Sri Aurobindo: Finally, in all difﬁculties where personal effort is hampered, the help of the Teacher can intervene and bring about what is needed for the realisation or for the immediate step that is necessary.  Obviously to seek the Divine for what one can get out of Him is not the proper attitude; but if it were absolutely forbidden to seek Him for these things, most people in the world would not turn towards Him at all. I suppose therefore it is allowed so that they may make a beginning — if they have faith, they may get what they ask for and think it a good thing to go on and then one day they may suddenly stumble upon the idea that this is after all not quite the one thing to do and that there are better ways and a better spirit in which one can approach the Divine. If they do not get what they want and still come to the Divine and trust in Him, well, that shows they are getting ready.  Let us look on it as a sort of infants’ school for the unready


Sri Aurobindo: .  But of course that is not the spiritual life, it is only a sort of elementary religious approach. For the spiritual life to give and not to demand is the rule. The sadhak however can ask for the Divine Force to aid him in keeping his health or recovering it if he does that as part of his sadhana so that his body may be able and ﬁt for the spiritual life and a capable instrument for the Divine Work.


Sri Aurobindo:   First, it is a great exaggeration to deduce from your difﬁculties any idea of unﬁtness or of going away or being sent away or giving up the Yoga. I am certainly not going to pronounce you unﬁt because you want the Ananda; on such grounds I would have to pronounce myself unﬁt, because I have myself wanted it and many other things besides. And if I were to send you away because you are not entirely disinterested in the approach to the Divine, I should have, to be consistent, to send practically the whole Asram packing. I do not know why you are allowing yourself to indulge in such black and despondent thoughts — there is no ground for them at all, and I do not think I gave any grounds for them in my letter.


Sri Aurobindo: Whatever your difﬁculties, the Mother and I have every intention of seeing you through them, and I think that you too, whatever suggestions your vital depression may make to you at the moment, have every intention of going through to the end of the Path. I imagine you have gone too far on it to go back and, if you wanted to, your psychic being which has persistently pushed you towards it, would not allow such a retreat.  Next, it was not my intention to say that it was wrong to aspire for the Ananda. What I wanted to point out was the condition for the permanent possession of the Ananda (intimations, visits, downrushes of it one can have before); the essential condition for it is a change of consciousness, the coming of peace, light, etc., all that brings about the transition from the normal to the spiritualised nature. And that being so, it is better to make this change of consciousness the ﬁrst object of the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: On the other hand, to press for the constant Ananda immediately in a consciousness which is not yet able to retain it, still more to substitute for it lesser (vital) joys and pleasures may very well stop the ﬂow of these spiritual experiences which make the continuous ecstasy eventually possible. But I certainly never intended to say that the Ananda was not to be attained or to insist on your moving towards a (joyless) Brahman.  On the contrary, I said that Ananda was the crown of the Yoga, which surely means that it was part of the highest ﬁnal.  Whatever one wants sincerely and persistently from the Divine, the Divine is sure to give. If then you want Ananda and go on wanting, you will surely have it in the end.


Sri Aurobindo: The only question is what is to be the chief power in your seeking, a vital demand or a psychic aspiration manifesting through the heart and communicating itself to the mental and vital and physical consciousness. The latter is the greatest power and makes the shortest way — and besides one has to come to that way sooner or later.    Let us ﬁrst put aside the quite foreign consideration of what we would do if the union with the Divine brought eternal joylessness, Nirananda or torture. Such a thing does not exist and to drag it in only clouds the issue.


Sri Aurobindo: The Divine is Anandamaya and one can seek him for the Ananda he gives; but he has also in him many other things and one may seek him for any of them, for peace, for liberation, for knowledge, for power, for anything else of which one may feel the pull or the impulse. It is quite possible for someone to say: “Let me have Power from the Divine and do His work or His will and I am satisﬁed, even if the use of Power entails suffering also.” It is possible to shun bliss as a thing too tremendous or ecstatic and ask only or rather for peace, for liberation, for Nirvana. You speak of self-fulﬁlment, — one may regard the Supreme not as the Divine but as one’s highest Self and seek fulﬁlment of one’s being in that highest Self; but one need not envisage it as a self of bliss, ecstasy, Ananda — one may envisage it as a self of freedom, vastness, knowledge, tranquillity, strength, calm, perfection — perhaps too calm for a ripple of anything so disturbing as joy to enter. So even if it is for something to be gained that one approaches the Divine, it is not a fact that one can approach Him or seek union only for the sake of Ananda and nothing else.


Sri Aurobindo: That involves something which throws all your reasoning out of gear. For these are aspects of the Divine Nature, powers of it, states of his being, — but the Divine Himself is something absolute, someone self-existent, not limited by his aspects, — wonderful and ineffable, not existing by them, but they existing because of him. It follows that if he attracts by his aspects, all the more he can attract by his very absolute selfness which is sweeter, mightier, profounder than any aspect. His peace, rapture, light, freedom, beauty are marvellous and ineffable, because he is himself magically, mysteriously, transcendently marvellous and ineffable. He can then be sought after for his wonderful and ineffable self and not only for the sake of one aspect or another of him.


Sri Aurobindo: The only thing needed for that is, ﬁrst, to arrive at a point when the psychic being feels this pull of the Divine in himself and, secondly, to arrive at the point when the mind, vital and each thing else begins to feel too that that was what it was wanting and the surface hunt after Ananda or what else was only an excuse for drawing the nature towards that supreme magnet.  Your argument that because we know the union with the Divine will bring Ananda, therefore it must be for the Ananda that we seek the union, is not true and has no force. One who loves a queen may know that if she returns his love it will bring him power, position, riches and yet it need not be for the power, position, riches that he seeks her love. He may love her for herself and could love her equally if she were not a queen; he might have no hope of any return whatever and yet love her, adore her, live for her, die for her simply because she is she. That has happened and men have loved women without any hope of enjoyment or result, loved steadily, passionately after age has come and beauty has gone.


Sri Aurobindo: Patriots do not love their country only when she is rich, powerful, great and has much to give them; their love for country has been most ardent, passionate, absolute when the country was poor, degraded, miserable, having nothing to give but loss, wounds, torture, imprisonment, death as the wages of her service; yet even knowing that they would never see her free, men have lived, served and died for her — for her own sake, not for what she could give. Men have loved Truth for her own sake and for what they could seek or ﬁnd of her, accepted poverty, persecution, death itself; they have been content even to seek for her always, not ﬁnding, and yet never given up the search.  That means what? That men, country, Truth and other things besides can be loved for their own sake and not for anything else, not for any circumstance or attendant quality or resulting enjoyment, but for something absolute that is either in them or behind their appearance and circumstance. The Divine is more than a man or woman, a stretch of land or a creed, opinion, discovery or principle.


Sri Aurobindo: He is the Person beyond all persons, the Home and Country of all souls, the Truth of which truths are only imperfect ﬁgures. And can He then not be loved and sought for his own sake, as and more than these have been by men even in their lesser selves and nature?  What your reasoning ignores is that which is absolute or tends towards the absolute in man and his seeking as well as in the Divine — something not to be explained by mental reasoning or vital motive. A motive, but a motive of the soul, not of vital desire; a reason not of the mind, but of the self and spirit. An asking too, but the asking that is the soul’s inherent aspiration, not a vital longing.


Sri Aurobindo: That is what comes up when there is the sheer self-giving, when “I seek you for this, I seek you for that” changes to a sheer “I seek you for you.” It is that marvellous and ineffable absolute in the Divine that Krishnaprem means when he says, “Not knowledge nor this nor that, but Krishna.”  The pull of that is indeed a categorical imperative, the self in us drawn to the Divine because of the imperative call of its greater Self, the soul ineffably drawn towards the object of its adoration, because it cannot be otherwise, because it is it and He is He. That is all about it.  I have written all that only to explain what we mean when we speak of seeking the Divine for himself and not for anything else — so far as it is explicable.


Sri Aurobindo: Explicable or not, it is one of the most dominant facts of spiritual experience. The call to selfgiving is only an expression of this fact. But this does not mean that I object to your asking for Ananda. Ask for that by all means, so long as to ask for it is a need of any part of your being — for these are the things that lead on towards the Divine so long as the absolute inner call that is there all the time does not push itself to the surface. But it is really that that has drawn from the beginning and is there behind — it is the categorical spiritual imperative, the absolute need of the soul for the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: I am not saying that there is to be no Ananda. The selfgiving itself is a profound Ananda and what it brings, carries in its wake an inexpressible Ananda — and it is brought by this method sooner than by any other, so that one can say almost, “A self-less self-giving is the best policy.” Only one does not do it out of policy. Ananda is the result, but it is done not for the result, but for the self-giving itself and for the Divine himself — a subtle distinction, it may seem to the mind, but very real.


Sri Aurobindo:   No, what you write in your letter was not at all what the Mother was trying to tell you. The question of and its opposite was settled long ago and the Mother did not intend to return upon it; it is understood that whatever the motive immediately pushing the mind or the vital, an asking for Ananda or knowledge or power, yet if there is a true seeking for the Divine in the being, it must lead eventually to the realisation of the Divine. The soul within has always the inherent () yearning for the Divine; the or special motive is simply an impulsion used by it to get the mind and the vital to follow the inner urge. If the mind and the vital can feel and accept the soul’s sheer love for the Divine for his own sake, then the sadhana gets its full power and many difﬁculties disappear; but even if they do not, they will get what they seek after in the Divine and through it they will come to realise something, even perhaps to pass beyond the limit of their original desire.


