Sri Aurobindo: Obviously it doesn’t . The description you have quoted evidently means something much higher than. It is the  of the Upanishad — the truth-consciousness of the Veda.  No, certainly I did not mean that the Vedantin who sees a greater working behind the appearances of the world is living in a different world from this material one — if I had meant that, all that I had written would be without point or sense.


Sri Aurobindo: I meant a Vedantin who lives in this world with all its suffering and ignorance and ugliness and evil and has had a full measure of these things, betrayal and abandonment by friends, failure of outward objects and desires in life, attack and persecution, accumulated illnesses, constant difﬁculty, struggles, stumblings in his Yoga. It is not that he lives in a different world, but he has a different way of meeting its ordeals, blows and dangers.  He takes them as the nature of this world and the result of the ego-consciousness in which it lives. He tries therefore to grow into another consciousness in which he feels what is behind the outward appearance, and as he grows into that larger consciousness he begins to feel more and more a working behind which is helping him to grow in the spirit and leading him toward mastery and freedom from ego and ignorance and he sees that all has been used for that purpose. Till he reaches this consciousness with its larger knowledge of things, he has to walk by faith and his faith may sometimes fail him, but it returns and carries him through all the difﬁculties.


Sri Aurobindo: Everybody is not bound to accept this faith and this consciousness, but there is something great and true behind it for the spiritual life.    I doubt whether the condition of which you speak is that of the realised Vedantin — except of course the loss of the sense of personality and the non-identiﬁcation with desire and the movements of Prakriti. Still perhaps the condition of the Paramhansa (like Jada Bharata) may resemble it. The theory of  goes farther than that — it assumes that even if there are vital movements, that is also only the continuance of the machine of Prakriti and will drop off at death.


Sri Aurobindo: They may, perhaps . I don’t base the gospel of the transformation of Nature on an impossibility of taking a static release as ﬁnal — the static release is necessary, but I don’t consider that to take it as ﬁnal is the object of coming into world-existence. I hold that the static release is only a beginning, a ﬁrst step in the Divine. If anyone is satisﬁed with the ﬁrst step as all that is possible for him, I have no objection to his taking it like that.


Sri Aurobindo: The Jain philosophy is concerned with individual perfection.  Our effort is quite different. We want to bring down the Supermind as a new faculty. Just as the mind is now a permanent state of consciousness in humanity, so also we want to create a race in which the Supermind will be a permanent state of consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo:   Why cannot one love or experience [ ] concretely? many have done it. And why assume that He is immobile, silent and aloof? The Cosmic Divine can be as close to one as one’s own self and the Transcendent as intimate as the closest friend or lover.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only in the physical consciousness that there is some difﬁculty in realising it.  The Jain realisation of an individual godhead is all right so far as it goes — its defect is that it is too individual and isolated.  Buddhist teaching does not recognise any inner self or soul — there is only a stream of consciousness from moment to moment — the consciousness itself is only a bundle of associations — it is kept moving by the wheel of Karma. If the associations are untied and thrown away (they are called sanskaras), then it dissolves; the idea of self or a persistent person ceases; the stream ﬂows no longer, the wheel stops. There is left, according to some, Sunya, a mysterious Nothing from which all comes; according to others a mysterious Permanent in which there is no individual existence.


Sri Aurobindo: This is Nirvana. Buddha himself always refused to say what there was beyond cosmic existence; he spoke neither of God nor Self nor Brahman. He said there was no utility in discussing that — all that was necessary was to know the causes of this unhappy temporal existence and the way to dissolve it.    Buddha, it must be remembered, refused always to discuss what was beyond the world.


Sri Aurobindo: But from the little he said it would appear that he was aware of a Permanent beyond equivalent to the Vedantic Para-Brahman, but which he was quite unwilling to describe. The denial of anything beyond the world except a negative state of Nirvana was a later teaching, not Buddha’s.    If Buddha really combated and denied all Vedantic conceptions of the Self then it can be no longer true that Buddha refrained from all metaphysical speculations or distinct pronouncements as to the nature of the ultimate Reality. The view you take of his conception of Nirvana seems to concur with the Mahayanist interpretation and its conception of the Permanent,, which could be objected to as a later development like the opposite Nihilistic conception of the Shunyam.


Sri Aurobindo: What Buddha very certainly taught was that the world is not-Self and that the individual has no true existence since what does exist in the world is a stream of impermanent consciousness from moment to moment and the individual person is ﬁctitiously constituted by a bundle of sanskaras and can be dissolved by dissolving the bundle. This is in conformity with the Vedantic Monistic view that there is no true individual. As to the other Vedantic view of the one Self, impersonal and universal and transcendent, it does not seem that Buddha made any distinct and unmistakable pronouncements on abstract metaphysical questions; but if the world or all in the world is not-Self,, there can be no more room for a universal Self, only at most for a transcendent Real Being. His conception of Nirvana was of something transcendent of the universe, but he did not deﬁne what it was because he was not concerned with any abstract metaphysical speculations about the Reality; he must have thought them unnecessary and irrelevant and any indulgence in them likely to divert from the true object. His explanation of things was psychological and not metaphysical and his methods were all psychological, the breaking up of the false associations of consciousness which cause the continuance of desire and suffering, so getting rid of the stream of birth and death in a purely phenomenal (not an unreal) world; the method of life by which this liberation could be effected was also a psychological method, the eightfold path developing right understanding and right action.


Sri Aurobindo: His object was pragmatic and severely practical and so were his methods; metaphysical speculations would only draw the mind away from the one thing needful.  As to Buddha’s attitude towards life, I do not quite see how service to mankind or any ideal of improvement of the worldexistence can have been part of his aim, since to pass out of life into a transcendence was his object. His eightfold path was the means towards that end and not an aim in itself or indeed in any way an aim. Obviously if right understanding and right action became the common rule of life, there would be a great improvement in the world, but for Buddha’s purpose that could be an incidental result and not at all part of his central object.  You say, “Buddha himself urged the necessity to serve mankind: his ideal was to achieve a consciousness of inner eternity and then be a source of radiant inﬂuence and action.”


Sri Aurobindo: But where and when did Buddha say these things, use these terms or express these ideas? “The service of mankind” sounds like a very modern and European conception; it reminds me of some European interpretations of the Gita as merely teaching the disinterested performance of duty or the pronouncement that the whole idea of the Gita is service. The exclusive stress or overstress on mankind or humanity is also European. Mahayanist Buddhism laid stress on compassion, fellow-feeling with all, , just as the Gita speaks of the feeling of oneness with all beings and preoccupation with the good of all beings, , but this does not mean humanity only but all beings and means all earth-life. Are there any sayings of Buddha which would justify the statement that the object or one object of attaining to Nirvana was to become a source of radiant inﬂuence and action?


Sri Aurobindo: The consciousness of inner eternity may have that result, but can we really say that that was Buddha’s ideal, the object which he held in view or for which he came?    Buddhism is the turning away from and its causes to the peace of Nirvana. The did not exist in India, except in the theory of the Vaishnava; otherwise it was not considered as a means or even a stage in the sadhana. But that does not mean that does not come in the sadhana — it comes and has to be rejected and overcome, overpassed — excepting the psychic sorrow which does not disturb or depress but rather liberates the vital.


Sri Aurobindo: To make a or gospel of sorrow is dangerous because sorrow if indulged becomes a habit, sticks and few things, if once they stick, can be more sticky.  The Buddhist Nirvana and the Adwaitin’s Moksha are the same thing. It corresponds to a realisation in which one does not feel oneself any longer as an individual with such a name or such a form, but an inﬁnite eternal Self spaceless (even when in space), timeless (even when in time). Note that one can perfectly well do actions in that condition and it is not to be gained only by Samadhi.


Sri Aurobindo:   It [] is the same [ ]. Only the Gita describes it as Nirvana in the Brahman while Buddha preferred not to give any name or say anything about that into which the nirvana took place. Some later schools of Buddhists described it as Sunya, the equivalent of the Chinese Tao, described as the Nothing which is everything.


Sri Aurobindo:   The feeling of the Self as a vast peaceful Void, a liberation from existence as we know it, is one that one can always have, Buddhist or no Buddhist. It is the negative aspect of Nirvana — it is quite natural for the mind, if it follows the negative movement of withdrawal, to get that ﬁrst, and if you lay hold on that and refuse to go farther, being satisﬁed with this liberated NonExistence, then you will naturally philosophise like the Buddhists that Sunya is the eternal truth. Lao Tse was more perspicacious when he spoke of it as the Nothing that is All. Many of course have the positive experience of the Atman ﬁrst, not as a void but as pure unrelated Existence like the Adwaitins (Shankara) or as the one Existent.


Sri Aurobindo:   They [] do not feel as if they had any existence at all. In the Buddhistic Nirvana they feel as if there were no such thing at all, only an inﬁnite zero without form. In the Adwaita Nirvana there is felt only one vast existence, no separate being is discernible anywhere.  There are forms of course but they are only forms, not separate beings.


Sri Aurobindo: Mind is silent, thought has ceased, — desires, passions, vital movements there are none. There is consciousness but only a formless elemental consciousness without limits. The body moves and acts, but the sense of body is not there. Sometimes there is only the consciousness of pure existence, sometimes only pure consciousness, sometimes all that exists is only a ceaseless limitless Ananda. Whether all else is really dissolved or only covered up is a debatable point, but at any rate it is an experience as if of their dissolution.


Sri Aurobindo:   I don’t think I have written, but I said once that souls which have passed into Nirvana may (not “must”) return to complete the larger upward curve. I have written somewhere, I think, that for this Yoga (it might also be added, in the natural complete order of the manifestation) the experience of Nirvana can only be a stage or passage to the complete realisation. I have said also that there are many doors by which one can pass into the realisation of the Absolute (Parabrahman) and Nirvana is one of them, but by no means the only one. You may remember Ramakrishna’s saying that the Jivakoti can ascend the stairs, but not return, while the Ishwarakoti can ascend and descend at will.


