Sri Aurobindo: Regard it not as something sinful and horrible and attractive at the same time, but as a mistake and wrong movement of the lower nature. Reject it entirely, not by struggling with it, but by drawing back from it, detaching yourself and refusing your consent; look at it as something not your own, but imposed on you by a force of Nature outside you.   Refuse all consent to the imposition. If anything in your vital consents, insist on that part of you withdrawing its consent.


Sri Aurobindo: Call in the Divine Force to help you in your withdrawal and refusal.  If you can do this quietly and resolutely and patiently, in the end your inner will will prevail against the habit of the outer Nature.    To be conscious [] is the ﬁrst step, but by itself it is not enough; there must come an automatic force of rejection which the moment desire and passion arise throws it off so that it ebbs back from the mind or vital or wherever it touches. This comes either by a strong will of rejection becoming habitual in its action on the consciousness, or by the detached inner being developing an automatic dynamic strength in itself so that it is not only not touched, but refuses these things by an active purifying power or, ﬁnally, by the full emergence of the psychic and its government of the mind, vital and body.


Sri Aurobindo: The last is the most rapid and easy way. Till then these things recur.  But probably in yourself there is still some sense of the old idea of sin or fault which makes you feel troubled. You must take it as an adjustment of the nature that is going on in which old movements which you no longer accept as yours return from force of habit and get a habitual response from some part of the being. But if that part of the being can be made to reject it, then the response begins to fade away.


Sri Aurobindo: You must not allow yourself or your mind to feel troubled by the returns; for that only weakens the power of resistance. There should be calm dissociation of yourself from these things; then the detached inner being will become more easily dynamic and able to reject them from the vital nature.   The trouble of the sex-impulse is bound to dwindle away if you are in earnest about getting rid of it. The difﬁculty is that part of your nature (especially, the lower vital and the subconscient which is active in sleep) keeps the memory and attachment to these movements, and you do not open these parts and make them accept the Mother’s Light and Force to purify them. If you did that and, instead of lamenting and getting troubled and clinging to the idea that you cannot get rid of these things, insisted quietly with a calm faith and patient resolution on their disappearance, separating yourself from them, refusing to accept them or at all regard them as part of yourself, they would after a time lose their force and dwindle.


Sri Aurobindo:   The small tendencies, rajasic vital, which you enumerate are of minor importance. They have to be removed in this sense that attachment to these things has to be given up; the vital part of the being must be prepared to consent to their absence with quietude and indifference, taking them only if they are given freely by the Divine without demand or claim or clinging, but there is nothing very grave about them otherwise.  The one serious matter is the sex-tendency.


Sri Aurobindo: That must be overcome. But it will be more easily overcome if instead of being upset by its presence you detach the inner being from it, rise up above it and view it as a weakness of the lower nature.  If you can detach yourself from it with a complete indifference in the inner being, it will seem more and more something alien to yourself, put upon you by the outer forces of Nature. Then it will be easier to remove.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is something in that. Too much importance given [ ], too much tension does sometimes make the struggle worse. To dissociate quietly and to reject steadily without being moved by the recurrence is the best way — if one knows how to do the trick.


Sri Aurobindo:   As for the other point, the right attitude is neither to worry always about the sex-weakness and be obsessed by its importance so as to be in constant struggle and depression over it, nor to be too careless so as to allow it to grow. It is perhaps the most difﬁcult of all to get rid of entirely; one has to recognise quietly its importance and its difﬁculty and go quietly and steadily about the control of it. If some reactions of a slight character remain, it is not a thing to get disturbed about — only it must not be permitted to increase so as to disturb the sadhana or get too strong for the restraining will of the mental and higher vital being.   It is best not to pay too much attention to this [-]movement, but to let it drop off quietly by lack of support and assent from the mind and the higher vital.


Sri Aurobindo:    To think


Sri Aurobindo: too much of sex, even for suppressing it, makes it worse.  You have to open more to positive experience. To spend all the time struggling with the lower vital is a very slow method.


Sri Aurobindo:   Detachment is the ﬁrst step. If you can detach yourself from the sex suggestions even when having them as you say, then they do not matter so much as the tamas, inertia etc. which interfere with your sadhana. They can wait for their ﬁnal removal hereafter.


Sri Aurobindo: It is true that the removal of the sex-impulse in all its forms and, generally, of the vital woman-complex is a great liberation which opens up to the Divine considerable regions of the being which otherwise tend to remain shut up. These things are a degradation of the source in the being from which bhakti, divine love and adoration arise. But the complex has deep roots in human nature and one must not be disappointed if it takes time to pull them up. A resolute detachment rejecting them as foreign elements, refusing to accept any inner association with them as well as outer indulgence even of the slightest kind is the best way to wear out their hold upon the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: Pranayama and other physical practices like asana do not necessarily root out sexual desire — sometimes by increasing enormously the vital force in the body they can even exaggerate in a rather startling way the force too of the sexual tendency, which, being at the base of the physical life, is always difﬁcult to conquer. The one thing to do is to separate oneself from these movements, to ﬁnd one’s inner self and live in it; these movements will not then any longer appear as belonging to oneself but as surface impositions of the outer Prakriti upon the inner self or Purusha. They can then be more easily discarded or brought to nothing.  Hurting the ﬂesh is no remedy for the sex-impulse, though it may be a temporary diversion. It is the vital and mostly the vitalphysical that takes the sense-perception as pleasant or otherwise.


