Sri Aurobindo:   I am glad to know the disturbance was expelled last night. Now the receptivity in the body consciousness has to be kept so that it may not at all return or, if it tries, may immediately be expelled.  You must always try to keep the quietude, not allow depressing or disturbing thoughts or feelings to enter you or take hold of your mind or your speech — there is no true reason after one has gained the inner quietness and wideness why that should be allowed to lapse and these things enter. And if the mind keeps its quietude and receptivity to higher forces only, it can then easily pass on that quietude and receptivity to the body consciousness and even to the material cells of the body.


Sri Aurobindo:  As the body consciousness becomes more open to the Force (it is always the most difﬁcult and the last to open up entirely), this frequent stress of illness will diminish and disappear.     As for the question about the illness, perfection in the physical plane is indeed part of the ideal of the Yoga, but it is the last item and, so long as the fundamental change has not been made in the material consciousness to which the body belongs, one may have a certain perfection on other planes without having immunity in the body.


Sri Aurobindo: Your theory of illness is rather a perilous creed — for illness is a thing to be eliminated, not accepted or enjoyed. There something in the being that enjoys illness, it is possible even to turn the pains of illness like any other pain into a form of pleasure; for pain and pleasure are both of them degradations of an original Ananda and can be reduced into the terms of each other or else sublimated into their original principle of Ananda. It is true also that one must be able to bear illness with calm, equanimity, endurance, even recognition of it, since it has come, as something that had to be passed through in the course of experience. But to accept and enjoy it means to help it to last and that will not do; for illness is a deformation of the physical nature just as lust, anger, jealousy etc. are deformations of the vital nature and error and prejudice and indulgence of falsehood are deformations of the mental nature. All these things have to be eliminated and rejection is the ﬁrst condition of their disappearance while acceptance has a contrary effect altogether.


Sri Aurobindo:   If one has faith and is open to the Force, illnesses can of course be removed in that way. What I objected to was the acceptance of illness and taking pleasure in it; that is admissible in Yogas which do not aim at transformation of the physical consciousness, but not here.   By will [] I meant this that there is something in the body that accepts the illness and has certain reactions that make this acceptance effective — so there must always be a contrary will in the conscious parts of the being to get rid of this most physical acceptance.


Sri Aurobindo:   All that is quite wrong. Illness is a wrong movement of the body and is no more to be cherished than a wrong movement of the mind or vital. Pain and illness have to be borne with calm, detachment and equanimity, but not cherished — the sooner one gets rid of them the better.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is always wrong to wish for illness. Fever is not a purifying action; it is the sign of an attack on the body and a ﬁght and resistance to the attack. Illness in the body is like impurity in the vital, a thing undesirable and to be rejected. It may happen that in throwing out the illness (the attacking force) one throws out also something within, some impurity which helped it to come, but that is the result of a Force working within and not of the illness.


Sri Aurobindo: It is quite possible that an illness or attack can be transferred in this way from one to another and indeed it very commonly happens; but it does not follow that it happened in this instance.    It was the mind that did not want it []; this vital when left to itself often invites illness, it ﬁnds it dramatic — thinks it makes it interesting to others, likes to indulge the tamas, etc. etc.   That [] also is tamas. If you threw off the strain of the idea of weakness, the strength would come back.


Sri Aurobindo: But there is always something in the vital physical which is pleased with becoming more weak and ill so that it can feel and lament its tragic case.    If this [] is his only illness, there is absolutely no reason why it should not be cured, if he keeps proper habits and diet and above all the right attitude. I expect that the reason why the illness has such a hold and strong effect on him, is in the imagination and the nerves, more than anything else. There is something there that expects the illness, accepts it when it comes and gives it free play.


Sri Aurobindo: He must learn to keep calm and quiet in the mind and vital being, to refuse to regard the illness and the tendency to it in the body as something normal to it, regarding it rather as something imposed from outside, and he must believe ﬁrmly that it must and will go. If he can keep this attitude and open to the true force, the mind and nervous being once strengthened, the illness and weakness will disappear.  It is not anything physical but a vital depression (in some part of the vital, not the whole) that prevents the body from recovering its elasticity. There was some part of the vital that was resisting a radical change and even, unknown to your mind, trying to go on as it was under cover of the change in the rest of your being.  This has now, owing to this last affair, received a blow and got depressed and, when the vital is depressed like that, it affects the body.


Sri Aurobindo: You say rightly that it is part of a change or turn that is taking place. But these effects of inertia and weakness need not continue; as soon as this vital part acquiesces gladly in the turn or change, the elasticity and energy will return.    It is good that you reject the sense of illness and allow no depression. Let there be no apprehension in the physical consciousness; with faith make it open to the Force.


Sri Aurobindo:   The seeds of these old illnesses remain in the subconscient after they are cured. So when the subconscient is being worked, an adverse push bringing a general depression may make them sprout up; but they can be counteracted by the Force if you are vigilant and persistent in your sadhana and not remain to trouble.  If you have fear or apprehension of illness in your vital, that is the ﬁrst thing to be thrown away, as it helps the illnesses to come in.   People taking the utmost precautions catch an illness, while often those who take no precautions escape.


Sri Aurobindo: One has to take reasonable care if there is some immediate and deﬁnite cause of apprehension, but that is all.     What is the difﬁculty [ ]? You are like the scientists who say or used to say that there is no such thing as mind or thought independent of the physical brain.


Sri Aurobindo: Mind and thought are only names for brain quiverings. Or that there is no such thing as vital Force because all the movements of life depend upon chemicals, glands and what not. These things and the germs also are only a minor physical instrumentation for something supraphysical.  They [] ﬁrst weaken or break through the nervous envelope, the aura. If that is strong and whole, a thousand million germs will not be able to do anything to you.


Sri Aurobindo: The envelope pierced, they attack the subconscient mind in the body, sometimes also the vital mind or mind proper — prepare the illness by fear or thought of illness. The doctors themselves said that in inﬂuenza or cholera in the Far East 90 per cent got ill through fear. Nothing to take away the resistance like fear.  But still the subconscient is the main thing.  If the contrary Force is strong in the body, one can move in the midst of plague and cholera and never get contaminated.


Sri Aurobindo: Plague too, rats dying all around, people passing into Hades. I have seen that myself in Baroda.    I have gone through the report of the Doctor and it seems to be clear from it — he says so himself — that there is nothing serious the matter and no danger. If there is some dilation of the heart, it was so slight that it was difﬁcult to detect it and all else in it is healthy and normal.


Sri Aurobindo: Whatever is wrong in the system can easily be set right — but the ﬁrst thing necessary is that you should dismiss this fear which hampers the action of the Force and opposes the cure. It is also necessary that you should now abstain ﬁnally not only from alcohol and wine, but from sex and smoking. Healthy conditions of living are necessary to help the Force to undo what has been done in the past and restore the full strength and normality of the body.   Fix in yourself the calm and courage of the sadhak.


Sri Aurobindo: Fear nothing, open yourself, reject the weaknesses that remain — then the progress that had begun here will complete itself and the body also become an abiding place of the true consciousness and force.  The human body has always been in the habit of answering to whatever forces chose to lay hands on it and illness is the price it pays for its inertia and ignorance. It has to learn to answer to the one Force alone, but that is not easy for it to learn.   It is a weakness and inertia in the physical nature which makes it undergo and acquiesce in the attacks of illness, instead of refusing and repelling them. That is the character of the material physical in all.


Sri Aurobindo: It can only be remedied by the Force and Consciousness from above occupying the whole physical being.     There seem to be two elements in the physical difﬁculty that is weighing on you. The ﬁrst is the liver trouble which weakens and must weaken still more if it leads you to diminish your food below what the body needs for maintaining sufﬁcient strength to react — also probably the nervous tendency to insomnia with its consequences.


Sri Aurobindo: The second is an inertia of the lower vital and physical consciousness which prevents it from throwing off the lassitude, from reacting against the attacks and from opening steadily to the Force which would remove these things. All that is due to the breakdown of the poise that you had for so long, the vital trouble that caused it and the reaction of the lower vital to the insistence on throwing out the causes of the trouble. This reaction seems to have been a listlessness at losing the things to which it was still holding — such a reaction always brings the inertia of the physical consciousness, while the right reaction in the lower vital brings on the contrary a sense of peace, release, quietude which deﬁnitely opens the lowest physical parts to the higher consciousness and force. If you can get over this and get back the old poise, then all these things can be made to disappear.   was of course right from the medical point of view in recommending exercise — both for the liver and as a tonic to the body it is helpful.


Sri Aurobindo: So some walking may be advisable. Care should be taken of the body certainly, the care that is needed for its good condition, rest, sleep, proper food, sufﬁcient exercise; what is not good is too much preoccupation with it, anxiety, despondency in illness etc., for these things only favour the prolongation of ill-health or weakness. For such things as the liver attacks treatment can always be taken when necessary.  But it is always the right inner poise, quietude inward and outward, faith, the opening of the body consciousness to the Mother and her Force that are the true means of recovery — other things can only be minor aids and devices.  What has caused all the trouble for is his insistence on his ego, its ideas, claims, desires, intentions and his aggressiveness in expressing them so that he quarrels with everybody.


