisation of the Self seems more easy — a case like yours.


Sri Aurobindo: To go away and suffer the consequences is not a solution. As for the rest, the selﬁshness of the ego is not a reason for not calling down the higher (divine) consciousness of which the peace and the force are as it were the front or the basis. How can you get rid of the selﬁsh ego unless you call down that higher consciousness to which the ego is not a necessity?  In the evolution of the lower consciousness here ego and selﬁshness were a necessity. So long as the higher consciousness above ordinary mind does not descend, ego remains a necessity even in aspiring towards the Divine or towards Mukti, even if it becomes a sattwic ego.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only in the higher consciousness that ego can dissolve, either by ascending there or by its descent into the consciousness below.    Why is it selﬁshness []? Selﬁshness is to live for oneself and not for something greater than the self. To be concentrated on the Divine at all times is to get out of the personal self and its aims into something greater and serve the aims of that greater Existence.


Sri Aurobindo: It is no more selﬁshness than to live for others always would be selﬁshness.     As to egoism and selﬁshness, one can be generous and yet egoistic — one can be generous with vanity, pride etc. in the generosity; one can even be egoistic in self-sacriﬁce.  Ambition is always a force of the vital.


Sri Aurobindo:   A kind of siddhi or siddhis can come [ ] — siddhis of power etc. There are Yogins who have great powers and also a big ego. Of course there can be no liberation without overcoming ambition and ego.


Sri Aurobindo:   Suggestions of ambition etc. are always born in the vital mind or, as it might be called, the mind of the vital and from there they rush up to the thinking mind and claim its assent and the sanction of the mental will. When the thinking mind gets clouded by the uprush, it gets carried away and gives its assent. The thinking mind (reason) has always to remain unmoved above and judge what is right without being caught and carried away by the vital.


Sri Aurobindo:   Ambition and vanity are things so natural to the human consciousness — they have even their use in ordinary life — that it is quite natural that at ﬁrst they should enter into the sadhana also and linger even when they are rejected. But they have to be pushed out, before one is far on the path — otherwise they are very dangerous attendants and can pervert both aspiration and siddhi.  It [] is one of the things most difﬁcult to get rid of.


Sri Aurobindo: Even when the mind is unmoved, something in the vital or physical or perhaps even some little bit on the surface at once starts vibrating.     It is possible that has experiences for he has probably some mental force and through that can build up mental realisations of what he reads, but he lives in the vital and whatever he experiences or receives the vital takes it and makes it a hundred times bigger in its construction than it really is. His claims preposterous.


Sri Aurobindo: It is evident that, like most people, he has no idea what the supramental is or he would never talk like that. People who live in the vital and have much vanity (there have been several examples here too) easily get the idea that they have attained everything, are without ego, all they receive is from the Divine (even when a magniﬁed ego is driving them) etc. etc., for the vital ego is eager to arrive, to be big, to be siddha, and it persuades itself very easily that it is all these things. Let him however go on his own way; it is no use disturbing his self-content, as probably it is the only kind of self-expression he can do.    When vanity is there on a big scale, it usually works like that.


Sri Aurobindo: The man feels the energy in all he does and mistakes the energy for high accomplishment. It is a common error. The high accomplishment is in only one or two ﬁelds.


Sri Aurobindo: It is vanity, but it is not humbug, unless he does not believe in it. If he does not believe in it, it is humbug, but it is not vanity.  Pride is only one form of ego — there are ten thousand others.  Every action of man is full of ego — the good ones as well as the bad, his humility as much as his pride, his virtues as much as his vices.  To get the ego out of the human nature is not so simple as that.


Sri Aurobindo: If one is free from ego, does nothing with reference to himself or for his own sake but only for the Divine and all his thoughts and feelings are for the Divine, then he is Jivanmukta and a Siddha Yogi.    For many sadhaks there is a ﬁrst stage governed by the mind or higher vital in which they go on very well, because in the mind and higher vital there are elements that are strong enough to control the rest while the ﬁrst experiences or ﬁrst progress is made. But a time comes when the sadhak has to deal with the lower parts of the being, all the vital difﬁculties arise. If the early progress or experiences have engendered pride or ego or if there is a serious ﬂaw somewhere, then they are unable to deal with these so long as the ego is not removed or broken or the ﬂaw mended.


Sri Aurobindo: developed a pride of self-righteousness that stood in his way altogether; he has also the ﬂaw of a narrow obstinate mind that sticks to its own ideas as if they alone were right — the instances you give of his conduct are illustrations of this defect. That is why here he quarrels with everyone thinking that he is right and they are very bad and mischievous, cannot see his own faults and mistakes and when he is not heard by the Mother or myself feels hurt and offended because we do not support his saintliness and righteousness against the wicked who oppress him. He is a good and clever worker but he cannot progress in sadhana so long as he keeps this stiffness and ego.    But that [] is a very common human weakness, although it ought not to exist in a sadhak whose progress depends largely on his recognising what has to be changed in him.


Sri Aurobindo: Not that the recognition by itself is sufﬁcient, but it is a necessary element. It is of course a kind of pride or vanity which considers this necessary for strength and standing.  Not only will they not recognise it before others but they hide their defects from themselves or even if obliged to look at it with one eye look away from it with the other. Or they weave a veil of words and excuses and justiﬁcations trying to make it something other than it really is. ’s saying [ ] is very characteristic of him — that has been his main stumbling block in the path of Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is little use our trying to convey to you will (in words), because what your vital seeks after is a sanction for your own will and its way of action, — and it is little use our trying to give you light, because your mind follows always its own light. Any attempt to correct from us you have always rejected as our error, our misunderstanding of you, an attempt to give you kicks, as you express it. In such a case we can only be silent, try to help your sadhana silently as much as you will allow and for the rest leave you to learn by experience as far as you may become willing to do so. You have capacities and Yogic stuff, but along with them goes a very strong self-esteem and a self-righteous spirit which stand in the way of perfection and constitute a very serious obstacle.


Sri Aurobindo: So long as a sadhak has that, the attempt of the Truth to manifest in him will always be bafﬂed by his changing it into mental and vital constructions which distort it, turn it into ineffective half-truth or even make truth itself a source of error.  I would not have written even so much if you had not pressed so persistently for an answer. I hope you will not take it as misunderstanding or merely another “kick”. If you do not want criticism or correction from us, you should at least develop better the power of self-criticism and self-correction in yourself without which no perfection is possible.


Sri Aurobindo:   The egoism in yourself of which you speak belongs to the relation of one human being with another and is common to almost all men and women; it is extremely difﬁcult to get rid of, but if one sees it clearly and determines not to have it, then it can ﬁrst be brought under control and then dismissed from the nature.  But the egoism which made people go away from here through pride in their sadhana and attachment to the supposed greatness of their experiences is another kind and far more dangerous spiritually. You do not have it and I do not think you are in danger of ever having it.  Self-respect and a sense of superiority are two very different things.