Sri Aurobindo: If that is so, the Jivakoti might be those who describe only the curve from Matter through Mind into the silent Brahman and the Ishwarakoti those who get to the integral Reality and can therefore combine the Ascent with the Descent and contain the “two ends” of existence in their single being.     The realisation of this Yoga is not lower but higher than Nirvana or Nirvikalpa Samadhi.


Sri Aurobindo: In our Yoga the Nirvana is the beginning of the higher Truth, as it is the passage from the Ignorance to the higher Truth. The Ignorance has to be extinguished in order that the Truth may manifest.  Buddhism is of many kinds and the entirely nihilistic kind is only one variety. Most Buddhism admits a Permanent as beyond the creation of Karma and Sanskaras. Even the Sunya of the Sunyapanthis is described like the Tao of Lao Tse as a Nothing which is All.


Sri Aurobindo: So as a higher “above mental” state is admitted which one tries to reach by a strong discipline of the consciousness, it may be called spirituality.    There are elements in most Yogas which enter into this one, so it is not surprising if there is something in Buddhism also.  But such notions as a Higher Evolution beyond Nirvana seem to me not genuinely Buddhistic, unless of course there is some offshoot of Buddhism which developed something so interpreted by the author. I never heard of it as part of Buddha’s teachings — he always spoke of Nirvana as the goal and refused to discuss metaphysically what it might be.


Sri Aurobindo:    About the One [] there are different versions.


Sri Aurobindo: I just read somewhere that the Buddhist One is a Superbuddha from whom all Buddhas come — but it seemed to me a rehash of Buddhism in Vedantic terms born of a modern mind. The Permanent of Buddhism has always been supposed to be Supracosmic and Ineffable — that is why Buddha never tried to explain what it was; for, logically, how can one talk about the Ineffable? It has really nothing to do with the Cosmos which is a thing of sanskaras and Karma.    There is no reason why the passage about Buddhism [ ] should be omitted.


Sri Aurobindo: It gives one side of the Buddhistic teaching which is not much known or is usually ignored, for that teaching is by most rendered as Nirvana (Sunyavada) and a spiritualised humanitarianism. The difﬁculty is that it is these sides that have been stressed especially in the modern interpretations of Buddhism and any strictures I may have passed were in view of these interpretations and that onesided stress. I am aware of course of the opposite tendencies in the Mahayana and the Japanese cult of Amitabha Buddha which is a cult of bhakti. It is now being said even of Shankara that there was another side of his doctrine — but his followers have made him stand solely for the Great Illusion, the inferiority of bhakti, the uselessness of Karma —.


Sri Aurobindo: The impressions in the approach to Inﬁnity or the entry into it are not always quite the same; much depends on the way in which the mind approaches it. It is felt ﬁrst by some as an inﬁnity above, by others as an inﬁnity around into which the mind disappears (as an energy) by losing its limits. Some feel not the absorption of the mind energy into the inﬁnite, but a falling entirely inactive; others feel it as a lapse or disappearance of energy into pure Existence. Some ﬁrst feel the inﬁnity as a vast existence into which all sinks or disappears, others, as you describe it, as an inﬁnite ocean of Light above, others as an inﬁnite ocean of Power above. A certain school of Buddhists felt it in their experience as a limitless Sunya, the Vedantists on the contrary see it as a positive Self-Existence featureless and absolute.


Sri Aurobindo: No doubt the various experiences were erected into various philosophies, each putting its conception as deﬁnitive; but behind each conception there was such an experience. What you describe as a completely emptied mind substance devoid of energy or light, completely inert, is the condition of neutral peace and empty stillness which is or can be a stage of the liberation.  But it can afterwards feel itself ﬁlled with inﬁnite existence, consciousness (carrying energy in it) and ﬁnally Ananda.    The universe is only a partial manifestation and Brahman as its foundation is the Sat.


Sri Aurobindo: But there is also that which is not manifested and beyond manifestation and is not contained in the basis of manifestation. The Buddhists and others get from that the conception of Asat as the ultimate thing.  Another meaning given is: Sat = the Eternal, Asat = the Temporary and Unreal.    The ego and its continuity, they [] say, are an illusion, the result of the continuous ﬂowing of energies and ideas in a determined current.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no real formation of an ego.  As to the liberation, it is in order to get free from etc., — it is a painful ﬂow of energies and to get free from the pain they must break up their continuity. That is all right, but how it started, why it should end at all and how anybody is beneﬁted by the liberation, since there is nobody there, only a mass of idea and action — these things are insoluble mysteries. But is there not the same difﬁculty with the Mayavadin also, since there is no Jiva really, only Brahman and Brahman is by nature free and unbound for ever? So how did the whole absurd affair of Maya come into existence and who is liberated?


Sri Aurobindo: That is what the old sages said at last: “There is none bound, none freed, none seeking to be free.” It was all a mistake (a rather long-standing one though). The Buddhists, I suppose, could say that also.  In the spiritual thought of India during the time of the Rishis and even before, the Sankhya and Vedanta elements were always combined. The Sankhya account of the constitution of the being (Purusha, Prakriti, the elements, Indriyas, Buddhi etc.) was universally accepted and Kapila was mentioned with veneration everywhere.


Sri Aurobindo: In the Gita he is mentioned among the great Vibhutis; Krishna says, “I am Kapila among the sages.”  Divine union [], yes — but for the ascetic schools it was union with the featureless Brahman, the Unknowable beyond existence or, if with the Ishwara, still it was the Ishwara in a supracosmic consciousness. From that point of view Patanjali’s aphorism is sound enough. When he says Yoga, he means the process of Yoga, the object which has to be kept in view in the process — for by the cessation of one gets into and is the only way of uniting solely and completely with the Brahman beyond existence.


Sri Aurobindo:   Stopping the movements of the chitta [ cittavr.ttinirodha]. In our Yoga it is more necessary to transform these movements than to stop them altogether, but the power to stop them is necessary — it is usually done by the mind falling into silence and then imposing the same silence on the vital nature.    Chit is the pure consciousness — as in Sat Chit Ananda.


Sri Aurobindo: Chitta is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc. It is these that in Patanjali’s system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into samadhi.  It [] has a different function []. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.   If you suppress [ cittavr.ttis], you will have no movements of the chitta at all; all will be immobile until you remove the suppression or will be so immobile that there cannot be anything else than immobility.


Sri Aurobindo: If you still, the chitta will be quiet; whatever movements there are will not disturb the quietude.  If you control or master, then the chitta will be immobile when you want, active when you want, and its action will be such that what you wish to get rid of will go, only what you accept as true and useful will come.     Some people do get disgusted with the body for its uncleanness, but I should say it is very few.


Sri Aurobindo: The suggestion of Patanjali supposes that the mind is everything, so if I get the idea that the body is an unclean thing, all my feelings will harmonise with that idea. But it is not so — there are other parts which do not care for the idea or knowledge in the mind and are not affected by it but are led by their own instincts and desires. It is only those who have already the turn to vairagya who can make use of Patanjali’s suggestion to help their already existing vairagya. The medical man for instance holds his knowledge of the composition of the body as a matter of fact of science, he keeps it separate there in the scientiﬁc compartment of his mind and it does not in the least affect his other ideas, feelings or activities.  I have not myself read the Yoga-Vasishtha, but from what I have read about it, it must be a book written by somebody with a remarkable occult knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: No use doing asanas and pranayam. It is not necessary to burn with passion. What is needed is a patient increasing of the power of concentration and steady aspiration so that the silence you speak of may ﬁx in the heart and spread to the other members.  Then the physical mind and subconscient can be cleared and quieted.


Sri Aurobindo:   The asanas are one means for control of the body, as is Pranayam for the life-forces, but neither is indispensable.    Mother thinks that the shirshasan is not safe for your eyes. While some of these asanas are simple and safe, others are not so; they require a training of the body or practice under the eye of an expert.


Sri Aurobindo: It might not be prudent for you to take them up in an amateur fashion.    Pranayam is safe only if one knows how to do it and is on guard against its possible dangers: (1) danger to health by mistakes in the method, (2) rising of the vital forces, especially lust, egoism and wrongly directed strength and force, (3) the awakening of concealed sanskaras of the physical nature or latent karma from past lives.


Sri Aurobindo: Tell him it is not safe to do Pranayam without guidance by one who is expert in Rajayoga or Hathayoga. Pranayam is not a part of the sadhana here.   You can write to him that it is not safe to do Pranayam except under the directions of a guru who is siddha in either Rajayoga or Hathayoga. Gasping is obviously a sign of something wrong — for the breathing in Pranayam must be perfectly unimpeded and regular. It is better either to stop the Pranayam or to ﬁnd out somebody who is practised in the method and take instructions from him what to do.


Sri Aurobindo:   Your experience is correct. The true breathing is not merely the inspiration and expiration from the lungs which is merely the mechanism of it, but a drawing in of the universal energy of Prana into every cell of the body.  This world as the Gita describes it,, so long as we live in the present world-consciousness; it is only by turning from that to the Divine and entering into the Divine Consciousness that one can possess, through the world also, the Eternal.


Sri Aurobindo: The Gita cannot be described as exclusively a gospel of love.  What it sets forth is a Yoga of knowledge, devotion and works based on a spiritual consciousness and realisation of oneness with the Divine and of the oneness of all beings in the Divine.  Bhakti, devotion and love of God carrying with it unity with all beings and love for all beings is given a high place but always in connection with knowledge and works.  The language of the Gita in many matters seems sometimes contradictory because it admits two apparently opposite truths and tries to reconcile them. It admits the ideal of departure from sansara into the Brahman as one possibility; also it afﬁrms the possibility of living free in the Divine (in Me, it says) and acting in the world as the Jivanmukta.