Sri Aurobindo: This quarrelsomeness opens him to all sorts of forces of the vital plane and their attacks. It is also the cause of the damage done to the liver and organs of digestion — for anger and quarrelsomeness always tend to spoil the liver and through it the stomach and intestines.  As his quarrelsomeness is colossal, so also is the damage done to liver and digestion extreme. He must get rid of his egoism, quarrelsomeness and bad feelings towards others, if he wants to recover his health and his sadhana.  I do not know why working with must make good health impossible, unless you mean that there is too much work imposed on you, — but then the work can be lessened.


Sri Aurobindo: In fact a complete rest and relief from the work can be arranged at present and for the future we can see afterwards. If you mean that working according to somebody else’s ideas makes or keeps you ill, I do not see why it should be so. 999 people out of every 1000 do that — only a few are able to carry out their own ideas and even they have to a large extent to suit their ideas to those of other people in the actual execution of their work. If you mean that to have to work under discipline, doing things in what you consider not the best way, makes you nervous, discouraged and ill, that is a pity. It would be so much better if you could leave the responsibility of the way of doing things to the Mother and do cheerfully what you have to do.


Sri Aurobindo: However, if you cannot bring yourself to that attitude, some other way will have to be found hereafter. But at the present, if that is the case, to take rest as a relief would seem the only way.     It is no use stopping work because of rheumatism (unless it is of the kind that disables one from working), — it only makes things worse.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes. If you don’t sleep enough the physical system becomes more open to these attacks []. If it is kept in good condition, then usually it repels them automatically and one does not notice even that there has been an attack.


Sri Aurobindo:   I said that when the body is in good condition it automatically repels any attack of illness which is in the air without the mind even having to notice that there is an attack. If the attack is automatically repelled what is the need of dealing with it?  Pain is caused because the physical consciousness in the Ignorance is too limited to bear the touches that come upon it. Otherwise, to cosmic consciousness in its state of complete knowledge and complete experience, all touches come as Ananda.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes — all pain can become Ananda — pain is only the perversion of what in the original Consciousness would be Ananda.     Pain can be turned into Ananda, but I don’t think that there is a special stage for that.


Sri Aurobindo:   Peace in the cells ﬁrst, then consolidated force [ ]. Pain and discomfort come from a physical consciousness not forceful enough to determine its own reaction to things.   The healing of the nervous pain in the stomach does not depend on more or less eating — often these pains come when one does not eat enough, not only when one eats too much — so it is not by eating less you can cure it.


Sri Aurobindo: These pains are a part of the pressure of the old nature on the body; that is why we consider it can only be healed by the Peace and Power bringing a new movement of the physical nature there. In the stage of the struggle between the two natures, the peace does not always remain, but it will remain longer and longer as you get the habit of opening constantly to it.   The pains in the body come from the same source as the trouble in the vital nature; both are attacks from the same outside Force that wants to mislead or, when it cannot mislead, to trouble and disturb you. When once you can get rid of the vital invasion and prevent its recurrence, it will be easier to get rid too of the physical trouble whose origin is nervous (vital-physical); although its symptoms seem to be those of a physical illness, it is really an attack on the nervous part and a weakening of it for the time that gives you these pains.  Remain always quiet and persist in opening yourself.


Sri Aurobindo: The Force that releases you from the vital trouble, can also remove the disturbance in the nervous part and the physical body.     The physical pain is obviously due to attacks — any physical cause being only a means for the action of the attack. I have often seen that when the mind and consciousness have rejected the attacks, the contrary forces fall on some weak point in the body hoping that by pain or illness they will depress the consciousness and so make it less strong to resist and reject them.


Sri Aurobindo: We must see whether this recurrence of the pain cannot be quietly pushed out altogether.    It is a great gain if you feel no depression when the attack on the body comes.  The pain itself is, from your description, evidently nervous  and, if you develop openness in the more physical layers of the being, then the action of the Force can always remove it or you will yourself be able to use the Force to push it away.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a matter of getting the habit of opening in the body consciousness.  The consciousness or unconsciousness, as you have seen in the matter of the French studies, is dependent on the condition.  It is not that you are unconscious, but that the physical being is prone to the tamasic condition (the condition of inertia) and then it becomes either inactive or obscure, stupid and unconscious; when the tamas goes away the condition becomes bright and what was difﬁcult before becomes natural and easy. The whole thing is to get the physical out of its habit of falling back into tamas or inertia, and that can be done by opening and accustoming it to the action of the Force. When the action of the Force becomes constant, then there will be no more tamas.


Sri Aurobindo:   You had opened your consciousness, so the pain disappeared. If it came back during sleep, it must have been because you lost touch and fell back into the ordinary consciousness. That often happens.


Sri Aurobindo:   Pains of that kind must be due to some resistance or obstruction to the force on the body — it is not the pressure that creates them.     All these pains are a sign that you have put too great and sudden a strain on your physical system.


Sri Aurobindo: The mind and vital were ready, but the body could not follow. You will have to diminish your work until you recover from the pains and fatigue. You may remember that I suggested to you to do only part of the sweeping work; it was for this reason that I was not sure that the physical system was ready. Now you should follow that — do only part of the work and ask to arrange for the rest. See whether with this diminution and taking rest during the spare time the pain and the fatigue of the body disappear.


Sri Aurobindo: If it does, then we can see what is best to do.    That is what they [] do at ﬁrst; when one drives them out of one place, they go to another. It is better than their ﬁxing in any place.  The body [], naturally — but the body transmits it to the vital and mental.


Sri Aurobindo: With the ordinary consciousness the vital gets disturbed and afﬂicted and its forces diminished, the mind identiﬁes and is upset. The mind has to remain unmoved, the vital unaffected, and the body has to learn to take it with equality so that the higher Force may work.  The Self is never affected by any kind of pain. The psychic takes it quietly and offers it to the Divine for what is necessary to be done.   You must arrive at a complete separation of your consciousness from these feelings of the body and its acceptance of illness and from that separated consciousness act upon the body.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only so that these things can be got rid of or at least neutralised.    If it [] is separate, it should not suffer from them []. Even for the pains, the body may suffer but the consciousness should not feel itself suffering or overpowered.


Sri Aurobindo:   I suppose there are only two ways [ ]: (1) to think of something else if you can manage it, (2) to be able to detach yourself from the body consciousness, so that the body alone feels the pain, the mind and the vital are not affected.     It is a detachment of even the physical mind from the pain that makes one able to go on as if nothing were there, but this detachment of the physical mind is not easy to acquire.


Sri Aurobindo:  It is by an attack on your physical consciousness that the old forces are bringing back the wrong condition. As you got the power before to stand back from the vital movement and localise it, while the rest of your consciousness observed and was not overpowered, so you must learn to stand back from the physical pain or uneasiness and localise it. If you can do that and do it completely, the pain or uneasiness itself will be more easily and quietly removed and you will not be overpowered like this with the sense of weakness. You can see that the Force has the power to take away the pains; but you allow yourself to be nervously overcome and therefore it is difﬁcult for it to act with a continuous result. What was done at that time in the vital, must be done in the physical also.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the only way to get free from the attacks.    The main difﬁculty seems to be that you are too subject to an excitement of the nerves — it is only by bringing quietude and calm into the whole being that a steady progress in the sadhana can be assured.  The ﬁrst thing to be done in order to recover is to stop yielding to the attack of the nerves — the more you yield and identify yourself with these ideas and feelings, the more they increase. You have to draw back and ﬁnd back something in you that is not affected by pains and depressions, then from there you can get rid of the pains and depressions.


Sri Aurobindo: To heal [] by the true force is obviously the best — provided the body is amenable. It has a consciousness of its own which must be fully enlightened before it gives a full response.    Yes, if the faith and opening are there, medicines are not indispensable.


Sri Aurobindo:    To separate yourself from the thing and call in the Mother’s force to cure it [] — or else to use your own will force with faith in the power to heal, having the support of the Mother’s force behind you. If you cannot use either of these methods then you must rely on the action of the medicine.


Sri Aurobindo:  Yogic force is all right when one is in a Yogic condition and when it acts. But when it does not, medicine is handy.   All ill-health is due to some inertia or weakness or to some resistance or wrong movement there [], only it has sometimes a more physical and sometimes a more psychological character. Medicines can counteract the physical results.


Sri Aurobindo: Medicines are a that have to be used when something in the consciousness does not respond or responds superﬁcially to the Force. Very often it is some part of the material consciousness that is unreceptive — at other times it is the subconscient which stands in the way even when the whole waking mind, life, physical consent to the liberating inﬂuence. If the subconscient also answers, then even a slight touch of the Force can not only cure the particular illness but make that form or kind of illness practically impossible hereafter.


Sri Aurobindo: As for the illness itself, we understood from what you wrote that it was only a cold and not a serious illness. In such a case one can take medicines from the Dispensary to hasten the cure or one relies on the Force and opens oneself to the Mother, rejecting the suggestions of illness, putting oneself on the side of the helping forces. You had sufﬁcient experience of sadhana to know that and we did not think it necessary to write what we supposed to be in your knowledge.   Try to keep yourself open to our Force in the body, that is the main thing. If the nerves (physical) are quieted, the illness itself will be less intense in its symptoms and can be more easily got over.


Sri Aurobindo:   As for curing you by the Force, the main obstacle is your own vital movements. All this egoistic insistence on your own ideas, claims, preferences — assertion of your own righteousness as against the wickedness of others, complaints, quarrels, disputes, rancours against those around you and the reactions they cause — have had this effect on your liver and stomach and nerves. If you give up all that and live quietly and at peace with others, thinking less of yourself and others and more of the Divine, it would make things much easier and help to restore your health.


