Sri Aurobindo: You admit that you once or twice felt “a force coming down and delivering a poem out of me” (your opinion about its worth or worthlessness is not worth a cent, that is for others to pronounce). That is sufﬁcient to blow the rest of your Jeremiad into smithereens; it proves that the force was and is there and at work and it is only your sweating Herculean labour that prevents you feeling it. Also it is the trickle that gives assurance of the possibility of the downpour. One has only to go on and by one’s patience deserve the downpour or else, without deserving, stick on till one gets it. In Yoga itself the experience that is a promise and foretaste but gets shut off till the nature is ready for the fulﬁlment is a phenomenon familiar to every Yogin when he looks back on his past experience.


Sri Aurobindo: Such were the brief visitations of Ananda you had some time before. It does not matter if you have not a leechlike tenacity — leeches are not the only type of Yogins.  If you can stick anyhow or get stuck that is sufﬁcient. The fact that you are not Sri Aurobindo (who said you were?) is an inept irrelevance. One needs only to be oneself in a reasonable way and shake off the hump when it is there or allow it to be shaken off without clinging to it with a “leechlike tenacity” worthy of a better cause.


Sri Aurobindo: The Divine Force, not using the supramental Power, can certainly throw back the forces of Death and that has been done many times. But the Divine Force works here under conditions imposed by the Divine Will and Law; it has to take up an immense mass of conﬂicting forces, conditions, habits and movements of Nature and out of it arrive at the result of a higher consciousness on earth and a higher state. If it were to act otherwise, then all would be done by a miracle or magic, no sadhana would be needed, no way beaten out for the process of spiritual evolution to follow; there would be no real transformation of consciousness, but only a temporary feat of force which having no basis in the substance of creation here would vanish as it came. Therefore conditions have to be satisﬁed, the work to be done has to be wrought out step by step. The powers that held the ﬁeld up to now have to be given their chance to oppose, so that the problem may be solved and not evaded or turned into a sham ﬁght or unreal game without signiﬁcance.


Sri Aurobindo: Therefore there is a sadhana to be done, there is a resistance to be overcome, a choice made between the higher and the lower state. The Divine Power does the work, gives a protection and a guidance; but it is not here to use an absolute force — except when that is sanctioned by the Divine Wisdom and in the light of that Wisdom justiﬁable. Then the decisive Po


Sri Aurobindo: wer acts of itself and does what it has to do.  If I write about these questions [] from the Yogic point of view, even though on a logical basis, there is bound to be much that is in conﬂict with your own settled and perhaps cherished opinions, e.g. about “miracles”, persons, the limits of judgment by sense data etc. I have avoided as much as possible writing about these subjects because I would have to propound things that cannot be understood except by reference to other data than those of the physical senses or of reason founded on these alone. I might have to speak of laws and forces not recognised by physical reason or science. In my public writings and my writings to sadhaks


Sri Aurobindo: I have not dwelt on these because they go out of the range of ordinary knowledge and the understanding founded on it. These things are known to some, but they do not usually speak about it, while the public view of such of them as are known is either credulous or incredulous, but in both cases without experience or knowledge. So if the views founded on them are likely to upset, shock or bewilder, the better way is silence.    If I was annoyed, it was with myself for speaking of things which ought to be kept under a cover.


Sri Aurobindo: I put the whole thing in a light form, no doubt, but the substance was perfectly serious, the intention being to point out that even in ordinary non-spiritual things the action of invisible or of subjective forces was open to doubt and discussion in which there could be no material certitude — while the spiritual force is invisible in itself and also invisible in its action. So it is idle to try to prove that such and such a result was the effect of spiritual force. Each must form his own idea about that — for if it is accepted it cannot be as a result of proof and argument, but only as a result of experience, of faith or of that insight in the heart or the deeper intelligence which looks behind appearances and sees what is behind them.  Moreover it would not be seemly for me to appear to be making a claim for myself and pleading for recognition or acceptance — for the spiritual consciousness does not claim in that way, it can state the truth about itself but not ﬁght for a personal acceptance. A general and impersonal statement about spiritual force is another matter, but I doubt whether the time has come for it or whether it could be understood by the mere reasoning intelligence.


Sri Aurobindo: All power comes from the Divine but it is more usually misused than used spiritually or rightly.    The Divine Forces are meant to be used — the mistake of man individualised in the Ignorance is to use it for the ego and not for the Divine. It is that that has to be set right by the union with the Divine Consciousness and also by the widening of the individual being so that it can live consciously in the universal. Difﬁcult it is owing to the ﬁxed ego-habit, but it is not impossible.


Sri Aurobindo: The action of the Force does not exclude tapasya, concentration and the need of sadhana. Its action rather comes as an answer or a help to these things. It is true that it sometimes acts without them; it very often wakes a response in those who have not prepared themselves and do not seem to be ready. But it does not always or usually act like that, nor is it a sort of magic that acts in the void or without any process. Nor is it a machine which acts in the same way on everybody or in all conditions and circumstances; it is not a physical but a spiritual Force and its action cannot be reduced to rules.


Sri Aurobindo:  It [] acts by awakening the inner consciousness gradually or swiftly, by replacing the principle of ego-service by the principle of service of the Divine, by making him watch his actions and see his own defects and pushing him to rectify them, by establishing a connection between his consciousness and the Mother’s consciousness, by preparing his nature to be taken up more and more by the Mother’s consciousness and force, by giving him experiences which make him ready for the major experiences of Yoga, by stimulating the growth of his psychic being, by opening him to the Mother as the Universal Being, etc. etc. Naturally it acts differently in different persons.  It is quite true that, left to yourself, you can do nothing; that is why you have to be in contact with the Force which is there to do for you what you cannot do for yourself. The only thing  have to do is to allow the Force to act and put yourself on its side, which means to have faith in it, to rely upon it, not to trouble and harass yourself, to remember it quietly, to call upon it quietly, to let it act quietly. If you do that, all else will be done for you — not all at once, because there is much to clear away, but still it will be done steadily and more and more.


Sri Aurobindo:  Passivity can be only to the Divine Force when it is felt at work, — there can be no passivity to other forces, for that would be dangerous in the extreme. Passivity does mean a blank mind — it means allowing the Divine Force to work without interference of the mental preferences, vital desires or physical disinclinations. As for freedom from ego or desire, that is the general law of all Yoga, but it cannot be acquired by merely giving up work. The majority of Sannyasins are not at all free from desire or ego.


Sri Aurobindo:   Always keep in touch with the Divine Force. The best thing for you is to do that simply and allow it to do its own work; wherever necessary, it will take hold of the inferior energies and purify them; at other times it will empty you of them and ﬁll you with itself. But if you let your mind take the lead and discuss and decide what is to be done, you will lose touch with the Divine Force and the lower energies will begin to act for themselves and all go into confusion and a wrong movement.


Sri Aurobindo:   One feels the Force only when one is in conscious contact with it.    It is a great progress, a decisive advance if, at the time the Force is acting behind the screen, you feel that it is there, that the help and support, the more enlightened consciousness is there still. This is the second stage in the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: There is a third when there is no screen and the Force and all else are always felt whether actively working or pausing during a transition.     Remind yourself always that the Divine Force is there, that you have felt it and that, even if you seem to lose consciousness of it for a time or it seems something distant, still it is there and is sure to prevail. For those whom the Force has touched and taken up, belong thenceforth to the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: The Guru should be accepted in all ways — transcendent, impersonal, personal.    It has always been held in Indian yoga that the relation between Guru and disciple must be one of full conﬁdence and full acceptance of the Guru by the Shishya. The latter was supposed to accept unquestioningly the guidance and to follow the instructions of the Guru without criticism or questioning; he was not supposed to criticise, to blame or to refuse adhesion or to follow in a questioning or grudging spirit: for that would stand in the way of his advance. The Indian disciple of those days would not have expected the Guru to suit his directions or instructions or ways of leading to the mental demands or vital ideas of the [


Sri Aurobindo: ]     There are three conditions for a disciple for proﬁting fully from his relation to a spiritual guide.  1st: He must accept him entirely and him alone without submitting himself to any contrary or second inﬂuence.


Sri Aurobindo: 2nd: He must accept the indications given by the Guru and follow them ﬁrmly and with full faith and perseverance to the best of his own spiritual capacity.  3rd: He must make himself open and receptive to the Guru for even more than what the Guru teaches to the mind of the disciple, it is what he spiritually is, the spiritual consciousness, the knowledge, the light, the power, the Divinity in him that helps the disciple to grow by his receiving that into himself and its being used within himself for the growth of his consciousness and nature into its own divine possibility.    What the Guru can do for the sadhak depends upon the latter’s receptivity — not upon any method or rule of sadhana. Certain psychological conditions or attitudes of the consciousness tend to increase the receptivity — e.g., humility towards the Guru, devotion, obedience, trust, a certain receptive passivity to his inﬂuence.


Sri Aurobindo: The opposite things — independence, a critical attitude, questionings — go the other way and make it necessary for the Guru to help only indirectly or behind the veil. But the main thing is a kind of psychological openness in the consciousness which comes or increases of itself with the help of the will to receive and the right attitude. If there is that then it is not necessary to pull anything from the Guru, only to receive quietly.  Pulling from him often draws untruly or things for which the consciousness is not ready to assimilate.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a deﬁciency of psychic perception and spiritual discrimination that makes people speak like that [] and ignore the importance of obedience. It is the mind wanting to follow its own way of thinking and the vital seeking freedom for its desires which argue in this manner. If you do not follow the rules laid down by the spiritual guide or obey one who is leading you to the Divine, then what or whom are you to follow? Only the ideas of the individual mind and the desires of the vital: but these things never lead to siddhi in Yoga. The rules are laid down in order to guard against certain inﬂuences and their dangers and to keep a right atmosphere in the Asram favourable to spiritual development; the obedience is necessary so as to get away from one’s own mind and vital and learn to follow the Truth.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes, it [] is difﬁcult, but once achieved it is immensely fruitful.