Sri Aurobindo: I may say that the idea of a joyless God is an absurdity which only the ignorance of the mind could engender; the Radha love is not based upon any such thing, but means simply that whatever comes on the way to the Divine, pain or joy, or, and however long the sufferings may last, the Radha love is unshaken and keeps its faith and certitude pointing ﬁxedly like a star to the supreme object of Love.  All this, however, has nothing to do with what the Mother wished to say in the morning. What she told you was that you seemed to have a ﬁxed notion about the Divine, as of a rather distant Being somewhere whom you expect to give you an article called Ananda, and, when there is some prospect of his giving it to you, you are on good terms with him, but when he doesn’t, you quarrel and revolt and call him names! And she said a notion of the kind was in itself an obstacle, — because it is rather far from the Truth, — in the way of realising the Divine. What is this Ananda that you seek, after all?


Sri Aurobindo: The mind can see in it nothing but a pleasant psychological condition, — but if it were only that, it would not be the rapture which the bhaktas and the mystics ﬁnd in it. When the Ananda comes into you, it is the Divine who comes into you; just as when the Peace ﬂows into you, it is the Divine who is invading you, or when you are ﬂooded with Light, it is the ﬂood of the Divine Himself that is around you. Of course, the Divine is something much more; many other things besides and in them all a Presence, a Being, a Divine Person; for the Divine is Krishna, is Shiva, is the Supreme Mother. But through the Ananda you can perceive the Anandamaya Krishna; for the Ananda is the subtle body and being of Krishna; through the Peace you can perceive the Shantimaya Shiva; in the Light, in the delivering Knowledge, the Love, the fulﬁlling and uplifting Power you can meet the presence of the Divine Mother. It is this perception that makes the experiences of the bhaktas and mystics so rapturous and enables them to pass more easily through the nights of anguish and separation — when there is this soul-perception, it gives to even a little or brief Ananda a force or value it would not otherwise have and the Ananda itself gathers by it a growing power to stay, to return, to increase.


Sri Aurobindo: This was what the Mother meant when she said, “Don’t ask the Divine to give you Ananda, ask Him to give you Himself” — signifying that in the Ananda and through the Ananda it would be Himself that He would give you. There would then be no cause to say, “I do not know the Divine. I have never felt or met Him”; it would be a gate too for other experiences and make it easier to see the Divine in the material object, in the human form, in the body.  It was not a condition that the Mother was laying down when she said this; it was simply a suggestion which, if something in you could seize and proﬁt by it, would make things less slow and difﬁcult than they actually are.  This Yoga demands a total dedication of the life to the aspiration for the discovery and embodiment of the Divine Truth and to nothing else whatever.


Sri Aurobindo: To divide your life between the Divine and some outward aim and activity that has nothing to do with the search for the Truth is inadmissible. The least thing of that kind would make success in the Yoga impossible.  You must go inside yourself and enter into a complete dedication to the spiritual life. All clinging to mental preferences must fall away from you, all insistence on vital aims and interests and attachments must be put away, all egoistic clinging to family, friends, country must disappear if you want to succeed in Yoga. Whatever has to come as outgoing energy or action, must proceed from the Truth once discovered and not from the lower mental or vital motives, from the Divine Will and not from personal choice or the preferences of the ego.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is a universally accepted principle of the spiritual endeavour that one must be prepared to sacriﬁce everything without reserve in order to reach the Divine through a spiritualised consciousness. If self-development on the mental, vital and physical plane is his aim that is another matter — that life is the life of the ego with the soul kept behind undeveloped or half developed.  But for the spiritual seeker the only development he seeks is the development of the psychic and spiritual consciousness and that too, only because it is necessary to reach and to serve the Divine, not for its own sake. Whatever mental, vital, physical development or use of faculties can be made part of the spiritual life and an instrumentation for the Divine can be kept on condition of surrender of them for transformation and restatement on the spiritual basis.


Sri Aurobindo: But they must not be kept for their own sake or for the sake of the ego or considered as one’s own possession or used for one’s own purpose but only for the sake of the Divine.  As for James’ statement it is of course true except in so far as the politician can indulge in other things as hobbies for his leisure hours, but if he wants to succeed as a politician he must give his best energies to politics. Conversely if Shakespeare or Newton had spent part of their energies in politics they would not have been able to reach such heights in poetry and in science or even if they had they would have done much less. The main energies have to be concentrated on one thing; the others can only be minor pursuits at leisure or for distraction or interests rather than pursuits useful for keeping up a general culture.   All depends on the aim of the life.


Sri Aurobindo: To one whose aim is to discover and possess the highest spiritual truth and the divine life, I do not think a University post can count for much, nor do I see that there can be any practical connection between them. It might be different if the aim were the life of a writer and thinker on the intellectual level only without any higher ﬂight or deeper seeking. I do not see that your unwillingness to commit yourself to this kind of work is due to any weakness. It is rather that only a small part of your nature, and that not the deepest or strongest part, would be satisﬁed with it or with the atmosphere in which it would have to be done.  In these matters it is not the thinking mind but the vital being — the life-force and the desire nature — or some part of it at least, that usually determines men’s action and their choice — when it is not some outward necessity or pressure that compels or mainly inﬂuences the decision.


Sri Aurobindo: The mind is only an interpreting, justifying and devising agent. By your taking up the sadhana this part of your vital being has had a pressure put upon it from above and within which has discouraged its old turn of desires and tendencies, its past grooves, those which would have decided its direction before; this vital has, as is often one ﬁrst result, fallen silent and neutral. It is no longer strongly moved towards the ordinary life; it has not yet received from or through the psychic centre and the higher mental will a sufﬁcient illumination and impulse to take up a new vital movement and run vigorously on the road to a new life. That is the reason for the listlessness of which you speak and the mistiness of the future. Men do not know themselves and have not learned to distinguish these different parts of the being which are usually lumped together as mind; they do not understand their own states and actions, or, if at all, then only on the surface.


Sri Aurobindo: It is part of the foundation of Yoga to become conscious of the complexity of the nature, see the different forces that move it and get over it a control of directing knowledge.  The remedy can only come from the parts of the being that are already turned towards the Light. To call in the light of the divine consciousness, bring the psychic being to the front and kindle a ﬂame of aspiration which will awaken spiritually the outer mind and set on ﬁre the vital being, is the way out. It is usually a psychic awakening or a series of strong experiences by which the sadhak comes out of this intermediary no man’s land of the quiescent vital (few can avoid altogether this passage through a neutral vital indifference) into the full dynamic course of the spiritual movement.   It is not absolutely necessary to abandon the ordinary life in order to seek after the Light or to practise Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: This is usually done by those who want to make a clean cut, to live a purely religious or exclusively inner and spiritual life, to renounce the world entirely and to depart from the cosmic existence by cessation of the human birth and a passing away into some higher state or into the transcendental Reality. Otherwise it is only necessary when the pressure of the inner urge becomes so great that the pursuit of the ordinary life is no longer compatible with the pursuit of the dominant spiritual objective. Till then what is necessary is a power to practise an inner isolation, to be able to retire within oneself and concentrate at any time on the necessary spiritual purpose. There must also be a power to deal with the ordinary outer life from a new inner attitude and one can then make the happenings of that life itself a means for the inner change of nature and the growth in spiritual experience.  You have apparently a call and may be ﬁt for Yoga; but there are different paths and each has a different aim and end before it.


Sri Aurobindo: It is common to all the paths to conquer the desires, to put aside the ordinary relations of life, and to try to pass from uncertainty to everlasting certitude. One may also try to conquer dream and sleep, thirst and hunger etc. But it is no part of my Yoga to have nothing to do with the world or with life or to kill the senses or entirely inhibit their action. It is the object of this Yoga to transform life by bringing down into it the Light, Power and Bliss of the divine Truth and its dynamic certitudes. This Yoga is not a Yoga of world-shunning asceticism, but of divine Life.


Sri Aurobindo: Your object, on the other hand, can only be gained by entering into Samadhi and ceasing in it from all connection with world-existence.    The way of Yoga followed here has a different purpose from others, — for its aim is not only to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.  This is an exceedingly difﬁcult aim and difﬁcult Yoga; to many or most it will seem impossible. All the established forces of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness are opposed to it and deny it and try to prevent it, and the sadhak will ﬁnd his own mind, life and body full of the most obstinate impediments to its realisation.


Sri Aurobindo: If you can accept the ideal whole-heartedly, face all the difﬁculties, leave the past and its ties behind you and are ready to give up everything and risk everything for this divine possibility, then only can you hope to discover by experience the Truth behind it.  The sadhana of this Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by self-opening to an Inﬂuence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart, and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.   The aim of the Yoga is to open the consciousness to the Divine, to live in the inner consciousness more and more while acting from it on the external life, to bring the inmost psychic into the front and by the power of the psychic to purify and change the being so that it may become ready for transformation and in union with the Divine Knowledge, Will and Love. Secondly, to develop the Yogic consciousness — i.e. to universalise the being on all the planes, become aware of the cosmic being and cosmic forces and be in union with the Divine on all the planes up to the Overmind.


Sri Aurobindo: Thirdly, to come into contact with the transcendent Divine, beyond the Overmind, through the supramental consciousness, supramentalise the consciousness and the nature and make oneself an instrument for the realisation of the dynamic Divine Truth and its transforming descent into the earth-nature.  Well, I once wrote in my callow days, “Our Yoga is not for ourselves but humanity” — that was in the times.  To get out of the hole self-created I had to explain that it was no longer for humanity, but for the Divine. The “not for ourselves” remained intact.