Sri Aurobindo: Quietness of the mind in facing your illness is also necessary — agitation stops the action of the Force.     Certainly, one can act from within on an illness and cure it.  Only it is not always easy as there is much resistance in Matter, a resistance of inertia.


Sri Aurobindo: An untiring persistence is necessary; at ﬁrst one may fail altogether or the symptoms increase, but gradually the control of the body or of a particular illness becomes stronger. Again, to cure an occasional attack of illness by inner means is comparatively easy, to make the body immune from it in future is more difﬁcult. A chronic malady is harder to deal with, more reluctant to disappear entirely than an occasional disturbance of the body. So long as the control of the body is imperfect, there are all these and other imperfections and difﬁculties in the use of the inner force.  If you can succeed by the inner action in preventing increase, even that is something; you have then by to strengthen the power till it becomes able to cure.


Sri Aurobindo: Note that so long as the power is not entirely there, some aid of physical means need not be altogether rejected.    Illness marks some imperfection or weakness or else opening to adverse touches in the physical nature and is often connected also with some obscurity or disharmony in the lower vital or the physical mind or elsewhere.  It is very good if one can get rid of illness entirely by faith and Yoga-power or the inﬂux of the Divine Force. But very often this is not altogether possible, because the whole nature is not open or able to respond to the Force.


Sri Aurobindo: The mind may have faith and respond, but the lower vital and the body may not follow.  Or if the mind and vital are ready, the body may not respond, or may respond only partially, because it has the habit of replying to the forces which produce a particular illness and habit is a very obstinate force in the material part of the nature. In such cases the use of the physical means can be resorted to, — not as the main means, but as a help or material support to the action of the Force. Not strong and violent remedies, but those that are beneﬁcial without disturbing the body.  If the whole being is open to the force, then only outward means have not to be taken or used very little.


Sri Aurobindo: But till then Doctors and their ways of treating things cannot be dispensed with altogether.    I have got’s report. I gather from it that there is general nervous weakness. I shall write to ask him if this is correct and what treatment he proposes to give.


Sri Aurobindo: As for medical treatment it is sometimes a necessity. If one can cure by the Force as you have often done, it is the best — but if for some reason the body is not able to respond to the Force (e.g. owing to doubt, lassitude or discouragement or for inability to react against the disease), then the aid of medical treatment becomes necessary. It is not that the Force ceases to act and leaves all to the medicines, — it will continue to act through the consciousness but take the support of the treatment so as to act directly on the resistance in the body, which responds more readily to physical means in its ordinary consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: You refuse to speak to the Doctor and on the other hand your body is not yet able to receive the Forces in such a way as to cure it. When the body is not able to receive the Forces, it is then that we send the Doctor and work through him — but here your mind comes in and refuses. So both means are stopped.    Where the illness becomes pronounced and chronic in the body, it is necessary often to call in the aid of physical treatment and that is then used as a support of the Force.


Sri Aurobindo: in his treatment does not rely on medicines alone, but uses them as an instrumentation for the Mother’s force.     You are very much behind the times. Do you not know that even many doctors now admit and write it publicly that medicines are an element but only one and that the psychological element counts as much and even more?


Sri Aurobindo: I have heard that from doctors often and read it over reputable medical signatures. And among the psychological elements, they say, one of the most important is the doctor’s optimism and self-conﬁdence, (his faith, what? it is only another word for the same thing) and the conﬁdence, hope, helpful mental atmosphere he can inspire in or around his patient. I have seen it stated categorically that a doctor who can do that is far more successful than one who knows Medicine better but cannot.


Sri Aurobindo: Miracles can be done, but there is no reason why they should be all instantaneous, whether from Gods or doctors.  Of course injections are all the fashion; for everything it is “inject, inject and again inject”. Medicine has gone through three stages in modern times — ﬁrst (at the beginning in Moli`ere’s days) it was “bleed and douche”, then “drug and diet”, now it is “serum and injection”. Praise the Lord! not for the illnesses, but for the doctors.


Sri Aurobindo: However each of these formulas has a part truth behind it — with its advantages and disadvantages. As all religions and philosophies point to the Supreme but each in a different direction, so all medical fashions are ways to health — though they don’t always reach it.    Medicine is not exactly science. It is theory + experimental fumbling + luck.


Sri Aurobindo:   The theory [] is imposing, but when it comes to application, there is too much fumbling and guesswork for it to rank as an exact science. There are many scientists (and others) who grunt when they hear medicine called a science.  Anatomy and physiology, of course, are sciences.


Sri Aurobindo:   There are plenty of allopathic doctors who consider homeopathy, Nature-Cure, Ayurveda and everything else that is not orthodox “medical science” to be quackery. Why should not homeopaths etc. return the compliment?


Sri Aurobindo: I have put down a few comments to throw cold water on all this blazing hot allopathism. But all these furious disputes seem to me now of little use. I have seen the working of both systems [] and of others and I cannot believe in the sole truth of any. The ones damnable in the orthodox view, entirely contradicting it, have their own truth and succeed — also both the orthodox and heterodox fail. A theory is only a constructed idea-script which represents an imperfect human observation of a line of processes that Nature follows or can follow; another theory is a different idea-script of other processes that also she follows or can follow.


Sri Aurobindo: Allopathy, homeopathy, naturopathy, osteopathy, Kaviraji, hakimi have all caught hold of Nature and subjected her to certain processes; each has its successes and failures. Let each do its own work in its own way.  I do not see any need for ﬁghts and recriminations. For me all are only outward means and what really works are unseen forces behind; as they act, the outer means succeed or fail — if one can make the process a right channel for the right force, then the process gets its full utility — that is all.


Sri Aurobindo: Tumour, syphilis etc. are specialities, but what I have found in my psycho-physical experience is that most disorders of the body are connected, though they go by families, — but there is also connection between the families. If one can strike at their psycho-physical root, one can cure even without knowing the pathological whole of the matter and working through the symptoms is a possibility. Some medicines invented by demimystics have the power. What I am now considering is whether homeopathy has any psycho-physical basis. Was the founder a demi-mystic?


Sri Aurobindo: I don’t understand otherwise certain peculiarities of the way’s medicines act.    Of course [ ]. He learned homeopathic medicine in America and his ideas of homeopathy are the American ideas. But how does his knowledge prevent intuition?


Sri Aurobindo: Even an allopathic doctor has often to intuit what medicine he should give or what mixture — and it is those who intuit best that succeed best. All is not done by sole rule of book or sole rule of thumb even in orthodox Science.   wrote two or three days ago that you were not regular in taking his medicine and in that case he could not be responsible (if the treatment was not strictly followed to the end) if the cure was imperfect or if afterwards there was a relapse which might be irremediable. Dr. told the Mother that he was amazed at the improvement in your case. He had not believed such a thing was possible, but he had seen with his own eyes and now knew that it was.


Sri Aurobindo: It would be a pity if such a result were not carried out to full success because of carelessness in following the treatment. I would recommend you to give it a full chance.    I did not mean that it [] cannot be done without medicines. But if it is to be done with the aid of medicines, then the right medicine is helpful, the wrong one obviously brings in a danger.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is not enough for a medicine to be a speciﬁc [ ]. Certain drugs have other effects or possible effects which can be ignored by the physician who only wants to cure his case, but cannot be in a whole-view of the system and its reactions. The unfavourable reactions of quinine are admitted by medical opinion itself and doctors in Europe have been long searching for a substitute for quinine.


Sri Aurobindo:  There are some remedies which cure the disease temporarily but are bad for the system like quinine — others which suit some people but harm others, others which have a good effect one way, but a bad one in another way. That is why Mother does not like them to be used indiscriminately. Some she disapproves of altogether, e.g. quinine. She also disapproves of the excessive use of purgatives.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is hardly possible to give a list of drugs [ ], but the general rule is that very strong or violent medicines should be avoided as much as possible — for Yoga increases the sensitivity of the vital and physical reactions and drugs tend to produce stronger or other effects than with ordinary persons.   The morphia stuns locally or otherwise the consciousness and its reaction to the subconscient pressure and so suspends the pain or deadens it. Even that it does not always do — took ﬁve morphine injections in succession without even diminishing his liver inﬂammation pains.


Sri Aurobindo: What became of the power of the drug over the subconscient in that case? The resistance was too strong just as the resistance of’s subconscient to the Force.   Injection should be taken only if indispensable. Medical treatment can be resorted to if the illness is or has become of a chronic kind.  I do not know why the doctors speak of cancer as inevitable.


Sri Aurobindo: There are so many people who carry gall-stones in the bladder for so many years without any development of cancer. It is evident that it is a dangerous illness, not easily curable — but we cannot say positively either that she will not survive. There is no such thing as an incurable illness in reality — for what the doctors call such is only an illness for which they have not yet been able to discover a physical remedy. has one force on her side, her faith and her will to survive for the sadhana; on the other side is a kind of destiny of the body which is strong but not absolutely insurmountable. Her faith must be left intact — and we must send force to help her.


Sri Aurobindo: That is all that we can say at present. If she can by her faith draw down and open to such a force as will counteract the adverse physical forces in her body, then she will survive.    Of course it [] can [], but on condition of faith or openness or both. Even a mental suggestion can cure cancer — with luck, of course, as is shown by the case of the woman operated on unsuccessfully for cancer, but the doctors lied and told her it had succeeded.