Sri Aurobindo: It is this latter kind of salvation on which it lays the greatest emphasis. So Ramakrishna put the “divine souls” (Ishwarakoti) who can descend the ladder as well as ascend it higher than the ordinary Jivas (Jivakoti) who, once having ascended, have not the strength to descend again for divine work. The full truth lies in the supramental consciousness and the power to work from there on life and matter.    There is no real contradiction; the two passages indicate in the Gita’s system two different movements of its Yoga, the complete surrender being the crowning movement.


Sri Aurobindo: One has ﬁrst to conquer the lower nature, deliver the self involved in the lower movement by means of the higher Self which rises into the divine nature ; at the same time one offers all one’s actions including the inner action of the Yoga as a sacriﬁce to the Purushottama, the transcendent and immanent Divine. When one has risen into the higher Self, has the knowledge and is free, one makes the complete surrender to the Divine, abandoning all other dharmas, living only by the divine Consciousness, the divine Will and Force, the divine Ananda.  Our Yoga is not identical with the Yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s Yoga. In our Yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature.


Sri Aurobindo: If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress; or else we may make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.     It was not your account of the inconsistencies of the Gita, but those that have been urged against the combining of sadhanas of which the Gita is the ﬁnest example that I was speaking of.  Your objection to Krishna’s pouring contradictory sadhanas on Arjuna was, I said, akin to these and not more sustainable.


Sri Aurobindo: All the other side questions I consider irrelevant and of no importance. The setting of the Gita is poetic and legendary and I consider it an admirable setting, but if you consider it a bad one, that does not matter. It makes no difference, even if you are right, to the spiritual excellence of the Gita. I care nothing whether Sanjaya and Krishna and Arjuna of the Mahabharat were myths or real persons. The only thing that is important is that the sadhana of the Gita is a real thing and can be lived and that if spiritually lived, its so-called inconsistencies are no inconsistencies but many well-related aspects of a single Divine Truth — the vision seen by Arjuna included.


Sri Aurobindo: The rest is a matter of opinion and, as I say, of no spiritual importance.   The Gita was meant by the writer to be an allegory — you can say, if you like, that now we should dismiss the ancient war element by interpreting it as if it were an allegory. The Gita is Yoga, spiritual truth applied to external life and action — but it may be action and not necessarily an action that of the Gita. The of the spiritual consciousness applied to action has to be kept; the particular example used by the Gita may be treated as a thing belonging to a past world.  The Gita does not speak expressly of the Divine Mother; it speaks always of surrender to the Purushottama — it mentions her only as the Para Prakriti who becomes the Jiva, i.e., who manifests the Divine in the multiplicity and through whom all these worlds are created by the Supreme and he himself descends as the Avatar.


Sri Aurobindo: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishwara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it; the Tantrik tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishwari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother, because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it. This Yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulﬁlment of the object of the Yoga.  In regard to the Purushottama the Divine Mother is the supreme divine Consciousness and Power above the worlds, Adya Shakti; she carries the Supreme in herself and manifests the Divine in the worlds through the Akshara and the Kshara.  In regard to the Akshara she is the same Para Shakti holding the Purusha immobile in herself and also herself immobile in him at the back of all creation. In regard to the Kshara she is the mobile cosmic Energy manifesting all beings and forces.


Sri Aurobindo:   I do not know that there is anything like a Purushottama consciousness which the human being can attain or realise , — for, in the Gita, the Purushottama is the Supreme Lord, the Supreme Being who is beyond the Immutable and the Mutable and contains both the One and the Many. Man, says the Gita, can attain the Brahmic consciousness, realise himself as an eternal portion of the Purushottama and live in the Purushottama. The Purushottama consciousness is the consciousness of the Supreme Being and man by loss of ego and realisation of his true essence can it.  It is not a fact that the Gita gives the whole base of Sri Aurobindo’s message; for the Gita seems to admit the cessation of birth in the world as the ultimate aim or at least the ultimate culmination of Yoga; it does not bring forward the idea of spiritual evolution or the idea of the higher planes and the supramental Truth-Consciousness and the bringing down of that consciousness as the means of the complete transformation of earthly life.


Sri Aurobindo: The idea of the supermind, the Truth-Consciousness is there in the Rig Veda according to Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation and in one or two passages of the Upanishads, but in the Upanishads it is there only in seed in the conception of the being of knowledge,, exceeding the mental, vital and physical being ; in the Rig Veda the idea is there but in principle only, it is not developed and even the principle of it has disappeared from the Hindu tradition.  It is these things among others that constitute the novelty of Sri Aurobindo’s message as compared with the Hindu tradition, — the idea that the world is not either a creation of Maya or only a play,, of the Divine, or a cycle of births in the ignorance from which we have to escape, but a ﬁeld of manifestation in which there is a progressive evolution of the soul and the nature in Matter and from Matter through Life and Mind to what is beyond Mind till it reaches the complete revelation of Sachchidananda in life. It is this that is the basis of the Yoga and gives a new sense to life.


Sri Aurobindo:   To the question in your last letter there can be no reply except that it is only either a single-minded faith or a ﬁxed will that can give you the open road to the Yoga. It is because your ideas and your will are in a constant state of ﬂux or of oscillation that you do not succeed. Even with a deﬁcient faith, a ﬁxed mind and will can carry one on and bring the experiences by which an uncertain faith is changed into certitude.  It is the reason why it is difﬁcult for me to answer your questions about the different alternatives.


Sri Aurobindo: I may say that the way of the Gita is itself a part of the Yoga here and those who have followed it, to begin with or as a ﬁrst stage, have a stronger basis than others for this Yoga. To look down on it therefore as something separate and inferior is not a right standpoint.  But whatever it is, you must yourself choose, nobody can do it for you. Those who go and come, can do so proﬁtably only if or because they have made the decision and keep to it; when they are here, it is for the Yoga that they come, when they are elsewhere, the will for the Yoga remains with them there. You have to get rid of your constant reasonings and see whether you can do without the impulse towards Yoga or not — if you cannot, then it is useless thinking of the ordinary life without Yoga — your nature will compel you to seek after it even if you have to seek all your life with a small result.


Sri Aurobindo: But the small result is mainly due to the mind which always came in the way and the vital weakness which gives it its support for its reasonings.  If you ﬁxed your will irrevocably, that would give you a chance — and whether you followed it here or elsewhere would make only a minor difference.  I suggested the Gita method for you because the opening which is necessary for the Yoga here seems to be too difﬁcult for you. If you made a less strenuous demand upon yourself, there might be a greater chance. In any case, if you cannot return to the ordinary life, it seems, in the absence of an opening to the Power that is here, the only course for you.


Sri Aurobindo: If Shankara’s conception of the undifferentiated pure Consciousness as the Brahman is your view of it, then it is not the path of this Yoga that you should choose; for here the realisation of pure Consciousness and Being is only a ﬁrst step and not the goal. But an inner creative urge from within can have no place in an undifferentiated Consciousness — all action and creation must necessarily be foreign to it.  I do not base my Yoga on the insufﬁcient ground that the Self (not soul) is eternally free. That afﬁrmation leads to nothing beyond itself, or, if used as a starting-point, it could equally well lead to the conclusion that action and creation have no signiﬁcance or value. The question is not that but of the meaning of creation, whether there is a Supreme who is not merely a pure undifferentiated Consciousness and Being, but the source and support also of the dynamic energy of creation and whether the cosmic existence has for It a signiﬁcance and a value.


Sri Aurobindo: That is a question which cannot be settled by metaphysical logic which deals in words and ideas, but by a spiritual experience which goes beyond Mind and enters into spiritual realities. Each mind is satisﬁed with its own reasoning, but for spiritual purposes that satisfaction has no validity, except as an indication of how far and on what line each one is prepared to go in the ﬁeld of spiritual experience. If your reasoning leads you towards the Shankara idea of the Supreme, that might be an indication that the Vedanta Adwaita (Mayavada) is your way of advance.  This Yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher TruthConsciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ananda.  But for that, surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to that Higher Consciousness is indispensable, since it is too difﬁcult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a supramental consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power.


Sri Aurobindo: Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this Yoga.     The Shankara knowledge is, as your Guru pointed out, only one side of the Truth; it is the knowledge of the Supreme as realised by the spiritual Mind through the static silence of the pure Existence.


Sri Aurobindo: It was because he went by this side only that Shankara was unable to accept or explain the origin of the universe except as illusion, a creation of Maya. Unless one realises the Supreme on the dynamic as well as the static side, one cannot experience the true origin of things and the equal reality of the active Brahman. The Shakti or Power of the Eternal becomes then a power of illusion only and the world becomes incomprehensible, a mystery of cosmic madness, an eternal delirium of the Eternal.  Whatever verbal or ideative logic one may bring to support it, this way of seeing the universe explains nothing; it only erects a mental formula of the inexplicable. It is only if you approach the Supreme through his double aspect of Sat and Chit-Shakti, double but inseparable, that the total truth of things can become manifest to the inner experience.


Sri Aurobindo: The other side was developed by the Shakta Tantrics. The two together, the Vedantic and the Tantric truth uniﬁed, can arrive at the integral knowledge.  But philosophically this is what your Guru’s teaching comes to and it is obviously a completer truth and a wider knowledge than that given by the Shankara formula. It is already indicated in the Gita’s teaching of the Purushottama and the Parashakti (Adya Shakti) who becomes the Jiva and upholds the universe.  It is evident that Purushottama and Parashakti are both eternal and are inseparable and one in being; the Parashakti manifests the universe, manifests too the Divine in the universe as the Ishwara and herself appears at his side as the Ishwari Shakti.