Sri Aurobindo: Quite possible and practical and a very rapturous thing [ ] as anyone who has done it can tell you. It is also the easiest and most powerful way of “getting the Divine”. So it is the best policy also. The phrase [“ ”], however, means that the object of the Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be turned in our nature into nature of the Divine and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine. Its object is not to be a great Yogi or a superman (although that may come) or to grab at the Divine for the sake of the ego’s power, pride or pleasure.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not for salvation though liberation comes by it and all else may come; but these must not be our objects. The Divine alone is our object.   To come to this Yoga merely with the idea of being a superman would be an act of vital egoism which would defeat its own object. Those who put this object in the front of their preoccupations invariably come to grief, spiritually and otherwise. The aim of this Yoga is, ﬁrst, to enter into the divine consciousness by merging into it the separative ego (incidentally, in doing so one ﬁnds one’s true individual self which is not the limited, vain and selﬁsh human ego but a portion of the Divine) and, secondly, to bring down the supramental consciousness on earth to transform mind, life and body.


Sri Aurobindo: All else can be only a result of these two aims, not the primary object of the Yoga.  The extreme difﬁculty of these two aims has never been concealed from the sadhakas; on the contrary, difﬁculties and dangers have been overemphasised, rather than minimised. If still they choose and persist in this path, it is supposed that they are ready to risk everything, sacriﬁce everything, surrender everything in order to achieve this end or help towards its achievement.    You must get out of certain wrong ideas that you seem to have about Yoga, for these are dangerous and ought to be thrown away by every sadhak:


Sri Aurobindo: (1) The object of Yoga is not to become “like” Sri Aurobindo or the Mother. Those who cherish this idea easily come to the further idea that they can become their equals and even greater.  This is only to feed the ego.  (2) The object of Yoga is not to get power or to be more powerful than others or to have great siddhis or to do great or wonderful or miraculous things.


Sri Aurobindo: (3) The object of Yoga is not to be a great Yogi or a superman. This is an egoistic way of taking the Yoga and can lead to no good; avoid it altogether.  (4) To talk about the supramental and think of bringing it down in yourself is the most dangerous of all. It may bring an entire megalomania and loss of balance. What the sadhak has to seek is the full opening to the Divine, the psychic change of his consciousness, the spiritual change.


Sri Aurobindo: Of that change of consciousness, selﬂessness, desirelessness, humility, bhakti, surrender, calm, equality, peace, quiet, sincerity are necessary constituents. Until he has the psychic and spiritual change, to think of being supramental is an absurdity and an arrogant absurdity.  All these egoistic ideas, if indulged, can only aggrandise the ego, spoil the sadhana and lead to serious spiritual dangers. They should be rejected altogether.


Sri Aurobindo: Making fulﬁlment etc. the aim encourages an ego-centric attitude. Fulﬁlment, liberation, bliss etc. will come, but as a result of union with the Divine, not as a personal object of the sadhana.  Peace is a necessary basis, but peace is not sufﬁcient. Peace if it is strong and permanent can liberate the inner being which can become a calm and unmoved witness of the external movements. That is the liberation of the Sannyasin.


Sri Aurobindo: In some cases it can liberate the external also, throwing the old nature out into the environmental consciousness, but even this is liberation, not transformation.   Spiritual liberation means to be free from ego and from the imprisonment in the mind and vital and physical nature and to be conscious of the spiritual Self and live in that consciousness.  Spiritual perfection and fulﬁlment means that the nature should be spiritualised, new-formed in the consciousness of the free Self and the divine consciousness of inﬁnity, purity, light, power, bliss and knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: In the Brahmanic condition one feels the self to be untouched and pure — but the nature remains imperfect. The ordinary Sannyasin does not care about that, because it is not his object to perfect the nature, but to separate himself from it.    The negative means [] are not evil — they are useful for their object which is to get away from life. But from the positive point of view, they are disadvantageous because they get rid of the powers of the being instead of divinising them for the transformation of life.


Sri Aurobindo: The fundamental difference is in the teaching that there is a dynamic divine Truth (the Supermind) and that into the present world of Ignorance that Truth can descend, create a new Truthconsciousness and divinise Life. The old Yogas go straight from mind to the absolute Divine, regard all dynamic existence as Ignorance, Illusion or Lila: when you enter the static and immutable Divine Truth, they say, you pass out of cosmic existence.    They [] aimed at realisation and did not care about divinisation, except the Tantric and some others. The aim however even in these was rather to become saints and siddhas than anything else.


Sri Aurobindo:   If your soul always aspires for the transformation, then that is what you have to follow after. To seek the Divine or rather some aspect of the Divine — for one cannot entirely realise the Divine if there is no transformation — may be enough for some, but not for those whose soul’s aspiration is for the entire divine change.


Sri Aurobindo:   Unless the external nature is transformed, one may go as high as possible and have the largest experiences — but the external mind remains an instrument of the Ignorance.   If the presence of the Divine is established, it means that the being is ready for the transformation which proceeds naturally.   The full transformation is the result of union with the divine consciousness.   To be in full union with the Divine is the ﬁnal aim.


Sri Aurobindo: When one has some kind of constant union, one can be called a Yogi, but the union has to be made complete. There are Yogis who have only the union on the spiritual plane, others who are united in mind and heart, others in the vital also. In our Yoga our aim is to be united too in the physical consciousness and on the supramental plane.  This Yoga is a special way to a high and difﬁcult spiritual achievement. It is given only when there is sufﬁcient evidence of capacity or an irresistible call.


Sri Aurobindo: Inner peace is not its object; that is only one of the elementary conditions for it.    The goal of Yoga is always hard to reach, but this one is more difﬁcult than any other, and it is only for those who have the call, the capacity, the willingness to face everything and every risk, even the risk of failure, and the will to progress towards an entire selﬂessness, desirelessness and surrender.   This Yoga implies not only the realisation of God, but an entire consecration and change of the inner and outer life till it is ﬁt to manifest a divine consciousness and become part of a divine work. This means an inner discipline far more exacting and difﬁcult than mere ethical and physical austerities.


Sri Aurobindo: One must not enter on this path, far vaster and more arduous than most ways of Yoga, unless one is sure of the psychic call and of one’s readiness to go through to the end.     By readiness I did not mean capacity but willingness. If there is the will within to face all difﬁculties and go through, no matter how long it takes, then the path can be taken.


Sri Aurobindo:   A mere restless dissatisfaction with the ordinary life is not a sufﬁcient preparation for this Yoga. A positive inner call, a strong will and a great steadiness are necessary for success in the spiritual life.


Sri Aurobindo:   Knowledge of the way is not enough — one must tread it, or if one cannot do that, allow oneself to be carried along it. The human vital and physical external nature resist to the very end, but if the soul has once heard the call, it arrives, sooner or later.


Sri Aurobindo: What you write [] is quite accurate about the true soul, the psychic being. But people mean different things when they speak of the soul. Sometimes it is what I have called in the the desire soul, — that is the vital with its mixed aspirations, desires, hungers of all kinds good and bad, its emotions, ﬁner and grosser, or sensational urges crossed by the mind’s idealisings and psychic stresses. But sometimes it is also the mind and vital under the stress of a psychic urge.


Sri Aurobindo: The psychic so long as it is veiled must express itself through the mind and vital and its aspirations are mixed and coloured there by the vital and mental stuff. Thus the veiled psychic urge may express itself in the mind by a hunger in the thought for the knowledge of the Divine, what the Europeans call the intellectual love of God.  In the vital it may express itself as a hunger or hankering after the Divine. This can bring much suffering because of the nature of the vital, its unquiet passions, desires, ardours, troubled emotions, cloudings, depressions, despairs. The psychic can have a psychic sorrow when things go against its diviner yearnings, but this sorrow has in it no touch of torment, depression or despair.


Sri Aurobindo: Nevertheless all cannot approach, at least cannot at once approach the Divine in the pure psychic way — the mental and vital approaches are often necessary beginnings and better from the spiritual point of view than an insensitiveness to the Divine. It is in both cases a call of the soul, the soul’s urge — it only takes a form or colour due to the stress of the mind or vital nature.     For those who have within them a sincere call for the Divine, however the mind or vital may present difﬁculties or attacks come or the progress be slow and painful, — even if they fall back or fall away from the path for a time, the psychic always prevails in the end and the Divine Help proves effective.


Sri Aurobindo: Trust in that and persevere — then the goal is sure.    There is only one logic in spiritual things: when a demand is there for the Divine, a sincere call, it is bound one day to have its fulﬁlment. It is only if there is a strong insincerity somewhere, a hankering after something else — power, ambition, etc. — which counterbalances the inner call that the logic is no longer applicable. Supramental realisation is another matter: I am speaking now of the realisation of the Divine, of the contact with the Divine, through whatever lever, heart or mind, or both.


Sri Aurobindo: In your case it is likely to come through the heart, through increase of bhakti or psychic puriﬁcation of the heart: that is why I was pressing the psychic way upon you. I do not mean that nothing can come through meditation for you, but probably — barring the unexpected — only after the heart-experience.  Do not allow these wrong ideas and feelings to govern you or your state of depression to dictate your decisions : try to keep a ﬁrm central will for the realisation — you can do so if you make up your mind to it — these things are not impossible for you; they are within the scope of your nature which is strong.  You will ﬁnd that the obstinate spiritual difﬁculty disappears in the end like a mirage.


Sri Aurobindo: It belongs to the maya and, where the inner call is sincere, cannot hold even the outer consciousness always: its apparent solidity will dissolve.   An idealistic notion or a religious belief or emotion is something quite different from getting spiritual light. An idealistic notion might turn you towards getting spiritual light, but it is not the light itself.  It is true however that “the spirit bloweth where it listeth”, and that one can get some initial impulse or touch of mental realisation of spiritual things from almost any circumstance, as Bilwamangal got it from the words of his courtesan mistress.


Sri Aurobindo: Obviously it happens because something is ready somewhere, — if you like, the psychic being waiting for its chance and taking some opportunity in mind, vital or heart to knock open a window somewhere.     Mental idealism can only have an effect if one has a strong will in the mind capable of forcing the vital to follow.