Sri Aurobindo: If by the real Being you mean the silent Atman, that does not identify itself [], but is felt as standing aloof. If you mean the Purusha, the sensation is a movement of Prakriti and the Purusha can stand back from it and reject it or identify and accept it.  Reduction of diet has not usually a permanent effect; it may give a greater sense of physical or vital-physical purity, lighten the system and reduce certain kinds of tamas. But the sex-impulse can very well accommodate itself to a reduced diet.  It is not by physical means but by a change in the consciousness that these things can be surmounted.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is only if the whole consciousness is awake and aware of its concealed movements that such [] reactions can be avoided. It does not mean that you are worse than others, but that in all men the sexual element is there, active or dormant, indulged or suppressed. It can only be overcome by a spiritual awakening in parts of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: There is a force of purity, not the purity of the moralist, but an essential purity of spirit, in the very substance of the being. When that comes, then sex-waves either cannot approach or they pass without imparting any impulse, without touching anywhere.    The desires of the heart and the body which stand in the way of Brahmacharya give a glow to the vital and emotive nature and prevent it from being dry and shut to feeling. To keep the heart warm and open, not dried up or closed, and at the same time attain to spiritual purity the best way is to turn it towards that which is eternal, pure and ever true, behind and beyond these earthly emotions — the ever-living Love, Bliss and Beauty.


Sri Aurobindo:  If it [] is established, then it brings purity and the purity throws off the sexual suggestions.  It is always difﬁcult to get rid of sex when it has had a strong hold on the system. It needs probably more than a mental will, — a stronger Force from above, to get rid of it altogether.    seems in his letter to want only a liberation from sexual thoughts and desires by an intervention of another’s will; but this is not how it should be done. Those who practise this Yoga can escape from it by a rejection of sexual suggestions aided by the inﬂuence of the Divine Power which acts through the Mother, but it is not instantaneous, except in the case of those who have a complete receptivity and an absolute faith.


Sri Aurobindo: Usually it takes a steady tapasya to get rid of a lifelong habit.      What seems to be best is that the movement of rising above should be completed and if you can feel there the wideness, peace, calm, silence of the Self and that can come down into the body through all the centres and there can be the working of the Force in that condition of the physical being, then the vitalphysical difﬁculty can be faced.


Sri Aurobindo: The effort to do it by personal tapasya can carry one to a certain point, it can throw out sex etc., but for most it does not prevent all coming back by attack — unless the force of tapasya is so great and continuous that these forces get no chance. But the elimination of these things can only come, I think, by the descent of the higher consciousness — bringing with it the self-existent calm and wideness, the higher force and the Ananda occupying all down to the cells of the body. It is quite certain that these three together in the body can leave no room for sex — even if sex came, it would at once get so transmuted that it would be sex no longer.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the physical centre — sex is only one of its movements.  Naturally, if the sex is active (instead of giving place to Beauty and Ananda) and if the lower movements are active, it forms an obstacle to the establishment of the higher consciousness.  But the higher can descend, if there is at all an opening, even before the lower movements have deﬁnitely gone — it has then to complete the work of displacing them.


Sri Aurobindo: It [ ] can


Sri Aurobindo: be got rid of only when a higher consciousness comes down permanently into the vital.     I don’t think it [] is feeble in its going, sometimes it gets a singular intensity just before it goes — but it exhausts itself, tires and sinks, pressed out by the pressure from above.  It depends of course on the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: Sometimes it goes out like a snuffed candle, sometimes dwindles away, sometimes expires in a last ﬂame. There is no rule applicable to everybody.  The sex-impulse is the chief difﬁculty in your way and, if that were got rid of, it would make the ground clear for the sadhana in you to take a much fuller course. If it persists, it is because some part of your being still clings to it and your mind and will have remained divided and found some kind of half-justiﬁcation for the continuance. The ﬁrst thing is for the mind and also the higher vital to withdraw their consent altogether; if that is done, it becomes only a mechanical return from outside on the physical and ﬁnally only an active memory which will disappear when it is able to ﬁnd no welcome in any part of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo:   The sex-trouble is serious only so long as it can get the consent of the mind and the vital will. If it is driven from the mind, that is, if the mind refuses its consent, but the vital part responds to it, it comes as a large wave of vital desire and tries to sweep the mind away by force along with it. If it is driven also from the higher vital, from the heart and the dynamic possessive life force, it takes refuge in the lower vital and comes in the shape of smaller suggestions and urges there. Driven from the lower vital level, it goes down into the obscure inertly repetitive physical and comes as sensations in the sex-centre and a mechanical response to suggestion.