Sri Aurobindo: Or, one may say, it is the Supreme Consciousness-Power of the Supreme that manifests or puts forth itself as Ishwara Ishwari, Atma Atmashakti, Purusha Prakriti, Jiva Jagat. That is the truth in its completeness as far as the mind can formulate it. In the Supermind these questions do not even arise — for it is the mind that creates the problem by erecting oppositions between aspects of the Divine which are not really opposed to each other but are one and inseparable.  This supramental knowledge has not yet been attained, because the supermind itself has not been attained, but the reﬂection of it in intuitive spiritual consciousness is there and that was what was evidently realised in experience by your Guru and what he was expressing in mental terms in the quoted passage. It is possible to go towards this knowledge by beginning with the experience of dissolution in the One, but on condition that you do not stop there, taking it as the highest Truth, but proceed to realise the same One as the supreme Mother, the Consciousness Force of the Eternal.


Sri Aurobindo: If on the other hand you approach through the supreme Mother, she will give you the liberation in the silent One also as well as the realisation of the dynamic One and from that it is easier to arrive at the Truth in which both are one and inseparable. At the same time the gulf created by Mind between the Supreme and his Manifestation is bridged and there is no longer a ﬁssure in the truth which makes all incomprehensible.  If in the light of this you examine what your Guru taught, you will see that it is the same thing in less metaphysical language.    They [] want to show that Shankara was not so savagely illusionist as he is represented — that he gave a certain temporary reality to the world, admitted Shakti etc.


Sri Aurobindo: But these (supposing he made them) are concessions inconsistent with the logic of his own philosophy which is that only the Brahman exists and the rest is ignorance and illusion. The rest has only a temporary and therefore an illusory reality in Maya. He farther maintained that Brahman could not be reached by works. If that was not his philosophy, I should like to know what was his philosophy. At any rate that was how his philosophy has been understood by people.


Sri Aurobindo: Now that the general turn is away from the rigorous Illusionism, many of the Adwaitins seem to want to hedge and make Shankara hedge with them.  Vivekananda accepted Shankara’s philosophy with modiﬁcations, the chief of them being Daridra-Narayan-seva which is a mixture of Buddhist compassion and modern philanthropy.     I believe according to the Adwaitins God is only the reﬂection of Brahman in Maya — just as Brahman is seen outwardly as the world which has only a practical not a real reality, so subjectively Brahman is seen as God, Bhagavan, Ishwara, and that also would be a practical not a real reality — which is and can be only the relationless Brahman all by itself in a worldless eternity.


Sri Aurobindo: At least that is what I have read — I don’t know whether Shankara himself says that. One is always being told by modern Adwaitins that Shankara did not mean what people say he meant — so one has to be careful in attributing any opinion to him.    Of course Shankara must have meant Mayavada. It is hardly possible that everybody should have misunderstood his ideas (which were not in the least veiled or enigmatic) till his modern apologists discovered what they really were.


Sri Aurobindo:   Shankara surely stands or falls by the Mayavada. Even the  poem is Mayavadic in spirit. I am not wellacquainted with these other writings — so it is difﬁcult for me to say anything about that side of the question.


Sri Aurobindo:   Chittashuddhi belongs to Rajayoga. In the pure Adwaita the method is rather to detach oneself by vichara and viveka and realise “I am not the mind, not the life, etc. etc.” In that case, no shuddhi would be necessary — the self would separate from the nature good or bad and regard it as a machinery which having no more the support of the egoless man would fall away of itself along with the body. Of course chittashuddhi can be resorted to also, but for cessation of the chittavrittis, not for their better dynamism as an instrument of the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: Shankara insists that all karma must fall off before one can be liberated — the soul must realise itself as, there is no salvation in or by works in the pure Yoga of knowledge. So how could Shankara recognise dynamism? Even if he recognises chittashuddhi as necessary, it must be as a preparation for getting rid of karma, not for anything else.  About Nirvana: When I wrote in the, I was setting forth an overmind view of things to the mind and putting it in mental terms, that was why I had sometimes to use logic. For in such a work — mediating between the intellect and the supra-intellectual — logic has a place, though it cannot have the chief place it occupies in purely mental philosophies.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mayavadin himself labours to establish his point of view or his experience by a rigorous logical reasoning. Only, when it comes to an explanation of Maya he, like the scientist dealing with Nature, can do no more than arrange and organise his ideas of the process of this universal mystiﬁcation; he cannot explain how or why his illusionary mystifying Maya came into existence. He can only say, “Well, but it is there.”  Of course, it is there. But the question is, ﬁrst, “What is it?


Sri Aurobindo: is it really an illusionary Power and nothing else, or is the Mayavadin’s idea of it a mistaken ﬁrst view, a mental imperfect reading, even perhaps itself an illusion?” And next, “Is illusion the sole or the highest Power which the Divine Consciousness or Superconsciousness possesses?” The Absolute is an absolute Truth free from Maya, otherwise liberation would not be possible. Has then the supreme and absolute Truth no other active Power than a power of falsehood and with it, no doubt, for the two go together, a power of dissolving or disowning the falsehood, — which is yet there for ever? I suggested that this sounded a little queer.


Sri Aurobindo: But queer or not, if it is so, it is so — for as you point out, the Ineffable cannot be subjected to the laws of logic.  But who is to decide whether it is so? You will say, those who get there. But get where? To the Perfect and the Highest, .


Sri Aurobindo: Is the Mayavadin’s featureless Brahman that Perfect, that Complete — is it the very Highest? Is there not or can there not be a higher than that highest,? That is not a question of logic, it is a question of spiritual fact, of a supreme and complete experience. The solution of the matter must rest not upon logic, but upon a growing, ever heightening, widening spiritual experience — an experience which must of course include or have passed through that of Nirvana and Maya, otherwise it would not be complete and would have no decisive value.  Now to reach Nirvana was the ﬁrst radical result of my own Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: It threw me suddenly into a condition above and without thought, unstained by any mental or vital movement; there was no ego, no real world — only when one looked through the immobile senses, something perceived or bore upon its sheer silence a world of empty forms, materialised shadows without true substance. There was no One or many even, only just absolutely That, featureless, relationless, sheer, indescribable, unthinkable, absolute, yet supremely real and solely real. This was no mental realisation nor something glimpsed somewhere above, — no abstraction — it was positive, the only positive reality — although not a spatial physical world, pervading, occupying or rather ﬂooding and drowning this semblance of a physical world, leaving no room or space for any reality but itself, allowing nothing else to seem at all actual, positive or substantial. I cannot say there was anything exhilarating or rapturous in the experience, as it then came to me, — the ineffable Ananda I had years afterwards, — but what it brought was an inexpressible Peace, a stupendous silence, an inﬁnity of release and freedom. I lived in that Nirvana day and night before it began to admit other things into itself or modify itself at all, and the inner heart of experience, a constant memory of it and its power to return remained until in the end it began to disappear into a greater Superconsciousness from above.


Sri Aurobindo: But meanwhile realisation added itself to realisation and fused itself with this original experience. At an early stage the aspect of an illusionary world gave place to one in which illusion is only a small surface phenomenon with an immense Divine Reality behind it and a supreme Divine Reality above it and an intense Divine Reality in the heart of everything that had seemed at ﬁrst only a cinematic shape or shadow. And this was no reimprisonment in the senses, no diminution or fall from supreme experience, it came rather as a constant heightening and widening of the Truth; it was the spirit that saw objects, not the senses, and the Peace, the Silence, the freedom in Inﬁnity remained always with the world or all worlds only as a continuous incident in the timeless eternity of the Divine.  Now that is the whole trouble in my approach to Mayavada.  Nirvana in my liberated consciousness turned out to be the beginning of my realisation, a ﬁrst step towards the complete thing, not the sole true attainment possible or even a culminating ﬁnale.


Sri Aurobindo: It came unasked, unsought for, though quite welcome. I had no least idea about it before, no aspiration towards it, in fact my aspiration was towards just the opposite, spiritual power to help the world and do my work in it, yet it came — without even a “May I come in” or a “By your leave”. It just happened and settled in as if for all eternity or as if it had been really there always. And then it slowly grew into something not less but greater than its ﬁrst self! How then could I accept Mayavada or persuade myself to pit against the Truth imposed on me from above the logic of Shankara?


Sri Aurobindo: But I do not insist on everybody passing through my experience or following the Truth that is its consequence. I have no objection to anybody accepting Mayavada as his soul’s truth or his mind’s truth or their way out of the cosmic difﬁculty. I object to it only if somebody tries to push it down my throat or the world’s throat as the sole possible, satisfying and allcomprehensive explanation of things. For it is not that at all.  There are many other possible explanations; it is not at all satisfactory, for in the end it explains nothing; and it is — and must be unless it departs from its own logic — all-exclusive, not in the least all-comprehensive.


Sri Aurobindo: But that does not matter. A theory may be wrong or at least one-sided and imperfect and yet extremely practical and useful. That has been amply shown by the history of science. In fact a theory whether philosophical or scientiﬁc is nothing else than a support for the mind, a practical device to help it to deal with its object, a staff to uphold it and make it walk more conﬁdently and get along on its difﬁcult journey. The very exclusiveness and one-sidedness of the Mayavada make it a strong staff or a forceful stimulus for a spiritual endeavour which means to be one-sided, radical and exclusive.


Sri Aurobindo: It supports the effort of the Mind to get away from itself and from Life by a short cut into superconscience. Or rather it is the Purusha in Mind that wants to get away from the limitations of Mind and Life into the superconscient Inﬁnite. Theoretically, the most radical way for that is for the mind to deny all its perceptions and all the preoccupations of the vital and see and treat them as illusions. Practically, when the mind draws back from itself, it enters easily into a relationless peace in which nothing matters — for in its absoluteness there are no mental or vital values — and from which the mind can rapidly move towards that great short cut to the Superconscient, mindless trance,.  In proportion to the thoroughness of that movement all the perceptions it had once accepted become unreal to it — illusion, Maya. It is on its road towards immergence.