Sri Aurobindo: The push to drown oneself in the Divine is very rare. It is usually a mental idea, a vital fumbling or some quite inadequate reason that starts the thing — or else no reason at all. The only reality is the occult psychic push behind of which the surface consciousness is not aware or else hardly aware.    Your inﬂuence on him for turning towards the Yoga was good, but it was not able to change his vital nature.


Sri Aurobindo: No human inﬂuence — which can only be mental and moral — can do that. You can see that he is just what he was before. It is only from the sadhak’s own soul turning towards the Divine [ ].    It is so with everybody.


Sri Aurobindo: Part of the nature turns to the Divine, another part does not give its consent at all; it either revolts or remains dully discontented or only pretends to acquiesce. It is only by making the whole being turn whole-heartedly to the Divine that one can enter fully into the Yoga.  When someone is destined for the Path all circumstances, through all the deviations of mind and life, help in one way or another to lead him to it. It is his own psychic being within him and the Divine Power above that use to that end the vicissitudes both of mind and outward circumstance.   A spiritual opportunity is not a thing that should be lightly thrown away with the idea that it will be all right some other time — one cannot be so sure of the other time.


Sri Aurobindo: Besides, these things leave a mark and at the place of the mark there can be a recurrence.     The spiritual destiny always stands — it may be delayed or seem to be lost for a time, but it is never abolished.  All can do some kind of Yoga according to their nature, if they have the will to it.


Sri Aurobindo: But there are few of whom it can be said that they have capacity for this Yoga. Only some can develop a capacity, others cannot. What wants is peace and something to carry her through the trials of life — she is not ready for more.   In sadhana it is not by the personal capacity that things are done.  It is the Divine Power that works and if one makes oneself its instrument, even what is impossible for the personal capacity can be done.


Sri Aurobindo:   When one once enters into the true (Yogic) consciousness, then you see that everything can be done, even if at present only a slight beginning has been made; but a beginning is enough, once the Force, the Power are there. It is not really on the capacity of the outer nature that success depends, (for the outer nature all self-exceeding seems impossibly difﬁcult), but on the inner being and to the inner being all is possible. One has only to get into contact with the inner being and change the outer view and consciousness from the inner — that is the work of the sadhana and it is sure to come with sincerity, aspiration and patience.


Sri Aurobindo:  You must realise that these moods are attacks which should be rejected at once — for they repose on nothing but suggestions of self-distrust and incapacity which have no meaning, since it is by the Grace of the Divine and the aid of a Force greater than your own, not by personal capacity and worth that you can attain the goal of the sadhana. You have to remember that and dissociate yourself from these suggestions when they come, never accept or yield to them. No sadhak even if he had the capacity of the ancient Rishis and Tapaswis or the strength of a Vivekananda can hope to keep during the early years of his sadhana a continuous good condition or union with the Divine or an unbroken call or height of aspiration. It takes a long time to spiritualise the whole nature and until that is done, variations must come. A constant trust and patience must be cultivated — must be acquired — not least when things go against — for when they are favourable, trust and patience are easy.


Sri Aurobindo:   Spiritual capacity means simply a natural capacity for true spiritual experience and development. It can be had on any plane, but the natural result is that one gets easily into touch with the Self and the higher planes.  Nobody is ﬁt for the sadhana — i.e. nobody can do it by his sole capacity. It is a question of preparing oneself to bring in fully the Force not one’s own that can do it with one’s consent and aspiration.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is useless to raise the question of ﬁtness. No one is ﬁt — for all human beings are full of faults and incapacities — even the greatest sadhaks are not free. It is a question only of aspiration, of believing in the divine Grace and letting the Divine work in you, not making a refusal.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is difﬁcult to say that any particular quality makes one ﬁt or the lack of it unﬁt. One may have strong sex impulses, doubts, revolts and yet succeed in the end, while another may fail. If one has a fundamental sincerity, a will to go through in spite of all things and a readiness to be guided, that is the best security in the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo:  Fitness for Yoga is a very relative term — the real ﬁtness comes by the soul’s call and the power to open oneself to the Divine.  If you have that, you have the ﬁtness, and your past actions cannot stand in the way: the past cannot bind the future. Of course, you have to ﬁnish with it, reject it and turn into the new ways — otherwise the past remains the present. But that is the question of the will in you and the soul’s call.


Sri Aurobindo: If you are faithful to your soul’s call there is no reason why you should not be able to do Yoga. All that you have to do is to keep your aspiration and not lose the inner connection that has been made — then the Mother’s thought and the help will be with you and you will ﬁnd your way.    You speak of your possible unﬁtness, but it is not a question of ﬁtness or unﬁtness. There is nobody who can go on in his own strength or by right of his ﬁtness to the goal of the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only by the Divine Grace and reliance on the Divine Grace that it can be done. It is in a strength greater than your own that you must put your ﬁrst and last reliance. If your faith falters you have to call on that to sustain you; if your force is insufﬁcient against the ill-will and opposition that surround you, open yourself to receive that force in its place.    The Mother’s help and mine are always there for you.


Sri Aurobindo: You have only to turn fully towards it and it will act on you.  What has come across is these wrong ideas about your unﬁtness, about bad things in you that prevent you from receiving the Mother’s grace, about the lack of aspiration which prevents you from having realisation and experience. These thoughts are quite wrong and untrue — they are not even your own thoughts, they are suggestions thrown on you just as they are thrown on the other sadhaks and intended to produce depression. There is no unﬁtness, no bad thing inside that comes across, no lack of aspiration causing the cessation of experience. It is the depression, the self-distrust, the readiness to despair which are the only cause; there is no other.


Sri Aurobindo: To all sadhaks, as I wrote to you, even to the best and strongest there come interruptions in the ﬂow of the sadhana; that is not a cause for thinking oneself unﬁt and wanting to go away with the idea that there is no hope. A little quietude would bring back the ﬂow. You were having the necessary experiences, the necessary progress and it was only a coming forward of some difﬁculties of the physical consciousness that stopped them for a time. That happens to all and is not particular to you, as I explained to you. These difﬁculties always come and have to be overcome.


Sri Aurobindo: Once overcome by the working of the Force, the sadhana goes on as before. But you began to entertain this wrong idea of unﬁtness and lack of aspiration as the cause and got entirely depressed. You must shake all that off and refuse to believe in the thought-suggestions that come to you. No sadhak ought ever to indulge thoughts of unﬁtness and hopelessness — they are quite irrelevant because it is not one’s personal ﬁtness and worthiness that makes one succeed, but the Mother’s grace and power and the consent of the soul to her grace and the workings of her Force.


Sri Aurobindo: Turn from these dark thoughts and look to the Mother only, not with impatience for the result and desire, but with trust and conﬁdence and let her workings bring you quietude and the renewal of the progress towards the psychic opening and realisation. That will bring surely and without doubt the fuller faith and the love which you seek.     I repeat what I said before (though your physical mind does not yet believe) that these experiences show at once that your inner being is a Yogi capable of trance, ecstasy, intensest bhakti, fully aware of Yoga and Yoga consciousness, and showing himself the very moment you get inside yourself, even as the outer man is very much the other way round, modernised, externalised, vigorously outward-vital (for the Yogi is inward-vital and psychic) and knowing nothing of Yoga or the world of inner experience.


Sri Aurobindo: I could see at once when I saw you that there was this inner Yogin and your former experiences here were quite convincing to anyone who knows anything at all about these things. When there is this inner Yogin inside, the coming to the way of Yoga is sure and not even the most externalised surface consciousness — not even a regular outside and you are not that, only a little on the surface, — can prevent ﬁnal success in the Yoga. But the tussle between the inward and the outward man can create a lot of trouble, because the inward man pushes towards the Divine and will not let go and the outward man regrets, repines, pulls back, asks what is this shadowy thing to which he is being brought, this Unknown, this (to him) far-off Ineffable. That, and not merely sex, food or society, is the genesis of the struggle and trouble in you. And yet it is all a misunderstanding — for if the outer gave way entirely to the inner Yogi, he would ﬁnd that what he lost or thought he was losing would be repaid a hundredfold — though he would get it in another spirit and consciousness, not any longer the transient and deceptive delight of the world for its own sake, but the delight of the Divine in the world, a thousand times more intense, sweet and desirable.


Sri Aurobindo:  The vision of the Light and the vision of the Lord in the form of Jagannath are both of them indications that he has the capacity for Yoga experience and that there is a call of the Divine on his inner being. But capacity is not enough; there must be also the will to seek after the Divine and courage and persistence in following the path. Fear is the ﬁrst thing that must be thrown away and, secondly, the inertia of the outer being which has prevented him from responding to the call.  The Light is the light of the Divine Consciousness. The aim of this Yoga is ﬁrst to come into contact with this consciousness and then to live in its light and allow the light to transform the whole nature, so that the being may live in union with the Divine and the nature become a ﬁeld for the action of the Divine Knowledge, the Divine Power and the Divine Ananda.


Sri Aurobindo: He can succeed in that only if he makes it the supreme object of his life and is prepared to subordinate everything else to this one aim. Otherwise all that can be done is only to make some preparation in this life — a ﬁrst contact and some preliminary spiritual change in part of the nature.  The best way to answer your letter will be, I think, to take separately the questions implied in it. I will begin with the conclusion you have drawn of the impossibility of the Yoga for a non-Oriental nature.  I cannot see any ground for such a conclusion; it is contrary to all experience.