Sri Aurobindo: You are putting the cart before the horse. It is not the right way to make the condition that if you get what you want you will be obedient and cheerful. But be always obedient and cheerful and then what you want will have a chance of coming to you.   Up to now no liberated man has objected to the Guruvada; it is usually only people who live in the mind or vital and have the pride of the mind or the arrogance of the vital that ﬁnd it below their dignity to recognise a Guru.


Sri Aurobindo: One has to learn from the master and act according to his instructions because the master knows the subject and how it is to be learnt — just as in spiritual things one has to follow the Guru who has the knowledge and knows the way. If one learns all by oneself, the chances are that one will learn all wrong. What is the use of a freedom to learn wrongly? Of course if the pupil is more intelligent than the master, he will learn more than the master, just as a great spiritual capacity may arrive at realisations which the Guru has not — but even so, the control and discipline in the early stages is indispensable.  The Guru is the Guide in the Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: When the Divine is accepted as the Guide, He is accepted as the Guru.    It is not usual to use the word Guru in the supramental Yoga, here everything comes from the Divine himself. But if anybody wants it he can use it for the time being.


Sri Aurobindo:   The relation of Guru and disciple is only one of many relations which one can have with the Divine, and in this Yoga which aims at a supramental realisation, it is not usual to give it this name; rather, the Divine is regarded as the Source, the living Sun of Light and Knowledge and Consciousness and spiritual realisation and all that one receives is felt as coming from there and the whole being remoulded by the Divine Hand. This is a greater and more intimate relation than that of the human Guru and disciple, which is more of a limited mental ideal.  Nevertheless, if the mind still needs the more familiar mental conception, it can be kept so long as it is needed; only do not let the soul be bound by it and do not let it limit the inﬂow of other relations with the Divine and larger forms of experience.  Because through it [] you surrender not only to the impersonal but to the personal, not only to the Divine in yourself but to the Divine outside you; you get a chance for the surpassing of ego not only by retreat into the Self where ego does not exist, but in the personal nature where it is the ruler.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the sign of the will to complete surrender to the total Divine, . Of course it must be a genuine spiritual surrender for all this to be true.     When one takes sincerely to surrender, nothing must be concealed that is of any importance for the life of the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: Confession helps to purge the consciousness of hampering elements and it clears the inner air and makes for a closer and more intimate and effective relation between the Guru and the disciple.    No [ ]. In surrendering to the Guru, it is to the Divine in him that one surrenders — if it were only to a human entity it would be ineffective. But it is the consciousness of the Divine Presence that makes the Guru a real Guru, so that even if the disciple surrenders to him thinking of the human being to whom he surrenders, that Presence would still make it effective.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes [ ] — because only the static parts would be free in formlessness, the active nature would be still in the play of the gunas. Many think they are free from ego because they get the sense of the formless Existence, they do not see that the egoistic element remains in their action just as before.  All true Gurus are the same, the one Guru, because all are the one Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: That is a fundamental and universal truth. But there is also a truth of difference; the Divine dwells in different personalities with different minds, teachings, inﬂuences so that He may lead different disciples with their special need, character, destiny by different ways to the realisation. Because all Gurus are the same Divine, it does not follow that the disciple does well if he leaves the one meant for him to follow another. Fidelity to the Guru is demanded of every disciple, according to the Indian tradition. “All are the same” is a spiritual truth, but you cannot convert it indiscriminately into action; you cannot deal with all persons in the same way because they are the one Brahman: if one did, the result pragmatically would be an awful mess.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a rigid mental logic that makes the difﬁculty but in spiritual matters mental logic easily blunders; intuition, faith, a plastic spiritual reason are here the only guides.     To respect the spiritual attainment of [ ] is all right, but it is a rule of this Yoga not to mix inﬂuences (and what he [] has described is very much like undergoing an inﬂuence). Otherwise there may be harm done by two different methods getting mixed together — e.g. the vital being awakened to a Bhakti-Ananda inﬂuence on that plane before it is puriﬁed and ready.


Sri Aurobindo: I think this saying of Ramakrishna’s expresses a certain characteristic happening in sadhana and cannot be interpreted in a general and absolute sense; for in that sense it is hard for it to be true. All difﬁculties disappearing in a minute? Well, Vivekananda had the grace of Ramakrishna from the beginning, but I think his difﬁculty of doubt lasted for some time and to the end of his life the difﬁculty of the control of anger was there — making him say that all that was good in him was his Guru’s gift but these things (anger etc.) were his own property. But what could be true is that the central difﬁculty may disappear by a certain touch between the Guru and the disciple. But what is meant by the?


Sri Aurobindo: If it is the general compassion and grace of the Guru, that, one would think, is always there on the disciple; his acceptance itself is an act of grace and the help is there for the disciple to receive. But the touch of grace, divine grace coming directly or through the Guru is a special phenomenon having two sides to it, — the grace of the Guru or the Divine, in fact both together, on one side and a “state of grace” in the disciple on the other. This “state of grace” is often prepared by a long tapasya or puriﬁcation in which nothing decisive seems to happen, only touches or glimpses or passing experiences at the most, and it comes suddenly without warning. If this is what is spoken of in Ramakrishna’s saying, then it is true that when it comes, the fundamental difﬁculties can in a moment and generally do disappear. Or at the very least something happens which makes the rest of the sadhana — however long it may take — sure and secure.


Sri Aurobindo: This decisive touch comes most easily to the “baby cat” people, those who have at some point between the psychic and the emotional vital a quick and decisive movement of surrender to the Guru or the Divine. I have seen that when that is there and there is the conscious central dependence compelling the mind also and the rest of the vital, then the fundamental difﬁculty disappears. If others remain they are not felt as difﬁculties, but simply as things that have just to be done and need cause no worry. Sometimes no tapasya is necessary — one just refers things to the Power that one feels guiding or doing the sadhana and assents to its action, rejecting all that is contrary to it, and the Power removes what has to be removed or changes what has to be changed, quickly or slowly — but the quickness or slowness does not seem to matter since one is sure that it will be done. If tapasya is necessary, it is done with so much feeling of a strong support that there is nothing hard or austere in the tapasya.


Sri Aurobindo: For the others, the “baby monkey” type or those who are still more independent, following their own ideas, doing their own sadhana, asking only for some instruction or help, the grace of the Guru is there, but it acts according to the nature of the sadhak and waits upon his effort to a greater or less degree; it helps, succours in difﬁculty, saves in the time of danger, but the disciple is not always, is perhaps hardly at all aware of what is being done as he is absorbed in himself and his endeavour. In such cases the decisive psychological movement, the touch that makes all clear, may take longer to come.  But with all the is there working in one way or another and it can only abandon the disciple if the disciple himself abandons or rejects it — by decisive and deﬁnitive revolt, by rejection of the Guru, by cutting the painter and declaring his independence, or by an act or course of betrayal that severs him from his own psychic being. Even then, except perhaps in the last case if it goes to an extreme, a return to grace is not impossible.  That is my own knowledge and experience of the matter.


Sri Aurobindo: But as to what lay behind Ramakrishna’s saying and whether he himself meant it to be a general and absolute statement — I do not pronounce.    All that is popular Yoga. The Guru’s touch or grace may open something, but the difﬁculties have always to be worked out still.  What is true is that if there is complete surrender which implies the prominence of the psychic, these difﬁculties are no longer felt as a burden or obstacle but only as superﬁcial imperfections which the working of the grace will remove.


Sri Aurobindo:   It has always been said that to take disciples means to take upon yourself the difﬁculties of the disciples as well as your own. Of course, if the Guru does not identify himself with the disciple, does not take him into his own consciousness, keeps him outside and only gives him, leaving him to do the rest himself, then the chance of these effects is much diminished, made practically nil.  I do not know what you mean by indirect knowledge. The knowledge given by the Guru, if that is what you mean, is in the nature of experience and becomes part and parcel of the experience.


Sri Aurobindo: Mere instruction is not knowledge but only an intellectual indication of what must be realised by experience.   According to Yoga, as it is known in India, the mediation of the Guru is almost indispensable. It is not a crutch. It is a direct action of the Divine who is realised by the Guru.


Sri Aurobindo: It is an opening of the consciousness to spiritual experience without which few can open at all or go very far. If they advance by themselves, they can fall into all sorts of perils and errors of which they have no knowledge and no idea how to guide themselves among these things.  All experience is direct — there is no such thing as an indirect spiritual experience. But after the consciousness is sufﬁciently opened and matured, a knowledge and guidance can come from within and above and the sadhana proceeds by Divine working within. But the sadhak has to be very careful, for he may easily mistake the guiding of his own mind, ego or vital or the guiding of some inferior Power that ﬂatters his ego for the Divine guidance.


Sri Aurobindo: It is by the inner experience and consciousness that one knows a spiritual result — one feels and sees it happening.  There are two kinds of knowledge — mental knowledge such as you describe here which is usually necessary as a mental preparation or for guidance and the real knowledge which is spiritual. One receives the mental knowledge from the Guru in the shape of instruction and guidance, but that is only a part of what he gives — for the man who gives only mental or what you call indirect knowledge is not a Guru but only a teacher, Acharya.  As for spiritual knowledge, it consists of two elements, experience and a direct knowledge which is not mental but is of the nature of a light showing the deeper truth of things, a direct vision and perception of the Truth.  The ordinary consciousness is not capable of receiving it as knowledge except in a fragmentary way because it belongs to a deeper consciousness within or a higher consciousness above the mind.