Sri Aurobindo: Driven from there too, it goes down into the subconscient and comes up as dreams or night-emissions even without dreams. But to wherever it recedes, it tries still for a time from that base or refuge to trouble and recapture the assent of the higher parts — until the victory is complete and it is driven even out of the surrounding or environmental consciousness which is the extension of ourselves into the general or universal Nature.     Is it that the body does not accept the sex-thoughts and desires?


Sri Aurobindo: If so, you are entitled to reject it as something external to you or at most existing only in the subconscient. For it is only what something in us accepts, supports, takes pleasure in, or still mechanically responds to, that can still be called ours.  If there is nothing of that, it belongs to general Nature but not to us. Of course it returns and tries to take possession of its lost territory, but that is a foreign invasion. The rule of these things is that they have to be extruded outside the individual consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: Rejected by the mind and higher vital, they still try to hold on to the lower vital and physical. Rejected from the lower vital, they still hold the body by a physical desire. Rejected from the body, they retire into the environmental consciousness (sometimes the subconscient also, rising in dreams) — I mean by the environmental a sort of surrounding atmosphere which we carry about with us and by which we communicate with the universal forces — and try to invade from there. Rejected from there, they become in the end too weak to be more than external suggestions till that too ends — and they are ﬁnished and non-existent.


Sri Aurobindo:   There are two places into which it [] can retire — the subconscient vital below or the environmental consciousness around. When it returns it surges up from below, if it is the former, or approaches and invades from outside, if it is the latter.


Sri Aurobindo: It [] is the reason why the vital sex-difﬁculty is the hardest to get rid of — even those who have sincerely given up the more physical form are liable to the vital form of the impulse. But it is harmful because it allows a subtle inﬁltration of the forces that stand in the way of the sadhana. One must get rid of them if the vital is to become entirely pure and able to contain the divine love and Ananda.


Sri Aurobindo: Of course []. It is the vital that gives it its intensity and power to hold the consciousness.     It is the entire inner rejection of the sex-pulls and vital pulls that is necessary, a rejection by the whole lower vital itself — the outer rejection can only be effective if this inner rejection comes to reinforce it. Usually people adopt the outer rejection because otherwise (if these things are indulged) the inner rejection is not likely to come since the vital trend is always being conﬁrmed by the outer action — but if the outer is rejected, then the conﬂict is conﬁned to the internal desire and fought out there.


Sri Aurobindo: Naturally an outer renunciation by itself does not liberate.     There are people outside the Asram even who have got free from the sex without seclusion — even sleeping in the same bed with the wife. I know one at least who did it without any higher experience.


Sri Aurobindo: The work of these people is ordinary service or professional work, but that did not prevent their having the sex-struggle nor did it help them to get rid of it. The thing came after a prolonged struggle because they were determined to be rid of it and at a certain stage they got a touch which made the determination absolutely effective. Possibly they were sattwic, but that did not prevent their having strong sex-impulses and a hard and prolonged struggle.  I meant by cutting off [] a determined rejection of the inward as well as the outward movement whenever it comes. Something in the nature accepts and lets itself go helplessly and something in the mind allows it to do so.


Sri Aurobindo: The mind does not seem to believe in its power to say No deﬁnitely to inward movements as it would to an outer contact — and yet the Purusha is there and can put its deﬁnite No, maintaining it till the Prakriti has to submit — or else till the conﬁrming touch from above makes its determination perfectly effective.     Sex is your main difﬁculty — it is in fact the only very serious one and it is so because it is always behind and you have sometimes pushed it back, but never cut with it entirely. It is the physical vital that is weak and when the thing comes, becomes pliant to it in spite of the mental will’s resistance.


Sri Aurobindo: But even so; if the mental will made itself real and strong, these crises would be met and overcome, or at least pass without leading to indulgence in one form or another. The other possibility is the settled descent of the higher consciousness into the physical being. It is in these two ways that liberation from sex is possible.   The sexual urge is something that tries to take complete hold and leave no room for inhibition or control. It has a power of temporary possession which no other passion or life-impulse has to the same degree, more even than anger which comes second to it.


Sri Aurobindo: That is why it is so difﬁcult to get rid of it — because even when the mind or higher vital refuses, the vital physical feels this possessive force and has an ingrained tendency to be passive to its urge.     In the vital physical the “[]response” lingers long after the mind and higher vital have turned from it. I have seen that in men who were mentally and emotionally quite sincere.


Sri Aurobindo: A few get rid of it easily, but these are a small minority. But there must be no justiﬁcation on the “what harm” basis — that is an attempt of the lower vital to get the mind and higher vital to adhere.  There is always room for harm so long as the sex-response is not eliminated in, not in you only.    It is the crude vital-physical that returns upon you in this way [] — and these returns must be the cause of all the feeling of illness, weakness, tamas that you get.


