Sri Aurobindo: Each sadhak has his own separate sadhana, his own difﬁculties, his own way to follow. His sadhana is between him and the Divine; no one else has a part in it. Nor is there any reason why, even if one falls or fails, the other should torment himself for that, lose his faith and abandon his way. ’s struggle, whatever its nature or limits, is her own and concerns herself and the Mother. It is not yours and ought not to touch or concern you at all; if you allow it to touch and shake you because she happens to be your sister, you bring in an unnecessary difﬁculty to add to your own and hamper your own progress.


Sri Aurobindo: Keep to your own path, concentrate on your own obstacles to overcome them. As for her, you can at most pray to the Divine Power to help her and leave it there.    Yoga has always its difﬁculties, whatever Yoga it be. Moreover it acts in a different way on different seekers.


Sri Aurobindo: Some have to overcome the difﬁculties of their nature ﬁrst before they get any experiences to speak of, others get a splendid beginning and all the difﬁculties afterwards, others go on for a long time having alternate risings to the top of the wave and then a descent into the gulfs and so on till the vital difﬁculty is worked out — that is the case with; others have a smooth path which does not mean that they have no difﬁculties — they have plenty, but they do not care a straw for them, because they feel sure that the Divine will help them to the goal, or that he is with them even when they do not feel him — their faith makes them imperturbable. What  feels is true — there are certain signs by which one can know it. As for he never tried to do Yoga, so he is not a case in point at all — if he had wanted he might have done something, but except at the beginning he did not want it in the least.  For yourself it seems to me that the consciousness is growing towards the point at which there can be the decisive change upwards and inwards, decisive and effective, and there is no cause for depression — for that change is the one thing needful.


Sri Aurobindo: The difﬁculties that remain, although not identical, are similar in their cause and their fundamental nature to those you have either largely or completely overcome, and they can be conquered in the same way; it is a question of time and of acquiescence within yourself in the pressure from the Divine which makes man change.  Human nature and the character of the individual are a formation that has arisen in and out of the inconscience of the material world and can never get entirely free from the pressure of that Inconscience. As consciousness grows in the being born into this material world, it takes the form of an Ignorance slowly admitting or striving with difﬁculty after knowledge and human nature is made of that Ignorance and the character of the individual is made from the elements of the Ignorance. It is largely mechanistic like everything else in material Nature and there is almost invariably a resistance and, more often than not, a strong and stubborn resistance to any change demanded from it. The character is made up of habits and it clings to them, is disposed to think them the very law of its being and it is a hard job to get it to change at all except under a strong pressure of circumstances.


Sri Aurobindo: Especially in the physical parts, the body, the physical mind, the physical life movements, there is this resistance; the tamasic element in Nature is powerful there, what the Gita describes as, absence of light, and, a tendency to inertia, inactivity, unwillingness to make an effort and, as a result, even when the effort is made, a constant readiness to doubt, to despond and despair, to give up, renounce the aim and the endeavour, collapse.  Fortunately, there is also in human nature a sattwic element which turns towards light and a rajasic or kinetic element which desires and needs to act and can be made to desire not only change but constant progress. But these too, owing to the limitations of human ignorance and the obstructions of the fundamental inconscience, suffer from pettiness and division and can resist as well as assist the spiritual endeavour. The spiritual change which Yoga demands from human nature and individual character is, therefore, full of difﬁculties, one may almost say that it is the most difﬁcult of all human aspirations and efforts.  In so far as it can get the sattwic and the rajasic (kinetic) elements to assist it, its path is made easier but even the sattwic element can resist by attachment to old ideas, to preconceived notions, to mental preferences and partial judgments, to opinions and reasonings which come in the way of higher truth and to which it is attached


Sri Aurobindo: : the kinetic element resists by its egoism, its passions, desires and strong attachments, its vanity and self-esteem, its constant habit of demand and many other obstacles. The resistance of the vital has a more violent character than the others and it brings to the aid of the others its own violence and passion and that is a source of all the acute difﬁculty, revolt, upheavals and disorders which mar the course of the Yoga. The Divine is there, but He does not ignore the conditions, the laws, the circumstances of Nature; it is under these conditions that He does all His work, His work in the world and in man and consequently also in the sadhak, the aspirant, even in the Godknower and God-lover; even the saint and the sage continue to have difﬁculties and to be limited by their human nature. A complete liberation and a complete perfection or the complete possession of the Divine and possession by the Divine is possible but it does not usually happen by an easy miracle or a series of miracles. The miracle can and does happen but only when there is the full call and complete self-giving of the soul and the entire widest opening of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: Still, if the call of the soul is there, although not yet full, however great and obstinate the difﬁculties, there can be no ﬁnal and irretrievable failure; even when the thread is broken it is taken up again and reunited and carried to its end. There is a working in the nature itself in response to the inner need which, however slowly, brings about the result. But a certain inner consent is needed; the progress that you have marked in yourself is due to the fact that there was this consent in the soul and also in part of the nature; the change was insisted on by the mind and desired by part of the vital; the resistance in part of the mind and part of the vital made it slow and difﬁcult but could not prevent it. The strong development you have observed in your powers with its proof in the response of others is due to the same reason; part of your being consented to it, wanted and needed it as a self-fulﬁlment of the nature and the soul wanted it as a means of service to the Divine; the rest was due to the pressure of the Divine force and my pressure. As for the distaste, the lack of interest etc. all this is temporary and belongs only to a part of you.


Sri Aurobindo: In so far as it comes from a kind of, it may have helped you in overcoming some of your attachments, but it is defective in so far as the element of and is there; it is not so fundamental as to resist the victorious drive of the pressure of the Divine Force.  You ask what I want you to do. What I want is that you should persist and give more and more that assent in you which brought about the progress you have made so that here too the resistance may diminish and eventually disappear.  And you must now get rid of an exaggerated insistence on the use of reason and the correctness of your individual reasoning and its right to decide in all matters. The reason has its place especially with regard to certain physical things and general worldly questions — though even there it is a very fallible judge — or in the formation of metaphysical conclusions and generalisations; but its claim to be the decisive authority in matters of Yoga or in spiritual things is untenable.


Sri Aurobindo: The activities of the outward intellect there lead only to the formation of personal opinions, not to the discovery of Truth. It has always been understood in India that the reason and its logic or its judgment cannot give you the realisation of spiritual truths but can only assist in an intellectual presentation of ideas; realisation comes by intuition and inner experience. Reason and intellectuality cannot make you see the Divine, it is the soul that sees. Mind and the other instruments can only share in the vision when it is imparted to them by the soul and welcome and rejoice in it. But also the mind may prevent it or at least stand long in the way of the realisation or the vision.


Sri Aurobindo: For its prepossessions, preconceived opinions and mental preferences may build a wall of arguments against the spiritual truth that has to be realised and refuse to accept it if it presents itself in a form which does not conform to its own previous ideas: so also it may prevent one from recognising the Divine if the Divine presents himself in a form for which the intellect is not prepared or which in any detail runs counter to its prejudgments and prejudices. One can depend on one’s reason in other matters provided the mind tries to be open and impartial and free from undue passion and is prepared to concede that it is not always right and may err; but it is not safe to depend on it alone in matters which escape its jurisdiction, especially in spiritual realisation and in matters of Yoga which belong to a different order of knowledge.     The Divine may be difﬁcult, but his difﬁculties can be overcome if one keeps at him.


Sri Aurobindo: No, it is not a test. The difﬁculties come because the mind, vital and physical or some part is open to the movements which bring the difﬁculties.     The difﬁculties are there in vital and physical nature because they are full of obscurity, falsehood, inertia and ignorance.


Sri Aurobindo: They have to be got rid of by opening the vital and physical wholly to the power of the psychic and the power of the Truth from above.     It is quite true that falsehood reigns in this world; that is the reason why these difﬁculties manifest. But you have not to allow yourself to be shaken.


Sri Aurobindo: You must remain calm and strong and go straight, using the power of Truth and the Divine Force supporting you to overcome the difﬁculties and set straight what has been made crooked by the falsehood.     All who enter the spiritual path have to face the difﬁculties and ordeals of the path, those which rise from their own nature and those which come in from outside. The difﬁculties in the nature always rise again and again till you overcome them; they must be faced with both strength and patience.


Sri Aurobindo: But the vital part is prone to depression when ordeals and difﬁculties rise. This is not peculiar to you, but comes to all sadhaks — it does not imply an unﬁtness for the sadhana or justify hopelessness. But you must train yourself to overcome this reaction of depression, calling in the Mother’s force to aid you.  All who cleave to the path steadfastly can be sure of their spiritual destiny. If anyone fails to reach it, it can only be for one of two reasons, either because they leave the path or because for some lure of ambition, vanity, desire etc. they go astray from the sincere dependence on the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo:   The Power does not descend with the object of raising up the lower forces, but in the way it has to work at present, that uprising comes in as a reaction to the working. What is needed is the establishment of the calm and wide consciousness at the base of the whole Nature so that when the lower nature appears, it will not be as an attack or struggle but as if a Master of forces were there seeing the defects of the present machinery and doing step by step what is necessary to remedy and change it.   It [] is the usual course of the process by which the change of consciousness is effected.


Sri Aurobindo: The lower Forces seldom yield the ground without a protracted and often repeated struggle. What is gained can be covered over, but it is never lost.     If you go down into your lower parts or ranges of nature, you must be always careful to keep a vigilant connection with the higher already regenerated levels of the consciousness and to bring down the Light and Purity through them into these nether still unregenerated regions.