Sri Aurobindo: Result, cancer symptoms all ceased and she died many years afterwards of another illness altogether.  T.B. is the result of a strong psychic-vital depression. Sex cannot directly cause T.B. though it may be a factor in bringing about a fall of the vital forces and a withdrawal of the psychic supporting forces leading to T.B. The lack of vitality which easily comes as a result of modern civilisation is therefore a very strong contributing cause. Moderns have not the solid nervous system and the natural (as opposed to the artiﬁcial and morbid) zest of life that their ancestors had.


Sri Aurobindo: But I don’t know about the soldiers — the hideous trench war with all its ghastly circumstances and surroundings was, I imagine, far more difﬁcult to bear than the open air marching and ﬁghting of the Napoleonic times.  Fever is of course more often than not a struggle of the body to ﬁght out impurities that have got in, but sometimes the remedy is as bad if not worse than the disease. It is the same with the mind difﬁculties — an illness sometimes results in a throwing out of some impurities but it can also do more harm than good.  The ﬁrst thing to do is to keep throughout a perfect equanimity and not to allow thoughts of disturbed anxiety or depression to enter you. It is quite natural after this severe attack of inﬂuenza that there should be weakness and some ﬂuctuations in the progress to recovery.


Sri Aurobindo: What you have to do is to remain calm and conﬁdent and not worry or be restless — be perfectly quiet and prepared to rest as long as rest is needed. There is nothing to be anxious about; rest, and the health and strength will come.  What you describe [ ] happens very usually during a cold in the head, as ordinarily one depends upon the brain cells for the transmission of the mental thought. When the mind is not so dependent on the brain cells, then their obscuration by the cold does not interfere with clear seeing and thinking and one is not thrown back in the mechanical mind.  Finally about your eyes.


Sri Aurobindo: The wearing of glasses does inevitably conﬁrm any weakness in the eyes, so we would not recommend you to resort to them for a strain which can surely be remedied in other ways.    It is better to take the sun-treatment (for the eyes) if you give up your spectacles. It is not a treatment in the ordinary sense, as there are no medicines, but a use of certain natural forces and physical observations to correct the impaired mechanism of the eye.   You will have to be careful about your eyes.


Sri Aurobindo: Reading by night (too much) is inadvisable. There are two suggestions of the suntreatment man which I have found to be not without foundation.  First, one should blink freely in looking at things or reading and not ﬁx the eyes or stare. Second, palming gives a very useful rest — palming means keeping the hands crossed over the closed eyes (without pressing on the eyes) so as to shut out all light.  We cannot take the responsibility of advising against operation.


Sri Aurobindo: Glaucoma is supposed to bring inevitable blindness — there is no known successful medical treatment — the operation is considered the only chance of avoiding the natural result of the illness.  So they must be left free to undergo it if there is no way out.  I don’t think stammering has anything to do with insufﬁcient lung-power nor is it usually caused by malformation of the vocal organ — it is commonly a nervous (physico-nervous) impediment and is perfectly curable. I can’t say that I know of any especial device for it — people have used various kinds of devices to get over it, but behind them all will-power and a patient discipline of the utterance are indispensable.  The attack you had on the body must, from the description, have been a crisis of the circulation due to the period you are passing through, the turning of the age when the menstruation is preparing to cease but has not yet ceased altogether.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a very uncomfortable period because of the irregularities and these things can happen — they cease when this period of life is over. Some pass through it very easily with only the irregularities of the ﬂow and an occasional trouble of this kind; others have more difﬁculty. If there is then no sexual movement in the nature or none of any intensity, then things go more smoothly.  Constipation is not determined by food; it is due to an inertia in the physical — get off the inertia and the constipation goes.  Sciatica is something more than nervous — it affects the movement of the muscles through the nerves.


Sri Aurobindo: It can be got rid of at once, however, if you can manage to direct the Force on it.     There is no outer means. Sciatica is a thing which yields only to inner concentrated force or else it goes away of itself and comes of itself.


Sri Aurobindo: Outer means at best can only be palliatives.     If you cannot get rid of the sciatica by inner means, the medical remedy (not for curing it, but for keeping free as long as possible) is not to fatigue yourself. It comes for periods which may last for weeks, then suddenly goes.


Sri Aurobindo: If you remain quiet physically and are not too active, it may not come for a long time. But that of course means an inactive life, physically incapable. It is what I meant by eternising the sciatica — and the inertia also.


Sri Aurobindo: The inertia is there because there was always in your outer being a great force of tamas and it is this that is being used by the resistance. There was also a deﬁciency of steady will-power in the outer mind which makes it more difﬁcult for the Force to come down than for the Knowledge. When you are entirely open the Force can act on the sciatica and it lessens or disappears, but with the consciousness blocked by the inertia these difﬁculties come in the way.


Sri Aurobindo: If you can cure by withdrawing [] so much the better. The sciatica has often tried to fall on the Mother and on myself — we have always found that it cannot resist the Force quietly and persistently applied. Other illnesses can resist, but sciatica being entirely tamasic cannot. The application of Force does not yet, probably, come natural to you, so it brings a sense of struggle not of quiet domination, hence the restlessness etc.  It is rather difﬁcult to grow taller when once the period of growth is over. It may come in the period of material transformation at the end of the Yoga — but that is far off and I don’t think there are any means by which it can be done otherwise.


Sri Aurobindo: Dry heat is supposed to be less bad for the general health than damp heat. There is however usually less need of food and therefore less appetite. From the point of view of Yoga if one can keep a certain quiet in the material body, “peace in the cells”, the heat is easier to bear.  The change of the subconscient is most important for our Yoga — for without it there can only be an incomplete personal experience without the change we seek for being established in the very roots of the being here and consequently in the earthconsciousness.


Sri Aurobindo:  No man is perfect; the vital is there and the ego is there to prevent it. It is only when there is the total transformation of the external and the internal being down to the very subconscient, that perfection is possible. Till then imperfection will remain as our common heritage.    So long as there is not the Supramental change down to the subconscient complete and ﬁnal the lower nature has always a hold on some part of the being.


Sri Aurobindo:   The Yoga cannot be done in a minute. Some essential changes are made rapidly, but even these have to be worked out and conﬁrmed in the detail of action. What you speak of [ ], only the Supramental could do if it acted directly or some force fully supported by the Supramental, but that occurs rarely.  In our Yoga we mean by the subconscient that quite submerged part of our being in which there is no wakingly conscious and coherent thought, will or feeling or organised reaction, but which yet receives obscurely the impressions of all things and stores them up in itself and from it too all sorts of stimuli, of persistent habitual movements, crudely repeated or disguised in strange forms can surge up into dream or into the waking nature.


Sri Aurobindo: For if these impressions rise up most in dream in an incoherent and disorganised manner, they can also and do rise up into our waking consciousness as a mechanical repetition of old thoughts, old mental, vital and physical habits or an obscure stimulus to sensations, actions, emotions which do not originate in or from our conscious thought or will and are even often opposed to its perceptions, choice or dictates. In the subconscient there is an obscure mind full of obstinate sanskaras, impressions, associations, ﬁxed notions, habitual reactions formed by our past, an obscure vital full of the seeds of habitual desires, sensations and nervous reactions, a most obscure material which governs much that has to do with the condition of the body. It is largely responsible for our illnesses; chronic or repeated illnesses are indeed mainly due to the subconscient and its obstinate memory and habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or illorganised, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives something, inner touches, communications or inﬂuences, from these sources but does not know for the most part whence they come.


Sri Aurobindo:   The subconscient is below the waking physical consciousness — it is an automatic, obscure, incoherent, half-unconscious realm into which light and awareness can with difﬁculty come. The inner vital and physical are quite different — they have a larger, plastic, subtler, freer and richer consciousness than the surface vital and physical, much more open to the Truth and in direct touch with the universal.


Sri Aurobindo: The inner being does not depend on the subconscient, but the outer has depended on it for thousands of lives — that is why  the outer being and physical consciousness’s habit of response to the subconscient can be a formidable obstacle to the progress of the sadhana and is so with most. It keeps up the repetition of the old movements, is always pulling down the consciousness and opposing the continuity of the ascent and bringing the old nature or else the tamas (non-illumination and non-activity) across the descent. It is only if you live wholly and dynamically in the inner being and feel the outer as a quite superﬁcial thing that you can get rid of the obstruction or minimise it until the transformation of the outer being can be made complete.


Sri Aurobindo: It [] is most probably something that has come from outside and covered. This happens at this stage when the working is in the physical and subconscient — for that is the nature of these parts, to live in the external with the inner being covered up by a sort of natural veil of obscurity. Therefore when one makes the opening through this veil, it has a tendency to come back. When that happens, one has to remain undisturbed and call down the Force and Light from above to remove the obstacle. This must be done till the opening is permanent and complete and no covering is possible.


Sri Aurobindo: The subconscient difﬁculty is difﬁculty now — because the whole struggle in the general sadhana is now there. It is in the subconscient, no longer in the vital or conscious physical that the resistance is all massed together.     There is a close connection between the subconscient and the physical and lower vital parts; so long as the subconscient is not cleared, the seed you speak of remains.


Sri Aurobindo:  The material [] is for the most part subconscient — it depends upon the subtler parts for its waking consciousness.     The subconscient material plane is a ﬁeld that still opposes the entrance of the Divine Light.