Sri Aurobindo: Mayavada, therefore, with its sole stress on Nirvana, quite apart from its defects as a mental theory of things, serves a great spiritual end and, as a path, can lead very high and far. Even, if the Mind were the last word and there were nothing beyond it except the pure Spirit, I would not be averse to accepting it as the only way out. For what the mind with its perceptions and the vital with its desires have made of life in this world, is a very bad mess, and if there were nothing better to be hoped for, the shortest cut to an exit would be the best. But my experience is that there is something beyond Mind; Mind is not the last word here of the Spirit. Mind is an ignorance-consciousness and its perceptions cannot be anything else than either false, mixed or imperfect — even when “true”, a partial reﬂection of the Truth and not the very body of Truth herself.


Sri Aurobindo: But there is a TruthConsciousness, not static only and self-introspective, but also dynamic and creative, and I prefer to get at that and see what it says about things and can do rather than take the short cut away from things offered as its own end by the Ignorance.  Still, I would have no objection, if your attraction towards Nirvana were not merely a mood of the mind and vital but an indication of the mind’s true road and the soul’s issue. But it seems to me that it is only the vital recoiling from its own disappointed desires in an extreme dissatisfaction, not the soul leaping gladly to its true path. This vairagya is itself a vital movement; vital vairagya is the reverse side of vital desire — though the mind of course is there to give reasons and say ditto. Even this vairagya, if it is one-pointed and exclusive, can lead or can point towards Nirvana.


Sri Aurobindo: But you have many sides to your personality or rather many personalities in you; it is indeed their discordant movements each getting in the way of the other, as happens when they are expressed through the external mind, that have stood much in the way of your sadhana. There is the vital personality which was turned towards success and enjoyment and got it and wanted to go on with it but could not get the rest of the being to follow. There is the vital personality that wanted enjoyment of a deeper kind and suggested to the other that it could very well give up these unsatisfactory things if it got an equivalent in some faeryland of a higher joy. There is the psycho-vital personality that is the Vaishnava within you and wanted the Divine Krishna and bhakti and Ananda. There is the personality which is the poet and musician and a seeker of beauty through these things.


Sri Aurobindo: There is the mental-vital personality which when it saw the vital standing in the way insisted on a grim struggle of Tapasya, and it is no doubt that also which approves vairagya and Nirvana.  There is the physical-mental personality which is the Russellite, extrovert, doubter. There is another mental-emotional personality all whose ideas are for belief in the Divine, Yoga, bhakti, Guruvada. There is the psychic being also which has pushed you into the sadhana and is waiting for its hour of emergence.  What are you going to do with all these people?


Sri Aurobindo: If you want Nirvana, you have either to expel them or stiﬂe them or beat them into coma. All authorities assure us that this exclusive Nirvana business is a most difﬁcult job ( says the Gita), and your own fatal attempt at suppressing the others was not encouraging, — according to your own account it left you as dry and desperate as a sucked orange, no juice left anywhere. If the desert is your way to the promised land, that does not matter. But — Well, if it is not, then there is another way — it is what we call the integration, the harmonisation of the being. That cannot be done from outside, it cannot be done by the mind and vital being — they are sure to bungle their affair.


Sri Aurobindo: It can be done only from within by the soul, the Spirit which is the centraliser, itself the centre of these radii. In all of them there is a truth that can harmonise with the true truth of the others. For there is a truth in Nirvana — Nirvana is nothing but the peace and freedom of the Spirit which can exist in itself, be there world or no world, world-order or world-disorder. Bhakti and the heart’s call for the Divine have a truth — it is the truth of the divine Love and Ananda. The will for Tapasya has in it a truth — it is the truth of the Spirit’s mastery over its members.


Sri Aurobindo: The musician and poet stand for a truth, it is the truth of the expression of the Spirit through beauty. There is a truth behind the mental Afﬁrmer; even there is a truth behind the mental doubter, the Russellian, though far behind him — the truth of the denial of false forms. Even behind the two vital personalities there is a truth, the truth of the possession of the inner and outer worlds — not by the ego but by the Divine. That is the harmonisation for which our Yoga stands — but it cannot be achieved by any outward arrangement, it can only be achieved by going inside and looking, willing and acting from the psychic and from the spiritual centre. For the truth of the being is there and the secret of Harmony also is there.


Sri Aurobindo: The illusionist metaphors all fail when you drive them home — they are themselves an illusion. Identiﬁcation with the body is an error, not an illusion. We are not the body, but the body is still something of ourselves. With realisation the erroneous identiﬁcation ceases — in certain experiences the existence of the body is not felt at all. In the full realisation the body is within us, not we in it, it is an instrumental formation in our wider being — our consciousness exceeds but also pervades it; it can be dissolved without our ceasing to be the self.


Sri Aurobindo: That is about all.    Your objection is correct. The snake-rope image cannot be used to illustrate the non-existence of the world, it would only mean that our seeing of the world is not that of the world as it really is. The idea of complete illusion would better be illustrated by the juggler’s rope-climbing trick, where there is no rope and no climber, and yet one is persuaded that they are there.


Sri Aurobindo: According to both Buddha and Shankara liberation means of the individual in some transcendent Permanence that is not individualised — so logically a belief in the individual soul must prevent liberation while the sense of misery in the world leads to the attempt to escape.    The impulse towards laya is a creation of the mind, it is not the sole possible destiny of the soul. When the mind tries to abolish its own Ignorance, it ﬁnds no escape from it except laya, because it supposes that there is no higher principle of cosmic existence beyond itself — beyond itself is only the pure Spirit, the absolute impersonal Divine. Those who go through the heart (love, bhakti) do not accept laya, they believe in a state beyond of eternal companionship with the Divine or dwelling in the Divine without laya.


Sri Aurobindo: All this quite apart from supramentalisation. What then becomes of your starting point that laya is the inevitable destiny of the soul and it is only the personal descent of the Avatar that saves it from inevitable laya?    There were two points of error [ ]. (1) That the soul formerly had no other possibility once it reached the Divine than laya.


Sri Aurobindo: There were other possibilities, e.g. passing into a higher plane, living in the Divine or in the presence of the Divine. Both imply the refusal of birth and leaving the Lila on earth. (2) That it was only for the sake of living with the incarnate Divine and by reason of this descent that the soul consented to give up laya. The capital point is the supramentalisation of the being which is the Divine intention in the evolution on earth and cannot fail to come; the descent or incarnation is only an instrumentation for bringing that about.  Your statement therefore became wrong by incompleteness.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is the Vedantic Adwaita experience of laya. It is only one phase of experience — not the whole or the highest Truth of the Divine.  Veda and Vedanta are one side of the one Truth; Tantra with its emphasis on Shakti is another. In this Yoga all sides of the Truth are taken up, not in the systematic forms given them formerly, but in their essence and carried to the fullest and highest signiﬁcance.


Sri Aurobindo: But Vedanta deals more with the principles and essentials of the divine knowledge and therefore much of its spiritual knowledge and experience has been taken bodily into the. Tantra deals more with forms and processes and organised powers — all these could not be taken as they were, for the integral Yoga needs to develop its own forms and processes, but the ascent of the consciousness through the centres and other Tantrik knowledge are there behind the process of transformation to which so much importance is given by me — also the truth that nothing can be done except through the force of the Mother.    The ascension and descent of the Force in this Yoga accomplishes itself in its own way without any necessary reproduction of the details laid down in the books []. Many become conscious of the centres, but others simply feel the ascent or descent in a general way or from level to level rather than from centre to centre, that is to say, the Force descending ﬁrst to the head, then to the heart, then to the navel and still below.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not at all necessary to become aware of the deities in the centres according to the Tantrik description, but some feel the Mother in the different centres. In these things our sadhana does not cleave to the knowledge given in the books, but only keeps to the central truth behind and realises it independently without any subjection to the old forms and symbols. The centres themselves have a different interpretation here from that given in the books of the Tantriks.  The process of the Kundalini awakened rising through the centres as also the puriﬁcation of the centres is a Tantrik knowledge.  In our Yoga there is no willed process of the puriﬁcation and opening of the centres, no raising up of the Kundalini by a set process either.


Sri Aurobindo: Another method is used, but still there is the ascent of the consciousness from and through the different levels to join the higher consciousness above; there is the opening of the centres and of the planes (mental, vital, physical) which these centres command; there is also the descent which is the main key of the spiritual transformation. Therefore there is, I have said, a Tantrik knowledge behind the process of transformation in this Yoga.    There is [] no willed opening of the chakras, they open of themselves by the descent of the Force. In the Tantrik discipline they open from down upwards, the Muladhara ﬁrst — in our Yoga, they open from up downward.


Sri Aurobindo: But the ascent of the force from the Muladhara does take place.   The ascent of the Kundalini — not its descent, so far as I know — is a recognised phenomenon; there is one that corresponds in our Yoga, the feeling of the consciousness ascending from the vital or physical to meet the higher consciousness. This is not necessarily through the chakras but is often felt in the whole body. Similarly the descent of the higher consciousness is not felt necessarily or usually through the chakras but as occupying the whole head, neck, chest, abdomen, body.


Sri Aurobindo: In the Tantra the centres are opened and Kundalini is awakened  by a special process, its action of ascent is felt through the spine.  Here it is the pressure of the Force from above that awakens it and opens the centres. There is an ascension of the consciousness going up till it joins the higher consciousness above. This repeats itself (sometimes a descent also is felt) until all the centres are open and the consciousness rises above the body.


Sri Aurobindo: At a later stage it remains above and widens out into the cosmic consciousness and the universal Self. This is a usual course, but sometimes the process is more rapid and there is a sudden and deﬁnite opening above.    It [ ] is what is meant by the Kundalini rising towards the Brahmarandhra — not the whole of it, but something of it is released coiling or circling upward with vibrations () from the Muladhara. It is not always felt like that.