Sri Aurobindo: If there is not this vigilance, one gets absorbed in the unregenerated movement of the inferior layers  and there is obscuration and trouble.  The safest way is to remain in the higher part of the consciousness and put a pressure from it on the lower to change. It can be done in this way, only you must get the knack and the habit of it. If you achieve the power to do that, it makes the progress much easier, smoother and less painful.


Sri Aurobindo:  There are higher forces and the lower — the latter have to be worked out by contact with the higher and in the working out sometimes they rise, sometimes disappear till they are done with.  It is not necessarily due to some mistake or fault that they rise.     I am not aware of any case in which the lower forces did not rise up.


Sri Aurobindo: If such a case occurred, I fancy it would be the ﬁrst in human history.    All the difﬁculties are bound to vanish in time under the action of the Force. They rise, because if they did not rise the action would not be complete, for all has to be faced and worked out, in order that nothing may be left to rise up hereafter. The psychic being itself can throw the light by which the full consciousness will come and nothing remain in the darkness.


Sri Aurobindo: There are only three fundamental obstacles that can stand in the way: (1) Absence of faith or insufﬁcient faith.  (2) Egoism — the mind clinging to its own ideas, the vital preferring its own desires to a true surrender, the physical adhering to its own habits.  (3) Some inertia or fundamental resistance in the consciousness, not willing to change because it is too much of an effort or because it does not want to believe in its own capacity or the power of the Divine — or for some other more subconscient reason.  You have to see for yourself which of these it is.


Sri Aurobindo:   These obstacles are usual in the ﬁrst stages of the sadhana. They are due to the nature being not yet sufﬁciently receptive. You


Sri Aurobindo: should ﬁnd out where the obstacle is, in the mind or the vital, and try to widen the consciousness there, call in more purity and peace and in that purity and peace offer that part of your being sincerely and wholly to the Divine Power.   In one form or another the resistance of the mind and the Prana seeking to be independent and fulﬁl ego under the plea of spiritual realisation is a frequent obstacle in the Yoga.   The main difﬁculty in the sadhana consists in the movements of the lower nature, ideas of the mind, desires and attractions of the vital, habits of the body consciousness that stand in the way of the growth of the higher consciousness — there are other difﬁculties, but these make the bulk of the opposition.


Sri Aurobindo: Each part of the nature wants to go on with its old movements and refuses, so far as it can, to admit a radical change and progress, because that would subject it to something higher than itself and deprive it of its sovereignty in its own ﬁeld, its separate empire. It is this that makes transformation so long and difﬁcult a process.  Mind gets dulled because at its lower basis is the physical mind with its principle of tamas or inertia — for in matter inertia is the fundamental principle. A constant or long continuity of higher experiences produces in this part of the mind a sense of exhaustion or reaction of unease or dullness. Trance or is a way of escape — the body is made quiet, the physical mind is in a state of torpor, the inner consciousness is left free to go on with its experiences.


Sri Aurobindo: The disadvantage is that trance becomes indispensable and the problem of the waking consciousness is not solved; it remains imperfect.  There are usually in the human being two different tendencies in two parts of the being, one psychic or mental supported by the psychic which seeks the better way and higher things, the other whose main seat is in the vital part of the being which is full of the life-instincts and life-desires, which is attached to or turns towards the things of the lower nature and is subject to the passions, anger, sex etc. If the higher part is dominant, then the lower is kept under control and does not give much trouble.  But often the latter is supported by outer forces and powers of the lower Nature in the universe and sometimes these intrude and give the coarse part of the being a separate personality and independence of its own. This may be the explanation of the dream of the ugly monster and of the resistance of this other personality.


Sri Aurobindo: If it be so, then this must be regarded not as part of oneself but as a foreign element to the true being. It is only by a persistent choice of the dictates of the higher and a persistent rejection of the other that the latter loses ground and ﬁnally recedes. This should be met as calmly as possible without allowing the mind to be troubled by any fall or failure — with a quiet constant vigilance and resolute will.    The difﬁculty is that in everyone there are two people (to say the least) — one in the outer vital and physical clinging to the past self and trying to get or retain the consent of the mind and the inner being, the other which is the soul asking for a new birth.


Sri Aurobindo: That which has spoken in you and made the prayer is the psychic being expressing itself through the aid of the mind and the higher vital, and it is this which should always arise in you through prayer and through turning to the Mother and give you the right idea and the right impulse.  It is true that if you refuse always the action suggested by the old Adam, it will be a great step forward. The struggle is then transferred to the psychological plane, where it will be much easier to ﬁght the matter out. I do not deny that there will be difﬁculty for some time; but if there is the control of action, the control of thought and feeling is bound to come. If there is yielding, on the contrary, a fresh lease is given to the old self.


Sri Aurobindo:  The reason why you have these alternating moods is because there are two different elements in you. On one side there is trying to develop in you your psychic being which, when it awakes, gives you the sense of closeness or union with the Mother and the feeling of Ananda; on the other, there is your old vital nature, restless and full of desires and, because of this restlessness and desire, unhappy. It is this old vital nature, which you were accepting and indulging, that made you go wrong and stood in the way of your progress. It is when the desire and restlessness of the vital are rejected that the psychic in you comes forward and then the vital itself changes and feels full of the joy and the nearness.


Sri Aurobindo: When the old unhappy and restless vital comes up again, you feel yourself unﬁt, without pleasure in anything.  What you have to do when this returns is not to accept it, to call in the Mother’s nearness again and let the psychic being grow in you. If you do that persistently, rejecting restlessness and desire, the vital part of you will change and become ﬁt for the sadhana.   I have explained to you that there is a division between your internal and external being — as it is in the case of most people.  Your inner being wants and has always wanted the Truth and the Divine — when the peace and power are felt it comes forward and you feel it as yourself and understand things and grow in knowledge and happiness and true feeling.


Sri Aurobindo: The external nature is being changed by the inﬂuence of the inner being, but what is pushed out returns constantly from old habit — and then you feel this old nature as if it were yourself. This external nature has been like that of almost all human beings, like that of most of the sadhaks here, selﬁsh and full of desires and wanting its own desires, not the Truth and the Divine. When it returns like this and covers you up, all these old ideas and feelings which are always the same take hold of you and try to push you to despair — for it is an enemy force that pushes them back into you. The difﬁculty is that your physical consciousness does not yet know how to reject this when it comes. The inner being rejects it, but as the physical consciousness lets it in, the inner being is pushed back for the time being.


Sri Aurobindo: You must absolutely learn not to allow this thing to come in, not to indulge and support it when it comes.  It is a falsehood and cannot be anything else, and by falsehood I mean not only contrary to the sadhana and contrary to the Divine truth, but contrary to the truth of your own inner being and of your soul’s aspiration and your heart’s desire. How can such a thing be true? it exists but that does not make it the truth of your being. It is the soul, the inner being that is the true self in everyone.


Sri Aurobindo: It is that you must know to be your self and reject this as a false thing imposed on you by the lower ignorant Nature.    You must remember that your being is not one simple whole, all of one kind, of one piece, but complex, made up of many things. There are the inner parts of the being which are easily conscious of the Truth and Divine, — when these come forward, then all is well. There is the external being which is full of past ignorance and defect and weakness, but has begun to change.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not yet sufﬁciently changed or changed in all its parts. When any part that is partly changed opens strongly to the peace and force, then all the rest become either quite quiet or not very active and you are aware of the peace and force and at ease or else aware only vaguely of confusion etc. somewhere. But when something ignorant comes up from below or is a little prominent (or else some old movement of consciousness that was thrown out returns and clouds you), then you feel the peace, the force as something alien to you or non-existent or outside you or at a distance. If you keep the quiet persistently, then this instability will begin to decrease, the Mother’s Force will get in everywhere and, though there will still be much to do, there will be a ﬁrm foundation for what has to be done.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is different parts of the being that have these different movements. It is, as you say, something in you, something in the vital that has the “insincerity” or the attraction to the wrong confused condition; but this you should not regard as yourself, but as part of the old nature which has to be transformed. So it is something in the physical that has the obscurity and the unconsciousness; but this too you should not look at as yourself, but as something formed in the exterior nature which has to be changed and will be changed. The real “you” is the inner being, the soul, the psychic being, that which calls the peace and the quiet and the working of the force.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is not necessary to put so many questions and get their separate answers. All your ten questions resolve themselves into one. In every human being there are two parts, the psychic with so much of the thinking mind and higher (emotional, larger dynamic) vital that is open to the psychic and cleaves to the soul’s aims and admits the higher experiences and on the other hand the lower vital and the physical or external being (external mind and vital included) which are attached to the ignorant personality and nature and do not want to change.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the conﬂict between these two that makes all the difﬁculty of the sadhana. All the difﬁculties you enumerate arise from that and nothing else. It is only by curing the duality that one can overcome them. That happens when one is able to live within, aware of one’s inner being, identiﬁed with it and to regard the rest as not oneself, as a creation of ignorant Nature from which one has separated oneself and which has to disappear and, secondly, when by opening oneself constantly to the Divine Light and Force and the Mother’s presence a dynamic action of sadhana is constantly maintained which steadily pushes out the movements of the ignorance and substitutes even in the lower vital and physical being the movements of the inner and higher nature. There is then no struggle any longer, but an automatic growth of the divine elements and fading out of the undivine.