Sri Aurobindo: The ordinary consciousness has therefore to open to the deeper and the higher consciousness. It has to receive the knowledge from within and above. It cannot do this if it does not open. There must, therefore, ﬁrst necessarily be an opening, however small, before any direct knowledge can come. As the knowledge comes the opening also can widen and so admit a greater and greater direct knowledge and experience.


Sri Aurobindo: In some, however, the opening comes ﬁrst very wide and then the knowledge comes afterwards in a great stream, some light of the Truth and many experiences.  If one has merely a mental idea about the Divine, that is not knowledge. It is with the experiences and the inner light of knowledge that the realisation of the Divine begins. As for example, one may have the mental idea of the Divine Peace but that is nothing, only a mental conception. It is only when one has the feeling of the Divine Peace descending from above or in oneself or surrounding one that one begins to know what it is.


Sri Aurobindo: That is what is called experience. Afterwards one begins to have a direct vision in knowledge of what the Peace is and what is its place in regard to the Divine Realisation; that is direct knowledge.  One can have a guru inferior in spiritual capacity (to oneself or to other gurus) carrying in him many human imperfections, and yet, if you have the faith, the bhakti, the right spiritual stuff, contact the Divine through him, attain to spiritual experiences, to spiritual realisation, even before the guru himself. Mark the “if”, — for that proviso is necessary; it isn’t every disciple who can do that with every guru. From a humbug you can acquire nothing but humbuggery.


Sri Aurobindo: The guru must have something in him which makes the contact with the Divine possible, something which works even if he is not himself in his outer mind quite conscious of its action. If there is nothing at all spiritual in him he is not a guru — only a pseudo. Undoubtedly, there can be considerable differences of spiritual realisation between one guru and the other; but much depends on the inner relation between guru and shishya. One can go to a very great spiritual man and get nothing or only a little from him; one can go to a man of less spiritual capacity and get all he has to give — and more. The causes of this disparity are various and subtle; I need not expand on them here.


Sri Aurobindo: It differs with each man. I believe the guru is always ready to give what can be given, if the disciple can receive, or it may be when he is ready to receive. If he refuses to receive or behaves inwardly or outwardly in such a way as to make reception impossible or if he is not sincere or takes up the wrong attitude, then things become difﬁcult. But if one is sincere and faithful and has the right attitude and if the guru is a true guru, then, after whatever time, it come.   What quotes about the limitation of the power of the Guru to that of a teacher who shows the way but cannot help or guide is the conception of certain paths of Yoga such as the pure Adwaitin and the Buddhist which say that you must rely upon yourself and no one can help you; but even the pure Adwaitin does in fact rely upon the Guru and the chief mantra of Buddhism insists on to Buddha.


Sri Aurobindo: For other paths of sadhana, especially those which like the Gita accept the reality of the individual soul as an “eternal portion” of the Divine or which believe that Bhagavan and the bhakta are both real, the help of the Guru has always been relied upon as an indispensable aid.  I don’t understand the objection to the validity of Vivekananda’s experience; it was exactly the realisation which is described in the Upanishads as a supreme experience of the Self.  It is not a fact that an experience gained in samadhi cannot be prolonged into the waking state.    Ramakrishna had the siddhi himself before he began giving to others — so had Buddha.


Sri Aurobindo: I don’t know about the others []. By perfection of course is meant siddhi in one’s own path — realisation. Ramakrishna always put that as a rule that one should not become a teacher to others until one has the full authority.  It does not strike me that Krishnaprem’s letters are admirable as an of current thoughts and general tendencies; it was rather his power to withdraw so completely from these thoughts and tendencies and look from a (for him) new and an abiding source of knowledge that impressed me as admirable. If he had remained interested and in touch with these current human movements, I don’t suppose he would have done better with them than Romain Rolland or another.


Sri Aurobindo: But he has gone to the Yoga-view of them, the summit-view, and it is the readiness with which he has been able to do it that struck me.  I would explain his progressing so far not entirely by his own superiority in the sense of a general ﬁtness for Yoga but by the quickness and completeness with which he has taken inwardly the attitude of the Bhakta and the disciple. That is a rare achievement for a modern mind, be he European or “educated” Indian; for the modern mind is analytic, dubitative, instinctively “independent” even when it wants to be otherwise; it holds itself back and hesitates in front of the Light and Inﬂuence that comes to it; it does not plunge into it with a simple directness, crying, “Here I am, ready to throw from me all that was myself or seemed to be, if so I can enter into Thee; remake my consciousness into the Truth in thy way, the way of the Divine.” There is something in us that is ready for it, but there is this element that intervenes and makes a curtain of non-receptivity; I know by my own experience with myself and others how long it can make a road that could never perhaps, for us who seek the entire truth, have been short and easy, but still we might have been spared many wanderings and stand-stills and recoils and detours.


Sri Aurobindo: All the more I admire the ease with which Krishnaprem seems to have surmounted this formidable obstacle.  I do not know if his Guru falls far short in any respect, but with the attitude he has taken, her deﬁciencies, if any, do not matter. It is not the human defects of the Guru that can stand in the way when there is the psychic opening, conﬁdence and surrender. The Guru is the channel or the representative or the manifestation of the Divine, according to the measure of his personality or his attainment; but whatever he is, it is to the Divine that one opens in opening to him, and if something is determined by the power of the channel , more is determined by the inherent and intrinsic attitude of the receiving consciousness, an element that comes out in the surface mind as simple trust or direct unconditional self-giving, and once that is there, the essential things can be gained even from one who seems to others than the disciple an inferior spiritual source and the rest will grow up in the sadhak of itself by the Grace of the Divine, even if the human being in the Guru cannot give it.


Sri Aurobindo: It is this that Krishnaprem appears to have done perhaps from the ﬁrst; but in most nowadays this attitude seems to come with difﬁculty after much hesitation and delay and trouble. In my own case I owe the ﬁrst decisive turn of my inner life to one who was inﬁnitely inferior to me in intellect, education and capacity and by no means spiritually perfect or supreme; but, having seen a Power behind him and decided to turn there for help, I gave myself entirely into his hands and followed with an automatic passivity the guidance. He himself was astonished and said to others that he had never met anyone before who could surrender himself so absolutely and without reserve or question to the guidance of the helper. The result was a series of transmuting experiences of such a radical character that he was unable to follow and had to tell me to give myself up in future to the Guide within with the same completeness of surrender as I had shown to the human channel. I give this example to show how these things work; it is not in the calculated way the human reason wants to lay down, but by a more mysterious and greater law.


Sri Aurobindo: As regards’s question — this is not a Yoga of Bhakti alone; it is or at least it claims to be an integral Yoga, that is, a turning of all the being in all its parts to the Divine. It follows that there must be knowledge and works as well as Bhakti and, in addition, it includes a total change of the nature, a seeking for perfection, so that the nature also may become one with the nature of the Divine. It is not only the heart that has to turn to the Divine and change, but the mind also — so knowledge is necessary, and the will and power of action and creation also — so works too are necessary. In this Yoga the methods of other Yogas are taken up — like this of Purusha-Prakriti, but with a difference in the ﬁnal object. Purusha separates from Prakriti, not in order to abandon her, but in order to know himself and her and to be no longer her plaything, but the knower, lord and upholder of the nature; but having become so or even in becoming so, one offers all that to the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: One may begin with knowledge or with works or with Bhakti or with Tapasya of self-puriﬁcation for perfection (change of nature) and develop the rest as a subsequent movement or one may combine all in one movement. There is no single rule for all, it depends on the personality and the nature. Surrender is the main power of the Yoga, but the surrender is bound to be progressive; a complete surrender is not possible in the beginning, but only a will in the being for that completeness, — in fact it takes time; yet it is only when the surrender is complete that the full ﬂood of the sadhana is possible. Till then there must be the personal effort with an increasing reality of surrender. One calls in the power of the Divine Shakti and once that begins to come into the being, it at ﬁrst supports the personal endeavour, then progressively takes up the whole action, although the consent of the sadhak continues to be always necessary.


Sri Aurobindo: As the Force works, it brings in the different processes that are necessary for the sadhak, processes of knowledge, of Bhakti, of spiritualised action, of transformation of the nature. The idea that they cannot be combined is an error.    The object of the sadhana is opening of the consciousness to the Divine and the change of the nature. Meditation or contemplation is one means to this but only one means; bhakti is another; work is another.


Sri Aurobindo: Chittashuddhi was practised by the Yogis as a ﬁrst means towards realisation and they got by it the saintliness of the saint and the quietude of the sage. But the transformation of the nature of which we speak is something more than that, and this transformation does not come by contemplation alone; works are necessary, Yoga in action is indispensable.  One must not treat human nature like a machine to be handled according to rigid mental rules — a great plasticity is needed in dealing with its complex motives.    Fundamentally the nature in all is the same and the methods of sadhana have the same principle — but the differences in detail and arrangement are very great.


Sri Aurobindo:  You forget that men differ in nature and therefore each will approach the sadhana in his own way — one through work, one through bhakti, one through meditation and knowledge — and those who are capable of it through all together. You are perfectly justiﬁed in following your own way, whatever may be the theories of others — but let them follow theirs. In the end all can converge together towards the same goal.  There is no opposition between work and sadhana. Work itself done in the right spirit is sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: Meditation is not the only means of sadhana. Work is one means; love and worship and surrender are another.   It [] depends more on the intensity of the spirit put into it than on the intensity of the work itself. As for the line on which most stress is laid, it depends on the nature.  There are some people who are not cut out for meditation and it is only by work that they can prepare themselves; there are also those who are the opposite.