Sri Aurobindo: Sometimes one simply feels currents or a Force of some kind rising up or just an ascending movement of consciousness. But in all cases it is the release of the Yogic consciousness which is shut up in the chakras and its ascent to meet the Divine Consciousness above.  It is this and the corresponding descent from above that make Yogic experiences and realisations possible.   It [] is the Yogic force asleep in the Muladhara and covered up in the other centres by the ordinary consciousness.  When it is liberated, it rises up to join the Brahmic (Divine) consciousness above passing through the centres on its way.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is no Kundalini Shakti above the head. Above the head is the universal or Divine Consciousness and Force. The Kundalini is the latent power asleep in the chakras.


Sri Aurobindo:   The Energy in the Kundalini is the Mother’s.     I am afraid the attempt to apply scientiﬁc analogies to spiritual or Yogic things leads more often to confusion than to anything else, — just as it creates confusion if thrust upon philosophy also.


Sri Aurobindo: Kundalini coiled in the Muladhara is asleep, plunged in the inconscience, supporting the play of the Ignorance. Naturally if she heaves up from there, there may be a disturbance or disruption of the states of the Ignorance, but that would be rather a salutary upheaval and helpful to the purpose of Yoga.  Kundalini becoming conscious rises up to meet the Brahman in the thousand-petalled lotus. A mere ejection from her uniting with the higher consciousness would hardly lead to a radical change. Of course she need not abandon connection with the physical centre altogether; but she is no longer coiled there: if she were, the great occult force residing there would not be liberated.


Sri Aurobindo: The usual image of her risen and awake is, I believe, that of a serpent standing erect, the tail touching the lowest centre, the head the highest at the Brahmarandhra. Thus with all the centres open and active she unites the two poles, superior and inferior, of the being, the spirit with Matter.   Sri Aurobindo cannot undertake to guide you as your Guru, for the reason that he takes as disciples only those who follow his special path of Yoga; your experiences follow a different line. In his Yoga there may be an occasional current in the spine as in other nerve channels or different parts of the body, but no awakening of the Kundalini in this particular and powerful fashion. There is only a quiet uprising of the consciousness from the lower centres to join the spiritual consciousness above and a descent of the Divine Force from above which does its own work in the mind and body — the manner and stages varying in each sadhak.


Sri Aurobindo: A perfect conﬁdence in the Divine Mother and a vigilance to repel all wrong suggestions and inﬂuences is the main law of this Yoga. Your opening having once been so powerful on the more usual Tantric lines (even without your own will intervening), it is hardly probable that it could now change easily to other lines — any such effort might create a serious disturbance.  In speaking of a competent Guru Sri Aurobindo meant one who had himself practised this opening of the centres and become siddha in that line of Yoga. It should not be impossible to ﬁnd one — when one has the call for the Guru, the Guru sooner or later comes. Meanwhile to put away fear and have conﬁdence in the Divine working is indispensable — but no effort should be made to force the pace by concentrated meditation unless you have a guide whom you can trust — a clear guidance from within or a guide from without.


Sri Aurobindo: The inspiration about the Ida nadi and the subsequent waking of the Shakti show that there was an intervention at a critical moment and that the call to it whenever needed is likely to be effective.  In the experiences proper related in your ﬁrst letter there is absolutely nothing that should have disturbed you — all was quite normal, the usual experiences of the Yogin at such a juncture and very good and powerful, such as do not come except by the grace of the Divine. Probably the opening came after slow invisible preparation as a result of the meditation on the lotus at the top of the head; for that is always an invitation to the Kundalini to awake or for the lower consciousness to rise and meet the higher. The disturbing factor came with the feeling of discomfort in the heart due to some resistance in the physical being which is very often felt and can be overcome by the working of the Force itself and the fear that came afterwards in the seats of the vital Nature, heart, navel etc. But that was no part of the experience, it was an interference by a wrong reaction from the lower or exterior consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: If you had not allowed yourself to be disturbed, probably nothing untoward would have disturbed the process. One must not get frightened by unusual states or movements or experiences, the Yogi must be fearless, ; it is absurd to have a fear because one can control one’s states; that is a power very much to be desired and welcomed in Yoga.  The crisis related in the second letter would hardly have come, if there had not been this reaction; but in any case there was the intervention and setting right of the trouble. However these reactions and the fact that the disturbance came show that something in the exterior consciousness is not altogether prepared; it is better to wait and seek for a guide so that ignorant steps or reactions may not bring again a serious trouble or danger. This is all that Sri Aurobindo can say by way of enlightenment and advice.


Sri Aurobindo: He does not usually intervene with anyone not his disciple, but as your case was an unusual one and your call urgent, he has given you what light he can on your experience.  The Tantriks locate these forms of speech in different chakras.  Speech may be internal or external, either may have the stamp of the same power. But if it is to be measured by withdrawal from externality, then Para ought to mean something of the causal realm beyond mind.


Sri Aurobindo:   Pashyanti is evidently speech with the vision of Truth in it — Para is probably the revelatory and inspired speech. I am not certain about the exact nature of the others [ ].  They [] accept the world as a Lila, but the true Lila is elsewhere in the eternal Brindavan. All the religions which believe in the personal Godhead


Sri Aurobindo: accept the universe as a reality, a Lila or a creation made by the will of God, but temporal and not eternal. The aim is the eternal status above.    The idea of a temporary Kingdom of heaven on earth is contained in the Puranas and conceived by some Vaishnava saints or poets; but it is a devotional idea, no philosophical basis is given for the expectation. I think the Tantric overcoming of imperfection is more individual, not collective.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is the Vaishnava theory — that if you only repeat the name of Hari it is enough — nothing else needed. Even if you do it by accident, you will go posthaste to Heaven. It has always seemed to be the apotheosis of laziness and incompetence. There are plenty of people who have a little Bhakti for Krishna but I don’t ﬁnd them revelling in all the fruits of tapasya.


Sri Aurobindo:   If you can feel the Name bringing you peace, it should be able to bring everything else, bhakti, joy, the revelation of the Power and the Presence and the full feeling and consciousness of it to you. That is indeed the process of the Vaishnava sadhana and the power of the Name in it. Only, keep your poise and persevere.


Sri Aurobindo:  The Supramental is something in which the basis is absolute calm and however intense a Divine Love there is in it it does not disturb the calm but increases its depth. Chaitanya’s experience was not that of Supermind, but of a Love and Ananda brought from above into the vital — the response of the vital is an extreme passion and exultation of Godward love and Ananda, the result of which is these. Chaitanya claimed this supremacy for the Radha experience because Ananda is higher than the experiences of the spiritual mind, Ananda being according to the Upanishads the supreme plane of experience. But this is a logical conclusion which cannot be accepted wholly — one must pass through the supermind to arrive to the highest Ananda and in the supermind there is a uniﬁcation and harmonisation of all the divine Powers (Knowledge, etc. as well as Love and Ananda). Different sadhanas emphasise one aspect or another as the highest, but it is this union of all that must be the true base of the highest realisation and experience.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not necessary to repeat past forms [] — to bring out the bhakti of the psychic being and give it whatever forms come naturally in the development is the proper way for our sadhana.    What three signs []? If you refer to the four conditions (child, madman, demon, inert), it is not Ramakrishna who invented that. It is an old Sanskrit sloka, , describing the Paramhansa or rather the various forms of Paramhansahood.


Sri Aurobindo: The Paramhansa is a particular grade of realisation, there are others supposed to be lower or higher.  I have no objection to them [ ] in their own place. But I must remind you that in my Yoga all vital movements must come under the control of the psychic and of the spiritual calm, knowledge and peace. If they conﬂict with the psychic or the spiritual control, they upset the balance and prevent the forming of the base of transformation.  If unbalance is good for other paths, that is the business of those who follow them.


Sri Aurobindo: It does not suit mine.    Everybody must be made to understand clearly that this is not a sadhana of emotional and egoistic, but of surrender.  One who makes demands and threatens to commit suicide if his demands are not complied with, is not meant for this Yoga. . . .  This Yoga is not a Yoga of emotional egoistic vital bhakti full of demands and desires.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no room in it for of any kind. It is only for those who surrender to the Divine and obey implicitly the directions given to them by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.  Your whole-hearted acceptance of the Vaishnava idea and bhakti becomes rather bewildering when it is coupled with an insistence that love cannot be given to the Divine until one has experience of the Divine. For what is more common in the Vaishnava attitude than the joy of bhakti for its own sake? “Give me bhakti,” it cries, “whatever else you may keep from me.


Sri Aurobindo: Even if it is long before I can meet you, even if you delay to manifest yourself, let my bhakti, my seeking for you, my cry, my love, my adoration be always there.” How constantly the Bhakta has sung, “All my life I have been seeking you and still you are not there, but still I seek and cannot cease to seek and love and adore.” If it were really impossible to love God unless you ﬁrst experience him, how could this be? In fact your mind seems to be putting the cart before the horse. One seeks after God ﬁrst, with persistence or with passion, one ﬁnds him afterwards, some sooner than others, but most after a long seeking.


Sri Aurobindo: One does not ﬁnd him ﬁrst, then seek after him. Even a glimpse only comes after long or fervent seeking. One has the love of God or at any rate some heart’s desire for him and afterwards one becomes aware of God’s love, its reply to the heart’s desire, its response of the supreme joy and Ananda. One does not say to God, “Show your love for me ﬁrst, shower on me the experience of yourself, satisfy my demand, then I will see whether I can love you so long as you deserve it.” It is surely the seeker who must seek and love ﬁrst, follow the quest, become impassioned for the Sought — then only does the veil move aside and the Light be seen and the Face manifest that alone can satisfy the soul after its long sojourn in the desert.


Sri Aurobindo: Then again you may say, “Yes, but whether I love or not, I want, I have always wanted and now I want more and more, but I get nothing.” Yes, but wanting is not all. As you now begin to see, there are conditions that have to be met — like the puriﬁcation of the heart. Your thesis was, “Once I want God, God must manifest to me, come to me, at least give glimpses of himself to me, the real solid concrete experiences, not mere vague things which I can’t understand or value. God’s Grace must answer my call for it, whether I yet deserve it or not — or else there is no Grace.”