Sri Aurobindo: The devotion of the heart and the increasing activity of the psychic being, which is best helped by devotion and self-giving, are the most powerful means for arriving at this condition.   Everyone whose psychic being calls him to the spiritual path has a capacity for that path and can arrive at the goal if or as soon as he develops a single-pointed will towards that alone. But also every sadhak is faced with two elements in him, the inner being which wants the Divine and the sadhana and the outer mainly vital and physical being which does not want them but remains attached to the things of the ordinary life. The mind is sometimes led by one, sometimes by the other. One of the most important things he has to do, therefore, is to decide fundamentally the quarrel between these two parts and to persuade or compel by psychic aspiration, by steadiness of the mind’s thought and will, by the choice of the higher vital in his emotional being the opposing elements to be ﬁrst quiescent and then consenting.


Sri Aurobindo: So long as he is not able to do that his progress must be either very slow or ﬂuctuating and chequered as the aspiration in him cannot have a continuous action or a continuous result.  Besides so long as this is so, there are likely to be periodical revolts of the vital, repining at the slow progress, despairing, desponding, declaring the Adhar unﬁt; calls from the old life will come; circumstances will be attracted which seem to justify it, suggestions will come from men and unseen powers pressing the sadhak away from the sadhana and pointing backward to the former life. And yet in that life he is not likely to get any real satisfaction.  Your circumstances are not different from those of others in the beginning and for a long time afterwards. You have come away from the family life, but something in your vital has still kept a habit of response and it is that that is being used to pull you away.


Sri Aurobindo: This is aided by the impatience of the vital because there is no rapid spiritual progress or continuous good condition — things which even the greatest sadhaks take time to acquire.  Circumstances combine to assist the pull — things like’s illness or your husband’s appeals which when he soothes and ﬂatters and prays and promises instead of being offensive succeed in mollifying you and creating a condition of less effective defence.  And there is the vital Nature and its powers suggesting this and that, that you are not ﬁt, that there is no aspiration, that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo do not help, are displeased, do not care, and it is best to go home.   All that most sadhaks have gone through and come out of it and left the old bonds behind them.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no reason why you should not do so too. Our help is there always, it is not given at one time and withheld at another, nor given to some and denied to others. It is there for all who make the effort and have the will to arrive. But you have to be steady in your will and not be taken in and deceived by the suggestions from outside or those that come in the shapes of your own adverse thoughts and depressions — you have to ﬁght these and surmount them.  It may take a shorter or longer time according to your energy in combating and overcoming them.


Sri Aurobindo: But everybody has to make that effort of mastery and overcome the old vital nature.  As for your going over there, you have to look at yourself and see clearly what is wanting to take you there. The plea from inability to do the sadhana has no value whatever. It is merely a plea put forward by the opposing elements in the vital and strengthened by the suggestion of adverse forces. If you say that you ﬁnd your attachment to husband and son or others is so strong that your soul and your aspiration can do nothing against it and home is the real place for you, then of course your departure is inevitable — but such a statement can hardly in your case be accepted as true.


Sri Aurobindo: Or if you say that still the pull is so great that you think it better to go for a time and test yourself and exhaust it, then that might just be true for a time, if the vital has risen up strongly; and we would not say no, as we did not say no when you wanted to go and nurse. But even in that case it would be wiser for you to examine it seriously and not make a decision on the strength of a condition which could pass otherwise. Your husband’s letters have no value for us; he has always written like that whenever he saw any hope of your coming away from here; at other times he has a very different tone.  I have put the whole thing before you at length. For us the straight course is always to keep on one’s way, whatever the difﬁculties, until one has got mastery and the way becomes smoother.


Sri Aurobindo: But at bottom the decision must be left with the sadhak himself — one can press for the right choice but one cannot command that he should make it.     I don’t think it can be said that you have no personality.  Coordination and harmonisation of parts is absent in many; it is a thing that has to be attained to or built up.


Sri Aurobindo: Moreover at a certain stage in sadhana there is almost always a disparity or opposition between the parts that are already turned towards the Truth and are capable of experience and others that are not and pull one down to a lower level. The opposition is not equally acute in all cases, but in one degree or another it is almost universal. Coordination and organisation can be satisfactorily done only when this is overcome. Till then oscillations are inevitable. As for violence, violence of action has been conﬁned to a few only, but what about violence of speech and the quarrels that take place in the Asram?


Sri Aurobindo: These are not difﬁculties that ought to prevent you from looking beyond them to the ultimate spiritual issue out of this ﬂux of contending forces of Nature.     Aspiration and will to change are not so very far from each other, and if one has either, it is usually enough for going through, — provided of course it maintains itself. The opposition in certain parts of the being exists in every sadhak and can be very obstinate.


Sri Aurobindo: Sincerity comes by having ﬁrst the constant central aspiration or will, next, the honesty to see and avow the refusal in parts of the being, ﬁnally, the intention of seeing it through even there, however difﬁcult it may be. You have admitted certain things changed in you, so you can no longer pretend that you have made no progress at all.  The peculiarity you note is pretty universal — it is one part of the being which believes and speaks the right and beautiful things; it is another which doubts and says just the opposite. I get communications for instance from in which for several pages he writes wise and perfect things about the sadhana — suddenly without transition he drops into his physical mind and peevishly and complainingly says — well, things ignorant and quite incompatible with all that wisdom. is not insincere when he does that — he is simply giving voice to two parts of his nature.


Sri Aurobindo: Nobody can understand himself or human nature if he does not perceive the multipersonality of the human being.  To get all parts into harmony, that is the difﬁcult thing.   As for the lack of response, — well, can’t you see that you are in the ancient tradition? Read the “lives of the saints” — you will ﬁnd them all (perhaps not all, but at least so many) shouting like you that there was no response, no response and getting into frightful tumults, agonies and desperations — until the response came.


Sri Aurobindo: Many people here who can’t say they have had no experiences, do just the same — so it does not depend on experiences. I don’t advise this procedure to anybody — mind you. I only want to say that the feeling of never having had a response does not mean that there never will be a response and that ﬁts of despair at having arrived nowhere do not mean that one will never arrive.    The thing is that it is unavoidable in the course of the sadhana that some parts of the being should be less open, less advanced, as yet less aware of the Peace and Force, less intimate to them than others.


Sri Aurobindo: These parts have to be worked upon, and changed, but this can be done smoothly only if you are detached from them, able to regard them as not your very self, even though a part of the nature you have to change. Then when they appear with their defects, you will not be upset, not carried away by their movements, lost to the sense of the Peace and Force; you will be able to work on them (or rather let the Force work) as one would on a machine that has to be repaired or a work that has defects and has to be done better this time. If you identify yourself with these parts, then it is very troublesome. The work will still be done, the change made, but with delay, with bad upsettings, in a painful and not in a smooth way. That is why we always tell people to be calm and detached and look upon these things not as their true selves but as an outer part that has to be worked upon quietly until it is what it should be.


Sri Aurobindo: Every man has a double nature except those who are born (not unborn) Asuras, Rakshasas or Pishachas and even they have a psychic being concealed somewhere by virtue of their latent humanity. But a double being (or a double nature in the special sense) refers to those who have two sharply contrasted parts of their being without as yet such a linking control over them.  Sometimes they are all for the heights and then they are quite all right — sometimes all for the abysses and then they care nothing for the heights, even sneer or rail at them and give full rein to the lower man. Or they substitute for the heights a smoky volcano summit in the abyss. These are extreme examples, but others while they do not go so far, yet are now one thing, now just the opposite.


Sri Aurobindo: If they can convert the lower fellow or discover the central being in themselves, then a true harmonious whole can be created.     There are always two sides to every human being. In Western occultism they call them the good and the evil Persona (personality).


Sri Aurobindo: has a strong personality and a formed, forceful and independent vital. It is a kind of character with great possibilities in it, but not liked by most people because they prefer girls to be soft, butterlike and docile and full of gushing affection and “sweetness”. Such characters, if badly used by life, may develop great vital difﬁculties. and probably see only this side; the other side is too unusual for them to appreciate.


Sri Aurobindo:  What you say about the “Evil Persona” interests me greatly as it answers to my consistent experience that a person greatly endowed for the work has, always or almost always — perhaps one ought not to make a too rigid universal rule about these things — a being attached to him, sometimes appearing like a part of him, which is just the contradiction of the thing he centrally represents in the work to be done. Or, if it is not there at ﬁrst, not bound to his personality, a force of this kind enters into his environment as soon as he begins his movement to realise. Its business seems to be to oppose, to create stumblings and wrong conditions, in a word, to set before him the whole problem of the work he has started to do. It would seem as if the problem could not, in the occult economy of things, be solved otherwise than by the predestined instrument making the difﬁculty his own. That would explain many things that seem very disconcerting on the surface.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes, the solution is certainly the Divine Grace — it comes of itself, intervening suddenly or with an increasing force when all is ready. Meanwhile it is there behind all the struggles, and “the unconquerable aspiration for the light” of which you speak is the outward sign that it will intervene. As for the two natures, it is only one form of the perpetual duality in human nature from which nobody escapes, so universal that many systems recognise it as a standing feature to be taken account of in their discipline, the two Personae, one bright, one dark, in every human being.


Sri Aurobindo: If that were not there, Yoga would be an easy walk-over and there would be no struggle. But its presence is not any reason for thinking that there is unﬁtness; the obstinacy of the worldly element is also not a reason, for it is always obstinate — in its very nature. It is like the Germans in their trenches, falling back and digging themselves in for a new mass attack, every time they are bafﬂed. But for all that, if the bright persona is equally determined not to be satisﬁed without the crown of light, if it is strong enough to make the being unable to rest content in lesser things, then that is the sign that the being is called, one of the elect in spite of outward appearances and its own doubts and despairs — who has them not, not even a Christ or a Buddha is without them — and that the inner spirit in the end. There is no cause for any apprehension on that score.