Sri Aurobindo: A puriﬁcation of this part by the descent of the higher consciousness into it is a very great necessity for your sadhana.     Sex is strongly connected with the physical centre, but also with the lower vital — it is the lower vital that gives it most of its intensity and excitement. It can be disconnected from the lower vital and then it becomes a purely physical movement of a mechanical kind which has no great force except for the more animal natures.


Sri Aurobindo: If the physical centre also is freed, then the sex-impulse ceases.     It [] is the habitual mechanical response to the sexforce in the physical nature. It gets this intensity in spite of the mind’s rejection because something in the vital physical (nervous) being still remembers and responds to the suggestion of the craving and the pleasure.


Sri Aurobindo: If the nervous being can be got to reject it then it becomes a purely physical wave without mental assent or vital desire — that is the last stage after which it can be thrown out of even the environmental Nature through which the suggestion or denial of the general sex-force comes to the individual being.     These difﬁculties [] in one form or another are felt by all — but they take a stronger form when the root is sexual. The obstinacy with which they return is due to the obscurity of the physical which always responds to an old habit of the nature (even when the mind has rejected it) and it is this obscurity and subjection to habit that the adverse vital forces take advantage of to repeat the trouble.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is of course the physical that is at once responsive in the most material way to sex-suggestion. What you are doing [ ] is right. As you are controlling it in the waking state, it comes out at night.


Sri Aurobindo: That too has to be got rid of.    That is usual — the subconscient acts of itself on its own store of impressions or habitual past movements. When one drives sex from the mind and conscious vital and physical it remains in the subconscient and rises from there in sleep.  The sex-sensation came from the subconscient.


Sri Aurobindo: When it is unable to manifest in the waking consciousness, it comes up from the subconscient in sleep. The mind must not allow itself to be disturbed — it will go out with the rest.    There is no reason for you to be depressed or discouraged. The defects of the nature of which you speak are habits of the lower vital and the external being; if you recognise them fully and frankly and detect them and reject whenever they act or try to act upon you, they will in time disappear.


Sri Aurobindo: The sexual desires show that the subconscient still retains the old impressions, movements and impulses; make the conscious parts of the being entirely free and aspire and will for the higher consciousness to come fully into the subconscient so that even in sleep and dream something in you may be aware and on guard and reject these things when they try to take form at that time.     I do not suppose the sex-touch came at all from them personally; at most some contact with the outside world and its consciousness might have touched the subconscient. But the real reason for these upsurgings of old movements is the subconscient itself where the old things remain in seed and can sprout up after long cessation or interruption.


Sri Aurobindo: To be completely secure against all possibility of their return one must have established the higher consciousness in all the being down to the subconscient. But meanwhile these returns can be used as a test of the progress made. If for instance the sex-thought rises into the mind, but cannot remain there, that means the mind is substantially free; if the sex-desire comes into the vital and falls away without taking a hold, it is the same for the vital. The last question is for the body where it can come as a physical urge or sensation. If it can hold none of these there is no refuge left for it except the subconscient from which it can try to rise, especially in dreams, or the environmental consciousness from which it can try to come as a wave invading the being.


Sri Aurobindo:  If you can exclude sex from the waking thought and consciousness, the survival in sleep will not be so important. It will mean that the sex has sunk down from the conscious mind, vital, physical being into the subconscious; from there it comes up in sleep. But if it has no support from the conscious being, it may be active for a time but its activity will afterwards diminish, become more and more rare till it is eliminated. This may take time, shorter or longer, but in the end the elimination is bound to come.


Sri Aurobindo:   If the waking state is freed from indulgence whether mental or physical in sex-thoughts, sex-impulses, sex-action, then the subconscient can be better dealt with; till then what is indulged by the mind in the waking state or else is suppressed but not yet entirely rejected can always lurk in the subconscient and rise from it in sleep. Turn away the conscious mind and vital from the sex-impulse, that is the ﬁrst step.


Sri Aurobindo: Naturally, if you read about these [] things [] they enter the mind and pass into the subconscient where they leave their impression. If the consciousness is not free from the sexual impulse, this impression can rise up from the subconscient and work in the mind.     The sex-impulse is deeply rooted in the subconscient and it is difﬁcult to get rid of it.


Sri Aurobindo: Only the full transformation of the physical consciousness can do that — except for a few who are not strongly bound by it.  When there is the dullness — tamas of any kind — it is much easier for the sex-force to act.     Inactivity is an atmosphere in which sex easily rises.


Sri Aurobindo:   A state of tamasic inertia of the mind and body is always favourable to the sex-urge by the sex-impulse. What I meant was that there is something (not the whole) of your lower vital and physical that can respond to the sex-impulse. There may be another part that has already the aspiration — but when the condition favourable to the sex-invasion comes, then the aspiration is quiescent or not strong enough and the other elements allow the sex-force to come in.