Sri Aurobindo: God’s Grace may indeed do that in certain cases, but where does the “must” come in? If God must do it, it is no longer God’s Grace, but God’s duty or an obligation or a contract or a treaty. The Divine looks into the heart and removes the veil at the moment which he knows to be the right moment to do it. You have laid stress on the bhakti theory that one has only to call his name and he must reply, he must at once be there. Perhaps, but for whom is this true?


Sri Aurobindo: For a certain kind of Bhakta surely who feels the power of the Name, who has the passion of the Name and puts it into his cry. If one is like that, then there may be the immediate reply — if not, one has to become like that, then there will be the reply. But some go on using the Name for years, before there is an answer. Ramakrishna himself got it after a few months, but what months! and what a condition he had to pass through before he got it!


Sri Aurobindo: Still he succeeded quickly because he had a pure heart already — and that divine passion in it.  It is not surely the Bhakta but the man of knowledge who demands experience ﬁrst. He can say, “How can I know without experience?”, but even he goes on seeking like Tota Puri even though for thirty years, striving for the decisive realisation. It is really the man of intellect, the rationalist who says, “Let God, if he exists, prove himself to me ﬁrst, then I will believe, then I will make some serious and prolonged effort to explore him and see what he is like.”  All this does not mean that experience is irrelevant to sadhana — I certainly cannot have said such a stupid thing.


Sri Aurobindo: What I have said is that the love and seeking of the Divine can be and ordinarily is there before the experience comes — it is an instinct, an inherent longing in the soul and it comes up as soon as certain coverings of the soul disappear or begin to disappear. The next thing I have said is that it is better to get the nature ready ﬁrst (the puriﬁed heart and all that) before the “experiences” begin rather than the other way round and I base that on the many cases there have been of the danger of experiences before the heart and vital are ready for the true experience. Of course in many cases there is a true experience ﬁrst, a touch of the Grace, but it is not something that lasts and is always there, but rather something that touches and withdraws and waits for the nature to get ready. But this is not so in every case, not even in many cases, I believe. One has to begin with the soul’s inherent longing, then the struggle with the nature to get the temple ready, then the unveiling of the Image, the permanent Presence in the sanctuary.


Sri Aurobindo: P.S. All this is of course only an answer couched in mental terms to your one objection or inability to conceive how one can love God without having ﬁrst known Him or had experience of Him. But mental reasoning by itself leads to nothing — it is something in yourself that has to see and then there is no difﬁculty. Fortunately, you are moving near to that.


Sri Aurobindo: Nor would I trouble at all about this point, if you did not make of it a support for depression and despair. Otherwise it would have no importance, since with one idea or with the other one can arrive at the goal because the soul drives towards it.  Peace was the very ﬁrst thing that the Yogins and seekers of old asked for and it was a quiet and silent mind — and that always brings peace — that they declared to be the best condition for realising the Divine. A cheerful and sunlit heart is the ﬁt vessel for the Ananda and who shall say that Ananda or what prepares it is an obstacle to the Divine union? As for despondency, it is surely a terrible burden to carry on the way.


Sri Aurobindo: One has to pass through it sometimes, like Christian of through the Slough of Despond, but its constant reiteration cannot be anything but an obstacle. The Gita specially says, “Practise the Yoga with an undespondent heart”,.  I know perfectly well that pain and suffering and struggle and excesses of despair are natural — though not inevitable — on the way, — not because they are helps, but because they are imposed on us by the darkness of this human nature out of which we have to struggle into the Light. I do not suppose Ramakrishna or Vivekananda would have recommended the incidents you allude to as an example for others to follow — they would surely have said that faith, fortitude, perseverance were the better way. That after all was what they stuck to in the end in spite of these bad moments and they would never have dreamed of giving up the Yoga or the aspiration for the Divine on the ground that they were unﬁt and not meant for the realisation.


Sri Aurobindo: At any rate Ramakrishna told the story of Narada and the ascetic Yogi and the Vaishnava Bhakta with approval of its moral. I put it in my own language but keep the substance.  Narada on his way to Vaikuntha met a Yogi practising hard tapasya on the hills. “O Narada,” cried the Yogi, “you are going to Vaikuntha and will see Vishnu. I have been practising terriﬁc austerities all my life and yet I have not even now attained to Him.


Sri Aurobindo: Ask Him at least for me when I shall reach Him.” Then Narada met a Vaishnava, a Bhakta who was singing songs to Hari and dancing to his own singing, and he cried also, “O Narada, you will see my Lord, Hari. Ask my Lord when I shall reach Him and see His face.” On his way back Narada came ﬁrst to the Yogi. “I have asked Vishnu; you will realise Him after six more lives.”


Sri Aurobindo: The Yogi raised a cry of loud lamentation, “What, so many austerities! such gigantic endeavours! and my reward is realisation after six long lives! O how hard to me is the Lord Vishnu.” Next Narada met again the Bhakta and said to him, “I have no good news for you.


Sri Aurobindo: You will see the Lord, but only after a lakh of lives.” But the Bhakta leapt up with a great cry of rapture, “Oh, I shall see my Lord Hari! after a lakh of lives I shall see my Lord Hari! How great is the grace of the Lord.” And he began dancing and singing in a renewed ecstasy.


Sri Aurobindo: Then Narada said, “Thou hast attained. Today thou shalt see the Lord!” Well, you may say, “What an extravagant story and how contrary to human nature!” Not so contrary as all that and in any case hardly more extravagant than the stories of Harishchandra and Shivi. Still I do not hold up the Bhakta as an example, for I myself insist on the realisation in this life and not after six or a lakh of births more.


Sri Aurobindo: But the point of these stories is in the moral and surely when Ramakrishna told it, he was not ignorant that there was a sunlit path of Yoga! He even seems to say that it is the quicker way as well as the better! You are quite mistaken in thinking that the possibility of the sunlit path is a discovery or original invention of mine. The very ﬁrst books on Yoga I read more than thirty years ago spoke of the dark and sunlit way and emphasised the superiority of the second over the other.  It is not either because I have myself trod the sunlit way or ﬂinched from difﬁculty and suffering and danger.


Sri Aurobindo: I have had my full share of these things and the Mother has had ten times her full share. But that was because the ﬁnders of the Way had to face these things in order to conquer. No difﬁculty that can come on the sadhak but has faced us on the path; against many we have had to struggle hundreds of times (in fact that is an understatement) before we could overcome; many still remain protesting that they have a right until the perfect perfection is there. But we have never consented to admit their inevitable necessity for others. It is in fact to ensure an easier path to others hereafter that we have borne that burden.


Sri Aurobindo: It was with that object that the Mother once prayed to the Divine that whatever difﬁculties, dangers, sufferings were necessary for the path might be laid on her rather than on others. It has been so far heard that as a result of daily and terrible struggles for years those who put an entire and sincere conﬁdence in her able to follow the sunlit path and even those who cannot, yet when they do put the trust ﬁnd their path suddenly easy and, if it becomes difﬁcult again, it is only when distrust, revolt, abhiman, or other darknesses come upon them. The sunlit path is not altogether a fable.  But you will ask what of those who cannot? Well, it is for them I am putting forth all my efforts to bring down the supramental Force within a measurable time.


Sri Aurobindo: I know that it will descend but I am seeking its near descent and, with whatever dark obstruction of the earth-nature or furious inroads of the Asuric forces seeking to prevent it, it is approaching the terrestrial soil. The supramental is not, as you imagine, something cold, hard and rocklike. It bears within it the presence of the Divine Love as well as the Divine Truth and its reign here means for those who accept it the straight and thornless path on which there is no wall or obstacle of which the ancient Rishis saw the far-off promise.  The dark path is there and there are many who make like the Christians a gospel of spiritual suffering; many hold it to be the unavoidable price of victory. It may be so under certain circumstances, as it has been in so many lives at least at the beginning, or one may choose to make it so.


Sri Aurobindo: But then the price has to be paid with resignation, fortitude or a tenacious resilience. I admit that if borne in that way the attacks of the Dark Forces or the ordeals they impose have a meaning. After each victory gained over them, there is then a sensible advance; often they seem to show us the difﬁculties in ourselves which we have to overcome and to say, “Here you must conquer us and here.”  But all the same it is a too dark and difﬁcult way which nobody should follow on whom the necessity does not lie.  In any case one thing can never help and that is to despond always and say, “I am unﬁt; I am not meant for the Yoga.”


Sri Aurobindo: And worse still are these perilous mental formations such as you are always accepting that you must fare like (one whose difﬁculty of exaggerated ambition was quite different from yours) and that you have only six years etc. These are clear formations of the Dark Forces seeking not only to sterilise your aspiration but to lead you away and so prevent your sharing in the fruit of the victory hereafter. I do not know what Krishnaprem has said but his injunction, if you have rightly understood it, is one that cannot stand as valid, since so many have done Yoga relying on tapasya or anything else but not conﬁdent of any divine Grace.  It is not that, but the soul’s demand for a higher Truth or a higher life that is indispensable. Where that is, the Divine Grace whether believed in or not, will intervene.


Sri Aurobindo: If you believe, that hastens and facilitates things; if you cannot yet believe, still the soul’s aspiration will justify itself with whatever difﬁculty and struggle.    would be quite the wrong movement, it would be a sort of Satyagraha against the Divine. In essence it is an attempt to force the Divine to do what one wants instead of trusting to him to do what is best according to his own divine will and wisdom; it is a culminating act of vital impatience and disappointed desire, while the true movement is a pure aspiration and an ardent surrender.  After all, one has not a to call on the Divine to manifest himself; it can come only as a response to a spiritual or psychic state of consciousness or to a long course of sadhana rightly done; or, if it comes before that or without any apparent reason, it is a grace; but one cannot demand or compel grace; grace is something spontaneous which wells out from the Divine Consciousness as a free ﬂower of its being. The bhakta looks for it, but he is ready to wait in perfect reliance, even if need be all his life, knowing that it will come, never varying in his love and surrender because it does not come now or soon.