Sri Aurobindo:   There are two or three things that I think it necessary to say to you about your spiritual life and your difﬁculties.  First, I should like you to get rid of the idea that that which causes the difﬁculties is so much a part of your self that a true inner life is impossible to you. The inner life is always possible if there is present in the nature, however much covered over by other things, a divine possibility through which the soul can manifest itself and build up its own true form in the mind and life, — a portion of the Divine. In you this divine possibility exists in a marked and exceptional degree.


Sri Aurobindo: There is in you an inner being of spontaneous light, intuitive vision, harmony and creative beauty which has shown itself unmistakably every time it has been able to throw off the clouds that gather in your vital nature. It is this that the Mother has always tried to make grow in you and bring it to the front. When one has that in oneself, there is no ground for despair, no just reason for any talk of impossibility. If you could once ﬁrmly accept this as your true self, (as indeed it is, for the inner being is your true self and the external, to which the cause of the difﬁculties belongs, is always something acquired and impermanent and can be changed,) and if you could make its development your settled and persistent aim in life, then the path would be clear and your spiritual future not only a strong possibility but a certitude.


Sri Aurobindo: It very often happens that when there is an exceptional power like this in the nature, there is found in the exterior being some contrary element which opens it to a quite opposite inﬂuence. It is this that makes the endeavour after a spiritual life so often a difﬁcult struggle: but the existence of this kind of contradiction even in an intense form does not make that life impossible. Doubt, struggle, efforts and failures, lapses, alternations of happy and unhappy or good and bad conditions, states of light and states of darkness are the common lot of human beings. They are not created by Yoga or by the effort after perfection; only in Yoga one becomes conscious of their movements and their causes instead of feeling them blindly, and in the end one makes one’s way out of them into a clearer and happier consciousness. The ordinary life remains to the last a series of troubles and struggles, but the sadhak of the Yoga comes out of the trouble and struggle to a ground of fundamental serenity which superﬁcial disturbances may still touch but cannot destroy, and, ﬁnally, all disturbance ceases altogether.


Sri Aurobindo: Even the experience which so alarms you, of states of consciousness in which you say and do things contrary to your true will, is not a reason for despair. It is a common experience in one form or another of all who try to rise above their ordinary nature. Not only those who practise Yoga, but religious men and even those who seek only a moral control and self-improvement are confronted with this difﬁculty. And here again it is not the Yoga or the effort after perfection that creates this condition; there are contradictory elements in human nature and in every human being through which he is made to act in a way which his better mind disapproves. This happens to everybody, to the most ordinary men in the most ordinary life.


Sri Aurobindo: It only becomes marked and obvious to our minds when we try to rise above our ordinary external selves, because then we can see that it is the lower elements which are being made to revolt consciously against the higher will. There then seems to be for a time a division in the nature, because the true being and all that supports it stand back and separate from these lower elements. At one time the true being occupies the ﬁeld of the nature, at another the lower nature used by some contrary Force pushes it back and seizes the ground, — and this we now see, while formerly the thing happened but the nature of the happening was not clear to us.  If there is the ﬁrm will to progress, this division is overpassed  and in the uniﬁed nature, uniﬁed around that will, there may be other difﬁculties, but this kind of discord and struggle will disappear.


Sri Aurobindo: I have written so much on this point because I think you have been given the wrong idea that it is the Yoga which creates this struggle and also that this contradiction or division in the nature is the sign of an unﬁtness or impossibility to go through to the end. Both ideas are quite incorrect and things will be easier if you cast them out of your consciousness altogether.  But it is true that in your case as in others this contradiction has been given a special and very discomforting kind of intensity by a hereditary weakness of the nervous parts which has always shown itself in you by ﬁts of despondency, gloom, unrest and self-tormenting darkness and spoiled for you the savour of life. Your mistake is to think that this is something to which you are bound and from which you cannot escape, a fate which makes a spiritual change of your nature impossible.  I have seen other families afﬂicted by this kind of hereditary nervous weakness accompanying very often exceptional gifts of intelligence or artistic capacity or spiritual possibilities.


Sri Aurobindo: One or two may have succumbed to it, like, but others, sometimes after a period of acute disturbance, overcame the perturbations caused by this weakness; either it disappeared or it took some minor and innocuous form which did not interfere with the development of the life and its capacities. Why then despair of yourself or ﬁx without any true cause the conviction that you cannot change and this thing will always be there? This despondency, this adverse conviction is the real danger for you; it prevents you from making a quiet and settled resolution and a permanent effective effort; because of it the return of this darker condition makes you quickly yield and allow the adverse external Force which uses this defect to play and do its will with you. It is this false idea that makes more than half the trouble.  There is no true reason why you should not overcome this defect of your external being as many others have done.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only a part of your vital nature that is affected, even though it often overclouds the rest; the other parts of your being can be easily made the ﬁt instruments of the divine possibility of which I have spoken. Especially, you have a clear and ﬁne intelligence which, when rightly used, becomes a ready instrument of the light and can be of great use to you in overcoming this vital weakness. And this divine possibility, this truth of your inner being, if you accept it, can of itself make certain your liberation and the change of your external nature.  Accept this divine possibility in you; have faith in your inner being and its spiritual destiny. Make its development as a portion of the Divine your aim in life, — for a great and serious aim in life is a most powerful help towards getting rid of this kind of disturbing or disabling nervous weakness; it gives ﬁrmness, balance, a strong support to the whole being and a powerful reason for the will to act.


Sri Aurobindo: Accept too the help we can give you, not shutting yourself against it by disbelief, despair or unfounded revolt. At present you cannot prevail because you have not ﬁxed in yourself a faith, an aim, a settled conﬁdence; the black mood has been able to cloud your whole consciousness. But if you have ﬁxed this faith in you and can cling to it, then the cloud will not be able to ﬁx itself for any long period, the inner being will be able to come to your help. And even the better self will be able to remain on the surface, keep you open to the light and maintain the inner ground for the soul even if the outer is partly clouded or troubled. When that happens, the victory will have been won and the entire elimination of the vital weakness will be only a matter of a little perseverance.


Sri Aurobindo: That [] is the real reason for all these things happening to. When there is something in the nature that has to be got over, it is always drawing on itself incidents that put it to the test till the sadhak has overcome and is free. At least it is a thing that often happens especially if the person is making a sincere effort to overcome. One does not always know whether it is the hostiles who are trying to break the resolution or putting it to the test (for they claim the right to do it) or whether it is, let us say, the gods who are doing it so as to press and hasten the progress or insisting on the reality and thoroughness of the change aspired after. Perhaps it helps most when one can take it from the latter standpoint.


Sri Aurobindo:  You are quite right — that is the way you must take it, that here is an opportunity given to you for overcoming this stumbling block in the nature. When one does sadhana, it is constantly seen that so long as there is an important defect somewhere, circumstances so happen that the occasion comes for the defect to rise until it is thrown out of the being. If one can take the coming of these circumstances clairvoyantly as a call and an opportunity for conquering the defect, then one can progress very quickly.  On the other point, it is very good that you have taken the right attitude and perception with regard to the criticism of others; but this must be extended to their wrong actions also, if there are any. For if their defects ﬂow from their nature, the common human nature of all, their actions ﬂow from the same source, and it is enough to see and understand — the same rule must apply to both these things.


Sri Aurobindo:   Outward difﬁculties are really nothing — it is the inward that are difﬁcult to get rid of, because something in the nature gives consent to them — or at least is accustomed to suffer and tolerate them.  Human nature is always full of impurities and imperfections and of itself cannot reach the Divine. It is by the descent of the higher consciousness from above that all that can change; but you must not expect the change to take place in a few days.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is not my working, but your moods that are queer. You get something no reasonable being would expect under the ordinary laws of Nature and then you fancy you haven’t got it and wail because everything is not absolutely, continuously, faultlessly, increasingly, illimitably miraculous through and through and always and for ever. In no sadhana that I know of does absolute sustained perfection in everything come with a rush and stay celestially perfect for ever more.


Sri Aurobindo: If it were so there would be no need for sadhana — one would only have to gaze at heaven a little and grow wings and ﬂy into the spheres, a triumphant godhead.    As I have a few minutes, I may comment on your today’s letter so as to get that out of the way. I must say your arguments about  and made me smile. When on earth were politeness and good society manners considered as a part or a test of spiritual experience or true Yogic siddhi?


Sri Aurobindo: It is no more a test than the capacity of dancing well or dressing nicely. Just as there are many very good and kind men who are boorish and rude in their manners, so there may be very spiritual men (I mean those who have deep spiritual experiences) who have no grasp over physical life or action (many intellectuals too are like that) and are not at all careful about their manners. I suppose I myself am accused of rude and arrogant behaviour because I refuse to see people, do not answer letters, and a host of other misdemeanours. I have heard of a famous recluse who threw stones at anybody coming to his retreat because he did not want disciples and found no other way of warding off the ﬂood of candidates. I at least would hesitate to pronounce that such people had no spiritual life or experience.


Sri Aurobindo: Certainly, I prefer that sadhaks should be reasonably considerate towards each other, but that is for the sake of collective life and harmony, not as a siddhi of the Yoga or an indispensable sign of inner experience.  As for the other matter how can the of the sadhaks here, none of whom have reached perfection or anywhere near it, be a proof that spiritual experience is null or worthless? You write as if the moment one had any kind of spiritual experience or realisation, one must at once become a perfect person without defects or weaknesses. That is to make a demand which it is impossible to satisfy and it is to ignore the fact that spiritual life is a growth and not a sudden and inexplicable miracle. No sadhak can be judged as if he were already a siddha Yogi, least of all those who have only travelled a quarter or less of a very long path as is the case with most of us who are here.