Sri Aurobindo:  The exercise has probably helped [] both by engaging the vital energies of the body and by giving it strength and tone. Sex always increases when the vital physical is indolent, unoccupied or without tone.     It is the most dangerous moment for sex things when just after waking one remains lying in bed; one should either go to sleep again, if there is time, or else ﬁx the mind on wholesome things.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is no condition more dangerous for the sex-imagination to come than this lying in bed in a half-awake or else a relaxed inert condition unoccupied by any activity or any experience.  That [] is just the thing that ought not to be done. It would be merely a gratuitous increasing of the difﬁculties.


Sri Aurobindo: For the spiritual endeavour is part of your nature and, if it is difﬁcult to get rid of the sex-impulse, you would ﬁnd it still more difﬁcult to do without the spiritual life in you. Sex is the one difﬁculty in its way that is hardest to get rid of, because it sticks and returns, but one has to be more persistent than the difﬁculty — there is no other way.     By giving up contact [] it [] can be reduced to two forms — dream and imagination.


Sri Aurobindo: Dream is not of much importance unless it affects the waking mind which it need not at all do; it can besides be discouraged and, if not fed, fades out in the end. Imaginations can only be got rid of by a tapasya of the will not allowing them to run their course, but breaking them off as soon as they begin. They come most easily when lying in bed after waking from sleep in a tamasic condition. One has to break them off either by shaking off the tamas or by emptying the mind and going to sleep again. At other times one ought to be able to stop it by turning the mind elsewhere.


Sri Aurobindo:   To let the memory or imagination dwell on things that excite the sex-desire is unhealthy for the sadhana and an obstacle to the development of the Yogic consciousness. Discourage these imaginations and memories when they come.


Sri Aurobindo: That [] is the difﬁculty. The imagination means a consent of the physical or else the vital mind. Otherwise the [-]sensation is often only due to physical causes and, if not supported by this automatic assent of a part of the mind, would before long diminish in its habit of recurrence.    Care must be taken that the sexual or erotic imagination does not take hold of the consciousness representing itself as spiritual truth.


Sri Aurobindo: In most men the sexual is the strongest of all the impulses of Nature.     The vital needs something to hook itself on to, but for a sadhak women are obviously the wrong things for it to hook itself on to — it must get hold of the right peg.


Sri Aurobindo:   If it [] admires all beautiful things, not women only, without desire — then there would be no harm [ ]. But specially applied to women, it is a relic of the “sex-appeal”.


Sri Aurobindo: It [] is the usual vanity of the lower vital — it is very common. Any man can have an attraction for any woman, and vice versa, when the sex-forces are active, but that attraction is not his, it is the pull of the sex-force.  There are two kinds of these [-]dreams, one kind which are things happening on the vital plane, another kind which is made up of impressions and impulses coming up from the subconscient, not actual happenings. Dreams in which emission takes place are usually of the second kind — but not always; for sometimes they come through the touch of vital beings or forces in the vital plane or through a meeting of one’s own sexual thought-forms with those of another there.


Sri Aurobindo:   Apart from the total rejection of sex-thoughts and imaginations and actions, which ends by acting in the subconscient also, I don’t know any remedy for sex-dreams except the putting of a force as concrete as possible on the sex-centre and organ prohibiting this urge and its result, put when about to sleep and renewed each time one wakes and goes to sleep again. But this all cannot manage to use, for they employ a mental will instead of a concrete force (the mental will can be effective, but is not always so). This method, besides, only acts for the time, it inhibits but except in rare cases does not permanently cure; it does not get rid of the sex-impressions in the subconscient, and of course it means thinking of the sex-affair though only negatively.  I have heard it said that even very advanced Yogis get the dreams at least once in six months, — I don’t know how far it is true or what the Yogis themselves say about it.


Sri Aurobindo: But the seximpressions in the heart can be got rid of long before the end of life, and even the seed state in the subconscient which comes up in dreams, though sticky enough, is not quite so irremovable as all that.  Anyway, the dream kind is not so much to trouble about, unless it is frequent — it is the waking state that must be rigorously cleared out. Sometimes, if that is done, there is automatic extension of the habit of rejection to the subconscient, so that when the dream is coming there is an automatic prohibition that stops it. Under a regime like that I think the sex-pressure would become, if not non-existent, yet permanently quiescent in its seed state and so practically   Night-dreams are involuntary upsurgings of the sex-impressions from the subconscient; most men when they are not indulging in the sex-act have it from time to time though it varies in period from a week, a fortnight, a month to three or four months or even less.