Sri Aurobindo: As for the enormous development of egoism, that can come whatever one follows. I have seen it blossom in the as well as in the worker; Krishnaprem says it does so in the bhakta. So it is evident that all soils are favourable to this Narcissus ﬂower. As for “no need of sadhana”, obviously one who does not do any sadhana cannot change or progress. Work, meditation, bhakti, all must be done as sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo:   I have always said that work done as sadhana — done, that is to say, as an outﬂow of energy from the Divine offered to the Divine or work done for the sake of the Divine or work done in a spirit of devotion — is a powerful means of sadhana and that such work is especially necessary in this Yoga. Work, bhakti and meditation are three supports of Yoga. One can do with all three, or two or one. There are people who can’t meditate in the set way that one calls meditation, but they progress through work or through bhakti or through the two together.


Sri Aurobindo: By work and bhakti one can develop a consciousness in which eventually a natural meditation and realisation become possible.    The growth out of the ordinary mind into the spiritual consciousness can be effected either by meditation, dedicated work or bhakti for the Divine. In our Yoga, which seeks not only a static peace or absorption but a dynamic spiritual action, work is indispensable. As for the Supramental Truth, that is a different matter; it depends only on the descent of the Divine and the action of the Supreme Force and is not bound by any method or rule.


Sri Aurobindo:   There are very few among the sadhaks here who at all concern themselves with the supermind or know anything about it except as something which the Mother and I will bring down some day and establish here. Most are seeking realisation through meditation, through love and worship or through activity and work.  Meditation and silence are not necessary for everyone; there are some, even among those spoken of by you and others as the most advanced sadhaks, who do their sadhana not through meditation, for which they have no turn, but through activity, work or creation supported or founded on love and bhakti.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not the credo but the person who matters. We impose no credo; it is sufﬁcient if there is an established and heart-felt relation between ourselves and the disciple.     I was quite in earnest in speaking of the progress you had made by the psychic movement and the endeavour to detect and remove the ego.


Sri Aurobindo: I had already written to you strongly approving of that way. It is in our Yoga the way to devotion and surrender — for it is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of ego that makes it possible to surrender. The two things indeed go together.  The other way, which is the way to knowledge, is the meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and ﬁlls the body and begins to take up all the movements. But this involves a passage through silence, a certain emptiness of the ordinary activities — they being pushed out and done as a purely superﬁcial action — and you strongly dislike silence and emptiness.


Sri Aurobindo: The third way which is one of the two ways towards Yoga by works is the separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and ﬁnally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. But this also means living in an inner peace and silence and dealing with the activities as if they were a thing of the surface. (The other way of beginning the Yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.)  If there is any secret or key of my Yoga which you say you have not found, it lies in these methods — and, in reality, there is nothing so mysterious, impossible or even new about them in themselves. It is only the farther development at a later stage and the aim of the Yoga that are new.


Sri Aurobindo: But that one need not concern oneself with in the earlier stages unless one wishes to do so as a matter of mental knowledge.     Poetry by itself does not bring to the goal, but it can help as a means to express and deepen one’s aspiration while it gives the vital an activity which can keep it from rusting and maintains its energy. Otherwise it may droop or go dry or sulk or non-cooperate.


Sri Aurobindo: What will bring towards the goal is the growth of the psychic being, the increase in bhakti, psychic clarity of vision with regard to one’s inner movements and the will to get rid of the vital ego, increase in pure self-giving. Meditation and the rest can bring only partial results or often no results until there has been a sufﬁcient psychic preparation. Even with those who begin with a ﬂood of experiences because of some mental or vital preparation in past lives whose results happen to be near the surface, these lead to nothing deﬁnite till the psychic preparation is made; they often have all their struggle still to go through and some sink with their bag of experiences on their head and a magniﬁed ego on their back. It was this psychic growth that suddenly began in you. Don’t let it stop; for through that lies your way.


Sri Aurobindo: Once that is done, you can meditate and do everything else that may be needful.    Meditation is one means of the approach to the Divine and a great way, but it cannot be called a short cut — for most it is a long and difﬁcult though very high ascent. It can by no means be short unless it brings a descent and even then it is only a foundation that is quickly laid — afterwards meditation has to build laboriously a big superstructure on that foundation. It is very indispensable, but there is nothing of the short cut about it.


Sri Aurobindo: Karma is a much simpler road — provided one’s mind is not ﬁxed on the karma to the exclusion of the Divine. The aim must be the Divine and the work can only be a means. The use of poetry etc. is to keep one in contact with one’s inner being and that helps to prepare for the direct contact with the inmost, but one must not stop with that, one must go on to the real thing. If one thinks of being a “literary man”, a poet, a painter as things worthwhile for their own sake, then it is no longer the Yogic spirit. That is why I have sometimes to say that our business is to be Yogis, not merely poets, painters etc.


Sri Aurobindo: Love, bhakti, surrender, the psychic opening are the only short cut to the Divine — or can be; for if the love and bhakti are too vital, then there is likely to be a seesaw between ecstatic expectation and, despair, which will make it not a short cut but a long one, a zigzag, not a straight ﬂight, a whirling round one’s own ego instead of a running towards the Divine.  I may stress one point, however, that there need not be only one way to realisation of the Divine. If one does not succeed or has not yet succeeded in reaching him, feeling him or seeing him by the established process of meditation or by other processes like japa, yet one may have made progress towards it by the frequent welling up of bhakti in the heart or a constantly greater enlargement of it in the consciousness or by work for the Divine and dedication in service. You have certainly progressed in these two directions, increased in devotion and shown your capacity for service.


Sri Aurobindo: You have also tried to get rid of obstacles in your vital nature and so effect a puriﬁcation, not without success, in several difﬁcult directions. The path of surrender is indeed difﬁcult, but if one perseveres in it with sincerity, there is bound to be some success and a partial overcoming or diminution of the ego which may help greatly a farther advance upon the way. I can see no sufﬁcient reason for the discouragement which so often overtakes you and sometimes makes you think that you are not cut out for the path; to indulge such a thought is always a mistake. A too ready proneness to discouragement and a consequent despondency is one of the weaknesses of your vital nature and to get rid of it would be a great help. One must learn to go forward on the path of Yoga, as the Gita insists, with a consciousness free from despondency —.


Sri Aurobindo: Even if one slips, one must rectify the posture; even if one falls, one has to rise and go undiscouraged on the divine way. The attitude must be, “The Divine has promised himself to me if I cleave to him always; that I will never cease to do whatever may come.”    It is altogether unproﬁtable to enquire who or what class will arrive ﬁrst or last at the goal. The spiritual path is not a ﬁeld of competition or a race that this should matter.


Sri Aurobindo: What matters is one’s own aspiration for the Divine, one’s own faith, surrender, selﬂess self-giving. Others can be left to the Divine who will lead each according to his nature. Meditation, work, bhakti are each means of preparative help towards fulﬁlment; all are included in this path. If one can dedicate oneself through work, that is one of the most powerful means towards the self-giving which is itself the most powerful and indispensable element of the sadhana.  To cleave to the path means to follow it without leaving it or turning aside.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a path of self-offering of the whole being in all its parts, the offering of the thinking mind and the heart, the will and actions, the inner and the outer instruments so that one may arrive at the experience of the Divine, the Presence within, the psychic and spiritual change. The more one gives of oneself in all ways, the better for the sadhana. But all cannot do it to the same extent, with the same rapidity, in the same way. How others do it or fail to do it should not be one’s concern — how to do it faithfully oneself is the one thing important.  I have never put any ban on bhakti.


Sri Aurobindo: Also I am not conscious of having banned meditation either at any time. I have stressed both bhakti and knowledge in my Yoga as well as works, even if I have not given any of them an exclusive importance like Shankara or Chaitanya.   The difﬁculty you feel or any sadhak feels about sadhana is not really a question of meditation versus bhakti versus works.  It is a difﬁculty of the attitude to be taken, the approach or whatever you may like to call it.


Sri Aurobindo: If you can’t as yet remember the Divine all the time you are working , it does not greatly matter. To remember and dedicate at the beginning and give thanks at the end ought to be enough for the present. Or at the most to remember too when there is a pause. Your method seems to me rather painful and difﬁcult, — you seem to be trying to remember and work with one and the same part of the mind.


Sri Aurobindo: I don’t know if that is possible. When people remember all the time during work (it can be done), it is usually with the back of their minds or else there is created gradually a faculty of double thought or else a double consciousness — one in front that works, and one within that witnesses and remembers. There is also another way which was mine for a long time — a condition in which the work takes place automatically and without intervention of personal thought or mental action, while the consciousness remains silent in the Divine. The thing, however, does not come so much by trying as by a very simple constant aspiration and will of consecration — or else by a movement of the consciousness separating the inner from the instrumental being. Aspiration and will of consecration calling down a greater Force to do the work is a method which brings great results, even if in some it takes a long time about it.


Sri Aurobindo: That is a great secret of sadhana, to know how to get things done by the Power behind or above instead of doing all by the mind’s effort. I don’t mean to say that the mind’s effort is unnecessary or has no result — only if it tries to do everything by itself, that becomes a laborious effort for all except the spiritual athletes.  Nor do I mean that the other method is the longed-for short cut; the result may, as I have said, take a long time. Patience and ﬁrm resolution are necessary in every method of sadhana.  Strength is all right for the strong — but aspiration and the Grace answering to it are not altogether myths; they are great realities of the spiritual life.