Sri Aurobindo: Even great Yogis do not claim perfection and you cannot say that because they are not absolutely perfect, therefore their spirituality is false or of no use to the world. There are besides all kinds of spiritual men, some who are content with spiritual experience and do not seek after an outward perfection or progress, some who are saints, others who do not seek after sainthood, others who are content to live in the cosmic consciousness in touch or union with the All but allowing all kinds of forces to play through them, e.g., as in the typical description of the Paramhansa. The ideal I put before our Yoga is one thing, but it does not bind all spiritual life and endeavour. The spiritual life is not a thing that can be formulated in a rigid deﬁnition or bound by a ﬁxed mental rule; it is a vast ﬁeld of evolution, an immense kingdom potentially larger than the other kingdoms below it with a hundred provinces, a thousand types, stages, forms, paths, variations of the spiritual ideal, degrees of spiritual achievement. It is from the basis of this truth which I shall try to explain in subsequent letters that things regarding spirituality and its seekers must be judged, if they are to be judged with knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: Let me do that ﬁrst and afterwards if I am able to give some idea of it, which is not easy, particular questions can be more soluble.   P.S. All these things I say, must not be applied to the personal cases you mention which are only an occasion for saying them.  The one thing that applies to them is that they are sadhaks, not siddhas, raw still, not ripe.


Sri Aurobindo:   I am glad to have got your second letter in which the psychic being in you expresses itself with such fullness. It would have been impossible for me to go on with my explanations of the case for spirituality if the exposition of it, carrying as it must do many things contrary to your own mental views, were to upset or hurt you. I have no intention of doing that and have always avoided it except that sometimes I had to express an unpalatable view of things rather plainly in answer to your own insistence. If I write about these questions from the Yogic point of view, even though on a logical basis, there is bound to be much that is in conﬂict with your own settled and perhaps cherished opinions, e.g. about “miracles”, persons, the limits of judgment by sense data etc.


Sri Aurobindo: I have avoided as much as possible writing about these subjects because I would have to propound things that cannot be understood except by reference to other data than those of the physical senses or of reason founded on these alone. I might have to speak of laws and forces not recognised by physical reason or science. In my public writings and my writings to sadhaks I have not dwelt on these because they go out of the range of ordinary knowledge and the understanding founded on it. These things are known to some, but they do not usually speak about it, while the public views of such of them as are known are either credulous or incredulous, but in both cases without experience or knowledge. So if the views founded on them are likely to upset, shock or bewilder, the better way is silence.


Sri Aurobindo: I should like, however, to clear up ﬁrst some misunderstandings in your letter about what I had written:  (1) What I wrote about politeness had nothing to do with  or the quarrel with — I referred to that as an and I said that such lapses on the part of sadhaks who were far from being siddha Yogis could not be advanced as a disproof of spiritual experience or of its value. My remark was not at all meant as justiﬁcation of loss of self-control in an argument and getting angry and excited if crossed in one’s views. It was merely a refusal to accept that as an argument against spirituality in general — spiritual experience, as I said, does not immediately lead to perfection and you cannot expect it to do so. Equality and self-control are most necessary to Yoga, but also, one has to strive slowly after them; they are not, at least in their completeness, easily attainable.


Sri Aurobindo: The whole being has to be pervaded by calm and peace; the nerves and cells of the body have to be full of calm and peace. Until then what one has to strive to attain is an inner calm in the inner being which remains even when the outer is disturbed by invasions of grief, unease or anger. The Yogi arrives ﬁrst at a sort of division in his being in which the inner Purusha ﬁxed and calm looks at the perturbations of the outer man as one looks at the passions of an unreasonable child; that once ﬁxed, he can proceed afterwards to control the outer man also. Whether he can easily control the actions depends on the temperament of his outer man, whether it is vehement, emotional and passionate or comparatively sedate and quiet. But a complete control of the outer man needs a long and arduous tapasya.


Sri Aurobindo: It cannot be expected and even the assured inner calm cannot be expected of those who are still in a very early stage of the journey, who are still sadhaks and not Yogis.  (2) I said that as regards both cases, and, my remarks must be taken as limited to this proposition that you cannot expect from the raw what you can expect from the ripe, that is from the siddha Yogi.  (3) But even from the siddha Yogi you cannot always expect a perfect perfection; there are many who do not even care for the perfection of the outer nature, yet they have spiritual experience, even spiritual realisation and the unperfected outer nature cannot be held as a disproof of their realisation or experience.  If you so regard it, you have to rule out of court the greater number of Yogis of the past and the Rishis of the old time also.  (4) I said that the ideal of my Yoga is different, but I cannot bind by it other spiritual men and their achievements or discipline.


Sri Aurobindo: My own ideal is transformation of the outer nature, perfection as perfect as it can be. But it is impossible to say that those who have not achieved it or did not care to achieve it had no spirituality or that their spirituality was of no value. Beautiful conduct — not politeness which is an outer thing, however valuable, — but beauty founded upon a spiritual realisation of unity and harmony projected into life, is certainly part of the perfect perfection. But all that I regard as the ideal, the thing to be attained in the fullness of the siddhi. I do not expect perfect perfection from those who are on the way and as yet far from the goal.


Sri Aurobindo: If they have it, it is delightful; but if they do not have it, I cannot deduce from that that they have no spiritual experiences or that these experiences are of no value.  You yourself speak of the Baradi Brahmachari. Because of his habits of speech, it is surely impossible to deny greatness as a spiritual man to this remarkable ascetic admired by Ramakrishna and revered by Vivekananda. Even Ramakrishna himself had habits of speech about which Vivekananda in a letter to his gurubhais rates them for translating these portions as it would make a very bad impression on his English readers. But would these English readers have been justiﬁed in denouncing Ramakrishna on that account as an unspiritual man or spirituality as therefore without value?


Sri Aurobindo: This was my reasoning and, so stated in a clearer way, I hope, you will not ﬁnd it either irrational or offensive. I wanted to clear this because, if you remain under the impression that I am saying outrageous things, it will be difﬁcult to go farther.  I want to show that spiritual seeking and achievement are not one limited thing that can be clearly deﬁned in a single mental formula and reduced to a single rule or set of rules but a kingdom like the mental kingdom with all sorts of stages, lines, variations, provinces, types of spiritual men, and it is only by so understanding it that one can understand it truly, either in its past or in its future or put in their place the spiritual men of the past and the present or relate the different ideals, stages etc. thrown up in the spiritual evolution of the human being.    I reply to your letter as Mother is still too much occupied to write.


Sri Aurobindo: What was in her view at the time was what is called in the psychology of Indian Yoga a “sattwic” perfection, perfection in the form of the qualities and actions such as would satisfy a mental idealism and be very visible and appreciable to others. This often generates a kind of pride and self-righteousness, a “sattwic” egoism, which makes the consciousness rigid and not ﬂexible and plastic to the Divine Will. The true spiritual perfection is not so much of form; it is of the very substance of the consciousness and, as it consists at its base in an entire harmony with the Divine Consciousness and a free and plastic self-adaptation at each moment to the Divine Will, its forms and the forms of its action are not so easily visible or appreciable.  The word “righteous” does not apply to its movements — they are simply right because they are in unison with the Divine.  Obviously real imperfections are not to be indulged — to take that as a principle would be dangerous; the “apparent” imperfections are those which might appear so to an outward view only.


Sri Aurobindo: A “righteous” anger might easily be part of that selfrighteousness which the Mother had in view, and to be identiﬁed with the movement of anger righteous or otherwise is spiritually undesirable. But a movement of the kind meant may seem to an outward view identical with the movements of imperfection in the nature, yet be quite the right one in the sense of rightness which I have indicated above. It is not a question of any particular action or attitude to be taken but of the consciousness within giving a free and supple expression to the Divine Will acting through it.    The existence of imperfections, even many and serious imperfections, cannot be a bar to progress in the Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: (I do not speak of a recovery of the former opening, for, according to my experience, what comes after a period of obstruction or struggle is usually a new and wider opening, some larger consciousness and an advance on what had been gained before and seems — but only seems — to be lost for the moment.) The only bar that can be permanent — but need not be, for this too can change — is insincerity, and this does not exist in you. If imperfections were a bar, then no man could succeed in Yoga; for all are imperfect, and I am not sure, from what I have seen, that it is not those who have the greatest power for Yoga who have too, very often, or have had the greatest imperfections. You know, I suppose, the comment of Socrates on his own character; that could be said by many great Yogins of their own initial human nature. Also, self-expression in some form of art does not preclude serious imperfections and, of itself, does not cure them.


Sri Aurobindo: Here again my experience is that men of this kind have great qualities, but also great faults and defects as a weight in the other balance. In Yoga the one thing that counts in the end is sincerity and with it the patience to persist in the path — many even without this patience go through, for — again I speak from personal experience, — in spite of revolt, impatience, depression, despondency, fatigue, temporary loss of faith, a force greater than one’s outer self, the force of the Spirit, the drive of the soul’s need, pushes them through the cloud and the mist to the goal before them. Imperfections can be stumbling blocks and give one a bad fall for the moment, but not a permanent bar.  Obscurations due to some resistance in the nature can be more serious causes of delay, but they too do not last for ever.