Sri Aurobindo: To have it more frequently indicates either indulgence in sex-imaginations which stimulate the sex-centre or else a nervous weakness in that part due to past indulgence. Some have beneﬁted by putting a will on the body before going to sleep at night that these dreams should not happen — though it may not succeed at the beginning, it tells in most cases after a time by ﬁxing a certain inhibitory force on the subconscient from which these dreams arise. As to children indulging, that is not hereditary, but a thing taught by bad company and these children are sometimes spoiled in this way at a very early age.    When the waking consciousness has renounced the indulgence of the sexual desires and impulses, these take refuge in the subconscient as impressions, memories, suppressed desires and come up in sleep as dreams and involuntary sleep emissions.


Sri Aurobindo: If the waking consciousness is not itself clear, if, that is to say, though there is no physical indulgence, yet there are imaginations in the mind or desires in the vital or the body, then these dreams and emissions can be frequent. Even if the waking consciousness is clear, the subconscient emergences can still come for a time, but in time they diminish. Some are able to get rid of this by putting a strong prohibiting will or force on the subconscient or on the sex-centre before going to sleep, but this does not succeed with everyone. The main thing is to get the increasing force of brahmacharya in the waking consciousness, complete expulsion of sex-thoughts, speech, physical craving or impulse — the subconscient remnants will either die out or be cleared out afterwards when one is able to bring the higher consciousness down here.


Sri Aurobindo: In order that the dream emissions may diminish or cease, it is necessary ﬁrst to have complete brahmacharya, — not only to banish sexuality from the bodily action, but also sexual impulses from the vital and body consciousness and sexual thoughts and imaginations from the mind and speech — and not talk or like to talk about sexual things. The dreams arise from the subconscient where all impressions and instincts are stored up and any of these things stimulates the subconscient and increases its store which can well up in dreams. If one makes the waking consciousness entirely pure, then by putting a will or force on the subconscient (especially before going to sleep) one can after a time eliminate the sex-dreams and emissions.   It is obviously an attack which falls upon your nervous system through the subconscient. It comes in sleep because in the waking consciousness you are more on your guard and able to react against attacks.


Sri Aurobindo: Usually this kind of dream and discharge come when the physical consciousness is in a tamasic condition through fatigue or strain or any other cause, in a heavy sleep or under a stress of inertia.  The ﬁrst thing to do is to reject the after consequences as you have done this time — for you say you do not feel any weakness, but rather as if nothing had happened. It is not at all inevitable that one should feel weakness after a dream of this kind and a discharge; it is only by a habitual association in the physical mind that these forces can bring these reactions of nervous weakness.  As for preventing the discharge, it can be done by becoming more conscious in sleep. You were conscious of all that happened, but you must besides develop the power of a conscious will which sees what is going to happen and interferes to prevent it, either by waking in time or by stopping the dream or prohibiting the discharge.


Sri Aurobindo: All this is perfectly possible, it is a matter of habit and a little persistence.  It is also often found very effective to put a will or force upon the body consciousness before going to sleep that it should not happen — especially when you feel the predisposing condition of heaviness or inertia, it should be done. This will is not always immediately successful, but after a time the subconscient gets the habit of responding to the will or force thus laid upon it and the trouble dwindles and ﬁnally disappears altogether.    As for the discharges, that is less dangerous; most who live unmarried have them from time to time.


Sri Aurobindo: Only, if they occur too often, they are depressing to the vital force. Certainly, they must be stopped; but do not have exaggerated ideas on the matter. To stop them, the ﬁrst necessity is to discourage sexual imaginations in the waking state. Even if that is totally done, the discharge may still continue at night, because the subconscient keeps the memory and the habit. To stop it, you have to have a strong will before sleeping that it should not happen; also, if you can learn how to do it, direct a strong force on the sexual centre before going to sleep to inhibit this kind of accident.


Sri Aurobindo: After a time this method usually succeeds.  This [] is a quite usual phenomenon when one stops sexual activity and rejects it in the conscious mind and vital. It takes refuge in the subconscient where the mind has no direct control and comes up in the form of dreams causing emission. That lasts so long as the subconscient itself is not cleared. This can sometimes be done by putting a strong will or, if possible, a concrete current of Force on the sex-centre before sleeping against this thing happening.


Sri Aurobindo: The success is not always immediate, but if effectively done it tends ﬁrst to reduce frequency and ﬁnally stop it.  These things (accumulation of urine, hot stimulating food etc.) are all predisposing or auxiliary causes or can be so. There is often as described a rhythm in this subconscient urge — it happens at a particular time in the month or else after a ﬁxed period of time (week, fortnight, month, six months).    The ﬁrst thing necessary in such matters [ ] is to be perfectly calm and refuse to be upset by these difﬁculties.


Sri Aurobindo: If they rise one must take it that they do so in order to be worked out. If there is nothing in the waking consciousness to encourage the sex-difﬁculty, then these dreams or discharges without dream can only be a rising up of old dormant impressions in the subconscient. Such risings often take place when the Force is working in the subconscient to clear it. It is also just possible that the discharges may be due, especially where there are no dreams, to purely material causes, e.g. the pressure of undischarged urine or faecal matter on the bladder. But in any case the thing is not to be disturbed and to put a force or will on the sex-centre or sex-organ for these things to cease.