Sri Aurobindo: Sadhana is the practice of Yoga. Tapasya is the concentration of the will to get the results of sadhana and to conquer the lower nature. Aradhana is worship of the Divine, love, selfsurrender, aspiration to the Divine, calling the name, prayer.  Dhyana is inner concentration of the consciousness, meditation, going inside in Samadhi. Dhyana, tapasya and aradhana are all parts of sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no stage of the sadhana in which works are impossible, no passage in the path where there is no foothold and action has to be renounced as incompatible with concentration on the Divine. The foothold is there always; the foothold is the reliance on the Divine, the opening of the being, the will, the energies to the Divine, the surrender to the Divine. All work done in that spirit can be made a means for the sadhana. It may be necessary for an individual here and there to plunge into meditation for a time and suspend work for that time or make it subordinate; but that can only be an individual case and a temporary retirement.  Moreover, a complete cessation of work and entire withdrawal into oneself is seldom advisable; it may encourage a too onesided and visionary condition in which one lives in a sort of midworld of purely subjective experiences without a ﬁrm hold on either external reality or on the highest Reality and without the right use of the subjective experience to create a ﬁrm link and then a uniﬁcation between the highest Reality and the external realisation in life.


Sri Aurobindo: Work can be of two kinds — the work that is a ﬁeld of experience used for the sadhana, for a progressive harmonisation and transformation of the being and its activities, and work that is a realised expression of the Divine. But the time for the latter can be only when the Realisation has been fully brought down into the earth-consciousness; till then all work must be a ﬁeld of endeavour and a school of experience.     I do not mean by work action done in the ego and the ignorance, for the satisfaction of the ego and in the drive of rajasic desire.


Sri Aurobindo: There can be no Karmayoga without the will to get rid of ego, rajas and desire, which are the seals of ignorance.  I do not mean philanthropy or the service of humanity or all the rest of the things — moral or idealistic — which the mind of man substitutes for the deeper truth of works.  I mean by work action done for the Divine and more and more in union with the Divine — for the Divine alone and nothing else. Naturally that is not easy at the beginning, any more than deep meditation and luminous knowledge are easy or even true love and bhakti are easy. But like the others it has to be begun in the right spirit and attitude, with the right will in you, then all the rest will come.


Sri Aurobindo: Works done in this spirit are quite as effective as bhakti or contemplation. One gets by the rejection of desire, rajas and ego a quietude and purity into which the Peace ineffable can descend; one gets by the dedication of one’s will to the Divine, by the merging of one’s will in the Divine Will the death of ego and the enlarging into the cosmic consciousness or else the uplifting into what is above the cosmic; one experiences the separation of Purusha from Prakriti and is liberated from the shackles of the outer nature; one becomes aware of one’s inner being and feels the outer as an instrument; one feels the universal Force doing one’s works and the Self or Purusha watching or witness but free; one feels all one’s works taken from one and done by the universal or the supreme Mother or by the Divine Power controlling and acting from behind the heart. By constant reference of all one’s will and works to the Divine, love and adoration grow, the psychic being comes forward. By the reference to the Power above we can come to feel it above and its descent and the opening to an increasing consciousness and knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: Finally works, bhakti and knowledge join together and selfperfection becomes possible — what we call the transformation of the nature.  These results certainly do not come all at once; they come more or less slowly, more or less completely according to the condition and growth of the being. There is no royal road to the divine realisation.  This is the Karmayoga as it is laid down in the Gita as I have developed it for the integral spiritual life. It is founded not on speculation and reasoning but on experience.


Sri Aurobindo: It does not exclude meditation and it certainly does not exclude bhakti, for the self-offering to the Divine, the consecration of all oneself to the Divine which is the essence of this Karmayoga are essentially a movement of bhakti. Only it does exclude a life-ﬂeeing exclusive meditation or an emotional bhakti shut up in its own inner dream taken as the whole movement of the Yoga. One may have hours of pure absorbed meditation or of the inner motionless adoration and ecstasy, but they are not the whole of the integral Yoga.    To say that one enters the stream of sadhana through work only is to say too much.


Sri Aurobindo: One can enter it through meditation or bhakti also, but work is necessary to get into full stream and not drift away to one side and go circling there. Of course all work helps provided it is done in the right spirit.     Why argue from your personal experience great or little and turn it into a generalisation?


Sri Aurobindo: A great many people (the majority perhaps) ﬁnd it [] the easiest of all. Many ﬁnd it easy to think of the Mother when working; but when they read or write, their mind goes off to the thing read or written and they forget everything else. I think that is the case with most.  Physical work on the other hand can be done with the most external part of the mind, leaving the rest free to remember or to experience.  In spite of your disclaimer you practically come to the conclusion that all my nonsense about integral Yoga and karma being as much a way to realisation as jnana and bhakti is either a gleaming chimaera or practicable only by Avatars or else a sheer laborious superﬂuity — since one can bump straight into the Divine through the open door of Bhakti or sweep majestically in on him by the easy high road of meditation; so why this scramble through the jungle of karma by which nobody ever reached anywhere?


Sri Aurobindo: The old Yogas are true, are they not?  Then why a new-fangled, more difﬁcult Yoga with unheard talk about the supramental and God knows what else? There can be no answer to that; for I can only answer by a repetition of the statement of my own knowledge and experience — that is what I have done in today’s answer to — and that amounts only to a perverse obstinacy in riding my gleaming and dazzling chimaera and forcing my nuisance of a superﬂuity on a world weary of itself and anxious to get a short easy cut to the Divine.  Unfortunately, I don’t believe in short cuts — at any rate none ever led me where I wanted to go. However, let it rest there.


Sri Aurobindo: I have never disputed the truth of the old Yogas — I have myself had the experience of Vaishnava Bhakti and of Nirvana in the Brahman; I recognise their truth in their own ﬁeld and for their own purpose — the truth of their experience so far as it goes — though I am in no way bound to accept the truth of the mental philosophies founded on the experience. I similarly ﬁnd that my Yoga is true in its own ﬁeld — a larger ﬁeld, as I think — and for its own purpose. The purpose of the old is to get away from life to the Divine — so, obviously, let us drop karma.  The purpose of the new is to reach the Divine and bring the fullness of what is gained into life — for that, Yoga by works is indispensable. It seems to me that there is no mystery about that or anything to perplex anybody — it is rational and inevitable.


Sri Aurobindo: Only you say that the thing is impossible; but that is what is said about everything before it is done.  I may point out that Karmayoga is not a new but a very old Yoga: the Gita was not written yesterday and Karmayoga existed before the Gita. Your idea that the only justiﬁcation in the Gita for works is that it is an unavoidable nuisance, so better make the best of it, is rather summary and crude. If that were all, the Gita would be the production of an imbecile and I would hardly have been justiﬁed in writing two volumes on it or the world in admiring it as one of the greatest scriptures, especially for its treatment of the problem of the place of works in spiritual endeavour. There is surely more in it than that.


Sri Aurobindo: Anyhow your doubt whether works can lead to realisation or rather your ﬂat and sweeping denial of the possibility contradicts the experience of those who have achieved this supposed impossibility. You say that work lowers the consciousness, brings you out of the inner into the outer — yes, if you consent to externalise yourself in it instead of doing works from within; but that is just what one has to learn not to do. Thought and feeling can also externalise one in the same way; but it is a question of linking thought, feeling and act ﬁrmly to the inner consciousness by living there and making the rest an instrument. Difﬁcult? Even bhakti is not easy and Nirvana is for most men more difﬁcult than all.


Sri Aurobindo: You again try to ﬂoor me with Ramakrishna. But one thing puzzles me, as Shankara’s stupendous activity of karma puzzles me in the apostle of inaction — you see you are not the only puzzled person in the world. Ramakrishna also gave the image of the jar which ceased gurgling when it was full. Well, but Ramakrishna spent the last years of his life in talking about the Divine and receiving disciples — that was not action, not work?  Did Ramakrishna become a half-full jar after being a full one or was he never full?


Sri Aurobindo: Did he get far away from God and so begin a work? Or had he reached a condition in which he was bound neither to rajasic work and mental prattling nor to inactivity and silence, but could do from the divine realisation the divine work and speak from the inner consciousness the divine word?  If the last, perhaps in spite of his dictum, his example at least is rather in my favour.  I do not know why you drag in humanitarianism, activism, philanthropical etc. None of these are part of my Yoga or in harmony with my deﬁnition of works, so they don’t touch me.


Sri Aurobindo: I never thought that politics or feeding the poor or writing beautiful poems would lead straight to Vaikuntha or the Absolute.  If it were so, Romesh Dutt on one side and Baudelaire on the other would be the ﬁrst to attain the Highest and welcome us there. It is not the form of the work itself or mere activity but the consciousness and Godward will behind it that are the essence of Karmayoga; the work is only the necessary instrumentation for the union with the Master of works, the transit to the pure Will and power of Light from the will and power of the Ignorance.  Finally, why suppose that I am against meditation or bhakti?  I have not the slightest objection to your taking either or both as the means of approach to the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: Only I saw no reason why anyone should fall foul of works and deny the truth of those who have reached, as the Gita says, through works perfect realisation and oneness of nature with the Divine, , as did “Janaka and others”, simply because he himself cannot ﬁnd or has not yet found their deeper secret — hence my defence of works.  Work by itself is only a preparation [], so is meditation by itself, but work done in the increasing Yogic consciousness is a means of realisation as much as meditation is.  I have not said, I hope, that work prepares. Meditation also prepares for the direct contact. If we are to do work only as a preparation and then become motionless meditative ascetics, then all my spiritual teaching is false and there is no use for supramental realisation or anything else that has not been done in the past.