Sri Aurobindo: That is the spirit of so many songs of the devotees, which you have sung yourself; I heard one such song from you in a record some time ago and a very beautiful song it was and beautifully sung — “Even if I have not won thee, O Lord, still I adore.”  What prevents you from having that, is the restless element of vital impatience and ever recurring or persisting disappointment at not having what you want from the Divine. It is the idea, “I wish so much for it, surely I ought to have it; why is it withheld from me?” But wanting, however strongly, is not a passport to getting; there is something more to it than that.  Our experience is that too much vital eagerness and insistence often blocks the way, it makes a sort of obstructing mass or a whirl of restlessness and disturbance which leaves no quiet space for the Divine to get in or for the thing wished for to come.


Sri Aurobindo: Often it does come, but when the impatience has been deﬁnitely renounced and one waits, quietly open, for whatever may be (or for the time not be) given. But so often when you are preparing for a greater progress in the true devotion the habit of this vital element stands up and takes hold and interrupts the progress made.  The joylessness also comes from the vital. It is partly due to the disappointment but not solely, for it is a very common phenomenon when there is a pressure from the mind and soul on the vital to give up its attachments and its full unpuriﬁed acceptance of the outward life; it often gets a rajasic or tamasic vairagya instead of the sattwic kind, refuses to take a joy in anything, becomes dry, listless or unhappy, or it says, “Well, I have given up, I am giving up, but in exchange I must have the realisation you promise me; why don’t I get it, I can’t wait.” To get rid of that, it is best, even while observing it, not to identify oneself with it; if the mind or some part of the mind sanctions or justiﬁes, it will persist or recur.


Sri Aurobindo: If sorrow there must be, the other kind you described in the previous letter is preferable, the sadness that has a sweetness in it, no revolt, no despair, only the psychic longing for the true thing to come.  It is not by or anything of the kind that it must come, but by the increase of the pure and true bhakti. You have been constantly told so by us and lately be Krishnaprem and his guru; remember that she told you that the presence of Krishna during your singing was a sure sign that it would come, — not necessarily today or tomorrow or the day after, but that it would surely come. We can’t be all of us wrong and your vital impatience only in the right. For heaven’s sake, get rid of it and settle down to quiet aspiration and an ever growing devotion and surrender leaving it to Krishna to do what he is sure to do in his own way and time.


Sri Aurobindo: Even if things were as bad as you say, I don’t see how going away would help you in the least — (it would certainly not make you non-human); some have tried before this device of progress by departure and it has never succeeded, they have had to come back and face their difﬁculty. Why do you always come back to this notion of going away or entertain it at all? It is quite meaningless from any rational point of view; it only encourages the adverse Force which wants to take you away from the path to return to the attack, and it prevents the speedy conversion of that dissatisﬁed part of your vital which is always kicking against the pricks — the pricks of your soul and of your spiritual destiny. However sad the prospect may seem to this dissatisﬁed vital fragment, your destiny is to be a Yogi and the sooner it reconciles itself to the prospect the better for it and for all the other personalities in you. Your alleged or inferred unﬁtness is a delusion, an imagination of this vital part; it doesn’t exist.


Sri Aurobindo: If persistence of difﬁculties is a proof of unﬁtness, then there is nobody in this Asram who is ﬁt for the Yoga. We would all have to pack up our belongings or give them away and start either to get back to the ordinary world or en route for the Himalayas.   You describe the rich human egoistic life you might have lived and you say “not altogether a wretched life, you will admit”. On paper, it sounds even very glowing and satisfactory, as you describe it.


Sri Aurobindo: But there is no real or ﬁnal satisfaction in it, except for those who are too common or trivial to seek anything else, and even they are not really satisﬁed or happy, — and in the end, it tires and palls. Sorrow and illness, clash and strife, disappointment, disillusionment and all kinds of human suffering come and beat its glow to pieces — and then decay and death.  That is the vital egoistic life as man has found it throughout the ages, and yet it is that which this part of your vital regrets?  How do you fail to see, when you lay so much stress on the desirability of a merely human consciousness, that suffering is its badge? When the vital resists the change from the human into the divine consciousness, what it is defending is its right to sorrow and suffering and all the rest of it, varied and relieved no doubt by some vital or mental pleasures and satisfactions, but very partially relieved by them and only for a time.


Sri Aurobindo: In your own case, it was already beginning to pall on you and that was why you turned from it. No doubt, there were the joys of the intellect and of artistic creation, but a man cannot be an artist alone; there is the outer quite human lower vital part and, in all but a few, it is the most clamorous and insistent part. But what was dissatisﬁed in you? It was the soul within, ﬁrst of all, and through it the higher mind and the higher vital. Why then ﬁnd fault with the Divine for misleading you when it turned you to the Yoga or brought you here?


Sri Aurobindo: It was simply answering to the demand of your own inner being and the higher parts of your nature. If you have so much difﬁculty and become restless, it is because you are still divided and something in your lower vital still regrets what it has lost or, as a price for its adhesion or a compensation — a price to be paid down to it, — asks for something similar and equivalent in the spiritual life. It refuses to believe that there is a greater compensation, a larger vital life waiting for it in which there shall not be the old inadequacy and unrest and ﬁnal dissatisfaction. The foolishness is not in the Divine guidance, but in the irrational and obstinate resistance of this confused and obscure part of you to the demand, made not only by this Yoga, but by all Yoga — to the necessary conditions for the satisfaction of the aspiration of your own soul and higher nature.  The “human” vital consciousness has moved always between these two poles, the ordinary vital life which cannot satisfy and the recoil from it to the ascetic solution.


Sri Aurobindo: India has gone fully through that see-saw; now Europe is beginning once more after a full trial to feel the failure of the mere vital egoistic life.  The traditional Yogas — to which you appeal — are founded upon the movement between these two poles. On one side are Shankara and Buddha and most go, if not by the same road, yet in that direction; on the other are Vaishnava or Tantric lines which try to combine asceticism with some sublimation of the vital impulse. And where did these lines end? They fell back to the other pole, to a vital invasion, even corruption and a loss of their spirit.


Sri Aurobindo: At the present day the general movement is towards an attempt at reconciliation, and you have alluded sometimes to some of the protagonists of this attempt and asked me my opinion about them, yours being unfavourable. But these men are not mere charlatans, and if there is anything wrong with them (on which I do not pronounce), it can only be because they are unable to resist the magnetic pull of this lower pole of the egoistic vital desire-nature. And if they are unable to resist, it is because they have not found the true force which will not only neutralise that pull and prevent deterioration and downward lapse, but transform and utilise and satisfy in their own deeper truth, instead of destroying or throwing away, the life-force and the embodiment in matter; for that can only be done by the supermind power and by no other.  You appeal to the Vaishnava-Tantric traditions, to Chaitanya, Ramprasad, Ramakrishna. I know something about them and, if I did not try to repeat them, it is because I do not ﬁnd in them the solution, the reconciliation I am seeking.


Sri Aurobindo: Your quotation from Ramprasad does not assist me in the least — and it does not support your thesis either. Ramprasad is not speaking of an embodied, but of a bodiless and invisible Divine — or visible only in a subtle form to the inner experience. When he speaks of maintaining his claim or case against the Mother until she lifts him into her lap, he is not speaking of any outer vital or physical contact, but of an inner psychic experience; precisely, he is protesting against her keeping him in the external vital and physical nature and insists on her taking him on the psychospiritual plane into union with her. All that is very good and very beautiful, but it is not enough; the union has indeed to be realised in the inner psycho-spiritual experience ﬁrst, because without that nothing sound or lasting can be done; but also there must be a realisation of the Divine in the outer consciousness and life, in the vital and physical planes on their own essential lines.  It is that which, without your mind understanding it or how it is to be done, you are asking for, and I too; only I see the necessity of a vital transformation, while you seem to think and to demand that it should be done without any radical transformation, leaving the vital as it is.


Sri Aurobindo: In the beginning, before I discovered the secret of the supermind, I myself tried to seek the reconciliation through an association of the spiritual consciousness with the vital, but my experience and all experience shows that this leads to nothing deﬁnite and ﬁnal, — it ends where it began, midway between the two poles of human nature. An association is not enough, a transformation is indispensable.  The tradition of later Vaishnava bhakti is an attempt to sublimate the vital impulses through love by turning human love towards the Divine. It made a strong and intense effort and had many rich and beautiful experiences; but its weakness was just there, that it remained valid only as an inner experience turned towards the inner Divine, but it stopped at that point. Chaitanya’s was nothing but a psychic divine love with a strong sublimated vital manifestation.


Sri Aurobindo: But the moment Vaishnavism before or after him made an attempt at greater externalisation, we know what happened — a vitalistic deterioration, much corruption and decline. You cannot appeal to Chaitanya’s example as against psychic or divine love; it was not something merely vital-human; in its essence, though not in its form, it was very much the ﬁrst step in the transformation, which we ask of the sadhaks, to make their love psychic and use the vital not for its own sake, but as an expression of the soul’s realisation. It is the ﬁrst step and perhaps for some it may be sufﬁcient, for we are not asking everybody to become supramental; but for any manifestation on the physical plane the supramental is indispensable.  In this later Vaishnava tradition the sadhana takes the form of an application of human vital love in all its principal turns to the Divine;, even complete separation (like the departure of Krishna to Mathura) are made prominent elements of this Yoga. But all that was only meant — in the sadhana itself, not in the Vaishnava poems — as a passage of which the end is  or complete union; but the stress laid on the untoward elements by some would almost seem to make strife, separation, , the whole means if not the very object of this kind of .