Sri Aurobindo: The length of your period of dullness is also no sufﬁcient reason for losing belief in your capacity or your spiritual destiny.  I can look back to periods not of two but of many months of blank suspension of all experience or progress. I believe that alternations of bright and dark periods are almost a universal experience of Yogins, and the exceptions are very rare. If one enquires into the reasons of this phenomenon, — very unpleasant to our impatient human nature, — it will be found, I think, that they are in the main two. The ﬁrst is that the human consciousness either cannot bear a constant descent of the Light or Power or Ananda, or cannot at once receive and absorb it; it needs periods of assimilation, but this assimilation goes on behind the veil of the surface consciousness; the experience or the realisation that has descended retires behind that veil and leaves this outer or surface consciousness to lie fallow and become ready for a new descent.


Sri Aurobindo: In the more developed stages of the Yoga these dark or dull periods become shorter, less trying as well as uplifted by the sense of the greater consciousness which, though not acting for immediate progress, yet remains and sustains the outer nature. The second cause is some resistance, something in the human nature that has not felt the former descents, is not ready, is perhaps unwilling to change, — often it is some strong habitual formation of the mind or the vital or some temporary inertia of the physical consciousness and not exactly a part of the nature — and this, whether showing or concealing itself, thrusts up the obstacle. If one can detect the cause in oneself, acknowledge it, see its workings and call down the Power for its removal, then the periods of obscurity can be greatly shortened and their acuity becomes less. But in any case the Divine Power is working always behind and one day, perhaps when one least expects it, the obstacle breaks, the clouds vanish and there is again the light and the sunshine. The best thing in these cases is, if one can manage it, not to fret, not to despond, but to insist quietly and keep oneself open, spread to the Light and waiting in faith for it to come: that, I have found, shortens these ordeals.


Sri Aurobindo: Afterwards, when the obstacle disappears, one ﬁnds that a great progress has been made and that the consciousness is far more capable of receiving and retaining than before. There is a return for all the trials and ordeals of the spiritual life.  I write all this to show you that there is nothing peculiar to you in this untoward experience, nothing that would warrant you in thinking yourself less called and ﬁt than others for the Yoga, nothing that would justify you in taking the hand from the plough, even though you ﬁnd long bits of hard soil that resist and need much labour. The opening you had is sufﬁcient proof that you are meant for the Path; for it is a sure sign of the dawns that are to come hereafter.  These periods of difﬁculty inevitably come — none is without them, for the lower nature is there in all.


Sri Aurobindo: What you have to do is to keep the ﬁrmness of which you speak and persevere till the Divine Power and your will together have dealt with what rises from below. Why do you regard what rises and shows itself () as if it were peculiar to yourself? They are part of the very substance of the lower vital of the human being and there is no one who is without them.  So their presence does not at all mean that you cannot reach the Mother. When the mind and soul have chosen the goal, the rest is bound to follow; only as they are more obscure, the resistance there is more blind and obstinate.


Sri Aurobindo: But even in your vital there is now ﬁxed the will to attain, it is only a lower part there that has had the habit of responding to these things and therefore when a wave comes, it does not know how to avoid and is swallowed up for a time. It can be for a time only, because these things are no longer really yours, since the central being and the greater part of the nature no longer desire them. You have only to go on ﬁrmly and the time will come when the waves no longer rise.   The real reason of the difﬁculty and the constant alternation is the struggle between the veiled true being within and the outer nature, especially the lower vital full of desires and the physical mind full of obscurity and ignorance. This struggle is inevitable in human nature and no sadhak escapes it; everyone has to deal with that obscurity and resistance and its obstinacy and constant recurrence; for the lower nature is not only persistent in its repetitions and returns, but even when it is on the point of changing, the general Powers of that plane in universal Nature try to keep up the resistance by bringing back the old movements at each step in order to prevent the progress from being conﬁrmed for good and made ﬁnal.


Sri Aurobindo: It is true therefore that a constant sadhana persistent and unceasing is necessary if one wants to go quickly — though even otherwise one will arrive if the soul within has the call, for the soul will persist and after each obscuration or stumble will bring back the light and drive one on on the path till it feels that it is at last secure of a smooth and easy march to the goal.    A difﬁculty comes or an arrest in some movement which you have begun or have been carrying on for some time. How is it to be dealt with? — for such arrests are inevitably frequent enough, not only for you, but for everyone who is a seeker; one might almost say that every step forward is followed by an arrest — at least, that is a very common, if not a universal experience.


Sri Aurobindo: It is to be dealt with by becoming always more quiet, more ﬁrm in the will to go through, by opening oneself more and more so that any obstructing non-receptivity in the nature may diminish or disappear, by an afﬁrmation of faith even in the midst of the obscurity, faith in the presence of a Power that is working behind the cloud and the veil, in the guidance of the Guru, by an observation of oneself to ﬁnd any cause of the arrest, not in a spirit of depression or discouragement but with the will to ﬁnd out and remove it. This is the only right attitude and, if one is persistent in taking it, the periods of arrest are not abolished, — for that cannot be at this stage, — but greatly shortened and lightened in their incidence. Sometimes these arrests are periods, long or short, of assimilation or unseen preparation, their appearance of sterile immobility is deceptive: in that case, with the right attitude, one can after a time, by opening, by observation, by accumulated experience, begin to feel, to get some inkling of what is being prepared or done. Sometimes it is a period of true obstruction in which the Power at work has to deal with the obstacles in the way, obstacles in oneself, obstacles of the opposing cosmic forces or any other or of all together, and this kind of arrest may be long or short according to the magnitude or obstinacy or complexity of the impediments that are met. But here too the right attitude can alleviate or shorten and, if persistently taken, help to a more radical removal of the difﬁculties and greatly diminish the necessity of complete arrests hereafter.


Sri Aurobindo: On the contrary, an attitude of depression or unfaith in the help or the guidance or in the certitude of the victory of the guiding Power, a shutting up of yourself in the sense of the difﬁculties impedes the recovery, prolongs the difﬁculties, helps the obstructions to recur with force instead of progressively diminishing in their incidence. It is an attitude whose persistence or recurrence you must resolutely throw aside if you want to get over the obstruction which you feel so much — which the depressed attitude only makes, while it lasts, more acute.   You should realise that these periods of clouding are not due to any special incapacity or perversity in you — even the best sadhaks have them. It is the difﬁculty of the human nature in getting transformed. This difﬁculty sometimes takes the form of a bad will in the vital somewhere or a tendency in the physical to cling to old mistakes and old habits or to shrink from the trouble of transformation — but in these respects you have made a great progress.


Sri Aurobindo: What is there, is the mechanical habit of the lower nature in general — mechanical, not voluntary — to repeat the old movements to which it has been or was quite recently accustomed when any strong wave of them comes in from the surrounding universal Nature. This creates a kind of recurrence of relapse into the states which the spiritual progress is pushing out and it is not easy to get rid of this recurrence altogether. The one thing when they come is not to get distressed or upset, to realise what it is and to remain very quiet calling for the Mother’s Force to push it away. In this way the habit of these recurrences diminishes, the strength and intensity also, and on the other side one is able to recall the true consciousness and the true force, the bright, happy, peaceful, open condition more and more easily and quicker. One can then proceed on an assured basis to a more and more positive progress.


Sri Aurobindo:  Do not allow these ideas [] to gain on you or even to occupy your mind. It is not by their merit or their effort or the capacity they show that men advance in the spiritual path, but by their opening to the divine help and grace. For that you must have the conﬁdence that whatever your own weakness, the grace will not fail you. Difﬁculties may come, dry and barren moments or even periods may come, but they will be passed over and overcome. It is this idea and feeling that you must cherish and encourage and make to grow in you.


Sri Aurobindo: Then it will be easier for you to advance.     I do not think there is any sadhak however advanced who has the full consciousness all the time. These changes come and one cannot help it because there is something of the ordinary consciousness that is still left and it comes up to be dealt with.


Sri Aurobindo: One has to understand this and not get upset — for getting upset only delays the process. If the true consciousness were constant in its fullness, the sadhana would be ﬁnished and there would be the siddhi. That cannot come at once.  There are always these resistances in sadhana; it is because the world is full of forces that don’t want men to ﬁnd the Divine.  Even the Rishis of old times used always to be obstructed and disturbed until they conquered desire, anger and all else and became full of the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo:   The resistance is not always an intentional one. It is the resistance of the nature, the mind’s personal ideas and preferences, the vital’s desires, attachments, depressions, revolts, egoistic insistences on its own ways and freedom to follow its inclinations and fancies, the physical’s tamas, want of faith, inertia. These things are parts of human nature. The Force comes to change them, but if the sadhak accepts these things, justiﬁes them, or simply allows them to hold his consciousness without reacting, then their resistance which is always there can last a long time.


Sri Aurobindo:   Your proposed remedy would be no remedy at all. One has to go forward not backward to some old starting point.  It is a wrong idea to get disgusted with doing the right thing because you cannot do it absolutely now.


Sri Aurobindo: It has to be done by a progressive movement. In everyone there is something that resists, until the ignorant parts of the being are transformed. That is no reason for giving up. It is sufﬁcient if there is something behind that feels and can respond even if it is very much covered by the obscure external nature. It is that in you which feels the Force above the head and the atmosphere of quietness, and it is through that that it will be done whatever the amount of the external resistance.


Sri Aurobindo:    What you feel coming across the meditation is a resistance in the subconscient material throwing up a thing like the cold or a nervous unrest or a causeless uneasiness. They must of course be dismissed.