Sri Aurobindo:  The including of the outer consciousness in the transformation is of supreme importance in this Yoga — meditation cannot do it. Meditation can deal only with the inner being. So work is of primary importance — only it must be done with the right attitude and in the right consciousness, then it is as fruitful as any meditation can be.   You need not have qualms about the time you give to action and creative work. Those who have an expansive creative vital or a vital made for action are usually at their best when the vital is not held back from its movement and they can develop faster by it than by introspective meditation.


Sri Aurobindo: All that is needed is that the action should be dedicated, so that they may grow by it more and more prepared to feel and follow the Divine Force when it moves them. It is a mistake to think that to live in introspective meditation all the time is invariably the best or the only way of Yoga.     It is not meditation (thinking with the mind) but a concentration or turning of the consciousness that is important, — and that can happen in work, in writing, in any kind of action as well as in sitting down to contemplate.


Sri Aurobindo:   It does not depend on sitting []. Many don’t sit. They become conscious by working.


Sri Aurobindo:   There are some who cannot meditate and progress through work only. Each has his own nature. But to extend one method to all is always an error.


Sri Aurobindo:   Meditation is best when it comes spontaneously. But there should be full concentration in the work if it is to take the place of meditation.  There are several sadhaks who have advanced very far by work alone, work consecrated to the Mother or else by work mainly with very little time for meditation.


Sri Aurobindo: Others have advanced far by meditation mainly, but work also. Those who tried to do meditation alone and became impatient of work (because they could not consecrate it to the Mother) have generally been failures like  and. But one or two may succeed by meditation alone — if it is in their nature or if they have an intense and unshakable faith and bhakti. All depends on the nature of the sadhak.  As for the I do not see that the workers have their external being less changed than others.


Sri Aurobindo: There are some who are where they were or only a little progressive, there are others who have changed a good deal — none is transformed altogether, though some have found a sure and sound spiritual and psychic basis. But that applies equally to workers who do not spend time in meditation and to those who spend a long time in meditation.  Each sadhak must be left to himself and the Mother to ﬁnd his right way which need not be that of his neighbour. There is in the Asram too much observation of each other by the sadhaks, criticism, discussion of persons, even baseless gossip about each other’s character, ideas, sadhana, actions along sometimes with theories and (usually mistaken) advice. All that is not very consistent with the atmosphere of Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: People should keep all their energy for their own sadhana — unless of course they are commissioned by the Mother to speak or state anything about the Yoga.    The ignorance underlying this attitude [ ] is in the assumption that one must necessarily do only work or only meditation. Either work is the means or meditation is the means, but both cannot be! I have never said, so far as I know, that meditation should not be done.


Sri Aurobindo: To set up an open competition or a closed one between works and meditation is a trick of the dividing mind and belongs to the old Yoga. Please remember that I have been declaring all along an integral Yoga in which Knowledge, Bhakti, works — light of consciousness, Ananda and love, will and power in works — meditation, adoration, service of the Divine have all their place.  Have I written seven volumes of the all in vain? Meditation is not greater than Yoga of works nor works greater than Yoga by knowledge — both are equal.  Another thing — it is a mistake to argue from one’s own very limited experience, ignoring that of others, and build on it large generalisations about Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: This is what many do, but the method has obvious demerits. You have no experience of major realisations through work, and you conclude that such realisations are impossible. But what of the many who have had them — elsewhere and here too in the Asram? That has no value? You kindly hint to me that I have failed to get anything by works?


Sri Aurobindo: How do you know? I have not written the history of my sadhana — if I had, you would have seen that if I had not made action and work one of my chief means of realisation — well, there would have been no sadhana and no realisation except that, perhaps, of Nirvana.  I shall perhaps add something hereafter as to what works can do, but no time tonight.  Do not conclude however that I am exalting works as the sole means of realisation. I am only giving it its due place.


Sri Aurobindo: The work should not be diminished for that purpose [ ]. On the other hand it is not necessary for you to work all the time. If the work assigned to you is ﬁnished earlier, it does not matter about your not keeping the full ofﬁce hours.    If this arrangement [] gives no time for meditation — no time for going inside and establishing there the peace, wideness and joy in which you can meet the Divine inside and in work — it seems defective.


Sri Aurobindo: What I meant is that it is not necessary either to work all the time or to intoxicate the brain by unrelieved meditation as some do. The result of meditation can be obtained by work, but then you must be able or learn to live inwardly even in the work and to do all from within.


Sri Aurobindo: Half an hour’s meditation in the day ought to be possible — if only to bring a concentrated habit into the consciousness which will help it, ﬁrst to be less outward in work and, secondly, to develop a receptive tendency which can bear its fruits even in the work.     I have not suggested that you are to progress by alone; but you have a great capacity for that and you cannot progress fully without it. In this Yoga some kind of action is necessary for all — though it need not take the form of some set labour.


Sri Aurobindo: But for the moment progress through concentration and inner experience is the ﬁrst necessity for you.  This [] is what we call the activity of the mind, which always comes in the way of the concentration and tries to create doubt and dispersion of the energies. It can be got rid of in two ways, by rejecting it and pushing it out, till it remains as an outside force only — by bringing down the higher peace and light into the physical mind.  What you felt before was in your mental being and consciousness; after coming here you have evidently come out into your external and physical consciousness, that is why you feel as if all you had before was gone. It is only covered over by the obscurity of the physical consciousness and not gone.


Sri Aurobindo: As for sadhana, I presume you mean by that some kind of exercise of concentration etc. For work also is sadhana, if done in the right attitude and spirit. The sadhana of inner concentration consists in: (1) Fixing the consciousness in the heart and concentrating there on the idea, image or name of the Divine Mother, whichever comes easiest to you.  (2) A gradual and progressive quieting of the mind by this concentration in the heart.  (3) An aspiration for the Mother’s presence in the heart and the control by her of mind, life and action.


Sri Aurobindo: But to quiet the mind and get the spiritual experience it is necessary ﬁrst to purify and prepare the nature. This sometimes takes many years. Work done with the right attitude is the easiest means for that — i.e. work done without desire or ego, rejecting all movements of desire, demand or ego when they come, done as an offering to the Divine Mother, with the remembrance of her and prayer to her to manifest her force and take up the action so that there too and not only in inner silence you can feel her presence and working.    I don’t think you understood very well what Mother was trying to tell you.


Sri Aurobindo: First of all she did not say that prayers or meditation either were no good — how could she when both count for so much in Yoga? What she said was that the prayer must well up from the heart on a crest of emotion or aspiration, the Japa or meditation come in a live push carrying the joy or the light of the thing in it. If done mechanically and merely as a thing that ought to be done (stern grim duty!), it must tend towards want of interest and dryness and so be ineffective. It was what I meant when I said I thought you were doing Japa too much as a means for bringing about a result — I meant too much as a device, a process laid down for getting the thing done. That again was why I wanted the psychological conditions in you to develop, the psychic, the mental — for when the psychic is forward, there is no lack of life and joy in the prayer, the aspiration, the seeking, no difﬁculty in having the constant stream of bhakti and when the mind is quiet and inturned and upturned there is no difﬁculty or want of interest in meditation.


Sri Aurobindo: Meditation by the way is a process leading towards knowledge and through knowledge, it is a thing of the head and not of the heart; so if you want dhyana, you can’t have an aversion to knowledge. Concentration in the heart is not meditation, it is a call on the Divine, on the Beloved.  This Yoga too is not a Yoga of knowledge alone — knowledge is one of its means, but its base being self-offering, surrender, bhakti, it is based on the heart and nothing can be eventually done without this base. There are plenty of people here who do or have done Japa and base themselves on bhakti, very few comparatively who have done the “head” meditation; love and bhakti and works are usually the base — how many can proceed by knowledge? Only the few.


Sri Aurobindo: To know about the sadhana with the mind is not indispensable.  If one has bhakti and aspires in the heart’s silence, if there is the true love for the Divine, then the nature will open of itself, there will be the true experience and the Mother’s power working within you, and the necessary knowledge will come.  Work alone is not the object; work is a means of sadhana.   Certainly; work done in the right way and with the consciousness open to the Force is sadhana.   Without sadhana the object of Yoga cannot be attained.


Sri Aurobindo: Work itself must be taken as part of sadhana. But naturally when you are working, you must think of the work, which you will learn to do from the Yogic consciousness as an instrument and with the memory of the Divine.     Sadhana and work done disinterestedly as part of the sadhana cannot be incompatible with each other — provided the work is attended to, sadhana can go on very well at the same time.


Sri Aurobindo:  By disinterested work is usually meant work done for the sake of the work or for the sake of others without asking for return, reward or personal fruit or recompense; but in Yoga it means desireless work done for the Divine as an offering without condition or claim — only because it is the Divine’s Will or out of love for the Divine.     Your object is not only to practise Yoga for your own internal progress and perfection, but also to do a work for the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: This is not an Asram like others — the members are not Sannyasis; it is not that is the sole aim of the Yoga here. What is being done here is a preparation for a work — a work which will be founded on Yogic consciousness and Yoga-Shakti, and can have no other foundation. Meanwhile every member here is expected to do some work in the Asram as part of his spiritual preparation.   Recommendation to not to take you away but to let you realise the Divine ﬁrst has no meaning. Must one realise the Divine before one can serve him or is not service of the Divine a step on the way to realisation and a help towards it?