Sri Aurobindo: Self-respect is not necessarily a sign of egoism any more than its absence is a sign of liberation from egoism. Self-respect means observing a certain standard of conduct which is proper to the level of manhood to which I belong — e.g. I cannot make a false statement out of self-respect though it would be advantageous to do it and most people under the circumstances would make it. Amour-propre is different and belongs to the sattwic type of ego. When one is not free from ego, then amour-propre (as well as self-respect — for that can be with ego or without ego) is a necessary support for the maintenance of the personality at its proper level.


Sri Aurobindo:   Amour-propre does not mean conceit. It means at its best the feeling not to make mistakes and to do as well as possible — at its worst it means to try to appear well and without mistakes or faults to others and not to like faults being pointed out.    Ideas of superiority and inferiority are not of much use or validity.


Sri Aurobindo: Each one is himself with his own possibilities to which there need be no limit except that of will and development and time. Each nature has its own lines and own things that are more developed or less developed, but the standard should be set by what he in himself aims to be. Comparison with others brings in a wrong standard of values.  This is a very common disease with the sadhaks — making comparisons with feelings of jealousy and envy — in some it leads to revolt and self-assertion, in others to self-depreciation and depression. Naturally, these feelings are quite out of place and the judgments created are out of focus.


Sri Aurobindo: Each sadhak has his own movement, his own relation with the Divine, his own place in the work or the general sadhana and to compare with others immediately brings in a wrong standard. It is on the truth of his own inner movement that he has to take his base — swadharma.     Jealousy should not be there if there is no ground for it, for then it is absurd and meaningless — but also when there is reason for it according to common standards, it should not be there, for it is a sentiment lacking in nobility and quite unyogic.


Sri Aurobindo: As for getting rid of, certainly the Mother’s full help will be with you.     It is jealousy of course. Fame and success always create a great amount of jealousy and ill-will anywhere but most in countries where there has been a suppressed public life and solidarity does not exist.


Sri Aurobindo:   This jealousy (which is a very common afﬂiction of the vital) will go like the rest. If you have the aspiration to get rid of it, it can only come by force of habit, and with the psychic growing in you and the Mother’s force acting, the power of the habit is sure to diminish and fade away. Do not be discouraged by its occasional return, but reject it so that it may be unable to stay long and will be obliged to retire.


Sri Aurobindo: Very soon then it will cease to come at all.    All that [] of course is not love, but self-love. Jealousy is only an ugly form of selflove. That is what people do not understand — they even think that demands and jealousy and wounded vanity are signs of love or at least natural attendants of it.


Sri Aurobindo:   The sooner you get rid of that [] the better. Anyone who indulges abhiman puts himself under the inﬂuence of the hostile forces. Abhiman has nothing to do with true love; it is like jealousy a part of the vital egoism.


Sri Aurobindo:   The feeling of jealousy and abhiman was of course a survival from the past movements of the nature. It is so that these things go out if they are rejected; they lose their force, can stay less and less, can affect less and less the consciousness, — ﬁnally, they are able to touch no longer and so come no longer.   It is of course the old reaction — jealousy is certainly there, or you would not feel this violent sorrow.


Sri Aurobindo: That it subsists still in the recesses and rises with such vehemence shows how deeply rooted this movement was in your physical consciousness. You have not been able to root it out, because when it comes you associate yourself entirely with it and abandon yourself to its outcries and violence. You must have the strength to stand back from it in that part of your nature which is free — only then will you be able to push it away from you; and it is only if it is pushed away from you each time it rises that it will consent to disappear and return no more. As for our support and help it is there, but you must remain conscious of it — and you must not allow any wrong ideas like those of this morning to diminish the sense of unity and contact with the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: I do not see why you make such a big difference between the quarrels and jealousy over other women and quarrels and jealousy over other attractions not of a sexual character. They both spring from the same primary impulse, the possessive instinct which is at the base of ordinary vital love. In the latter case, as often sexual jealousy is not possible, the mind supports itself on other motives which seem to it quite reasonable and justiﬁable — it may not be conscious that it is being pushed by the vital, but the quarrels and the vivacity of the disagreement are there all the same. Whether you had or had not both forms of it, is not very material and does not make things better or worse. It is the getting rid of the instinct itself that matters, whether from the psychological point of view or from that of a spiritual change.


Sri Aurobindo: The one thing that is of any importance is the fact that the old personality which you were throwing out has reasserted itself for the moment, as you yourself see. It has confused your mind, otherwise you would not ask the question whether it is there still and how that agrees with my description of your aspiration and glimpse of turning entirely to the Mother as true and real.  Of course, they were true and real and sincere and they are still there even if for a moment clouded over. You know well enough by this time that the whole being is not one block so that if one part changes, all changes miraculously at the same time. Something of the old things may be there submerged and rise up again if the pressure and ﬁxed resolution to get rid of them slackens.


Sri Aurobindo: I do not know to what you refer when you speak of the statement that “Light and Darkness, truth and falsehood cannot dwell together”, but certainly it can only mean that in the spiritual endeavour one cannot allow them to dwell together, — the Light, the Truth must be kept, the Darkness, the falsehood or error pushed out altogether. It certainly did not mean that in the human being there can be either only all light or only all darkness and whoever has any weakness in him has no light and no sincere aspiration and no truth in his nature. If that were so, Yoga would be impossible. All the sadhaks in this Asram would be convicted of insincerity and of having no true sadhana — for who is there in whom there is no obscurity and no movement of ignorance?  If you have fallen down from the consciousness you had, it is because instead of dismissing the dispute with as a moment’s movement, you begin to brood on it and prolong the wrong turn it gave.


Sri Aurobindo: It is no use persisting in the feelings that it created in you. You have only to do what I have been trying to tell you.   Draw back from them and, having seen what was lingering in the nature, dismiss them quietly and turn back again to the true consciousness, opening yourself to receive once more the Truth that is creating you anew and let it come down into all your nature.  Your letter of the morning came entirely from the disturbed and wounded vital; that was why I was in no hurry to answer.


Sri Aurobindo: I do not know why you are so ready to believe that myself or the Mother act from ordinary movements of anger, vexation or displeasure; there was nothing of the kind in what I wrote.  You had been repeatedly falling from your attained level of a higher consciousness and, in spite of our suggestions to you to see what was pulling you down, your only reply was that you could see nothing. We knew perfectly well that it was part of the vital which did not want to change and, not wanting to change, was hiding itself from the mind and the mind itself did not seem very willing to see, — so we thought it necessary when you gave us a chance by what you wrote — ﬁrst about and secondly about the thoughts of the past — to indicate plainly and strongly the nature of the obstacle — on one side your old sentiment persisting in the form of anger, resentment and wounded feeling, on the other the vital’s habit of self-esteem, censorious judgment of others, a sense of superiority in sadhana or in other respects, a wish to appear well before others and before yourself also. This especially has a blinding inﬂuence and prevents the clear examination of oneself and the perception of the obstacles that are interfering with the spiritual progress.  Even if the mind aspires to know and change, a habit of that kind acting concealed in the vital is quite enough to stand in the way and prevent both the knowledge and the change.