Sri Aurobindo:   Until they [] aspire or at least assent fully to the aspiration and will of the higher being, there can be no lasting change in them.     It [] is because, the subconscient being just below the physical, the enlightened physical can act on it directly and completely in a way in which mind and vital cannot and by this direct action can help to liberate the mind and vital also.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes, what you write is correct. When the physical consciousness has to be changed, it is of course essential to work on the subconscient, as it has a great inﬂuence on the physical which is very dependent on it.  The loss of consciousness comes naturally at ﬁrst when the subconscient is being worked upon.


Sri Aurobindo: You have to be careful that it does not become habitual. If you react with a will for the change of this tendency (no struggle is needed) it will pass in time.    It is not a fact that formless things [ ] can have no power — all that is necessary is that they should have a force in them. The subconscient inﬂuences the body because all in the body has developed out of the subconscient and all in itself still is only half conscious and much of its action can be called subconscious.


Sri Aurobindo: It is therefore much more easily inﬂuenced by the subconscious than by the conscious mind and conscious will or even the vital mind and vital will except in those things in which a conscious mental or vital control has been established and the subconscious itself has accepted it. If it were not so, man’s control of his actions and physical states would be complete, there would be no illness or, if there were, it could be immediately cured by mental action. But it is not so. For that reason the higher consciousness has to be brought down, the body and the subconscient enlightened by it and accustomed to obey its control.


Sri Aurobindo: It is good. Emptiness and silence of the consciousness prepare the being to live within, with the outer consciousness only as a means of communication and action on the physical world instead of living in the external only.  As there is a superconscient (something above our present consciousness) above the head from which the higher consciousness comes down into the body, so there is also a subconscient (something below our consciousness) below the feet. Matter is under the control of this power, because it is that out of which it has been created — that is why matter seems to us to be quite unconscious. The material body is very much under the inﬂuence of this power for the same reason; it is why we are not conscious of what is going on in the body, for the most part.


Sri Aurobindo: The outer consciousness goes down into this subconscient when we are asleep, and so it becomes unaware of what is going on in us when we are asleep except for a few dreams. Many of these dreams rise up from the subconscient and are made up of old memories, impressions etc. put together in an incoherent way. For the subconscient receives impressions of all we do or experience in our lives and keeps these impressions in it, sending up often fragments of them in sleep. It is a very important part of the being, but we can do nothing much with it by the conscious will. It is the higher Force working in us that in its natural course will open the subconscient to itself and bring down into it its control and light.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is in the Yogic consciousness that one feels the seat of the subconscient below the feet, but the inﬂuence of the subconscious is not conﬁned there — it is spread in the body. In the waking state it is overpowered by the conscious thinking mind and vital and conscious physical mind, but in the sleep state it comes on the surface.  The subconscient is a thing of habits and memories and repeats persistently or whenever it can old suppressed reactions, reﬂexes, mental, vital or physical responses.


Sri Aurobindo: It must be trained by a still more persistent insistence of the higher parts of the being to give up its old responses and take on the new and true ones.   The subconscient is the support of habitual action — it can  support good habits as well as bad.   The exterior consciousness can be invaded by what rises up from the subconscient or comes in from outside and owing to a renewed vibration of the past habit can respond — but that does not mean that the will of the vital or of the physical mind is for these things. If there was anything in them normally on the side of sex or violence, then you could say the impurities were there.


Sri Aurobindo: But if it were so, there would be more than these attacks, there would be a daily struggle with anger and desire.  If one had to wait for an absolute purity free from all possibility of these attacks before beginning to realise the Divine, nobody would ever be able to realise. It is as the realisation progresses, that the fundamental transformation takes place.  These cravings and desires are old habits of the physical which came to it from the universal Nature and which it accepted and took as part of itself and its life. When these things are rejected by the waking consciousness they try to take refuge in the subconscient or else in what may be called the environmental consciousness and from there they press upon the consciousness trying to recover their hold or simply to recur for a time.


Sri Aurobindo: If they are in the subconscient they come up most usually in dreams, but they may also surge up into the waking consciousness. If they come from the environment they take the form of thought-suggestions or impulses or a vague restless or disturbing pressure. It is probably this environmental pressure that you feel. When the body is full of the new consciousness, Peace and Power at the same time, then this outward pressure is felt but can no longer disturb and ﬁnally it recedes to a distance (no longer pressing immediately on the physical mind or body) and either gradually or rapidly disappears.  By environmental consciousness I mean something that each man carries around him, outside his body, even when he is not aware of it, — by which he is in touch with others and with the universal forces.


Sri Aurobindo: It is through this that the thoughts, feelings etc. of others pass to enter into one — it is through this also that waves of the universal force — desire, sex, etc. — come in and take possession of the mind, vital or body.    When these things [] are rejected and disappear for a time, some part of them may go out into the environmental consciousness and from there they can return in a wave from the general Nature. If one is conscious, one can even feel them coming in. The rejection of such returns is an important part of the puriﬁcation and it is not complete till this power of returning is no longer there.


Sri Aurobindo: But also it may be that some part is not so much rejected as suppressed by mental control, then it sinks into the subconscient and when the subconscient is active (as in dream or in a passive state of the mind) or else when the subconscient itself is brought up for puriﬁcation, then it may rise up even with much violence. There especially the sense that one has to begin all again and nothing has been done may come upon the sadhak. But it is not so really. One has to be ﬁrm and not get upset but this time detach ﬁrmly and completely so as to uproot completely from the nature.


Sri Aurobindo:   What is taking place, the subsiding of the surge of subconscient thoughts and movements, and their pressure on the mind, is just what ought to take place. It is not a suppression or pulling back into the subconscient, it is an expulsion from the conscious self into which it has arisen. It is true that something more may rise from the subconscient, but it will be what is still left there. What is now rejected, if it goes anywhere and is not abolished, will go not into the subconscient but into the surrounding consciousness which one carries around him — once there it no longer belongs to oneself in any way and if it tries to return it will be as foreign


Sri Aurobindo: matter which one has not to accept or allow any longer. These are the two last stages of rejection by which one gets rid of the old things of the nature, they go down into the subconscient and have to be got rid of from there or they go out into the environmental consciousness and are no longer ours.  The idea that one should let what rises from the subconscient go on repeating itself till it is exhausted is not the right idea. For that would needlessly prolong the troubled condition and might be harmful. When these things rise they have to be observed and then thrown out, not kept.


Sri Aurobindo: The human like the animal mind lives largely in impressions rising up from the subconscient.    What must have happened was that as the physical consciousness is now being worked upon, all the past impressions (which usually remain in the subconscious and rise up from time to time and meanwhile inﬂuence the thought and action and feelings without being noticed) rose up in a mass and threw themselves on the consciousness. This usually happens in order that the sadhak may see and reject them and get liberated entirely (in the subconscious as well as the conscious parts) from his physical past. That is why you felt afterwards the sense of release.


Sri Aurobindo: The throat is the centre of the externalising mind (physical mind).    I do not think you have gone back — probably what has been happening to many if not most in the Asram (especially those who have done some serious sadhana) is happening to you. It is the rising of old habitual thoughts, feelings, impulses in a confused way from the subconscient in a mechanical repetition.  The subconscient is the basis of the ordinary physical nature and the light has to come into it also.


Sri Aurobindo: Moreover even if the progress gained has been covered over by these things, what is once gained is not lost; it always reemerges after obscuration and one can get back into it. Ideas of discouragement should always be rejected.   What is happening just now [ ] is that there is a great uprush of the subconscient in which are the seeds or the strong remnants of the habitual difﬁculties of the nature. But its character is a confusion and obscurity without order or clear mental or other arrangement — it is a confused depression, discouragement, inability to progress — a feeling of what are we doing? why are we here?


Sri Aurobindo: how can we go on? will anything ever be attained? and along with it old difﬁculties recurring in a confused and random but often violent and distressing fashion.  You cannot “begin” again; it would be too difﬁcult a thing in this confusion. You have to get back to the point at which you deviated.


Sri Aurobindo: If you can get back to the Peace that was coming and with it aspire to the freedom and wideness of the Purusha consciousness forming a of detachment and separation from all this confusion of the subconscient Prakriti, then you will have a ﬁrm ground to stand upon and proceed. But for that you must make your choice ﬁrmly and refuse to be upset at every moment and diverted from it.     But in reality these things [] are not sufﬁcient reasons for getting sad and depressed.


Sri Aurobindo: It is quite normal for difﬁculties to come back like that and it is not a proof that no progress has been made. The recurrence (after one has thought one has conquered) is not unaccountable. I have explained in my writings what happens. When a habitual movement long embedded in the nature is cast out, it takes refuge in some less enlightened part of the nature, and when cast out of the rest of the nature, it takes refuge in the subconscient and from there surges up when you least expect it or comes up in dreams or sudden inconscient movements  or it goes out and remains in wait in the environmental being through which the universal Nature works, and attacks from there as a force from outside trying to recover its kingdom by a suggestion or repetition of old movements.


Sri Aurobindo: One has to stand fast till the power of return fades away. These returns or attacks must be regarded not as parts of oneself, but as invasions — and rejected without allowing any depression or discouragement. If the mind does not sanction them, if the vital refuses to welcome them, if the physical remains steady and refuses to obey the physical urge, then the recurrence of the thought, the vital impulse, the physical feeling will begin to lose its last holds and ﬁnally they will be too feeble to cause any trouble.    You do not realise how much of the ordinary natural being lives in the subconscient physical.