Sri Aurobindo: When this part opens to the pressure from above, then these things are felt no more.     To break and rebuild is often necessary for the change; but once the fundamental consciousness has come there is no reason why it should be done with trouble and disturbance — it can be done quietly. It is the resistance of the lower parts that brings in trouble and disturbance.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is no invariable rule of such suffering. It is not the soul that suffers; the Self is calm and equal to all things and the only sorrow of the psychic being is the sorrow of the resistance of Nature to the Divine Will or the resistance of things and people to the call of the True, the Good and the Beautiful. What is affected by suffering is the vital nature and the body.


Sri Aurobindo: When the soul draws towards the Divine, there may be a resistance in the mind and the common form of that is denial and doubt — which may create mental and vital suffering. There may again be a resistance in the vital nature whose principal character is desire and the attachment to the objects of desire, and if in this ﬁeld there is conﬂict between the soul and the vital nature, between the Divine Attraction and the pull of the Ignorance, then obviously there may be much suffering of the mind and vital parts. The physical consciousness also may offer a resistance which is usually that of a fundamental inertia, an obscurity in the very stuff of the physical, an incomprehension, an inability to respond to the higher consciousness, a habit of helplessly responding to the lower mechanically, even when it does not want to do so; both vital and physical suffering may be the consequence. There is moreover the resistance of the Universal Nature which does not want the being to escape from the Ignorance into the Light. This may take the form of a vehement insistence on the continuation of the old movements, waves of them thrown on the mind and vital and body so that old ideas, impulses, desires, feelings, responses continue even after they are thrown out and rejected, and can return like an invading army from outside, until the whole nature, given to the Divine, refuses to admit them.


Sri Aurobindo: This is the subjective form of the universal resistance, but it may also take an objective form — opposition, calumny, attacks, persecution, misfortunes of many kinds, adverse conditions and circumstances, pain, illness, assaults from men or forces. There too the possibility of suffering is evident. There are two ways to meet all that — ﬁrst that of the Self, calm, equality, a spirit, a will, a mind, a vital, a physical consciousness that remain resolutely turned towards the Divine and unshaken by all suggestion of doubt, desire, attachment, depression, sorrow, pain, inertia. This is possible when the inner being awakens, when one becomes conscious of the Self, of the inner mind, the inner vital, the inner physical, for that can more easily attune itself to the divine Will, and then there is a division in the being as if there were two beings, one within, calm, strong, equal, unperturbed, a channel of the Divine Consciousness and Force, one without, still encroached on by the lower Nature; but then the disturbances of the latter become something superﬁcial which are no more than an outer ripple, — until these under the inner pressure fade and sink away and the outer being too remains calm, concentrated, unattackable. There is also the way of the psychic, — when the psychic being comes out in its inherent power, its consecration, adoration, love of the Divine, self-giving, surrender and imposes these on the mind, vital and physical consciousness and compels them to turn all their movements Godward.


Sri Aurobindo: If the psychic is strong and master throughout, then there is no or little subjective suffering and the objective cannot affect either the soul or the other parts of the consciousness — the way is sunlit and a great joy and sweetness are the note of the whole sadhana. As for the outer attacks and adverse circumstances, that depends on the action of the Force transforming the relations of the being with the outer Nature; as the victory of the Force proceeds, they will be eliminated; but however long they last, they cannot impede the sadhana, for then even adverse things and happenings become a means for its advance and for the growth of the spirit.  The sufferings and distress which come to people are part of their karma, part of the experience the being has to go through on its way through life after life till it is ready for spiritual change. In the life of the sadhak all vicissitudes are part of the path and, if he is a sadhak, he will recognise them as such though he may not understand their full meaning till afterwards — good and bad fortune, outward happiness and suffering are to be taken with an unshaken equality and trust in the Divine Wisdom till one has attained a position in which, united with the Divine Will, one can dominate them.   Suffering is not inﬂicted as a punishment for sin or for hostility


Sri Aurobindo: — that is a wrong idea. Suffering comes like pleasure and good fortune as an inevitable part of life in the ignorance. The dualities of pleasure and pain, joy and grief, good fortune and ill fortune are the inevitable results of the ignorance which separates us from our true consciousness and from the Divine. Only by coming back to it can we get rid of suffering. Karma from the past lives exists, much of what happens is due to it, but not all.


Sri Aurobindo: For we can mend our karma by our own consciousness and efforts.  But the suffering is simply a natural consequence of past errors, not a punishment, just as a burn is the natural consequence of playing with ﬁre. It is part of the experience by which the soul through its instruments learns and grows until it is ready to turn to the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: Sometimes pain and suffering are means by which the soul is awakened and pushed forward to the Divine. That is the experience on which constantly dwells as he has suffered much in his life — but all do not ﬁnd it like that.     The idealist’s question is why should there be pain at all, even if it is counterweighed by the fundamental pleasure of existence.


Sri Aurobindo: The real crux is why should inadequacy, limit and suffering come across this natural pleasure of life. It does not mean that life is initially miserable in its very nature.    Life as it is is certainly full of mishap and suffering and looks like an inconsequence of Nature that has no eventual signiﬁcance.  But even if one does not ﬁnd the concealed signiﬁcance, yet if one can live in the higher calm, one can pass through it without being immersed in its bitternesses or its engulﬁng turmoils.


Sri Aurobindo: That you have seen for yourself. I certainly hope that you will arrive at stability and security in that higher calm and with it the security of life cannot fail to come.  The divine support will always be there if you hold on to it and our direct help cannot but be yours when you ask and call for it. You have only to hold on to your effort in spite of what seeks to shake you. Then certainly you will reach the height to which you aspire.


Sri Aurobindo: I do not see why it should not be in the end the highest height — but that we will leave for the future to decide.  To have solid calmness is in itself something fundamental and sufﬁcient.     There is no need of suffering.


Sri Aurobindo: Refuse it when it comes.    There is no reason why suffering should be indispensable for making progress. You bring the suffering on yourself by the wrong ideas of the mind and by the revolts of the vital. The Mother’s grace and love are there, but the mind refuses to recognise it.


Sri Aurobindo: If there is conﬁdence, if the mind and vital consent to surrender and have full faith and reliance, then there may be difﬁculties but there is no suffering.  There are people who think that the proper way of progress is through revolt, but this is a mistake. Conditions of light followed by darker conditions come to everyone, but to revolt because there is delay and difﬁculty does not help. One has to go on in the conﬁdence that in spite of all delays and difﬁculties, if one is faithful, then in the end, the goal will be reached and one will attain to the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: I cannot say that I follow very well the logic of your doubts.  How does a brilliant scholar being clapped into prison invalidate the hope of the Yoga? There are many dismal spectacles in the world, but that is after all the very reason why Yoga has to be done. If the world were all happy and beautiful and ideal, who would want to change it or ﬁnd it necessary to bring down a higher consciousness into earthly Mind and Matter? Your other argument is that the work of the Yoga itself is difﬁcult, not easy, not a happy canter to the goal.


Sri Aurobindo: Of course it is, because the world and human nature are what they are. I never said it was easy or that there were not obstinate difﬁculties in the way of the endeavour. Again I do not understand your point about raising up a new race by writing trivial letters. Of course not — nor by writing important letters either; even if I were to spend my time writing ﬁne poems it would not build up a new race. Each activity is important in its own place — an electron or a molecule or a grain may be small things in themselves, but in their place they are indispensable to the building up of a world, — it cannot be made up only of mountains and sunsets and streamings of the aurora borealis — though these have their place there.


Sri Aurobindo: All depends on the force behind these things and the purpose in their action — and that is known to the Cosmic Spirit which is at work, — and it works, I may add, not by the mind or according to human standards but by a greater consciousness which, starting from an electron, can build up a world and, using a “tangle of ganglia”, can make them the base here for the works of the Mind and Spirit in Matter, produce a Ramakrishna, or a Napoleon, or a Shakespeare. Is the life of a great poet, either, made up only of magniﬁcent and important things? How many “trivial” things had to be dealt with and done before there could be produced a or a! Again, according to your own reasoning, would not people be justiﬁed in mocking at your pother — so they would call it, I do not — about metre and scansion and how many ways a syllable can be read? Why, they might say, is wasting his time in trivial prosaic things like this when he might have been spending it in producing a beautiful lyric or ﬁne music?


Sri Aurobindo: But the worker knows and respects the material with which he must work and he knows why he is busy with “triﬂes” and small details and what is their place in the fullness of his labour.  As for faith, you write as if I had never had a doubt or any difﬁculty. I have had worse than any human mind can think of.  It is not because I have ignored difﬁculties, but because I have seen them more clearly, experienced them on a larger scale than anyone living now or before me that, having faced and measured them, I am sure of the results of my work. Even if I still saw the chance that it might come to nothing (which is impossible), I would go on unperturbed, because I would still have done to the best of my power the work that I had to do and what is so done always counts in the economy of the universe.


Sri Aurobindo: But why should I feel that all this may come to nothing when I see each step and where it is leading and every week and day — once it was every year and month and hereafter it will be every day and hour — brings me so much nearer to my goal? In the way that one treads with the greater Light above, even every difﬁculty gives its help and has its value and the Night itself carries in it the burden of the light that has to be.  As for your own case, it comes to this that experiences come and stop, there are constant ups and downs, in times of recoil and depression no advance at all seems to have been made, there is as yet no certitude. So it was with me also, so it is with everyone, not with you alone. The way to the heights is always like that up to a certain point, but the ups and downs, the difﬁculties and obstacles are no proof that it is a chimera to aspire to the summits.