Sri Aurobindo: I was therefore careful to speak plainly of vanity and self-righteousness — so that this part of the vital might not try not to see. The Mother speaks or writes much more pointedly and sharply to those whom she wishes to push rapidly on the way because they are capable of it and they do not resent or suffer but are glad of the pressure and the plainness because they know by experience that it helps them to see their obstacles and change. If you wish to progress rapidly, you must get rid of this vital reaction of , suffering, wounded feeling, seeking for arguments of self-justiﬁcation, outcry against the touch that is intended to liberate, — for so long as you have these, it is difﬁcult for us to deal openly and ﬁrmly with the obstacles created by the vital nature.  In regard to the difference between you and, the Mother’s warning to you against the undesirability of too much talk, loose chat and gossip, social self-dispersion was entirely meant and stands; when you indulge in these things, you throw yourself out into a very small and ignorant consciousness in which your vital defects get free play and this is likely to bring you out of what you have developed in your inner consciousness. That was why we said that if you felt a reaction against these things when you went to’s, it was a sign of (psychic) sensitiveness coming into you — into your vital and nervous being — and


Sri Aurobindo: we meant that it was all for the good. But in dealing with others, in withdrawing from these things you should not allow any sense of superiority to creep in or force on them by your manner or spirit a sense of disapproval or condemnation or pressure on them to change. It is for your personal inward need that you draw back from these things, that is all. As for them what they do in these matters, right or wrong, is their affair — and ours; we will deal with them according to what we see as necessary and possible for them at the moment and for that purpose we can not only deal quite differently with different people, allowing for one what we forbid for another, but we may deal differently with the same person at different times, allowing or even encouraging today what we shall forbid tomorrow. ’s case is quite different from yours, for there is no resemblance in your natures.


Sri Aurobindo: I told you that or something like it long ago and I emphasised in my letter to that what might be the rule for myself or was not to be applied or going to be applied to his case. To deal otherwise would be to create difﬁculties in his sadhana and not to make it easier for him or swifter. I have also told him quite clearly in my letter that the attempt at meeting and mixing with others — which in the ordinary human life is attempted by sociableness and other contacts — has to be realised in Yoga on another plane of consciousness and without the lower mixture — for a higher unity with all on a spiritual and psychic basis. But the way, the time, the order of movements by which this is done, need not be the same for everybody. If he attempted to force himself it would lead to gloom, despondency and an artiﬁcial movement which would not be the true way to success.


Sri Aurobindo: A human soul and nature cannot be dealt with by a set of mental rules applicable to everybody in the same way; if it were so, there would be no need of a Guru, each could set his chart of Yogic rules before him like the rules of Sandow’s exercise and follow them till he became the perfect siddha!  I have said so much in order to let you understand why we do not deal in the same way with as with you or another.  The tendency to take what I lay down for one and apply it without discrimination to another is responsible for much misunderstanding. A general statement too, true in itself, cannot be applied to everyone alike or applied now and immediately without consideration of condition or circumstance or person or time. I may say generally that to bring down the supermind is my aim in the Yoga or that to do that one has ﬁrst to rise out of mind into overmind, but if on the strength of that, anybody and everybody began trying to pull down the supermind or force his way immediately out of mind into overmind, the result would be disaster.


Sri Aurobindo: Therefore concern yourself with your own progress and follow there the lead the Mother gives you. Leave or others to do the same; the Mother is there to guide and help them according to their need and their nature. It does not in the least matter if the way she follows with him seems different or the opposite of that which she takes with you. That is the right one for him as this is the right one for you.  You have now begun to see the difﬁculties that are still there in your vital; keep to that clear perception, let it grow clearer and more precise.


Sri Aurobindo: Concentrate on what you have to do and do not let yourself be distracted this way and that by irrelevant preoccupations or any other inﬂuence.   Your surprise at your cousin’s behaviour shows that you do not yet know what kind of thing is the average human nature.  Did you never hear of the answer of Vidyasagar when he was told that a certain man was abusing him: “Why does he abuse me?  I never did him a good turn ().”


Sri Aurobindo: The unregenerate vital is not grateful for a beneﬁt, it resents being under an obligation.  So long as the beneﬁt continues, it is effusive and says sweet things, as soon as it expects nothing more it turns round and bites the hand that fed it. Sometimes it does that even before, when it thinks it can do it without the benefactor knowing the origin of the slander, fault-ﬁnding or abuse. In all these dealings of your uncles and cousins with you there is nothing unusual, nothing, as you think, peculiar to you. Most have this kind of experience, few escape it altogether.


Sri Aurobindo: Of course, people with a developed psychic element are by nature grateful and do not behave in this way.  Most men are, like animals, driven by the forces of Nature: whatever desires come, they fulﬁl them, whatever emotions come they allow them to play, whatever physical wants they have, they try to satisfy. We say then that the activities and feelings of men are controlled by their Prakriti, and mostly by the vital and physical nature. The body is the instrument of the Prakriti or Nature — it obeys its own nature or it obeys the vital forces of desire, passion, etc.  But man has also a mind and, as he develops, he learns to control his vital and physical nature by his reason and by his will.


Sri Aurobindo: This control is very partial: for the reason is often deluded by vital desires and the ignorance of the physical and it puts itself on their side and tries to justify by its ideas, reasonings or arguments their mistakes and wrong movements. Even if the reason keeps free and tells the vital or the body, “Do not do this”, yet the vital and the body often follow their own movement in spite of the prohibition — man’s mental will is not strong enough to compel them.  When people do sadhana, there is a higher Nature that works within, the psychic and spiritual, and they have to put their nature under the inﬂuence of the psychic being and the higher spiritual self or of the Divine. Not only the vital and the body but the mind also has to learn the Divine Truth and obey the divine rule. But because of the lower nature and its continued hold on them, they are unable at ﬁrst and for a long time to prevent their nature from following the old ways — even when they know or are told from within what to do or what not to do.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only by persistent sadhana, by getting into the higher spiritual consciousness and spiritual nature that this difﬁculty can be overcome; but even for the strongest and best sadhaks it takes a long time.    All the ordinary vital movements are foreign to the true being and come from outside; they do not belong to the soul nor do they originate in it but are waves from the general Nature, Prakriti.  The desires come from outside, enter the subconscious vital and rise to the surface. It is only when they rise to the surface and the mind becomes aware of them, that we become conscious of the desire.


Sri Aurobindo: It seems to us to be our own because we feel it thus rising from the vital into the mind and do not know that it came from outside. What belongs to the vital, to the being, what makes it responsible is not the desire itself, but the habit of responding to the waves or the currents of suggestion that come into it from the universal Prakriti.    It should be quite clear to you what the two opposite things are, the two things with which every sadhak is faced. One is the vehemence of earthly egoistic desire which brings only confusion and suffering and the other is the peace, force, joy, light of understanding which is the divine in you and which we are striving to establish in you.