Sri Aurobindo: It is there that habitual movements, mental and vital, are stored and from there they come up into the waking mind. Driven out of the upper consciousness, it is in this cavern of the Panis that they take refuge. No longer allowed to emerge freely in the waking state, they come up in sleep as dreams. It is only when they are cleared out of the subconscient, their very seeds killed by the enlightening of these hidden layers, that they cease for good. As your consciousness deepens inwardly and the higher light comes down into those inferior covered parts, the things that now recur in this way will disappear.


Sri Aurobindo:   What you describe seems to be in its nature an uncontrolled rushing up of the subconscient taking the form of a mechanical recurrence of old thoughts, interests or desires with which the physical mind is usually occupied. If that were all, the only thing would be to reject them, detach yourself and let them pass till they quieted down. But I gather from what you write that there is an attack, an obscure force using these recurrences to invade and harass the mind and body.


Sri Aurobindo: It would be helpful if you could give an exact description of the main character of the thoughts that come, what things and ideas they are concerned with etc. But in any case the one thing to do is to open yourself to the Mother’s force by aspiration, thought of the Mother or any other way and let it drive out the attack. We shall send Force continually till this is done. It will be better to let us know every three days or so how you go on, for that will help to make the action of the Force more precise.   These thoughts that attack in sleep or in the state between sleep and waking do not belong to any part of your conscious being, but come either from the subconscient or from the surrounding atmosphere through the subconscient.


Sri Aurobindo: If they are thoughts you had in the past and have thrown out from you, then what rises must be impressions left by them in the subconscient — for all things thought, felt or experienced leave such impressions which can rise from there in sleep. Or the thoughts can have gone out from you into the environmental consciousness, that is, an atmosphere of consciousness which we carry around us and through which we are connected with universal Nature and from there they may be trying to return upon you. As it is difﬁcult for them to succeed in the waking state, they take advantage of the absence of conscious control in sleep and appear there. If it is something new and not yours, then it can be neither of these, but an attack of some outside Force.  It is to be hoped that as you have rejected them, they will not come again, but if they do, then you must put a conscious will before going to sleep that they should not come.


Sri Aurobindo: A suggestion of that kind on the subconscient is often successful, if not at once, after a time; for the subconscient learns to obey the will put upon it in the waking state.   The dream you had was really a rising up of past formations or impressions from the subconscient. All that we do, feel or experience in life leaves an impression, a sort of essential memory of itself in the subconscient and this can come up in dreams even long after those feelings, movements or experiences have ceased in the conscious being, — still more when they have been recent and are only now or lately thrown away from the mind or vital.  Thus long after one has ceased to think of old acquaintances or relatives dreams about them go on coming up from this source.  So too when sex or anger no longer troubles the conscious vital, dreams of sex or dreams of anger and strife can still rise.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only when the subconscient is cleared that they cease; meanwhile they are of not much importance (provided one understands what they are and is not affected) so long as the old movements are not allowed to recur or remain in the waking state.    It [] is always so with the impressions left in the subconscient physical. One day they come as pale and distant things, with no life in them, another they seem to get a certain force. It depends on whether they are caught up by a current of force from the universal or rise up of themselves with no force except what is left in them from the past.


Sri Aurobindo:  All these movements simply mean that a certain part of the nature, full of habitual emotional movements, had been lying suppressed but not deﬁnitely dealt with and has now come up with as much force as possible, taking advantage of the descent of the consciousness from the peace and Ananda. It is an old habitual movement of the egoistic vital that is repeating itself.  You had pushed it down into the subconscient and away to the outskirts of your nature, but not cleared the nature of it entirely. It is not surprising that it has pushed back the inner self and its experiences for the time being; if it had not done that, it could not last for a moment. But that is no reason why you should talk as if it were a hopeless downfall; it is not that, though it is a serious stumble.


Sri Aurobindo: You have to recognise it for what it is and get out of the wave and throw it away from you. Steady yourself and look straight at what has happened without overstressing its importance; it will then pass away sooner.   As for the mood that came on you, it comes up from the subconscient, where things of the old nature sink when they are rejected. When moods come up like that, you have to remain quiet and call the Mother till it is gone. After a time this power of mechanical repetition without reason from the subconscient gets worn out and disappears — then these moods come no more.


Sri Aurobindo:  All that [] is probably things that rise from the subconscient — or perhaps the subconscient itself is being worked upon to arrive at a state of light and peace.  It sometimes enters into a happy condition, sometimes into a neutral one, sometimes it raises up a causeless sorrow. The movements of the subconscient take place even without reason, of themselves, owing to the inherent habit in Nature, that is why the grief is without discoverable cause. It is only because it is in the subconscient that you cannot locate it. When the grief comes, you must dissociate yourself from it and reject it, not taking it as your own, until it ceases to come and call down the Mother’s peace and Ananda in its place.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes, surely it is present []. All normal reactions and characteristics are there in the subconscient, and even remain there after they have been rejected from the conscious nature and can return from it in the conscious nature.


Sri Aurobindo:   Certainly, the subconscient has many more fears in it than those admitted or acknowledged by the waking consciousness.     The dark wells of the subconscient are deep and until they are altogether cleared some gushing up of the old sources is always possible.


Sri Aurobindo: As for the subconscient that is best dealt with when the opening of the consciousness to what comes down from above is complete. Then one becomes aware of the subconscient as a separate domain and can bring down into it the silence and all else that comes from above.     The subconscient can be entirely dealt with only when the other parts are sufﬁciently open and changed — but meanwhile it can feel the pressure of the change in the mind and vital.


Sri Aurobindo:   The conscious parts have to be prepared ﬁrst — impossible to deal successfully with the subconscient till then, except in points and details. Just as the musician has ﬁrst to learn the right principle and execution of his music with his mind and vital (aesthetic) perception and will — and teach his ﬁngers to execute it — afterwards the subconscient in his ﬁngers will learn its work and do the right thing of itself — e.g. touching the right keys without his eyes having to follow.   These [] are symptoms and feelings that can easily come in the period when the subconscient is being dealt with — tamas, age, decay, illness, death, weakness, inertia, the mechanical play (as if the inevitable round of a machine) of the lower vital have their seeds in the subconscient


Sri Aurobindo: and when the subconscient rises up in its native power, these threaten to rise with them. Never consent to the attack or allow the faith and the will to go down before them. Afﬁrm always the higher Truth against them and call down the Power and Light into the cells, into the whole body and plunge them into the subphysical below the body so that the very roots of the subconscient may get illuminated and change


Sri Aurobindo: . It is only by doing this that realisation in the body will become possible.


Sri Aurobindo: It [ ] can only be dangerous if the waking mind accepts it. All the same, so long as it remains in the subconscient, it keeps a seed of possibility — so it must be got out altogether.


Sri Aurobindo:    Just as one can concentrate the thought on an object or the vision on a point, so one can concentrate will on a particular part or point of the body and give an order to the consciousness there. That order reaches the subconscient.


Sri Aurobindo: It is most probably from the subconscient [ ]. When these memories arise, they should be treated on the basis that they have arisen in order to be dissolved and dismissed, so that by their persistent dissolution one may not be tied by the impressions in the subconscient to the past (that is the machinery of Karma) but free for the spirit’s unbound future.  The best is when you can get the true knowledge about it, why it happened and what purpose it served; then it goes easily.    Reject them [] from their roots with the idea that they have come up in order to be abolished from the subconscient.


Sri Aurobindo: It may take a little time to get rid of some memories which are persistent and recurrent, but usually this process has an effect of clearance after a time.      If


Sri Aurobindo: you do not pay attention, they [] fall into the background and become a mechanical action which it is more easy to get rid of.    This review of the past is a very good sign, for it usually comes when there is a preparation of the physical consciousness and subconscient for change. One has not to regret the stumbles of the past but look with a quiet eye and understand, for all came — the stumbles included — as part of the necessary experience by which the being learns and advances through error to the Light and through the imperfections of Nature towards the divine perfection.  There is always a great deal to do in the subconscient, but if you specially feel it [], it must be that the time for clearing it has come.


Sri Aurobindo: If the other parts keep open and responsive, this should not give too much trouble.     It is only if the mind is silent that the subconscient can be empty.  What has to be done is to get all the old ignorant unyogic stuff out of the subconscient.


Sri Aurobindo:   If the subconscient is emptied, it would mean that you have got beyond the ordinary consciousness and the subconscient itself is prepared to be an instrument of the Truth.  The subconscient is a dark and ignorant region, so that it is natural that the obscurer movements of the Nature should have more power there. It is so indeed with all the lower parts of the nature from the lower vital downwards.


Sri Aurobindo: But it does send up good things also though more rarely. It has in the course of the sadhana to be illumined and made a support of the higher consciousness in the physical nature instead of a basis of the instinctive lower movements.    The work [] is of a general nature, not individual, but necessarily everyone here is to some extent affected by it. If consciousness and light is not brought into the subconscient, then there can be no change.


Sri Aurobindo: For it is in the subconscient that there are the seeds of all the old lower vital instincts and movements and however much they may be cleared in the lower vital itself, they may sprout up again from below. Also the subconscient is the secret basis of the bodily consciousness. The subconscient must admit into itself the higher consciousness and the Truth light.    [ :] 1.


Sri Aurobindo: The subconscient begins to show more easily what is in it.  2. Things rising from there come to the awareness of the mind before they can touch or affect the consciousness.  3. The subconscient becomes less the refuge of the ignorant and obscure movements and more an automatic response of the material to the higher consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: 4. It gives less covert and less passage to the suggestions of the hostile forces.  5. It is more easy to be conscious in sleep and to have higher forms of dream experience. Hostile dreams — e.g. sexsuggestions can be met and stopped in the dream itself and any result like emission prevented.