Sri Aurobindo: Europeans throughout the centuries have practised with success spiritual disciplines which were akin to Oriental Yogas and have followed too ways of the inner life which came to them from the East. Their non-Oriental nature did not stand in their way. The approach and experiences of Plotinus and the European mystics who derived from him were identical, as has been shown recently, with the approach and experiences of one type of Indian Yoga. Especially, since the introduction of Christianity Europeans have followed its mystic disciplines which were one in essence with those of Asia, however much they may have differed in forms, names and symbols.  If the question be of Indian Yoga itself in its own characteristic forms, here too the supposed inability is contradicted by experience.


Sri Aurobindo: In early times Greeks and Scythians from the West as well as Chinese and Japanese and Cambodians from the East followed without difﬁculty Buddhist or Hindu disciplines; at the present day an increasing number of occidentals have taken to Vedantic or Vaishnava or other Indian spiritual practices and this objection of incapacity or unsuitableness has never been made either from the side of the disciples or from the side of the Masters. I do not see, either, there should be any such unbridgeable gulf; for there is no essential difference between spiritual life in the East and spiritual life in the West, — what difference there is has always been of names, forms and symbols or else of the emphasis laid on one special aim or another or on one side or another of psychological experience. Even here differences are often alleged which do not exist or else are not so great as they appear. I have seen it alleged by a Christian writer (who does not seem to have shared your friend’s objection to these scholastic (?) distinctions) that Hindu spiritual thought and life acknowledged or followed after only the Transcendent and neglected the Immanent Divinity while Christianity gave due place to both Aspects; but, in matter of fact, Indian spirituality, even if it laid the ﬁnal stress on the Highest beyond form and name, yet gave ample recognition and place to the Divine immanent in the world and the Divine immanent in the human being. Indian spirituality has, it is true, a wider and more minute knowledge behind it; it has followed hundreds of different paths, admitted every kind of approach to the Divine and has thus been able to enter into ﬁelds which are outside the less ample scope of occidental practice; but that makes no difference to the essentials, and it is the essentials alone that matter.


Sri Aurobindo: Your explanation of the ability of many Westerners to practise Indian Yoga seems to be that they have a Hindu temperament in a European or American body. As Gandhi is inwardly a moralistic Westerner and Christian, so, you say, the other non-Oriental members of the Asram are essentially Hindus in outlook. But what exactly is this Hindu outlook? I have not myself seen anything in them that can be so described nor has the Mother. My own experience contradicts entirely your explanation.


Sri Aurobindo: I knew very well Sister Nivedita (she was for many years a friend and a comrade in the political ﬁeld) and met Sister Christine, — the two closest European disciples of Vivekananda. Both were Westerners to the core and had nothing at all of the Hindu outlook; although Sister Nivedita, an Irishwoman, had the power of penetrating by an intense sympathy into the ways of life of the people around her, her own nature remained non-Oriental to the end. Yet she found no difﬁculty in arriving at realisation on the lines of Vedanta. Here in this Asram I have found the members of it who came from the West (I include especially those who have been here longest) typically occidental with all the quality and also all the difﬁculties of the Western mind and temperament and they have had to cope with their difﬁculties, just as the Indian members have been obliged to struggle with the limitations and obstacles created by temperament and training. No doubt, they have accepted in principle the conditions of the Yoga; but they had no Hindu outlook when they came and I do not think they have tried to acquire one.


Sri Aurobindo: Why should they do so? It is not the Hindu outlook or the Western that fundamentally matters in Yoga, but the psychic turn and the spiritual urge, and these are the same everywhere.  What are the differences after all from the viewpoint of Yoga between the sadhak of Indian and the sadhak of occidental birth? You say the Indian has his Yoga half done for him, — ﬁrst, because he has his psychic much more directly open to the Transcendent Divine. Leaving out the adjective, (for it is not many who are by nature drawn to the Transcendent, most seek more readily the Personal, the Divine immanent here, especially if they can ﬁnd it in a human body), there is there no doubt an advantage.


Sri Aurobindo: It arises simply from the strong survival in India of an atmosphere of spiritual seeking, and a long tradition of practice and experience, while in Europe the atmosphere has been lost, the tradition interrupted and both have to be rebuilt. There is an absence too of the doubt which so much afﬂicts the minds of Europeans or, it may be added, of Europeanised Indians, although that does not prevent a great activity of a practical and very operative kind of doubt in the Indian sadhak.  But when you speak of indifference to fellow human beings in any deeper aspect, I am unable to follow your meaning. My own experience is that the attachment to persons — to mother, father, wife, children, friends — not out of sense of duty or social relationship, but through close heart-ties is quite as strong as in Europe and often more intense; it is one of the great stumbling blocks in the way, some succumbing to the pull and many even advanced sadhaks being still unable to get it out of their blood and their vital ﬁbre. The impulse to set up a “spiritual” or a “psychic” relationship with others — very usually covering a vital mixture which distracts them from the one aim — is a persistently common feature.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no difference here between Western and Eastern human nature. Only the teaching in India is of old standing that all must be turned towards the Divine and everything else either sacriﬁced or changed into a subordinate and ancillary movement or made by sublimation a ﬁrst step only towards the seeking for the Divine. This no doubt helps the Indian sadhak if not to become single-hearted at once, yet to orientate himself more completely towards the goal. It is not always for him the Divine alone, though that is considered the highest state, but the Divine chief and ﬁrst is easily grasped by him as the ideal.  The Indian sadhak has his own difﬁculties in his approach to the Yoga — at least to this Yoga — which a Westerner has in less measure.


Sri Aurobindo: Those of the occidental nature are born of the dominant trend of the European mind in the immediate past.  A greater readiness of essential doubt and sceptical reserve; a habit of mental activity as a necessity of the nature which makes it more difﬁcult to achieve a complete mental silence; a stronger turn towards outside things born of the plenitude of active life (while the Indian commonly suffers from defects born rather of a depressed or suppressed vital force); a habit of mental and vital self-assertion and sometimes an aggressively vigilant independence which renders difﬁcult any completeness of internal surrender even to a greater Light and Knowledge, even to the divine Inﬂuence — these are frequent obstacles. But these things are not universal in Westerners, and they are on the other hand present in many Indian sadhaks, and they are, like the difﬁculties of the typical Indian nature, superstructural formations, not the very grain of the being. They cannot permanently stand in the way of the soul, if the soul’s aspiration is strong and ﬁrm, if the spiritual aim is the chief thing in the life. They are impediments which the ﬁre within can easily burn away if the will to get rid of them is strong, and which it will surely burn away in the end, — though less easily — even if the outer nature clings long to them and justiﬁes them — provided that central will, that deeper impulse is behind all, real and sincere.


Sri Aurobindo: This conclusion of yours about the incapacity of the nonOriental for Indian Yoga is simply born of a too despondently acute sense of your own difﬁculties, — you have not seen those, equally great, that have long troubled or are still troubling others. Neither to Indian nor to European can the path of Yoga be smooth and easy; their common human nature is there to see to that. To each his own difﬁculties seem enormous and radical and even incurable by their continuity and persistence and induce long periods of despondency and crises of despair.  To have faith enough or enough psychic sight to react at once or almost at once and prevent these attacks is given hardly to two or three in a hundred. But one ought not to settle down into a ﬁxed idea of one’s own incapacity or allow it to become an obsession; for such an attitude has no true justiﬁcation and unnecessarily renders the way harder.


Sri Aurobindo: Where there is a soul that has once become awake, there is surely a capacity within that can outweigh all surface defects and can in the end conquer.  If your conclusion were true, the whole aim of this Yoga would be a vain thing; for we are not working for a race or a people or a continent or for a realisation of which only Indians or only Orientals are capable. Our aim is not, either, to found a religion or a school of philosophy or a school of Yoga, but to create a ground and a way of spiritual growth and experience which will bring down a greater Truth beyond the mind but not inaccessible to the human soul and consciousness. All can pass who are drawn to that Truth, whether they are from India or elsewhere, from the East or from the West. All may ﬁnd great difﬁculties in their personal or common human nature; but it is not their physical origin or their racial temperament that can be an insuperable obstacle to their deliverance.


Sri Aurobindo:  I am not sure about the last matter. After all India with her mentality and method has done a hundred times more in the spiritual ﬁeld than Europe with her intellectual doubts and questionings.  Even when a European overcomes the doubt and questioning, he does not ﬁnd it as easy to go as fast and far as an Indian with the same force of personality because the stir of mind is still greater. It is only when he can get beyond that that he arrives, but for him it is not so easy.  On the other hand however your statement is correct.


Sri Aurobindo: It [] is “natural considering the times” and the occidental mentality prevalent everywhere.  It is also probably necessary that this should be faced and overcome before any supramental realisation is possible in the earth-consciousness — for it is the attitude of the physical mind to spiritual things and as it is in the physical that the resistance has to be overcome before the mind can be overpassed in the way required for this Yoga, the strongest possible representation of its difﬁculties was indispensable.  It goes without saying that the qualities you speak of are helpful in the approach to the spiritual path, while the defects you enumerate are each a serious stumbling-block in the way. Sincerity especially is indispensable to the spiritual endeavour, and crookedness a constant obstacle. The sattwic nature has always been held to be the most apt and ready for the spiritual life, while the rajasic nature is encumbered by its desires and passions.


Sri Aurobindo: At the same time, spirituality is something above the dualities, and what is most needed for it is a true upward aspiration. This may come to the rajasic man as well as to the sattwic. If it does, he can rise by it above his failings and desires and passions, just as the other can rise beyond his virtues, to the Divine Purity and Light and Love. Necessarily this can only happen if he conquers his lower nature and throws it from him; for if he relapses into it, he is likely to fall from the path or at least to be, so long as the relapse lasts, held back by it from inner progress. But for all that the conversion of great sinners into great saints, of men of little or no virtue into spiritual seekers and God-lovers has frequently happened in religious and spiritual history — as in Europe St. Augustine, in India Chaitanya’s Jagai and Madhai, Bilwamangal and many others.