Sri Aurobindo: When you put yourself on the right side, things become easy; when you hesitate and are divided, there is a double state; when something in you receives and clings to the desires, then all goes wrong. You learn to put always the weight of your choice on the right side. Certainly I shall do all to get the wrong will changed and the right one put in its place — whatever is the resistance or difﬁculty, that I shall do always.    It is again the old vain imagination prompted by an uprising of the dissatisﬁed desires of the vital nature.


Sri Aurobindo: Evidently the old wrong attitude of desire must have been waiting for its opportunity and it gave the opportunity also for the old vital to rise and indulge in its accustomed movements. It is also evident that it was the pressure of the desire coming up from below that removed the Ananda. The psychic Ananda and the desires of the complaining and clamouring vital cannot go together; if desire comes up, the Ananda is obliged to draw back — unless you reject the desire in time and refuse to make any compromise with it. Especially when the Mother was giving you wideness and peace and intense Ananda, it was irrational in the extreme to give room to an external desire and sacriﬁce all that for its sake.


Sri Aurobindo:   Saturate your mind and vital with the Truth and remain calm and still. It is from unsatisﬁed desire that all suffering arises; take your stand on a calm free from desire. When that has come, all else of the Divine Truth, Love and Ananda can come and stand securely upon it.   All belongs to the Divine — there must be no ego or desire — only the Divine and its Light, Knowledge, Power, Ananda, action.


Sri Aurobindo: But all this must come from above — not from the mixed lower cosmic forces.     It is the vital which (in everybody and not in you only) is restless, full of desires, always falling into dejection and disappointment and sorrow. The only way to escape from it is to get rid of desires — to have no will or desire other than the will of the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo:   That is the nature of the vital and its desires — vital desire and its enjoyment and dissatisfactions and uneasinesses almost always go together.    If you are anxious for them [], that means that you have desire and are bound.


Sri Aurobindo: Ananda is one thing and vital enjoyment is another. One can have the of a beautiful thing, for instance a picture, without wanting or needing to possess it or turn it to one’s own purpose. Where that want comes in, there is vital desire. The sign of freedom from attachment is that one has no craving and can do without things without feeling anything for that or disappointment at their loss or absence or hankering or wish to have them. If one has, one takes the in a free unattached way — if one does not get or loses them, it makes not the slightest difference.


Sri Aurobindo: The true Ananda is the Ananda of the Divine and when one has the Yogic consciousness, it is the Divine one sees everywhere and has the Ananda of that, but there is no attachment to objects as objects.  It is not necessary to be a Sannyasi to have this inner freedom; it is only necessary to be sincere. There are many who say, “I have no attachment”, but it is a self-deception. Therefore one must examine oneself very closely and strictly and see what is left of desire or attachment and reject it. This is difﬁcult for the ordinary consciousness and never wholly achieved by it, even if things are outwardly given up; it is easy if the higher consciousness is there in all the parts of the being, provided one opens all one’s movements to its Light.


Sri Aurobindo:  About the attachment to things, the physical rejection of them is not the best way to get rid of it. Accept what is given you, ask for what is needed and think no more of it — attaching no importance, using them when you have, not troubled if you have not. That is the best way of getting rid of the attachment.


Sri Aurobindo:   have no part in Yoga, they cannot be its help (), they can only be hindrances. So long as desire and ego remain, there can be no surrender to the Divine, no fulﬁlment in the Yoga. They are movements of the vital and cannot be anything else.  Egoless strength is strength which does not act for selﬁsh motives or for the desires of the vital or to carry out the ideas of one’s own mind, but exists only for the service of the Divine and as an instrument of the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo:   The seat of desire is not so much in the emotional as in the lower vital — but the desires rise up from there into the emotional part and even into the thinking mind.     It is always the habit of the vital being to ﬁnd out things by which it persuades the mind and justiﬁes its desires; and circumstances usually shape themselves to justify it still farther.


Sri Aurobindo: For what we have within us creates the circumstances outside us. What matters is that you should take inwardly a different position in the future.    When you clutch at anything and try to make it your own with an egoistic sense of possession, then however beautiful and wonderful it may be, it loses its value and becomes ordinary.   It is often the experience that when one gives up the insistence of desire for a thing, then the thing itself comes.


Sri Aurobindo: The right attitude is to wait on the Divine Will and seek that only — desire always creates perturbation and even its fulﬁlment does not satisfy. Aspiration is a different thing. The oscillation between the two conditions you speak of, is the sign of a struggle in the physical consciousness — it must end by the Peace and Power ﬁxing itself there, then the other will disappear.    The desire for the Divine or bhakti for the Divine is the one desire which can free one from all the others — at the core it is not a desire, but an aspiration, a soul need, the breath of existence of the inmost being, and as such it cannot be counted among desires.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the vital physical that receives these suggestions and obeys these desires. What you have to do is to get the consciousness down into the whole of the vital proper — so that not only the mind but the vital itself will reject these desires. In that case the vital-physical desires will lose half their force.   If the peace and power that were acting on the head and in the chest have come down into the stomach and below, that would indicate that they are no longer acting on the mind and emotional being only, but fully on the vital also — that is a great progress.  The desires you refer to are those of the vital-physical in the subtle physical consciousness — impulse to talk, essential hunger, thirst, etc.


Sri Aurobindo: Peace and quietude full in the vital-physical and subtle physical and down even in the lowest levels are necessary for the whole change to be made. The heat of which you speak is that of this subtle principle of vital-physical desire which exists for its own sake, not for the real needs of the body — that is why physical satisfaction does not diminish it.    These habits of the physical vital are almost automatic in their action and it takes either a very strong will or a persistent effort of self-discipline to get out this automatic, almost reﬂex action.  You should not therefore be discouraged by the difﬁculty, but go on with the necessary perseverance of the will to press it out of existence.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is the small habits of the lower vital being which gather all their strength to resist eviction and try to occupy the consciousness. When they come you must learn to detach your inner consciousness from them entirely so that even when they strongly come they will not be able to occupy the consciousness or get any assent.


Sri Aurobindo:   The vital in the physical easily slips back to its old small habits if it gets a chance. It is there that they stick. They go entirely only when that part gets equanimity and a simple natural freedom from all desires.


Sri Aurobindo: You have done rightly about the things. These small desires obstruct greatly the change in the outer consciousness and the being must be free from them if the transformation is not to be hampered there.  It would certainly be very easy if all that one had to do were to follow one’s desires; but to be governed by one’s desires is not Yoga.  Need and want are not the same thing. The fact that they [] could go on without it [] for so long shows that it was not a need.


Sri Aurobindo:   Desire is a psychological movement, and it can attach itself to a “true need” as well as to things that are not true needs. One must approach even true needs without desire. If one does not get them, one must feel nothing.