Sri Aurobindo: In any case, the service and the realisation are both necessary for a complete Yoga and one cannot ﬁx an unalterable rule of precedence between the two.    has to learn to consecrate his work and feel the Mother’s power working through it. A purely sedentary subjective realisation is only a half realisation.  The only work that spiritually puriﬁes is that which is done without personal motives, without desire for fame or public recognition or worldly greatness, without insistence on one’s own mental motives or vital lusts and demands or physical preferences, without vanity or crude self-assertion or claim for position or prestige, done for the sake of the Divine alone and at the command of the Divine. All work done in an egoistic spirit, however good for people in the world of the Ignorance, is of no avail to the seeker of the Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo:  It is the spirit and the consciousness in which it is done that makes an action Yogic — it is not the action itself.   To do anything for a reward is contrary to the rule of Yoga. One must do a thing because it is right or else do it for the Divine, not for a reward.


Sri Aurobindo: The difﬁculties will disappear when you have succeeded in consecrating yourself and your work and business entirely and without any internal division to the Divine.  Men usually work and carry on their affairs from the ordinary motives of the vital being, need, desire of wealth or success or position or power or fame or the push to activity and the pleasure of manifesting their capacities, and they succeed or fail according to their capability, power of work and the good or bad fortune which is the result of their nature and their Karma.  When one takes up the Yoga and wishes to consecrate one’s life to the Divine, these ordinary motives of the vital being have no longer their full and free play; they have to be replaced by another, a mainly psychic and spiritual motive, which will enable the sadhak to work with the same force as before, no longer for himself, but for the Divine. If the ordinary vital motives or vital force can no longer act freely and yet are not replaced by something else, then the push or force put into the work may decline or the power to command success may no longer be there. For the sincere sadhak the difﬁculty can only be temporary; but he has to see the defect in his consecration or his attitude and to remove it.


Sri Aurobindo: Then the divine Power itself will act through him and use his capacity and vital force for its ends. In your case it is the psychic being and a part of the mind that have drawn you to the Yoga and were predisposed to it, but the vital nature or at least a large part of it has not yet put itself into line with the psychic movement. There is not as yet the full and undivided consecration of the active vital nature.  The signs of the consecration of the vital in action are these among others: The feeling (not merely the idea or the aspiration) that all the life and the work are the Mother’s and a strong joy of the vital nature in this consecration and surrender. A consequent calm content and disappearance of egoistic attachment to the work and its personal results, but at the same time a great joy in the work and in the use of the capacities for the divine purpose.


Sri Aurobindo: The feeling that the Divine Force is working behind one’s actions and leading at every moment.  A persistent faith which no circumstance or event can break.  If difﬁculties occur, they raise not mental doubts or an inert acquiescence, but the ﬁrm belief that, with sincere consecration, the Divine Shakti will remove the difﬁculties, and with this belief a greater turning to her and dependence on her for that purpose.  When there is full faith and consecration, there comes also a receptivity to the Force which makes one do the right thing and take the right means and then circumstances adapt themselves and the result is visible.  To arrive at this condition the important thing is a persistent aspiration, call and self-offering, and a will to reject all in oneself or around that stands in the way.


Sri Aurobindo: Difﬁculties there will always be at the beginning and for as long a time as is necessary for the change; but they are bound to disappear if they are met by a settled faith, will and patience.   I do not usually undertake the guidance of any except those who accept my own way of Yoga and show some signs of having a special call to it.  All I can suggest to him is to practise some kind of Karmayoga — remembering the Supreme in all his actions from the smallest to the greatest, doing them with a quiet mind and without ego-sense or attachment and offering them to Him as a sacriﬁce. He may also try or aspire to feel the presence of the Divine Shakti behind the world and its forces, distinguish between the lower nature of the Ignorance and the higher divine nature whose character is absolute calm, peace, power, Light and Bliss and aspire to be raised and led gradually from the lower to the higher.


Sri Aurobindo: If he can do this, he will become ﬁt in time to dedicate himself to the Divine and lead a wholly spiritual life.    The line that seems to be natural to him is the Karmayoga and he is therefore right in trying to live according to the teaching of the Gita; for the Gita is the great guide on this path. Puriﬁcation from egoistic movements and from personal desire and the faithful following of the best light one has are a preliminary training for this path, and so far as he has followed these things he has been on the right way, but to ask for strength and light in one’s action must not be regarded as an egoistic movement, for they are necessary in one’s inner development.  Obviously, a more systematic and intensive sadhana is desirable or, in any case, a steady aspiration and a more constant preoccupation with the central aim could bring an established detachment even in the midst of outer things and outer activity and a continuous guidance.


Sri Aurobindo: The completeness, the Siddhi of this way of Yoga — I speak of the separate path of Karma or spiritual action — begins when one is luminously aware of the Guide and the guidance and when one feels the Power working with oneself as the instrument and the participator in the divine work.    I gather from’s letter to you that he has been following a very sound method in his practice and has attained some good results. The ﬁrst step in Karmayoga of this kind is to diminish and ﬁnally get rid of the ego-centric position in works, the lower vital reactions and the principle of desire. He must certainly go on on this road until he reaches something like its end.


Sri Aurobindo: I would not wish to deﬂect him from that in any way.  What I had in view when I spoke [] of a systematic sadhana was the adoption of a method which would generalise the whole attitude of the consciousness so as to embrace all its movements at a time instead of working only upon details — although that working is always necessary. I may cite as an example the practice of the separation of the Prakriti and the Purusha, the conscious being standing back detached from all the movements of Nature and observing them as witness and knower and ﬁnally as the giver (or refuser) of the sanction and at the highest stage of development, the Ishwara, the pure will, master of the whole nature.  By intensive sadhana I meant the endeavour to arrive at one of the great positive realisations which would be a ﬁrm base for the whole movement. I observe that he speaks of sometimes getting a glimpse of some wide calm when he feels the leading of Vyasa.


Sri Aurobindo: A descent of this wide calm permanently into the consciousness is one of the realisations of which I was thinking.  That he feels it at such times seems to indicate that he may have the capacity of receiving and retaining it. If that happened or if the Prakriti-Purusha realisation came, the whole sadhana would proceed on a strong permanent base with a new and entirely Yogic consciousness instead of the purely mental endeavour which is always difﬁcult and slow. I do not however want to press these things upon him; they come in their own time and to press towards them prematurely does not always hasten their coming. Let him continue with his primary task of self-puriﬁcation and self-preparation; I shall always be ready to give him what silent help I can.


Sri Aurobindo:   I do not know that it is possible for me to give any guidance on the path you have chosen — it is at any rate difﬁcult for me to say anything deﬁnite without more precise data than those contained in your letter.  There is no need for you to change the line of life and work you have chosen so long as you feel that to be the way of your nature () or dictated to you by your inner being or, for some reason, it is seen to be your proper dharma. These are the three tests and apart from that I do not know if there is any ﬁxed line of conduct or way of work or life that can be laid down for the yoga of the Gita. It is the spirit or consciousness in which the work is done that matters most; the outer form can vary greatly for different natures.


Sri Aurobindo: This, so long as one does not get the settled experience of the Divine Power taking up one’s works and doing them; afterwards it is the Power which determines what is to be done or not done.  The overcoming of all attachments must necessarily be difﬁcult and cannot come except as the fruit of a long — unless there is a rapid general growth in the inner spiritual experience which is the substance of the Gita’s teaching. The cessation of desire of the fruit, of the attachment to the work itself, the growth of equality to all beings, to all happenings, to good repute or ill repute, praise or blame, to good fortune or ill fortune, the dropping of the ego which are necessary for the loss of all attachments can come completely only when all work becomes a spontaneous sacriﬁce to the Divine, the heart is offered up to Him and one has the settled experience of the Divine in all things and all beings. This consciousness or experience must come in all parts and movements of the being,, not only in the mind and idea; then the falling away of all attachments becomes easy. I speak of the Gita’s way of yoga, for in the ascetic life one obtains the same object differently, by cutting away from the objects of attachment and the consequent atrophy of the attachment itself through rejection and disuse.


Sri Aurobindo:  If I have not written to you, it is because I could not add anything to what I had already written before to you. I cannot promise that within a given time you will have a result which will enable you either to go out into the world with a stronger spirit or succeed in the Yoga. For the Yoga you yourself say that you have not yet the whole mind for it and without the whole mind success is hardly possible in sadhana. For the other it is hardly the function of sadhana to prepare a man for ordinary life in the world. There is one thing only that could work in a direction which would help you to something which is not that, but still not the whole Yoga for which you intimate that you are not wholly ready.


Sri Aurobindo: It is if you get the spirit of the Yoga of works as it is indicated in the Gita — forget yourself and your miseries in the aspiration to a larger consciousness, feel the greater Force working in the world and make yourself an instrument for a work to be done, however small it may be. But, whatever the way may be, you must accept it wholly and put your whole will into it — with a divided and wavering will you cannot hope for success in anything, neither in life nor in Yoga.    That is the ordinary Karmayoga in which the sadhak chooses his own work but offers it to the Divine — it is given to him in the sense that he is moved to it through some impulsion of his mind or heart or vital and feels that there is some cosmic power or cosmic Power behind the impulsion and he tries to train himself to see the One Force behind all actions working out in him and others the cosmic Purpose.  Once he has the ideal of the direct surrender he has to ﬁnd the direct moving or Guidance — that is why he rejects all that he sees to be merely mental, vital or physical impulsions coming from his own or universal Nature.