Sri Aurobindo: This can be  done just before sleeping — usually after a time if done regularly, it has an effect. A calm general pressure of Will or Force on the physical subconscient is to be put. The subconscient may be often obstinate in its continual persistence, but it can and does accommodate itself quickly or slowly to the will of the conscious being.


Sri Aurobindo:  The pressure from the kidneys or the intestines causing dream of sex-tendency or imagination is the last and most physical form — it often remains when the others have gone. The body dull and the mind half awake is indeed what gives it its opportunity.  But if it is only for a few minutes and leaves no after effect, then the tendency ought to disappear after a time.


Sri Aurobindo: Your dreams were mostly on the vital physical plane. There if there is any physical contact of a sexual or other kind that acts strongly on the sexual centre or on a sensory contact, it may even without raising any lust produce an emission by a mechanical blind and inconscient action of a purely physical (not even vital physical) kind. It is only when the sex-centre has become very strong that this becomes impossible.  People get too much worried about these [-]dreams which are only mechanical movements of the subconscient physical. If the conscious vital is cleared, they will after some time, with a little concentration, dwindle away.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is a mistake to make so much of emissions — everybody has them. The subconscient has its own movement and the want of control there is a thing one can get rid of only when there is the full light down there. At most one can deal with this special factor by putting a will into the subconscient (in the sexcentre or the organ itself) for prohibition, so that even in the subconscient during sleep there may be something that reacts.  Many have been able to diminish and almost get rid of the recurrence by this means, but others have succeeded less well.


Sri Aurobindo: In one case there was a recurrence every fortnight and that stood in spite of the will. As for the waking difﬁculty do not make too much of it. Press on with the positive side of the sadhana towards realisation — these things will fade and disappear when the higher consciousness is down in the sex-centre. Meanwhile it has ﬁrst to be controlled and got rid of as much as possible .


Sri Aurobindo:   There is no reason to be depressed to this extent or to have these imaginations about failure in the Yoga. It is not at all a sign that you are unﬁt for the Yoga. It simply means that the sexual impulse rejected by the conscious parts has taken refuge in the subconscient, somewhere probably in the lower vital physical and the most physical consciousness where there are some regions not yet open to the aspiration and the light.


Sri Aurobindo: The persistence in sleep of things rejected in the waking consciousness is a quite common occurrence in the course of the sadhana.  The remedy is (1) to get the higher consciousness, its light and the workings of its power down into the obscurer parts of the nature, (2) to become progressively more conscious in sleep, with an inner consciousness which is aware of the working of the sadhana in sleep as in waking, (3) to bring to bear the waking will and aspiration on the body in sleep.  One way to do the last is to make a strong and conscious suggestion to the body, before sleeping, that the thing should not happen; the more concrete and physical the suggestion can be made and the more directly on the sexual centre, the better.  The effect may not be quite immediate at ﬁrst or invariable; but usually this kind of suggestion, if you know how to make it, prevails in the end; even when it does not prevent the dream, it very often awakes the consciousness within in time to prevent untoward consequences.  It is a mistake to allow yourself to be depressed in the sadhana even by repeated failures.


Sri Aurobindo: One must be calm, persistent and more obstinate than the resistance.   It is all nervous. If you did not get depressed and despondent and create a weakness by the depression, the discharges would do no harm. All get them except those who indulge and so get out the sex-ﬂuid or those who have a strong Yogic or other control over their sleep. That control has to be got, but the ﬁrst thing is to get rid of this reaction of despondency and weakness which is quite unnecessary.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is no inevitable necessity for a dream emission making the body weak — it is probably the past sanskar that makes it have such strong results.  The theory of masturbation as a physiological necessity is a most extraordinary idea. It weakens the nervous force and nervous balance, — as is natural since it is an artiﬁcial and wholly uncompensated waste of the energy — and it disorganises the sex-centre. Those who indulge in it inordinately may even upset their nervous balance altogether and bring about neurasthenia or worse.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not by disorganisation of the sex-centre and sex-functioning that one should avoid the consequences of the sex-action, but by control of the sex itself so that it may be turned into higher forms of Energy.  It is perfectly possible to check the habit. There are any number of people who have had it for years and yet been able to stop it.


Sri Aurobindo: The habit you speak of is exceedingly harmful and dangerous; it wastes the energy that should be preserved for the sadhana; it tends to weaken the mind, dislocate the consciousness, exhaust the nervous power, diminish the life-force, create inertia and impotence in the body. The excitations etc. that accompany it build up nothing; their tendency is to disintegrate. Often the result of this habit is to destroy the health and bring in undermining illnesses — it always does so when there is unrestrained indulgence.  There is only one thing to do for those on whom it comes — to break off the habit entirely, uncompromisingly and for ever and.