Sri Aurobindo:  The of a sadhak should be as few as possible; for there are only a very few things that are real necessities in life. The rest are either utilities or things decorative to life or luxuries.  These a Yogi has a right to possess or enjoy only on one of two conditions — (1) if he uses them during his sadhana solely to train himself in possessing things without attachment or desire and learn to use them rightly, in harmony with the Divine Will, with a proper handling, a just organisation, arrangement and measure — or, (2) if he has already attained a true freedom from desire and attachment and is not in the least moved or affected in any way by loss or withholding or deprival. If he has any greed, desire, demand, claim for possession or enjoyment, any anxiety, grief, anger or vexation when denied or deprived, he is not free in spirit and his use of the things he possesses is contrary to the spirit of sadhana. Even if he is free in spirit, he will not be ﬁt for possession if he has not learned to use things not for himself, but for the Divine Will, as an instrument, with the right knowledge and action in the use for the proper equipment of a life lived not for oneself but for and in the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo:  It should not be difﬁcult for the man devoted to the spiritual aim [] — for he is always expected to rely on the Divine even in his ordinary life in the world — such dependence being part of his mental atmosphere and the constitution of his vital nature.  If to you says that her suffering and ill-health are due to your behaviour, to she has said it is all due to the bad room she has got! In fact it is due to her vital cherishing desires and getting disappointed because they are not fulﬁlled. If one cherishes desires, there is bound to be disappointment and suffering, especially if at the same time one does Yoga and takes up the spiritual life. For such desires, demand for vital affection and love from men and demand for physical comforts are not consistent with the spirit of Yoga in which one must turn one’s heart to the Divine and be vitally pure and in physical things must be content with what one gets and equal-minded in all conditions.


Sri Aurobindo: You were quite right in telling her that these outer demands should be given up altogether.    To yield to depression when things go wrong is the worst way of meeting the difﬁculty. There must be some desire or demand within you, conscious or subconscious, that gets excited and revolts against its not being satisﬁed. The best way is to be conscious of it, face it calmly and steadily throw it out.


Sri Aurobindo: If the lower vital (not the mind only) could permanently make up its mind that all desire and demand are contrary to the Truth and no longer call for them, these things would lose very soon their force of return.    It is not a demand to ask for things that one ﬁnds helpful, but it becomes a demand if there enters into it a feeling of claim, resentment when it is not conceded or other vital reactions. Be on your guard against any invasion by these reactions; the vital can only be conquered and changed and the physical opened up on a basis of faith and surrender and the psychic response overpowering all others.


Sri Aurobindo:   Demand and desire are only two different aspects of the same thing — nor is it necessary that a feeling should be agitated or restless to be a desire; it can be, on the contrary, quietly ﬁxed and persistent or persistently recurrent. Demand or desire comes from the mental or the vital and a psychic or spiritual need is a different thing. The psychic does not demand or desire; it aspires; it does not make conditions for its surrender or withdraw if its aspiration is not immediately satisﬁed — for the psychic has complete trust in the Divine or in the guru and can wait for the right time or the hour of the divine grace. The psychic has an insistence of its own, but it puts its pressure not on the Divine, but on the nature, placing a ﬁnger of light on all the defects there that stand in the way of the realisation, sifting out all that is mixed, ignorant or imperfect in the experience or in the movements of the Yoga and never satisﬁed with itself or with the nature till it has got it perfectly open to the Divine, free from all forms of ego, surrendered, simple and right in the attitude and all the movements.


Sri Aurobindo: This is what has to be established entirely in the mind and vital and in the physical consciousness before supramentalisation of the whole nature is possible. Otherwise what one gets is more or less brilliant, half luminous, half cloudy illuminations and experiences on the mental and vital and physical planes, half truth, half error or at the best true only for those planes and inspired either from some larger mind or larger vital or at the best from the mental reaches above the human that intervene between the intellect and the Overmind. These can be very stimulating and satisfying up to a certain point and are good for those who want some spiritual realisation on these planes; but the supramental realisation is something much more difﬁcult and exacting in its conditions and the most difﬁcult of all is to bring it down on to the physical level.  The satisfaction of the vital desires is a normal feature of the ordinary life, only it must be controlled and regulated by the mental will, so that one may not be enslaved to the desires. It is only if one turns to the spiritual life that one has to get rid of vital desires.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is not Yoga to give free play to the natural instincts and desires.  Yoga demands mastery over the nature, not subjection to the nature.


Sri Aurobindo:   Is there any time in the “straight path” for satisfying desires? If desire is not mastered, how can there be any straight walking on the straight path?    You do not seem to have a correct idea of the nature of vital desire.


Sri Aurobindo: Vital desire grows by being indulged, it does not become satisﬁed. If your desire were indulged, it would begin to grow more and more and ask for more and more. That has been our constant experience with the sadhaks and it conﬁrms what has always been known about desire. Desire and envy have to be thrown out of the consciousness — there is no other way to deal with them.


Sri Aurobindo: That [] is a mistake many have made because the vital wanted to make it. Whether ascetic or non-ascetic, the Yogi, the sadhak must become free from vital desire and spiritually master of the movements of his nature — and for that he must be free from ego and desire and duality. I have always made that quite clear — that indulgence of desire is no more part of this Yoga than it is of Sannyasa. One must be able to use and handle physical things and physical life, but from the spiritual consciousness, not from the level of the vital ego.   It is the old vital nature that feels its human worldly desires will not be satisﬁed and feels like this.


Sri Aurobindo: All that has not to be indulged but rejected and swept aside. In its place must come the wideness in which there is a self-existent peace and satisfaction and into that peace and wideness must come the Mother’s greater peace, force, light, knowledge, Ananda.    The vital always wants the things of ordinary life, sex, rich food, enjoyments of all kinds; it does not get full satisfaction out of them, but it feels dissatisﬁed without them. The only way to get rid of it is to reject desire of these things from the vital itself and to have only the aspiration for the Divine in all parts of the being.


Sri Aurobindo:   Everything which it hankers after is desirable to the vital — but the desire has to be rejected. “I won’t desire” is quite the right thing to say, even if “I don’t desire” cannot yet be said by the vital. Still there is something in the being that can even say “I don’t desire” and refuse to recognise the vital desire as part of the true being. It is that consciousness which the peace and power bring that has to be recognised as the true “I” and made permanent in front.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is difﬁcult to get rid of desires all at once — if the right ones have the upper hand, that already makes the ultimate victory sure. Therefore don’t allow that to trouble you.  A progressive change is the way these things work out — and  if the progress has begun, then there can be a fundamental sense of certitude about the outcome of the sadhana and a quiet view upon what has to be done because it is sure to be done.


Sri Aurobindo:  Desire always takes a long time to get rid of entirely. But, if you can once get it out of the nature and realise it as a force coming from outside and putting its claws into the vital and physical, it will be easier to get rid of the invader. You are too accustomed to feel it as part of yourself or planted in you — that makes it more difﬁcult for you to deal with its movements and dismiss its ancient control over you.  You should not rely on anything else alone, however helpful it may seem, but chieﬂy, primarily, fundamentally on the Mother’s Force.


Sri Aurobindo: The Sun and the Light may be a help, and will be if it is the true Light and the true Sun, but cannot take the place of the Mother’s Force.    It is good. No one can easily get rid of desires. What has ﬁrst to be done is to exteriorise them, to push them out on the surface and get the inner parts quiet and clear.