Sri Aurobindo: 6. A waking will put on the dream state before sleeping becomes more and more effective.    The subconscient is to be penetrated by the light and made a sort of bedrock of truth, a store of right impressions, right physical responses to the Truth. Strictly speaking, it will not be subconscient at all, but a sort of bank of true values held ready for use.


Sri Aurobindo: Your practice of psycho-analysis was a mistake. It has, for the time at least, made the work of puriﬁcation more complicated, not easier. The psycho-analysis of Freud is the last thing that one should associate with Yoga. It takes up a certain part, the darkest, the most perilous, the unhealthiest part of the nature, the lower vital subconscious layer, isolates some of its most morbid phenomena and attributes to it and them an action out of all proportion to its true role in the nature. Modern psychology is an infant science, at once rash, fumbling and crude.


Sri Aurobindo: As in all infant sciences, the universal habit of the human mind — to take a partial or local truth, generalise it unduly and try to explain a whole ﬁeld of Nature in its narrow terms — runs riot here.  Moreover, the exaggeration of the importance of suppressed sexual complexes is a dangerous falsehood and it can have a nasty inﬂuence and tend to make the mind and vital more and not less fundamentally impure than before.  It is true that the subliminal in man is the largest part of his nature and has in it the secret of the unseen dynamisms which explain his surface activities. But the lower vital subconscious which is all that this psycho-analysis of Freud seems to know — and even of that it knows only a few ill-lit corners, — is no more than a restricted and very inferior portion of the subliminal whole. The subliminal self stands behind and supports the whole superﬁcial man; it has in it a larger and more efﬁcient mind behind the surface mind, a larger and more powerful vital behind the surface vital, a subtler and freer physical consciousness behind the surface bodily existence.


Sri Aurobindo: And above them it opens to higher superconscient as well as below them to lower subconscient ranges. If one wishes to purify and transform the nature, it is the power of these higher ranges to which one must open and raise to them and change by them both the subliminal and the surface being. Even this should be done with care, not prematurely or rashly, following a higher guidance, keeping always the right attitude; for otherwise the force that is drawn down may be too strong for an obscure and weak frame of nature. But to begin by opening up the lower subconscious, risking to raise up all that is foul or obscure in it, is to go out of one’s way to invite trouble. First, one should make the higher mind and vital strong and ﬁrm and full of light and peace from above; afterwards one can open up or even dive into the subconscious with more safety and some chance of a rapid and successful change.


Sri Aurobindo: The system of getting rid of things by can also be a dangerous one; for on this way one can easily become more entangled instead of arriving at freedom. This method has behind it two well-known psychological motives. One, the motive of purposeful exhaustion, is valid only in some cases, especially when some natural tendency has too strong a hold or too strong a drive in it to be got rid of by or by the process of rejection and the substitution of the true movement in its place; when that happens in excess, the sadhaka has sometimes even to go back to the ordinary action of the ordinary life, get the true experience of it with a new mind and will behind and then return to the spiritual life with the obstacle eliminated or else ready for elimination. But this method of purposive indulgence is always dangerous, though sometimes inevitable. It succeeds only when there is a very strong will in the being towards realisation; for then indulgence brings a strong dissatisfaction and reaction, , and the will towards perfection can be carried down into the recalcitrant part of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: The other motive for is of a more general applicability; for in order to reject anything from the being one has ﬁrst to become conscious of it, to have the clear inner experience of its action and to discover its actual place in the workings of the nature. One can then work upon it to eliminate it, if it is an entirely wrong movement, or to transform it if it is only the degradation of a higher and true movement. It is this or something like it that is attempted crudely and improperly with a rudimentary and insufﬁcient knowledge in the system of psychoanalysis. The process of raising up the lower movements into the full light of consciousness in order to know and deal with them is inevitable; for there can be no complete change without it.  But it can truly succeed only when a higher light and force are sufﬁciently at work to overcome, sooner or later, the force of the tendency that is held up for change.


Sri Aurobindo: Many, under the pretext of , not only raise up the adverse movement, but support it with their consent instead of rejecting it, ﬁnd justiﬁcations for continuing or repeating it and so go on playing with it, indulging its return, eternising it; afterwards when they want to get rid of it, it has got such a hold that they ﬁnd themselves helpless in its clutch and only a terrible struggle or an intervention of divine grace can liberate them. Some do this out of a vital twist or perversity, others out of sheer ignorance; but in Yoga, as in life, ignorance is not accepted by Nature as a justifying excuse. This danger is there in all improper dealings with the ignorant parts of the nature; but none is more ignorant, more perilous, more unreasoning and obstinate in recurrence than the lower vital subconscious and its movements. To raise it up prematurely or improperly for is to risk suffusing the conscious parts also with its dark and dirty stuff and thus poisoning the whole vital and even the mental nature. Always therefore one should begin by a positive, not a negative experience, by bringing down something of the divine nature, calm, light, equanimity, purity, divine strength into the parts of the conscious being that have to be changed; only when that has been sufﬁciently done and there is a ﬁrm positive basis, is it safe to raise up the concealed subconscious adverse elements in order to destroy and eliminate them by the strength of the divine calm, light, force and knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: Even so, there will be enough of the lower stuff rising up of itself to give you as much of the as you will need for getting rid of the obstacles; but then they can be dealt with with much less danger and under a higher internal guidance.     I ﬁnd it difﬁcult to take these psycho-analysts at all seriously when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the ﬂicker of their torch-lights, — yet perhaps one ought to, for halfknowledge is a very powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. This new psychology looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious underground super-ego together and imagining that their ﬁrst book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t=cat, t-r-e-e=tree) is the very heart of the real knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things is above and not below,. The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true fountain of things. The signiﬁcance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above.  The self-chosen ﬁeld of these psychologists is besides poor and dark and limited; you must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the province of a greater psychology awaiting its hour before which these poor gropings will disappear and come to nothing.


Sri Aurobindo: There is another cause of the general inability to change which at present afﬂicts the sadhak. It is because the sadhana, as a general fact, has now and for a long time past come down to the Inconscient; the pressure, the call is to change in that part of the nature which depends directly on the Inconscient, the ﬁxed habits, the automatic movements, the mechanical repetitions of the nature, the involuntary reactions to life, all that seems to belong to the ﬁxed character of a man. This has to be done if there is to be any chance of a total spiritual change. The Force (generally and not individually) is working to make that possible, its pressure is for that, — for, on the other levels, the change has already been made possible (not, mind you, assured to everybody). But to open the Inconscient to the light is a Herculean task; change on the other levels is much easier.


Sri Aurobindo: As yet this work has only begun and it is not surprising that there seems to be no change in things or people. It will come in time, but not in a hurry.  As for experiences, they are all right but the trouble is that they do not seem to change the nature, they only enrich the consciousness — even the realisation, on the mind level, of the Brahman seems to leave the nature almost where it was, except for a few. That is why we insist on the psychic transformation as the ﬁrst necessity — for that does change the nature — and its chief instrument is bhakti, surrender etc.   The sunlit path can only be followed if the psychic is constantly or usually in front or if one has a natural spirit of faith and surrender or a face turned habitually towards the sun or psychic predisposition (e.g. a faith in one’s spiritual destiny) or if he has acquired the psychic turn.


Sri Aurobindo: That does not mean that the sunlit man has no difﬁculties; he may have many, but he regards them cheerfully as “all in the day’s work”. If he gets bad beatings, he is capable of saying, “Well, that was a queer go, but the Divine is evidently in a queer mood and if that is his way of doing things, it must be the right one; I am surely a still queerer fellow myself and that, I suppose, was the only means of putting me right.”  But everybody can’t be of that turn, and surrender which would put everything right is, as you say, difﬁcult to do completely.  That is why we do not insist on total surrender at once, but are satisﬁed with a little to begin with, the rest to grow as it can.  I have explained to you why so many people (not by any means all) are in this gloomy condition, dull and despondent.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the tamas, the inertia of the Inconscient, that has got hold of them. But also it is the small physical vital which takes only an interest in the small and trivial things of the ordinary daily and social life and nothing else. When formerly the sadhana was going on on higher levels (mind, higher vital etc.), there was plenty of vigour and verve and interest in the details of the Asram work and life as well as in an inner life; the physical vital was carried in the stream. But for many this has dropped; they live in the unsatisﬁed vital physical and ﬁnd everything desperately dull, gloomy and without interest or issue. In their inner life the tamas from the Inconscient has created a block or a bottleneck and they do not ﬁnd any way out.


Sri Aurobindo: If one can keep the right condition and attitude, a strong interest in work or a strong interest in sadhana, then this becomes quiescent. That is the malady. Its remedy is to keep the right condition and to bring gradually or, if one can, swiftly the light of the higher aspiration into this part of the being also, so that whatever the conditions of the environment, it may keep also the right poise. Then the sunlit path should be less impossible.


Sri Aurobindo:   The extreme acuteness of your difﬁculties is due to the Yoga having come down against the bedrock of Inconscience which is the fundamental basis of all resistance in the individual and in the world to the victory of the Spirit and the Divine Work that is leading toward that victory. The difﬁculties themselves are general in the Asram as well as in the outside world. Doubt, discouragement, diminution or loss of faith, waning of the vital enthusiasm for the ideal, perplexity and a bafﬂing of the hope for the future are the common features of the difﬁculty. In the world outside there are much worse symptoms such as the general increase of cynicism, a refusal to believe in anything at all, a decrease of honesty, an immense corruption, a preoccupation with food, money, comfort, pleasure to the exclusion of higher things and a general expectation of worse and worse things awaiting the world.