Sri Aurobindo:   What you said to is indeed very true, especially the phrase, “However feeble the clay, the ﬂower is in the bud and it will blossom.” That is true not only of individuals, but of the earth as a whole — Earth is a feeble clay for the spiritual planting, but all that is sown in it buds eventually and the bud once there will blossom.  La Rochefoucauld’s saying [“ ”] is true in general, but not quite true.


Sri Aurobindo: There are some who can bear their own sufferings much better than they can bear the sufferings of others, while the Yogi can bear the whole world’s suffering in himself and yet not falter.   The attitude you express in your letter is quite the right one — whatever sufferings come on the path, are not too high a price for the victory that has to be won and, if they are taken in the right spirit, they become even a means towards the victory .  I have never said that Yoga or that this Yoga is a safe and easy path. What I say is that anyone who has the will to go through can go through.


Sri Aurobindo: For the rest, if you aim high, there is always the danger of a steep fall if you misconduct your aeroplane. But the danger is for those who allow themselves to entertain a double being, aiming high but also indulging their lower outlook and hankerings. What else can you expect when people do that?  You must become single-minded, then the difﬁculties of the mind and vital will be overcome. Otherwise those who oscillate between their heights and their abysses, will always be in danger till they have become single-minded.


Sri Aurobindo: That applies to the “advanced” as well as to the beginner. These are facts of nature — I can’t pretend for anybody’s comfort that they are otherwise.  But there is the fact also that nobody need keep himself in this danger. One-mindedness (), surrender to the Divine, faith, true love for the Divine, complete sincerity in the will, spiritual humility (real, not formal) — there are so many things that can be a safeguard against any chance of eventual downfall.


Sri Aurobindo: Slips, stumbles, difﬁculties, upsettings everyone has; one can’t be insured against these things, but if one has the safeguards, they are transitory, help the nature to learn and are followed by a better progress.    Men like and are not likely to pretend to have experiences they do not have. ’s fall after his one year’s rapid progress had obvious reasons in his character which do not exist in theirs. But apart from that the fall of a sadhak from Yoga proves nothing against the truth of spiritual experience.


Sri Aurobindo: It is well known to all Yogis that a fall is possible and the Gita speaks of it more than once. But how does the fall prove that spiritual experience is not true and genuine? The fall of a man from a great height does not prove that he never reached a great height. The experiences of have been those of many others before him and will be those of many others who do not yet have them; I fail to see why the fact of people having them or their intensity or the joy and conﬁdence they give should make them suspect as untrue.


Sri Aurobindo:   A man who has risen high fall low, especially if his experiences are only through the spiritual mind and the vital and physical remain as they were. But it is an absurdity to say that he is to fall low.


Sri Aurobindo: I have not said that to reach the overmind is impossible; I have only said that it is difﬁcult. Difﬁculty is not a reason why the things should not be done.  It is not easy for a physical being to reach the highest truth because his consciousness is something ignorant that has emerged out of the material inconscience and is very much tied to and hampered by the obscurity of its origin — in addition to the mental and vital difﬁculties of ego and desire. Yoga itself is not easy; if it were so, it would be a multitude and not only a few that would be practising it.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no reason to have a vague doubt about one’s own future founded upon no other ground than the failure of others. That is what and are always doing, and it is a great disturber of their progress. Why not instead, if one is to go by others, gather hope from the example of those who are satisﬁed and progressing?  It is true however that these do not show their success as the others do their failure. However, that apart, failure comes by very positive errors and not by the absence of an invariable and unﬂagging aspiration or effort.


Sri Aurobindo: The effort demanded of the sadhak is that of aspiration, rejection and surrender. If these three are done, the rest is to come of itself by the grace of the Mother and the working of her force in you. But of the three the most important is surrender of which the ﬁrst necessary form is trust and conﬁdence and patience in difﬁculty. There is no rule that trust and conﬁdence can only remain if aspiration is there.  On the contrary when even aspiration is not there because of the pressure of inertia, trust and conﬁdence and patience can remain.


Sri Aurobindo: If trust and patience fail when aspiration is quiescent, that would mean that the sadhak is relying solely on his own effort — it would mean, “Oh my aspiration has failed, so there is no hope for me. My aspiration fails so what can Mother do?” On the contrary, the sadhak should feel, “Never mind, my aspiration will come back again. Meanwhile I know that the Mother is with me even when I do not feel her; she will carry me through even the darkest period.” That is the fully right attitude you must have.


Sri Aurobindo: To those who have it depression could do nothing; even if it comes, it has to return bafﬂed. That is not tamasic surrender. Tamasic surrender is when one says, “I won’t do anything; let Mother do everything. Aspiration, rejection, surrender even are not necessary. Let her do all that in me.”


Sri Aurobindo: There is a great difference between the two attitudes. One is that of the shirker who won’t do anything, the other is that of the sadhak who does his best but even when he is reduced to quiescence for a time and things seem adverse, keeps always his trust in the Mother’s force and presence behind all and by that trust bafﬂes the opposition force and calls back the activity of the sadhana.  I don’t believe much in this Divine Darkness. It is a Christian idea. For us the Divine is Peace, Purity, Wideness, Light, Ananda.


Sri Aurobindo:   I spoke of strange ideas in connection with what you said about peace and cheerfulness being obstacles in the Yoga because they are incompatible with an ardent longing for realisation. Peace was the very ﬁrst thing that the Yogins and seekers of old asked for and it was a quiet and silent mind — and that always brings peace — that they declared to be the best condition for realising the Divine. A cheerful and sunlit heart is the ﬁt vessel for the Ananda and who shall say that Ananda or what prepares it is an obstacle to the divine union? As for despondency, it is surely a terrible burden to carry on the way.


Sri Aurobindo: One has to pass through it sometimes, like Christian of through the Slough of Despond, but its constant reiteration cannot be anything but an obstacle. The Gita specially says, “Practise the Yoga with an undespondent heart”,.  I know perfectly well that pain and suffering and struggle and excesses of despair are natural — though not inevitable — on the way, — not because they are helps, but because they are imposed on us by the darkness of this human nature out of which we have to struggle into the Light. . .


Sri Aurobindo: .  The dark path is there and there are many who make like the Christians a gospel of spiritual suffering; many hold it to be the unavoidable price of victory. It may be so under certain circumstances, as it has been in so many lives at least at the beginning, or one may choose to make it so. But then the price has to be paid with resignation, fortitude or a tenacious resilience. I admit that if borne in that way the attacks of the Dark Forces or the ordeals they impose have a meaning.


Sri Aurobindo: After each victory gained over them, there is then a sensible advance; often they seem to show us the difﬁculties in ourselves which we have to overcome and to say, “Here you must conquer us and here.”  But all the same it is a too dark and difﬁcult way which nobody should follow on whom the necessity does not lie.  In any case one thing can never help and that is to despond always and say, “I am unﬁt; I am not meant for the Yoga.” And worse still are these perilous mental formations such as you are always accepting that you must fare like (one whose difﬁculty of exaggerated ambition was quite different from yours) and that you have only six years etc. These are clear formations of the Dark Forces seeking not only to sterilise your aspiration but to lead you away and so prevent your sharing in the fruit of the victory hereafter.


Sri Aurobindo: I do not know what Krishnaprem has said but his injunction, if you have rightly understood it, is one that cannot stand as valid, since so many have done Yoga relying on tapasya or anything else but not conﬁdent of any Divine Grace.  It is not that, but the soul’s demand for a higher Truth or a higher life that is indispensable. Where that is, the Divine Grace whether believed in or not, will intervene. If you believe, that hastens and facilitates things; if you cannot yet believe, still the soul’s aspiration will justify itself with whatever difﬁculty and struggle.


Sri Aurobindo: I am extremely glad to know that the worst of the attack has passed; I hope the after-effects will quickly disappear. You had stood out so well for two months and repelled all incipient movements of the kind, that the sudden violence of this one was not expected — especially as the last darshan had gone off well.  But when they get a chance these forces take it.  I quite agree with you in not relishing the idea of another attack of this nature. I am myself, I suppose, more a hero by necessity than by choice — I do not love storms and battles — at least on the subtle plane.


Sri Aurobindo: The sunlit way may be an illusion, though I do not think it is — for I have seen people treading it for years; but a way with only natural or even only moderate ﬁts of rough weather, a way without typhoons surely is possible — there are so many examples. may be generally true and certainly the path of laya or nirvana is difﬁcult in the extreme to most (although in my case I walked into nirvana without intending it or rather nirvana walked casually into me not so far from the beginning of my Yogic career without asking my leave). But the path not be cut by periodical violent storms, though that it so for a great many is an obvious fact.  But even for these, if they stick to it, I ﬁnd that after a certain point the storms diminish in force, frequency, duration. That is why I insisted so much on your sticking — for if you stick, the turning-point is bound to come.


Sri Aurobindo: I have seen some astonishing instances here recently of this typhonic periodicity beginning to fade out after years and years of violent recurrence.  These things are not part of the normal difﬁculties, however acute, of the nature but especial formations — tornadoes which start (usually from a particular point, sometimes varying) and go whirling round in the same circle always till it is ﬁnished. In your case the crucial point, whatever may have been the outward starting-point if any, is the idea or feeling of frustration in the sadhana; once that takes hold of the mind, all the rest follows.  That again is why I have been putting all sorts of suggestions before you for getting rid of this idea — not because my suggestions, however useful and true if they can be followed, are binding laws of Yoga, but because if followed they can wipe out this point of danger. A formation like this is very often the result of something in past lives — the Mother has so seen it in yours — which prolongs a karmic sanskara (as the Buddhists would say) and tries to repeat itself once again.