Sri Aurobindo: Afterwards they can be thrown out and replaced by the true thing, a happy and luminous will one with the Divine’s.     It is because both your mind and vital have become sincere that the attack is strong and seems to you abnormal. Before as you were yielding from time to time, the part that wants was not acutely insistent and, when it pressed, it was not so acutely felt by the rest of the vital nature.


Sri Aurobindo: It is your mental, psychic and higher vital beings that now stand completely apart from it. It is your physical vital that still keeps the desire and is pushed from time to time by opposite forces to make the desire active. It was also this desire that created the physical disturbance from which you suffered a few days ago. You must get rid of this desire of the lower vital altogether.


Sri Aurobindo: The fear is again that of the physical consciousness or of the vital element in it — it is afraid if it gives up desire that it will lose everything — or everything wants — and gain nothing in exchange or at least nothing wants. It does not realise that it will get something far greater and more powerful and happy in place of this troubled desire and its doubtful and precarious fruits — for it has been accustomed to think of desire as the only possible motive of life. It does not know that the divine Force is there waiting to descend with its light and peace and joy bringing much greater things and a happier life. When this part can be enlightened and persuaded to want wholeheartedly the change, then a great difﬁculty, indeed the central difﬁculty will have gone.


Sri Aurobindo:   There was and is the opening before you of a new stage in your spiritual development. For it to realise itself you must progress ﬁrst in two directions. The ﬁrst we have already pressed on you — the surmounting of these vital temptations and desires which linked you to the lower movements and invited the pressure of a hostile Force on your lower vital and your body and the complete surrender of life and body to the One alone. The other is the descent of a full calm and strength and equanimity into these parts so that you may conquer life and its difﬁculties and do your work for the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: This calm and strength had often descended into your mind and higher vital, but these other parts were still open to much weakness and attachment and a self-indulgent movement. That must go if one wants to become a hero and master of spiritual action. In your life at Bogra these things were too much sheltered and allowed to remain; at Shillong you have a chance to be by yourself with the Divine Force and look life in the face from the soul’s inner strength and become master of circumstances.  Outer difﬁculties or inconveniences you should not allow to alarm or depress you. Inner difﬁculties should also be met with detachment, calm equality, the unshakable will to conquer.


Sri Aurobindo: For the rest, you have rightly said, “I must preserve my equanimity and have faith in Divine Guidance when falsehood” — or any trouble or difﬁculty — “confronts me.” The defect that opened the way to the bodily and other troubles was the faltering in your resolution to conquer the vital and follow the straight and high path and the consequent violent despair and depression it brought in its wake. Let those disappear altogether and do not allow them to rise in that way again. The path of spiritual calm and strength and the consecration of all your forces to the Divine is the one safe way for you and that you must now consistently follow.


Sri Aurobindo: The rejection of desire is essentially the rejection of the element of craving, putting that out from the consciousness itself as a foreign element not belonging to the true self and the inner nature. But refusal to indulge the suggestions of desire is also a part of the rejection; to abstain from the action suggested, if it is not the right action, must be included in the Yogic discipline. It is only when this is done in the wrong way, by a mental ascetic principle or a hard moral rule, that it can be called suppression.  The difference between suppression and an inward essential rejection is the difference between mental or moral control and a spiritual puriﬁcation.  When one lives in the true consciousness one feels the desires outside oneself, entering from outside, from the universal lower Prakriti, into the mind and the vital parts.


Sri Aurobindo: In the ordinary human condition this is not felt; men become aware of the desire only when it is there, when it has come inside and found a lodging or a habitual harbourage and so they think it is their own and a part of themselves. The ﬁrst condition for getting rid of desire is, therefore, to become conscious with the true consciousness; for then it becomes much easier to dismiss it than when one has to struggle with it as if it were a constituent part of oneself to be thrown out from the being. It is easier to cast off an accretion than to excise what is felt as a parcel of our substance.  When the psychic being is in front, then also to get rid of desire becomes easy; for the psychic being has in itself no desires, it has only aspirations and a seeking and love for the Divine and all things that are or tend towards the Divine. The constant prominence of the psychic being tends of itself to bring out the true consciousness and set right almost automatically the movements of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is true that the mere suppression or holding down of desire is not enough, not by itself truly effective, but that does not mean that desires are to be indulged; it means that desires have not merely to be suppressed, but to be rejected from the nature. In place of desire there must be a single-minded aspiration towards the Divine.  As for love, the love must be turned singly towards the Divine. What men call by that name is a vital interchange for mutual satisfaction of desire, vital impulse or physical pleasure.


Sri Aurobindo: There must be nothing of this interchange between sadhaks; for to seek for it or indulge this kind of impulse only leads away from the sadhana.    Your theory is a mistaken one. The free expression of a passion may relieve the vital for a time, but at the same time it gives it a right to return always. It is not reduced at all.


Sri Aurobindo: Suppression with inner indulgence in subtle forms is not a cure, but expression in outer indulgence is still less a cure. It is perfectly possible to go on without manifestation if one is resolute to arrive at a complete control, the control being not a mere suppression but an inner and outer rejection.    Not necessarily suppression [ ], if the refusal of food is accompanied by detachment in the major part of the being. The difference between suppression () and self-control () is that one says, “I cannot help desiring but I will not satisfy my desire”, while the other says, “I refuse the desire as well as the satisfaction of the desire”.


Sri Aurobindo:    means holding down the movement, but a movement merely held down is only suspended — it is better to reject and dismiss, detaching yourself from it.  Yes, anger is a harmful and wasteful force, harmful both to the person himself and to the one on whom it is thrown. You are right in saying that it must be got rid of.


Sri Aurobindo: Anger immediately opens the door to hostile forces; it is as if you were calling them.    It [] is obviously a surprise attack that took you off your guard. But you must throw off the tendency to anger with yourself also as well as the other tendency to sudden anger with others — for all anger only disturbs the consciousness and makes it difﬁcult to keep the quiet poise. The whole thing has to be thrown out and the consciousness has to recover and be as if it had not happened.


Sri Aurobindo:   These things, hard forms of speech, anger etc., are habits formed by the vital-physical consciousness and, as they are supported by the subconscient, very difﬁcult to change. If one can conquer or change them by force of will or mental or spiritual control, so much the better. But if one cannot do this at once, one must not be upset or think oneself unﬁt. It is easier for most to realise the Divine or enter into the psychic consciousness than to change this part of the nature; but once the psychic consciousness governs or the higher consciousness descends then it is much easier for these to go.


Sri Aurobindo: You must not therefore be discouraged by these recurrences or persistences, but try always to stand back in an inner quietude and if they come let them pass away like a cloud across the light. In time these things will be ﬁnally dealt with by the Force.    It [] is really simply the recurrence of an old habit of the nature. Look at it and see how triﬂing is the occasion of the rising of this anger and its outburst — it becomes more and more causeless and the absurdity of such movements reveals itself.