Sri Aurobindo: The house of the Divine is not closed to any who knock sincerely at its gates, whatever their past stumbles and errors. Human virtues and human errors are bright and dark wrappings of a divine element within which once it pierces the veil, can burn through both towards the heights of the Spirit.  Humility before the Divine is also a of the spiritual life, and spiritual pride, arrogance, or vanity and selfassurance press always downward. But conﬁdence in the Divine and a faith in one’s spiritual destiny (i.e. since my heart and soul seek for the Divine, I cannot fail one day to reach Him) are much needed in view of the difﬁculties of the Path. A contempt for others is out of place, especially since the Divine is in all.


Sri Aurobindo: Evidently, the activities and aspirations of men are not trivial and worthless, for all life is a growth of the soul out of the darkness towards the Light. But our attitude is that humanity cannot grow out of its limitations by the ordinary means adopted by the human mind, politics, social reform, philanthropy, etc., — these can only be temporary or local palliatives. The only true escape is a change of consciousness, a change into a greater, wider and purer way of being, and a life and action based upon that change. It is therefore to that that the energies must be turned, once the spiritual orientation is complete. This implies no contempt, but the preference of the only effective means over those which have been found ineffective.


Sri Aurobindo:  Such qualities as faith, sincerity, aspiration, devotion etc. make up the perfection indicated in our language of the ﬂowers. In ordinary language it would mean something else such as purity, love, benevolence, ﬁdelity and a host of other virtues.  I have never said that this Yoga was a safe one — no Yoga is.  Each has its dangers as has every great attempt in human life.


Sri Aurobindo: But it can be carried through if one has a central sincerity and a ﬁdelity to the Divine. These are the two necessary conditions.    The ﬁrst conditions of this Yoga are: (1) A complete sincerity and surrender in the being. The divine life and the transformation of the lower human into the higher divine nature must be made the sole aim of all the life.


Sri Aurobindo: No attachments, desires or habits of the mind, heart, vital being or body should be clung to which come in the way of this one aspiration and one object of the life. One must be ready to renounce all these completely as soon as the demand comes from above and from the divine Shakti.  (2) A fundamental calm, peace and purity in the mind, vital being and all the nature.  The hours of meditation should be devoted to the formation of these two conditions in you, by aspiration and by selfobservation and rejection of all that disturbs the nature or keeps it troubled, confused and impure. Aspiration if rightly done, quietly, earnestly and sincerely, brings the divine help from above to effect this object.


Sri Aurobindo: As to the hours devoted to work, needs, family, etc., hey can be made an aid only on the following conditions.  (1) To regard all these things as not belonging to yourself, your inner being, but as things external, work to be done so long as it remains on your shoulders to the best of your ability without desire or attachment of any kind.  (2) To do all work as a sacriﬁce without any egoistic motive.  (3) To establish and deepen the inner calm and quiet. If that is done, all these things will be felt more and more as external and the falling off of desire and attachment will become possible.


Sri Aurobindo: For getting rid of passion the same condition. If you separate yourself from these movements and establish calm and peace inside, the passions may still rise on the surface, but they will be felt to be external movements and you can deal with them or call down the divine aid to get rid of them. So long as the mind does not fall quiet, it is not possible to deal ﬁnally with the vital being from which these forces rise.


Sri Aurobindo: The way to realise is through a quiet mind and a vital free from desires. To reject the desires and demands of the vital and to quiet the excessive activity of the mind, so that a true consciousness and spiritual perception and knowledge may take the place of the mind’s activity, are the requisite conditions of the Yoga.  The further method is, — (1) To concentrate in the heart and aspire and (2) to call to the divine Mother to enter there and purify the mind and vital and unveil the psychic being so that her constant guidance and presence in it may be felt always and (3) to concentrate in the quiet mind and (in the head) open oneself ﬁrst to the divine force and light which is always above the mind and call to it to descend into the body and the whole being — either of these or both, according to the capacity of the sadhaka.  Yoga must be done not for oneself or what one can get but for the sake of the Divine and to be united with the Divine.  If he can do any of these things (not minding how long it takes) in this spirit, then let him do Yoga; if he cannot, then there is no use in doing it.


Sri Aurobindo: A certain amount of puriﬁcation is necessary before there can be any realisation of the Divine and that is what has been going on in you. It is after all not a very long time since the real puriﬁcation began and it is never an easy work. So the impatience may be natural, but it is not exactly reasonable.


Sri Aurobindo: Puriﬁcation — rejecting from one’s nature all that is egoistic or of the nature of rajasic desire.  Aspiration for peace and calm and a perfect equality.  Puriﬁcation and a basis of calm are the ﬁrst necessary steps in the spiritual life.    The aspiration must be for entire puriﬁcation, especially (1) puriﬁcation from sex, so that no sex imaginations may enter and the sex impulse may cease, (2) puriﬁcation from desires and demands, (3) puriﬁcation from depression which is the result of disappointed desires.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the most important for you. Particularly what you must aspire for is peace in all the being, complete equanimity, samata. The feeling that peace is not enough must go. Peace and purity and equanimity once established, all the rest must be the Mother’s free gift, not a result of the demand from the being.  You can mix normally with people keeping as much as possible an inner quietude.


Sri Aurobindo: In future when the puriﬁcation is done and a continuous experience possible we can reconsider the matter.   Very often the earlier stage of the sadhana is successful, because there is an opening of the mind to ﬁrst workings of the Force — afterwards the lower vital consciousness and the physical rise up and if these are not ready or inclined for the sadhana, it ceases. The sadhaka has ﬁrst to purify and open them and call in the Force to work there and make all ready until he can bring the true consciousness and experience there. Yoga implies a long and difﬁcult work and one must be ready to accept the necessity of years of preparation and puriﬁcation and increasing consecration before the greater results can come.   By meditation alone and trying to concentrate you will never succeed.


Sri Aurobindo: There must be an aspiration from the heart and a giving up of all yourself to Krishna.  In your nature there are many obstacles, chieﬂy a great activity of the outward-going mind and a thick crust of the impure lower Prakriti that covers the heart and the vital being.  Quieting of the mind and puriﬁcation of the nature are what you must have before you can fulﬁl your aim. Aspire for these two things ﬁrst; ask for them constantly from above. You will not be able to achieve them by your own unaided effort.


Sri Aurobindo:  As for the way out of the impasse, I know only of the quieting of the mind which makes meditation effective, puriﬁcation of the heart which brings the divine touch and in time the divine presence, humility before the Divine which liberates from egoism and the pride of the mind and of the vital, the pride that imposes its own reasonings on the ways of the spirit and the pride that refuses or is unable to surrender, sustained persistence in the call within and reliance on the Grace above. Meditation, japa, prayer or aspiration from the heart can all succeed, if they are attended by these or even some of these things. But I do not know that you can be promised what you always make the condition of any inner endeavour, an immediate or almost immediate realisation or beginning of concrete realisation. I fully believe on the other hand that one who has the call in him cannot fail to arrive, if he follows patiently the way towards the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo:   I can only hope that the depression and the suggestions it brings will pass away soon. You were making very good progress before it touched you. There is no impossibility in the puriﬁcation of the heart which was the thing you were trying for and when the heart is puriﬁed, other things which seemed impossible before become easy — even the inner surrender which now seems to you impracticable. I at any rate will go on trusting in your spiritual destiny until the performance of the “miracle”.


Sri Aurobindo: Purity is to accept no other inﬂuence but only the inﬂuence of the Divine.    It [] is more a condition than a substance. Peace helps to purity — since in peace disturbing inﬂuences cease and the essence of purity is to respond only to the Divine Inﬂuence and not to have an afﬁnity with other movements.


Sri Aurobindo:   Purity means freedom from soil or mixture. The divine Purity is that in which there is no mixture of the turbid ignorant movements of the lower nature. Ordinarily purity is used to mean (in the common language) freedom from vital passion and impulse.


Sri Aurobindo: The Divine Purity is a more wide and all-embracing experience than the psychic.     Purity or impurity depends upon the consciousness; in the divine consciousness everything is pure, in the ignorance everything is subject to impurity, not the body only or part of the body, but mind and vital and all. Only the self and the psychic being remain always pure.


Sri Aurobindo:   A pure mind means a mind quiet and free from thoughts of a useless or disturbing character.    pretends to be pure and surrendered to the will of God. How can he be pure when his whole trouble has come from the indulgence of impure desires?


Sri Aurobindo: He pretends to act according to God’s will, but his actions are moved by three things, desire, vanity and self-will. The devil makes suggestions supported by one or another of these three motives and persuades him that it is the will of God.  Ignorance is not a state of innocence or purity; that is an old blunder. Only a consciousness full of light can be pure. For instance, when you are conscious, your mind is clear and you have the right ideas about things and people; your mind is pure of ignorance.


Sri Aurobindo: But when the mind is clouded by some impurity, — say, anger, jealousy or pride or some unreasonable desire, — you at once become ignorant and mistake and misunderstand everything.  Again, when your heart is turned to the Mother and satisﬁed with her love, when you are full of peace, contentment and happiness, then there is no room for wrong feelings and desires; your heart is pure.  This is what the Mother meant by purity; to be free from false ideas, wrong feelings, desires, demands etc. is to be pure.    Purity in the consciousness and purity in the conduct is what is usually meant by these terms [].


Sri Aurobindo: There is one indispensable condition, sincerity.     What is meant by “sincere”? Sincerity means to accept the Divine inﬂuence only and not that of lower forces.


Sri Aurobindo:   Sincerity means to be turned wholly to the Divine and accept only the Divine impulses — it means also the true and constant will or effort to be like this.