Sri Aurobindo: Of course the full signiﬁcance of the surrender comes out only when he is ready.     Any work can be done as a ﬁeld for the practice of the spirit of the Gita.


Sri Aurobindo: The ordinary life consists in work for personal aim and satisfaction of desire under some mental or moral control, touched sometimes by a mental ideal. The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacriﬁce to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This Yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.  The Mother had spoken to, after receiving your letter, for arranging for the increase of your work. But now as you say you do not want the work and have given it up, there is nothing to be done.


Sri Aurobindo: It is indeed unproﬁtable to do any work in this spirit of vital demand and unrest and impatience. I may add that the frown in Mother’s eyes and her serious face existed only in the imagination of your restless and excited vital mind; the Mother’s eyes and face could not have expressed something quite absent from her feelings or intention.  It is because you showed an intention of doing the sadhana in full earnest that we considered it necessary to point out to you that it could not be done without work or by mere solitary meditation, for that is the nature of this sadhana. We did not impose any work on you, but left it to you to choose. You yourself suggested the kitchen work and afterwards asked for an increase of it.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not possible to get peace of mind if you indulge in vital ego and the turbulent play of the vital mind, revolt, demand and impatience. Abhiman, revolt, violent insistence on the satisfaction of claims and wishes are foreign to the spirit of the Yoga, they can only bring disturbance and trouble. If you want peace of mind and true sadhana, the ﬁrst thing you have to do is to cease regarding all these things as justiﬁed or justiﬁable or insisting on them. You must recognise that in allowing all this to rise in you, it is you yourself who have created your own trouble and you must resolutely separate yourself from these things and clear them out of you. Till you are ﬁrm in doing that, nothing can be done, — till then no spiritual progress or achievement is possible.


Sri Aurobindo:   That is the most important thing to get over — ego, anger, personal dislikes, self-regarding sensitiveness etc. Work is not only for work’s sake, but as a ﬁeld of sadhana, for getting rid of the lower personality and its reactions and acquiring a full surrender to the Divine. As for the work itself it must be done according to the organisation arranged or sanctioned by the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: You must always remember that it is her work and not personally yours.  To keep up work helps to keep up the balance between the internal experience and the external development; otherwise one-sidedness and want of measure and balance may develop.  Moreover, it is necessary to keep the sadhana of work for the Divine, because in the end that enables the sadhak to bring out the inner progress into the external nature and life and helps the integrality of the sadhana.    It is not at all a question of usefulness — although your work is very useful when you put yourself into it.


Sri Aurobindo: Work is part of the sadhana, and in sadhana the question of usefulness does not arise, that is an outward practical measure of things, though even in the outward ordinary life utility is not the only measure.  The question is of aspiration to the Divine, whether that is your central aim in life, your inner need or not. Sadhana for oneself is another matter — one can take it up or leave it. The real sadhana is for the Divine — it is the soul’s need and one cannot give it up even if in moments of despondency one thinks one can.


Sri Aurobindo: Work here and work done in the world are of course not the same thing. The work there is not in any way a divine work in special — it is ordinary work in the world. But still one must take it as a training and do it in the spirit of karmayoga — what matters there is not the nature of the work in itself but the spirit in which it is done. It must be in the spirit of the Gita, without desire, with detachment, without repulsion, but doing it as perfectly as possible, not for the sake of the family or promotion or to please the superiors, but simply because it is the thing that has been given in the hand to do. It is a ﬁeld of inner training, nothing more.


Sri Aurobindo: One has to learn in it three things, equality, desirelessness, dedication. It is not the work as a thing for its own sake, but one’s doing of it and one’s way of doing it that one has to dedicate to the Divine. Done in that spirit it does not matter what the work is. If one trains oneself spiritually like that, then one will be ready to do in the true way whatever special work directly for the Divine (such as the Asram work) one may any day be given to do.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes, obviously, that is one great utility of work that it tests the nature and puts the sadhak in front of the defects of his outer being which might otherwise escape him.     It will be better to do the work as a sadhana for getting rid of the defects rather than accept the defects as a reason for not doing the work. Instead of accepting these reactions as if they were an unchangeable law of your nature, you should make up your mind that they must come no longer — calling down the aid of the Mother’s force to purify the vital and eliminate them altogether.


Sri Aurobindo: If you believe that the trouble in the body must come, naturally it will come; rather ﬁx in your mind the idea and will that it must not come and will not come. If it tries to come reject it and throw it away from you.   The actions are of importance only as expressing what is in the nature. You have to be conscious of whatever in your actions is not in harmony with the Yoga and to get rid of it. But for that what is needed is your own consciousness, the psychic, observing from within and throwing off what is seen to be undesirable.


Sri Aurobindo:  For the sadhak outward struggles, troubles, calamities are only a means of surmounting ego and rajasic desire and attaining to complete surrender. So long as one insists on success, one is doing the work partly at least for the ego; difﬁculties and outward failures come to warn one that it is so and to bring complete equality. This does not mean that the power of victory is not to be acquired; but it is not success in the immediate work that is all-important; it is the power to receive and transmit a greater and greater correct vision and inner Force that has to be developed and this must be done quite coolly and patiently without being elated or disturbed by immediate victory or failure.  The spiritual effectivity of work of course depends on the inner attitude. What is important is the spirit of offering put into the work.


Sri Aurobindo: If one can in addition remember the Mother in the work or through a certain concentration feel the Mother’s presence or force sustaining or doing the work, that carries the spiritual effectivity still farther. But even if one cannot in moments of clouding, depression or struggle do these things, yet there can be behind a love or bhakti which was the original motive power of the work and that can remain behind the cloud and reemerge like the sun after dark periods. All sadhana is like that and it is why one should not be discouraged by the dark moments, but realise that the original urge is there and that therefore the dark moments are only an episode in the journey which will lead to greater progress when they are once over.


Sri Aurobindo: As for the work, it is a means of preparation, it can also be a means of growing into the inner consciousness. But then it must be done not as work only but as an offering to the Mother, without insisting on the ego, with an aspiration to feel her Force working in one, her Presence presiding over the work, seeking to give all to her, not claiming anything for oneself. That is the spirit of work offered as a sacriﬁce; done like that, work becomes a sadhana and a Yoga.    What you have to realise is that your success or failure depends, ﬁrst and always, on your keeping in the right attitude and in the true psychic and spiritual atmosphere and allowing the Mother’s force to act through you.


Sri Aurobindo: If I can judge from your letters, you take its support too much for granted and lay the ﬁrst stress on your own ideas and plans and words about the work; but these whether good or bad, right or mistaken, are bound to fail if they are not instruments of the true Force. You have to be always concentrated, always referring all difﬁculties for solution to the force that is being sent from here, always letting it act and not substituting your own mind and separate vital will or impulse.   Proceed with your work, never forgetting the condition of success. Do not lose yourself in the work or in your ideas or plans or forget to keep yourself in constant touch with the true source.


Sri Aurobindo: Do not allow anybody’s mind or vital inﬂuence or the inﬂuence of the surrounding atmosphere or the ordinary human mentality to come between you and the power and presence of the Mother.    You know what is the right thing to do — to take and keep the necessary inner attitude — when there is the openness to the Force and the strength, courage and power in action coming from it, outward circumstances can be met and turned in the right direction.  Helpless acceptance [] is no part of the Yoga of works — what is necessary is a calm equanimity in the face both of helpful and adverse, fortunate or unfortunate happenings, good or evil fortune, success or failure of effort. One must learn to bear without ﬂinching and disturbance, without rajasic joy or grief, doing all that is necessary, but not dejected if difﬁculties or failure come — one still goes on doing what can be done, not sinking under the burden of life.


Sri Aurobindo:  To keep this equanimity and absence of reactions and from that calm ground to direct the Yoga-force on things and persons (not for egoistic aims but for the work to be done) is the position of the Yogi.   This is the right inner attitude, of equality — to remain unmoved whatever may outwardly happen. But what is needed for success in the outward ﬁeld (if you do not use human means, diplomacy or tactics) is the power to transmit calmly a Force that can change men’s attitude and the circumstances and make any outward action taken at once the right thing to do and effective.   You have to make yourself an instrument of the invisible Force — to be able in a way to direct it to the required point and for the required purpose. But for that samata must be entire — for a calm and luminous use of the Force is necessary.


Sri Aurobindo: Otherwise the use of the Force, if accompanied by ego-reactions, may raise a corresponding ego-resistance and a struggle.     The increase of samata is only a ﬁrst condition [ ]. It is when on the basis of samata an understanding Force can be used to make their attacks nugatory that the attacks will become impossible.


Sri Aurobindo: To be impersonal, generally, is not to be ego-centric, not to regard things from the point of view of how they affect oneself, — but to see what things are in themselves, to judge impartially, to do what is demanded by the purpose of things or by the will of the Master of things, not by one’s own personal point of view or egoistic interest or ego-formed idea or feeling. In work it is to do what is best for the work, without regard to one’s own prestige or convenience, not to regard the work as one’s own but as the Mother’s, to do it according to rule, discipline, impersonal arrangement, even if conditions are not favourable to do the best according to the conditions etc. etc. The impersonal worker puts his best capacity, zeal, industry into the work, but not his personal ambitions, vanity, passions. He has always something in view that is greater than his little personality and his devotion or obedience to that dictates his conduct.


Sri Aurobindo: Your difﬁculty in work is that you regard it too much as your work and from your personal point of view. So questions of personal convenience, ideas, way of doing things, prestige, demands take a big place — and the result is quarrels. You have to learn to be impersonal. Even in the world work cannot be well done without that. How much more necessary is it for a sadhak of Yoga!