Sri Aurobindo: It would not really be difﬁcult to get rid of it if when it comes you looked at it calmly — for it is perfectly possible to stand back in one part of the being observing in a detached equanimity even while the anger rises on the surface, as if it were someone else in your being who had the anger. The difﬁculty is that you get alarmed, grieved and upset and that makes it easier for the thing to get hold of your mind which it should not do.  Help we are giving you — stand back so as to be able to feel it and not the obsession of these surface movements.    When you have such thoughts, it makes a formation of force which falls on the man against whom you are angry.


Sri Aurobindo: If he is not on his guard or if he is sensitive in any way, it may become effective upon him. That is why such thoughts should be avoided altogether.    The reason why quietness is not yet ﬁxed and anger returns is that you allow your physical mind to become active. In regard to the sadhana it begins to think there is this defect in you and that defect and therefore the sadhana does not become immediately effective and perfect.


Sri Aurobindo: This makes the vital nervous or despondent and in the despondency a state of irritation arises. At the same time this mind becomes active as it has now with regard to or begins to judge and criticise and this too leads to nervousness and irritation. These things belong to the old mind you are trying to leave and therefore stand in the way of concentration and quietude. They should be stopped at their root by rejecting the suggestions of the physical mind as soon as they begin. A new consciousness is coming based upon inner silence and quietude.


Sri Aurobindo: You must wait quietly for that to develop. True knowledge, true perceptions of people and things will come in that new silent consciousness. The mind’s view of people and things must necessarily be either limited and defective or erroneous — to go on judging by it is now a waste of time. Wait for the new consciousness to develop and show you all in a new and true light. Then the tendency to anger which arises from this mind and is a violent impatience directed against things the mind and vital do not like, would have no ground to rise at all — or if it rose without cause could be more easily rejected.


Sri Aurobindo: Rely for the sadhana on the Mother’s grace and her Force, yourself remembering always to keep only two things, quietude and conﬁdence.  For things and people, leave them to the Mother also; as you have difﬁculties in your nature, so they have too; but to deal with them needs insight, sympathy, patience.    It is indeed a very good sign that the anger when it comes is brief and subdued and no longer expressed in the outward — for that is one very marked stage always of the rejection of something not wanted by the nature. It comes still but it has no longer the old force, duration, intensity, completeness.


Sri Aurobindo: The externalised condition is often used to show or test the progress made in the outer nature itself, for when one is entirely within these outward movements remain quiescent, so the extent to which they are changed cannot be so easily measured. But of course it is the going inward that most helps to deliver the nature.    If the anger did not come, it must be because the vital force of the attack is diminishing and it must be more in the physical mind and the external (physical) vital that it acts. You have a great strength for action; as for the inner growth and action of the sadhana you have a strength there too of the psychic and the vital, — it is only the external being that ﬁnds these difﬁculties in its way and is momentarily overcome or affected by them.


Sri Aurobindo: Things always come in the way when one wants to progress in the sadhana, but in the end if one is sincere in one’s aspiration these troubles help to prepare the victory of the soul over all that opposes.  The inner will prevails sometimes, sometimes it does not prevail for the time being. That is quite normal. It depends on certain conditions which the physical mind does not see. As one grows in knowledge, one becomes aware of these unseen conditions and understands better what happens.


Sri Aurobindo: The ﬁre is always the ﬁre of puriﬁcation — it is very red when it is acting on the vital; when the vital no longer covers the psychic, then the rose colour of the psychic comes out more and more.  The house you saw is the new building of the nature, especially in the vital, which is being prepared by the sadhana.    Because anger etc. once used to come, it does not follow that they cannot die down in a short time, so his incredulity is not justiﬁable. This is just the way that these things do go.


Sri Aurobindo: They come vehemently and resist the force used to eject them, but if they are still rejected or if there is a change in the consciousness, they lose their force and the consciousness quietly rejects them when they come .    It is rather perilous to think of anything like that — “Now it [] is ﬁnished” — it is better to wait some time and see. The hostiles have a habit of trying their strength when they hear anything like that; they want to show you that it is not so.


Sri Aurobindo:   But is it true that even anger which is of the lower vital and therefore close to the body, invariably produces these effects?  Of course the psychologist can’t know that another man is angry unless he shows physical signs of it, but also he can’t know what a man is thinking unless the man speaks or writes — does it follow that the state of thought cannot be “fancied” without its sign in speaking or writing? A Japanese who is accustomed to control all his “emotions” and give no sign (if he is angry the ﬁrst sign you will have of it is a knife in your stomach from a calm or smiling assailant) will have none of these things when he is angry — not even the “ebullition” in the chest, — in its place there will be a settled ﬁre that will burn till his anger achieves itself in action.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is your angers that have resulted in these pains. Get rid of the bad temper and the stomach will be more at ease.


Sri Aurobindo: For some sex is more difﬁcult [], for some greed.     It [] is a power of severity and indignation (in the deepest sense of the word) against what should not be — the warrior force of Mahakali in combating the Asura.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes, certainly. Inﬁnite peace , universal love can remove anger — if they are complete and stable.  The fact that the anger comes with such force is itself enough to show that it is not in you that it is, but that it comes from outside. It is a rush of force from the universal Nature that tries to take possession of the individual being and make that being act according to the will of this outside force and not according to the will of the soul within.


Sri Aurobindo: These things come in the course of the sadhana because the sadhak is liberating himself from the lower nature and trying to turn towards the Mother and live in her divine consciousness and the higher nature. The forces of the lower nature do not want that and so they make these rushes in order to recover their rule. It is necessary when that comes to remain quiet within remembering the Mother or calling her and reject the anger or whatever else comes, whenever it comes or however often it comes. If that is done, then these forces begin to lose their power to invade. It is easier if one clearly feels them to be outside forces and foreign to oneself; but even if you cannot feel that yet when they enter, still the mind must keep that idea and refuse to accept them as any longer a part of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: The idea of the Mother being severe was of course a suggestion that came with the invading force so as to help it to enter. Such suggestions come to many sadhaks (though not so many as before) at Pranam and is the cause to them of much disturbance. Such suggestions must be ﬁrmly rejected at once.    I think you have always had an idea that to give expression to an impulse or a movement is the best way or even the only way to get rid of it.


Sri Aurobindo: But that is a mistaken idea. If you give expression to anger, you prolong or conﬁrm the habit of the recurrence of anger; you do not diminish or get rid of the habit.  The very ﬁrst step towards weakening the power of anger in the nature and afterwards getting rid of it altogether, is to refuse all expression to it in act or speech. Afterwards one can go on with more likelihood of success to throw it out from the thought and feeling also. And so with all other wrong movements.


Sri Aurobindo: All these movements come from outside, from the universal lower nature, or are suggested or thrown upon you by adverse forces — adverse to your spiritual progress. Your method of taking them as your own is again a wrong method; for by doing that you increase their power to recur and take hold of you. If you take them as your own, that gives them a kind of right to be there. If you feel them as your own, then they have no right, and the will can develop more power to send them away. What you must always have and feel as yours, is this will, the power to refuse assent, to refuse admission to a wrong movement.