Sri Aurobindo: Sincere is simply an adjective meaning that the will must be a true will. If you simply think “I aspire” and do things inconsistent with the aspiration, or follow your desires or open yourself to contrary inﬂuences, then it is not a sincere will.     Sincerity means more than mere honesty.


Sri Aurobindo: It means that you mean what you say, feel what you profess, are earnest in your will. As the sadhak aspires to be an instrument of the Divine and one with the Divine, sincerity in him means that he is really in earnest in his aspiration and refuses all other will or impulse except the Divine’s.


Sri Aurobindo: [ :] To allow no part of the being to contradict the highest aspiration towards the Divine.   All sincere aspiration has its effect; if you are sincere, you will grow into the divine life.  To be entirely sincere means to desire the divine Truth only, to surrender yourself more and more to the Divine Mother, to reject all personal demand and desire other than this one aspiration, to offer every action in life to the Divine and do it as the work given without bringing in the ego.


Sri Aurobindo: This is the basis of the divine life.  One cannot become altogether this at once, but if one aspires at all times to it and calls in always the aid of the Divine Shakti with a true heart and straightforward will, one grows more and more into this consciousness.  Men are always mixed and there are qualities and defects mingled together almost inextricably in their nature. What a man wants to be or wants others to see in him or what he is sometimes on one side of his nature or in some relations can be very different from what he is in the actual fact or in other relations or on another side of his nature. To be absolutely sincere, straightforward, open, is not an easy achievement for human nature.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only by spiritual endeavour that one can realise it — and to do it needs a severity of introspective self-vision, an unsparing scrutiny of self-observation of which many sadhaks or Yogins even are not capable and it is only by an illumining Grace that reveals the sadhak to himself and transforms what is deﬁcient in him that it can be done. And even then only if he himself consents and lends himself wholly to the divine working.    It is quite natural that there should be much mixture in the attitude till all is clear — the ordinary nature clings to the action and the transformation in its completeness cannot be sudden.


Sri Aurobindo: What is necessary is that the basic consciousness should become ﬁrmly established in the Divine, then the mixture in the rest can be seen and steadily weeded out. To have this outwardly as well as inwardly is a great progress.    It is true that a central sincerity is not enough except as a beginning and a base; the sincerity must spread as you describe through the whole nature. But still unless there is a double nature (without a central harmonising consciousness) the basis is usually sufﬁcient for that to happen.


Sri Aurobindo:  I do not think there is any reason for anxiety about your sadhana. We feel always a great depth and sincerity of aspiration in you which keeps you in constant and close relation with us, and where there is this depth and sincerity and this closeness the progressive opening of the being is assured; for the openness already exists.    You speak of insincerity in your nature.


Sri Aurobindo: If insincerity means the unwillingness of some part of the being to live according to the highest light one has or to equate the outer with the inner man, then this part is always insincere in all. The only way is to lay stress on the inner being and develop in it the psychic and spiritual consciousness till that comes down in it which pushes out the darkness from the outer man also.    It is not sincerity to express only what the adverse forces suggest or what you feel when you are in a bad condition full of obscurity and a wrong outlook. When you are in the Truth, you feel quite the opposite and it is not insincerity to cling to that and recall it.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only by bringing it back that the Truth can grow in you.  The trouble in your chest comes only from a vital resistance and it continues because you identify yourself with that resistance. It is only by quietude and opening to the Mother that these things can disappear. There is no other way to progress.  If you have not got quietude, you can always aspire ﬁrst


Sri Aurobindo: and a sincere aspiration will bring it back.    All need vital sincerity, it is the most difﬁcult to have and the most needful.   To perceive one’s own weaknesses is one result of sincerity.


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


Sri Aurobindo:    If he [


Sri Aurobindo: ] is sincere, there is bound to be devotion.  Sincerity in Yoga means to respond to the Divine alone and if he has no devotion he cannot do it.    It is difﬁcult for the ordinary Christian to be of a piece, because the teachings of Christ are on quite another plane from the consciousness of the intellectual and vital man trained by the education and society of Europe — the latter, even as a minister or priest, has never been called upon to practise what he preached in entire earnest.


Sri Aurobindo: But it is difﬁcult for the human nature anywhere to think, feel and act from one centre of true faith, belief or vision. The average Hindu considers the spiritual life the highest, reveres the Sannyasi, is moved by the Bhakta; but if one of the family circle leaves the world for spiritual life, what tears, arguments, remonstrances, lamentations! It is almost worse than if he had died a natural death. It is not conscious mental insincerity — they will argue like Pandits and go to Shastra to prove you in the wrong; it is unconsciousness, a vital insincerity which they are not aware of and which uses the reasoning mind as an accomplice.  That is why we insist so much on sincerity in the Yoga — and that means to have all the being consciously turned towards the one Truth, the one Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: But that for human nature is one of the most difﬁcult of tasks, much more difﬁcult than a rigid asceticism or a fervent piety. Religion itself does not give this complete harmonised sincerity — it is only the psychic being and the one-souled spiritual aspiration that can give it.  In the major part of your being you are very much in earnest.  But of course there are always parts or rather parts of parts that are not equally ready to change. But that is not hypocrisy.


Sri Aurobindo: It is so with everybody, otherwise there would be no difﬁculty in the transformation.    Straightforwardness means simply to be honest with oneself and with the Divine and not to be crooked in one’s ways.  Self-justiﬁcation is unwillingness to recognise a mistake and an attempt to prove oneself right even against the censure of the Mother.  What you say is quite true.


Sri Aurobindo: A simple, straight and sincere call and aspiration from the heart is the one important thing and more essential and effective than capacities. Also to get the consciousness to turn inwards, not remain outward-going is of great importance — to arrive at the inner call, the inner experience, the inner Presence.  The help you ask will be with you. Let the aspiration grow and open the inner consciousness altogether.


Sri Aurobindo:   One has only to aspire sincerely and keep oneself as open as possible to the Mother’s Force. Then whatever difﬁculties come, they will be overcome — it may take some time, but the result is sure.


Sri Aurobindo: One has to suppose that [] force everywhere around and call it in — if one feels it, so much the better, but even otherwise if there is faith and power in the call, it can ﬂow in.   One must rely on the Divine and yet do some enabling sadhana — the Divine gives the fruits, not by the measure of the sadhana but by the measure of the soul and its aspiration. Also worrying does no good — “I shall be this, I shall be that, what shall I be?”  Say “I am ready to be not what I want, but what the Divine wants me to be” — all the rest should go on that base.


Sri Aurobindo:  I mean by the measure of the soul’s sincerity a yearning after the Divine and its aspiration towards the higher life.    But why allow to come in the way between you and the Divine, any idea, any incident; when you are in full aspiration and joy, let nothing count, nothing be of any importance except the Divine and your aspiration. If one wants the Divine quickly, absolutely, entirely, that must be the spirit of approach, absolute, all-engrossing, making that the one point with which nothing else must interfere.  What value have mental ideas about the Divine, ideas about what he should be, how he should act, how he should not act — they can only come in the way.


Sri Aurobindo: Only the Divine Himself matters.  When your consciousness embraces the Divine, then you can know what the Divine is, not before. Krishna is Krishna, one does not care what he did or did not do; only to see Him, meet Him, feel the Light, the Presence, the Love, the Ananda is what matters. So it is always for the spiritual aspiration — it is the law of the spiritual life.  Don’t waste time any longer in these ideas of the mind or in any starts of the vital — blow these clouds away.


Sri Aurobindo: Keep ﬁxed on the one thing indispensable.  There is no deep meaning [] — the meaning is plain.  It is the call of the being for higher things — for the Divine, for all that belongs to the higher or Divine Consciousness.    It [] is the call in the being for the Divine or for the higher things that belong to the Divine Consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: (To “aspire” always means to call for higher things.)     Aspiration is a turning upward of the inner being with a call, yearning, prayer for the Divine, for the Truth, for the Consciousness, Peace, Ananda, Knowledge, descent of Divine Force or whatever else is the aim of one’s endeavour.


Sri Aurobindo:   Aspiration is to call the forces. When the forces have answered, there is a natural state of quiet receptivity concentrated but spontaneous.


Sri Aurobindo: Aspiration is a call to the Divine, — will is the pressure of a conscious force on Nature.     Aspiration is a call in the being, it is not opening.  The aspiration should be for the full descent of the Truth and the victory over falsehood in the world.


Sri Aurobindo:   Aspire for the constant contact and the light. It is in the Light that the being will get organised in the Truth.   Aspire for your will to be one with the Divine will, concentrate in the heart and be plastic to whatever experience comes, neither forcing nor resisting any spiritual experience.


Sri Aurobindo:   The aspiration for the supramental would be premature. What you have to aspire for is for the psychic change and the spiritual change of the whole being — which is the necessary condition before one can even think of the supramental.


Sri Aurobindo: To want to be a superman is a mistake, it only swells the ego.  One can aspire for the Divine to bring about the supramental transformation, but that also should not be done till the being has become psychic and spiritualised by the descent of the Mother’s peace, force, light and purity.  There is no need of words in aspiration. It can be expressed or unexpressed in words.   The aspiration need not be in the form of thought — it can be a feeling within that remains even when the mind is attending to the work.


Sri Aurobindo: It depends on the stage which one has reached. Personal aspiration is necessary until there is the condition in which all comes automatically and only a certain knowledge and assent is necessary for the development.   Even if there is no rising up, the aspiration connects you with the higher consciousness and helps or prepares to bring down something from it.   It [] may not come exactly according to the aspiration, but the aspiration is not ineffective. It keeps the consciousness open, prevents an inert state of acquiescence in all that comes and exercises a sort of pull on the sources of the higher consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo:   Aspiration during the period of experience is not so necessary.  It is in the intervals that it should be there.