Sri Aurobindo: All that, however acute, is a temporary phenomenon for which those who know anything about the workings of the world-energy and the workings of the Spirit were prepared. I myself foresaw that this worst would come, the darkness of night before the dawn; therefore I am not discouraged. I know what is preparing behind the darkness and can see and feel the ﬁrst signs of its coming. Those who seek for the Divine have to stand ﬁrm and persist in their seeking; after a time, the darkness will fade and begin to disappear and the Light will come.  It is the lesson of life that always in this world everything fails a man — only the Divine does not fail him, if he turns entirely to the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not because there is something bad in you that blows fall on you, — blows fall on all human beings because they are full of desire for things that cannot last and they lose them or, even if they get, it brings disappointment and cannot satisfy them. To turn to the Divine is the only truth in life.    As for the blows, well, are they always given by the Yoga — is it not sometimes the sadhak of the Yoga who gives blows to himself? There are plenty of blows too in ordinary life according to my experience.


Sri Aurobindo: Blows are the order of existence, and of Yoga; our nature or the nature of things brings them upon us until we learn to present to them a back which they cannot touch.    The ordinary life naturally has its mental, vital and physical pleasures, but it is of a superﬁcial character and there is no ﬁrm foundation of the consciousness anywhere — all is at the mercy of the play of forces. In Yoga there is the period of struggle and difﬁculty in which the difﬁculty and suffering can be acute and the period of the foundation in the true consciousness after which there is no serious disturbance of the peace and freedom leading to the state of realisation in all the being in which grief etc. are impossible.


Sri Aurobindo:   All’s troubles are due partly to past Karma in another life, partly to his nature which is unable to harmonise with his surroundings or to master them by strong will and clear understanding or to face them with calm poise and balance. Life is for experience and growth and until one has learned one’s lesson things go on happening that are the result of one’s imperfect balance with Nature or inner imperfections. All that happens is for the best is true only if we see with the cosmic view that takes in past and future development which is aided by ill fortune, as well as good fortune, by danger, death, suffering and calamity, as well as by happiness, success and victory. It is not true if it means that only things happen which are fortunate or obviously good for the person in the human sense.


Sri Aurobindo:  What you describe is a nature divided against itself by a mind which has corrupted its action through a wrong use of its powers and a physical weakened by indulgence of vital desire.  Introspection is good only when it is used as a means for changing the nature so as to bring it into accordance with a higher ideal steadily held before you. The present nature of man is egoistic in motive, full of falsehoods created by the Ignorance into which he is born and which the mind and life accept in order to follow their ego’s aims and desires. By introspection one comes to see that, but by itself that can only create distrust of oneself, loss of motive to action, cynicism and weakness.


Sri Aurobindo: One must have the faith and aspiration towards a higher consciousness which one has to build up in place of this lower nature, then the introspection and the knowledge of the defects of the nature it gives become useful, as it helps one to see what has to be changed while the higher ideal gives what has to take the place of the old movements and the old nature.  But all that is not easy to do unless you resolve to give an aim to your life and erect the higher ideal towards which you have to grow. Just as the mind can destroy the force of life and its balance, so it can do that also, it can help to restore the power on a new basis and acquire a new and greater force and true balance. But for that you must have the will to do it. To create the will the mind must press for faith and vision and discourage their opposites.


Sri Aurobindo: What you have written has some power of thought and style and vision though of a mixed character. There is no harm in writing these things when they of themselves come; it may help the inner element of aspiration to grow in you.  This Yoga is certainly difﬁcult, but is any Yoga really easy? You speak of the lure of liberation into the extracosmic Absolute, but how many who set out on the path of Nirvana attain to it in this life or without a long, strenuous and difﬁcult endeavour?  Which of the paths has not to pass through the dry desert in order to reach the promised land?


Sri Aurobindo: Even the path of Bhakti which is said to be the easiest is full of the lamentations of the bhaktas complaining that they call but the Beloved eludes their grasp, the place of meeting is prepared but even now Krishna does not come. Even if there is the joy of a brief glimpse or the passion of , it is followed by long periods of. It is a mistake to think that any path of Yoga is facile, that any is a royal road or short cut to the Divine, or that like a system of “French made easy” or “French without tears”, so there can be a system of “Yoga made easy” or “Yoga without tears”. A few great souls prepared by past lives or otherwise lifted beyond the ordinary spiritual capacity may attain realisation more swiftly; some may have uplifting experiences at an early stage, but for most the  of the path, whatever it is, must be the end of a long, difﬁcult and persevering endeavour. One cannot have the crown of spiritual victory without the struggle or reach the heights without the ascent and its labour.


Sri Aurobindo: Of all it can be said, “Difﬁcult is that road, hard to tread like the edge of a razor.”  You ﬁnd the path dry precisely because you have not yet touched the fringe of it. But all paths have their dry periods and for most though not for all it is at the beginning. There is a long stage of preparation necessary in order to arrive at the inner psychological condition in which the doors of experience can open and one can walk from vista to vista — though even then new gates may present themselves and refuse to open until all is ready. This period can be dry and desert-like unless one has the ardour of self-introspection and self-conquest and ﬁnds every step of the effort and struggle interesting or unless one has or gets that secret of trust and self-giving which sees the hand of the Divine in every step of the path and even in the difﬁculty the grace or the guidance.


Sri Aurobindo: The description of Yoga as “bitter like poison in the beginning” because of the difﬁculty and struggle “but in the end sweet as nectar” because of the joy of realisation, the peace of liberation or the divine Ananda and the frequent description by sadhaks and bhaktas of the periods of dryness shows sufﬁciently that it is no unique peculiarity of this Yoga. All the old disciplines recognised this and it is why the Gita says that Yoga should be practised patiently and steadily with a heart that refuses to be overcome by despondency. It is a recommendation applicable to this path but also to the way of the Gita and to the hard “razor” path of the Vedanta, and to every other. It is quite natural that the higher the Ananda to come down, the more difﬁcult may be the beginning, the drier the deserts that have to be crossed on the way.  Certainly, the supramental manifestation does not bring peace, purity, force, power of knowledge only; these give the necessary conditions for the ﬁnal realisation, are part of it, but Love, Beauty and Ananda are the essence of its fulﬁlment.


Sri Aurobindo: And although the supreme Ananda comes with the supreme fulﬁlment, there is no real reason why there should not be the love and Ananda and beauty of the way also. Some have found that even at an early stage before there was any other experience.  But the secret of it is in the heart, not the mind — the heart that opens its inner door and through it the radiance of the soul looks out in a blaze of trust and self-giving. Before that inner ﬁre the debates of the mind and its difﬁculties wither away and the path however long or arduous becomes a sunlit road not only towards but through love and Ananda.  Nevertheless, even if that does not come at ﬁrst, one can arrive at it by a patient perseverance — the psychic change is indeed the indispensable preliminary of any approach to the supramental path and this change has for its very core the blossoming of the inner love, joy, bhakti.


Sri Aurobindo: Some may ﬁnd a mental opening ﬁrst and the mental opening may bring peace, light, a beginning of knowledge ﬁrst, but this opening from above is incomplete unless it is followed by an opening inward of the heart.  To suppose that the Yoga is dry and joyless because the struggles of your mind and vital have made your ﬁrst approach to it dry is a misunderstanding and an error. The hidden springs of sweetness will reveal themselves if you persevere, even if now they are guarded by the dragons of doubt and unsatisﬁed longing.   Grumble, if your nature compels you to it, but persevere.


Sri Aurobindo:   The only thing to do with such depressing thoughts is not to indulge them, to send them away at once. Vital difﬁculties are the common lot of every human being and of every sadhak — they are to be met with a quiet determination and conﬁdence in the Divine Grace.


Sri Aurobindo:   It needs either a calm resolute will governing the whole being or a very great to have a quite smooth transformation.  If they are there, then there are no revolts though there may be difﬁculties, no attacks, only a conscious dealing with the defects of the nature, no falls but only setting right of wrong steps or movements.


Sri Aurobindo: These obstacles can only be got rid of gradually by persistent sadhana. The alternation of dark and bright states is normal and inevitable.   The headache if it comes is only a result of the body not being accustomed to the pressure or else to some resistance there.  The difﬁculties of course rise up, but it is not always in the beginning. Sometimes the ﬁrst effect is such that one feels as if there were no difﬁculties, — they rise afterwards when the exultation wanes and the normal consciousness has a chance to assert itself against the ﬂood of power or light from above.


Sri Aurobindo: There is a resistance that has to be fought out or worked out — fought out if the nature is unsteady or resists violently, worked out if the will is steady and the nature moderate in its reactions.  On the other hand if there has been a long preparation and the resistances of the nature have been already largely dealt with by the psychic or by the enlightened mental will, then there are no primary or later aggravations but a steady and quiet pulsing of the change, the remaining difﬁculties falling away of themselves as the new consciousness develops, or else there may be no difﬁculties at all, only a necessary readjustment and change.    If has allowed any fall in her consciousness and action which retards her sadhana and is not yet able wholly to overcome her weakness, that is no reason why you should allow difﬁculty to overcome faith and endeavour. There is no natural connection between the two and no reason why there should be — it is only your mind that is making one.