Sri Aurobindo: Or if it comes in, the power to send it away, without expressing it.  If you ﬁnd it difﬁcult to reject in the sense of throwing away, what you have to do is to refuse assent. As for instance, as regards voices or suggestions, not to listen to them, not to believe what they want you to believe, not to do what they want or push you to do.  Of course the best way will be if you can keep the contact more with the Mother and her Light and Force and receive and accept and follow only what comes from that higher force.  Secondly, to keep the mind quiet, not to allow it to be too active, going from one thing to another.


Sri Aurobindo: That brings the confusion.     Anger comes from the vital nature or if it has been driven out from there rises back into it from the subconscient or from the environmental Nature.   It [] is the way to get rid of these things [ ] — when rejected they either sink into the subconscient or pass out into the surrounding (environmental) consciousness through which one is connected with the universal forces.


Sri Aurobindo: They may try to rise up from the subconscient or come in again from outside; but if one always rejects them, calling in the aid of the Mother and does not allow them to take hold, their force of recurrence dies away and ﬁnally they come no more. Sometimes a very decisive rejection gets rid of them at a stroke once for all.     These things [] can only be got rid of if you do not accept them.


Sri Aurobindo: When they come, you must stand back from them in your mind, look at them and say, “I don’t want this.”  If it comes in spite of your not wanting and refusing them, then it shows it is not your own movement, but something thrown upon you by the outside Nature. If you can once see that and feel them as not yours, then by degrees you can get free of anger, desire and other things that trouble you.    In fact all these ignorant vital movements originate from outside in the ignorant universal Nature; the human being forms in his superﬁcial parts of being, mental, vital, physical, a habit of certain responses to these waves from outside.


Sri Aurobindo: It is these responses that he takes as his own character (anger, desire, sex etc.) and thinks he cannot be otherwise. But that is not so; he can change. There is another consciousness deeper within him, his true inner being, which is his real self, but is covered over by the superﬁcial nature. This the ordinary man does not know, but the Yogi becomes aware of it as he progresses in his sadhana.  As the consciousness of this inner being increases by sadhana, the surface nature and its responses are pushed out and can be got rid of altogether.


Sri Aurobindo: But the ignorant universal Nature does not want to let go and throws the old movements on the sadhak and tries to get them inside him again; owing to a habit the superﬁcial nature gives the old responses. If one can get the ﬁrm knowledge that these things are from outside and not a real part of oneself, then it is easier for the sadhak to repel such returns, or if they lay hold, he can get rid of them sooner. That is why I say repeatedly that these things rise not in yourself, but from outside.  If the will is strong enough, it [] can be held in check — but usually it is only if the psychic being becomes entirely awake and governs the vital that the tendency to anger can entirely disappear.


Sri Aurobindo:    When it is the psychic that rules all the movements of the being, then it [] completely disappears and when the equanimity of the higher consciousness takes complete possession of the lower vital. Till then one can establish a control, diminish and reduce it to a touch that has no outward effect or a wave that passes without self-expression.


Sri Aurobindo:   That [] is the right thing that must happen always when anger or anything else rises. The psychic reply must become habitual pointing out that anger is neither right nor helpful and then the being must draw back from these outward things and take its stand in its inner self, detach from all these things and people. It is this detachment that is the ﬁrst thing that must be gained by the sadhak — he must cease to live in these outward things and live in his inner being. The more that is done the more there is a release and peacefulness.


Sri Aurobindo: Afterwards when one is secure in this inner being, the right thing to do, the right way to deal with men and things will begin to come.    It is true that anger and strife are in the nature of the human vital and do not go easily; but what is important is to have the will to change and the clear perception that these things must go. If that will and perception are there, then in the end they will go.  The most important help to it is, here also, for the psychic being to grow within — for that brings a certain kindliness, patience, charity towards all and one no longer regards everything from the point of view of one’s own ego and its pain or pleasure, likings and dislikings.


Sri Aurobindo: The second help is the growth of the inner peace which outward things cannot trouble. With the peace comes a calm wideness in which one perceives all as one self, all beings as the children of the Mother and the Mother dwelling in oneself and in all. It is that towards which your sadhana will move, for these are the things which come with the growth of the psychic and spiritual consciousness. Then these troubled reactions to outward things will no longer come.    It is indeed when the quietude comes down from above or comes out from the psychic that the vital becomes full of peace or of kindliness and goodwill.


Sri Aurobindo: It is therefore that the inner psychic quietude ﬁrst and afterwards the peace from above must occupy the whole being. Otherwise such things as anger in the vital can be controlled but it is difﬁcult to get rid of them altogether without this occupation by the inner quietude and higher peace. That you should depend on the Mother for the sadhana is the best attitude, for it is indeed her Force that does the sadhana in you.    It is not at all unnatural that the anger brought back peace and harmony: for this anger was a form of loyalty to the Divine and that put you into touch with your psychic consciousness again.


Sri Aurobindo: Sri Ramakrishna was quite right about anger. The hostile powers are proof against gentleness and sweetness and non-resistance and soul-force, but a current of righteous anger often sends them ﬂying.  Vindictiveness, with or without a real cause for it, is even worse than anger because it is more cold and deliberate in its action and less of an impulse. One should be generous in nature and free from all rancour.   You must get rid of it [].


Sri Aurobindo: Cruelty and falsehood are the two things that separate most from the Divine.  An inner psychic or spiritual change is not brought about by violence. It is not a change of conduct that has to be done in the sadhak, but a change of soul and spirit governing the mind and vital and body instead of the mind and vital governing. Violence is the drastic contradiction of that; it makes mental egoism and vital passion and fury or else cruelty the rulers. Violence in ordinary Nature does not justify violence in a spiritual work.


Sri Aurobindo:  The explain the ordinary karmayoga as developed in the Gita, in which the work done is the ordinary work of human life with only an inward change. There too the violence to be used is not a personal violence done from egoistic motives, but part of the ordered system of social life.  Nothing can spiritually justify individual violence done in anger or passion or from any vital motive. In our Yoga our object is to rise higher than the ordinary life of man and in it violence has to be left aside altogether.


Sri Aurobindo: All vital violence in speech or action is rajasic and unyogic. One must be master of oneself and controlled in speech and act.     You must not accept everything; you should reject all suggestions of uncontrolled desire or anger.


Sri Aurobindo: . It is not safe to accept these things and you should be very careful to reject them always.  It is necessary that there should be control and organisation, and these cannot come and get ﬁxed if you accept  or, for all these are things that disorganise and destroy control.  If you want to do Yoga, you must get rid of fear. Yoga and fear do not go together.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is no fear in the higher Nature. Fear is a creation of the vital plane, an instinct of the ignorance, a sense of danger with a violent vital reaction that replaces and usually prevents or distorts the intelligence of things. It might almost be considered as an invention of the hostile forces.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes, fear creates imaginary terrors — even if there is real danger, fear does not help; it clouds the intelligence, takes away presence of mind and prevents one seeing the right thing to do.   Let the Force at work increase, till it clears out the mixed consciousness altogether.