Sri Aurobindo:   Why do you write “If I get” [] — one can always aspire. It is your mistake to think that everything must come of itself and nothing is within your own power to do. This kind of belief in the necessity of passivity to all movements should be thrown aside. Will, aspiration, surrender are things that you must do yourself — although even in doing them you must call in the Divine Power to help your will, aspiration and surrender and make them effective.


Sri Aurobindo:   Why “getting” aspiration? Aspiration is an act of the will and one can always aspire.   Activity in aspiration, tapasya, rejection of the wrong forces, passivity to the true working, the working of the Mother’s force are the right things in sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo:   One has to aspire to the Divine and surrender and leave it to the Divine to do what is true and right with the Adhar once it is perfected.  Intense aspiration is always good, but let there also be calm and peace and joy in the mind and heart, and a conﬁdence that all will be done in its due time.    There can be an intense but quiet aspiration which does not disturb the harmony of the inner being.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes — that is the way. The intensity of the aspiration brings the intensity of the experience and by repeated intensity of the experience the change.   The impatience and restless disquietude come from the vital which brings that even into the aspiration.


Sri Aurobindo: The aspiration must be intense, calm and strong (that is the nature of the true vital also) and not restless and impatient, — then alone it can be stable.   It is the psychic that gives the true aspiration — if the vital is puriﬁed and subjected to the psychic, then the vital gives intensity — but if it is unpuriﬁed it brings in a rajasic intensity with impatience and reactions of depression and disappointment. As for the calm and equality needed, it must come down from above through the mind.


Sri Aurobindo: That [] is all right, that is the psychic aspiration, the psychic ﬁre. Where the vital comes in is in the impatience for result and dissatisfaction if the result is not immediate. That must cease.  One should be satisﬁed with what one gets and still aspire quietly, without struggle, for more — till all has come. No desire, no struggle — aspiration, faith, openness — and the grace.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is no doubt the mixture of desire in what you do, even in your endeavour of sadhana, that is the difﬁculty. The desire brings a movement of impatient effort and a reaction of disappointment and revolt when difﬁculty is felt and the immediate result is not there and other confusing and disturbing feelings.  Aspiration should be not a form of desire, but the feeling of an inner soul’s need, and a quiet settled will to turn towards the Divine and seek the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: It is certainly not easy to get rid of this mixture of desire entirely — not easy for anyone; but when one has the will to do it, this also can be effected by the help of the sustaining Force.     If there are good desires, bad desires will come also. There is a place for will and aspiration, not for desire.


Sri Aurobindo: If there is desire there will be attachment, demand, craving, loss of equanimity, sorrow at not getting, all that is unyogic.  Pulling comes usually from a desire to get things for oneself — in aspiration there is a self-giving for the higher consciousness to descend and take possession — the more intense the call, the greater the self-giving.     It is certainly a mistake to bring down the light by force — to pull it down.


Sri Aurobindo: The supramental cannot be taken by storm. When the time is ready it will open of itself — but ﬁrst there is a great deal to be done and that must be done patiently and without haste.  Naturally the more one-pointed the aspiration the swifter the progress. The difﬁculty comes when either the vital with its desires or the physical with its past habitual movements comes in — as they do with almost everyone. It is then that the dryness and difﬁculty of spontaneous aspiration come.


Sri Aurobindo: This dryness is a well-known obstacle in all sadhana. But one has to persist and not be discouraged. If one keeps the will ﬁxed even in these barren periods, they pass and after their passage a greater force of aspiration and experience becomes possible.    You are ﬁnding it still difﬁcult to bear the interval periods when all is quiet and nothing being done on the surface.


Sri Aurobindo: But such interval periods come to all and cannot be avoided. You must not cherish the suggestion that it is because of your want of aspiration or any other unﬁtness that it is so and, if you had the constant ardent aspiration, then there would be no such periods and there would be an uninterrupted stream of experiences. It is not so. Even if the aspiration were there, the interval periods would come. If even in them one can aspire, so much the better — but the main thing is to meet them with quietude and not become restless, depressed or despondent.


Sri Aurobindo: A constant ﬁre can be there only when a certain stage has been reached, that is when one is always inside consciously living in the psychic being, but for that all this preparation of the mind, vital, physical is necessary. For this ﬁre belongs to the psychic and one cannot command it always merely by the mind’s effort. The psychic has to be fully liberated and that is what the Force is working to make fully possible.    No doubt the true and strong aspiration is needed, but it is not a fact that the true thing is not there in you.


Sri Aurobindo: If it had not been, the Force could not have worked in you. But this true thing was seated in the psychic and in the heart and whenever these were active in the meditation it showed itself. But for the sake of completeness the working had to come down into the physical consciousness and establish the quietude and the openness there.  The physical consciousness is always in everybody in its own nature a little inert and in it a constant strong aspiration is not natural, it has to be created. But ﬁrst there must be the opening, a puriﬁcation, a ﬁxed quietude, otherwise the physical vital will turn the strong aspiration into over-eagerness and impatience or rather it will try to give it that turn.


Sri Aurobindo: Do not therefore be troubled if the state of the nature seems to you to be too neutral and quiet, not enough aspiration and movement in it. This is a passage necessary for the progress and the rest will come.  Those who come here have an aspiration and a possibility — something in their psychic being pushes and if they follow it, they will arrive; but that is not conversion. Conversion is a deﬁnite turning of the being away from lower things towards the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: Aspiration can lead hereafter to conversion; but aspiration is not conversion.    Conversion is a spontaneous movement of the consciousness, a turning of it away from external things towards the Divine. It comes usually as the result of a touch from within and above.  Self-consecration may help to open one to the touch or the touch may come of itself.


Sri Aurobindo: But conversion may also come as the culmination of a long process of aspiration and tapasya. There is no ﬁxed rule in these things.  If the psychic being comes to the front, then conversion becomes easy or may come instantaneously or the conversion may bring the psychic being to the front. Here again there is no rule.  It is no part of the sadhana to accept the uglinesses of the lower nature on the ground that they exist — if that is what is meant by realism.


Sri Aurobindo: Our object is not to accept or enjoy these things but to get rid of them and create a life of spiritual beauty and perfection. So long as we accept these things, that cannot be done. To observe that these things are there and reject them, refusing to allow them to touch you, is one thing; to accept and acquiesce in them is quite another.    Who is able to reject the lower nature fully?


Sri Aurobindo: All one can do is to aspire and reject the lower impulses and call in the Divine to do the rest.     There are no right positive vibrations of devious impulses — these are wrong vibrations of the mind or vital. The right vibrations I speak of are those that come from the psychic or from the spiritual above or take place in the mind or vital under the inﬂuence of the psychic or spiritual.


Sri Aurobindo: If one aspires sincerely and rejects what has to be rejected, as far as one can, then the psychic and spiritual inﬂuences will more and more work, bring more and more true discrimination, support, stimulate and create the right vibrations, detect, discourage and eliminate the wrong ones. That is the method the Mother and I advise to all.     Rejection is a principle element in this sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: But what I say is that one can reject best by bringing in the positive psychic and spiritual forces through the pursuit of positive things like brahmacharya and the rest.     I do not know what you mean by dissolution []. The principle of the Yoga is rejection — throwing out of the being.


Sri Aurobindo: It is true that rejected from the mind it often goes to the vital, rejected by the vital, to the physical, rejected by the physical to the subconscient. Rejected from the subconscient also, it can still linger in the environmental consciousness — but there it has no longer any possession of the being and can be thrown away altogether.     That is a known fact that everything comes from outside, from universal Nature.


Sri Aurobindo: But the individual is not bound to accept everything that comes; he can accept and he can reject. The rejection may not succeed at once, if there is a strong habit of past acceptance; but if it is steadily persisted in, the rejection will succeed in the end.  What you should do, is always to reject the lower experiences and concentrate on a ﬁxed and quiet aspiration towards the one thing needed, the Light, the Calm, the Peace, the Devotion that you felt for two or three days. It is because you get interested in the lower vital experiences and in observing and thinking about them that they take hold, and then comes the absence of the Contact and the confusion. You have surely had enough of this kind of experience already and should make up your mind to steadily reject it when it comes.


Sri Aurobindo:  The effort should be to reject the restlessness and its suggestions altogether. These things come to everybody in the early stages of the sadhana and are sometimes very persistent, even later on they continue — but the sadhak rejects them and regards them as no part of his true consciousness or worthy to determine his action and life, but as untrue suggestions which he has to overcome. If that is always done, they begin after a time to lose their force of invasion and become superﬁcial things; ﬁnally they disappear.    The peace and the equality are there above you, you have to call them down into the mind and the vital and the body.


Sri Aurobindo: And whenever something disturbs you have to reject the thing that disturbs and the disturbance.     What do you mean by active means []? The power to refuse, to reject is always there in the being and to go on rejecting till the rejection is effective.


Sri Aurobindo: Nothing can obstruct a quiet aspiration except one’s own acquiescence in the inertia.   The practice of rejection prevails in the end; but with personal effort only, it may take a long time. If you can feel the Divine Power working in you, then it should become easier.  There should be nothing inert or tamasic in the self-giving to the guidance and it should not be made by any part of the vital into a plea for not rejecting the suggestions of lower impulse and desire.  The Divine gives itself to those who give themselves without reserve and in all their parts to the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: For them the calm, the light, the power, the bliss, the freedom, the wideness, the heights of knowledge, the seas of Ananda.   Surrender is giving oneself to the Divine — to give everything one is or has to the Divine and regard nothing as one’s own, to obey only the Divine will and no other, to live for the Divine and not for the ego.    Self-surrender is to give up yourself and all that is yours, mind and everything else to the Divine, so that the Divine Force may take everything and change it.