Sri Aurobindo: Necessarily, you must give up the perverse habit which is one of the main causes of your despondency, vital weakness etc.  There is nothing that has more power to derange and weaken the system. If not only in your mind but in your vital also you had made the resolution to give it up, it would have disappeared long ago.    There is one way by which it is possible for you to get rid of the perverse habit: to establish a strong mental control and so get rid of the wrong movement.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not true that it is unconquerable; on the contrary, the fact that you were able to interrupt it for some time shows that you can conquer it. It returned because these things are a movement of certain universal life-forces that, once allowed a habitual wrong response in the individual system, tend to continue in that form and, even if evicted, try always to recur. Your mind has rejected them, but something in your vital nature — the part that responds directly to the universal lifeforces — still takes pleasure and has preserved the capacity and desire of the wrong response. A resolute and persistent effort of will can enforce in the end the rejection of the desire and ﬁnally even of any mechanical habit of the movement upon this part of the nature also. Only you must not be discouraged by relapses; your will must be more persevering than the habit and persist till there is a complete conquest.


Sri Aurobindo:  It is of course true that the nerves get upset by the habit of masturbation (frequently done daily or continued for a long time) apart from other untoward results. In Hathayoga and Rajayoga to carry on sex along with the Yoga is extremely dangerous. But it is not safe (physically) with any Yoga, unless the practice of Yoga is only nominal or unless the mind and nerves are made of iron. The spiritual unsafeness is of course always there.


Sri Aurobindo:   Any intervention, however imperative, cannot be effective without the cooperation and assent of the being. If you continue to entertain and justify with your mind such [] movements as you described and gave expression to, if you go on doing physical violence to yourself and adopting it as a means of sadhana or admitting as a part of sadhana the method of revolt or other Asuric errors, how do you expect to have the will and needed discrimination? You have ﬁrst to throw out these things which have been shown to you to be false and from a hostile source .


Sri Aurobindo: It is because the mind justiﬁed or excused them, that the will became weak to dismiss them. You have to dismiss these errors altogether, if you want to do this Yoga in which they have no place at all.  On the other hand, if you are unable to control these movements and dismiss them in spite of your mind refusing them, that means a weak condition of the nerves in which the remedy I proposed is the only one. I meant by change of air not only a change of climate, but of place, surroundings and atmosphere — to remain for a time where there will not be any pressure.  You speak of the danger of not being able to come back or of losing the sadhana, but to allow these things to go farther is much more dangerous to the sadhana and, if they increase or continue, you will not be able to remain here.


Sri Aurobindo: As for the secretiveness you spoke of, it is one main reason of your going astray — for it has made you shut yourself up in your own wrong movement. If you have got yourself into an imprisoning circle, the ﬁrst thing you have to do is to get out of it — secretiveness must be renounced altogether.    If you cannot stop the masturbation, I think you are right in going [], as to continue might have serious consequences for the nervous system. It is better in that case to live the ordinary life and let the sex-instinct have its natural outlet so long as it is so irresistible.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not necessary to wait for training somebody to do the work. Mother appreciates very much all the work you have done and we had hoped the earnest spiritual effort you have made would prevail over this tendency. But it would not be wise to insist too much against the obstinately strong indication that the vital nature needs a relief. Wherever you are, the Mother’s blessings and mine will be with you and you will receive from us all the inner help we can give you.  There is no universal rule.


Sri Aurobindo: Women can be as sexual as men or more. But there are numbers of women who dislike sex and there are very few men. One Sukhdev in a million, but many Dianas and Pallas Athenes. The virgin is really a feminine conception; men are repelled by the idea of eternal virginity. Many women would remain without any wakening of the sexual instinct if men did not thrust it on them and that cannot be said of many, perhaps of any man!


Sri Aurobindo: But there is another side to the picture. Women are perhaps less physically sexual than men on the whole, — but what about vital sexuality? the instinct of possessing and being possessed etc. etc.?


Sri Aurobindo: If there were not the sex-push in her, how could that [ ] be? The sex-push is not merely the impulse to the act, as she perhaps thinks, as the push to envelop and occupy the man and to possess and be possessed. That is so especially with women, the sex-act being very often less attractive to them than to men; but of course always, if the vital physical reaches a certain point, the physical sex-movement tends to follow.


Sri Aurobindo: She may not have the sex-feeling towards you, but there is a certain kind of vital push, throwing out of tentacles — I don’t know exactly how to express it — the secret object of which in Nature is to attract the man, to draw his attention and ﬁx it on the woman, hook and draw him in a less or greater degree. The intention may not be at all conscious in the woman’s mind, that is to say, it may not be clear or even present to her mind, — it may be merely instinctive or subconscious. There need be no physical sexual intention, only the vital in spontaneous movement. All women of a strongly vital temperament (and is that) have it — some more, some less. There may be no speciﬁc sex-impulse in it, but it will still raise the sex-idea in the man.


Sri Aurobindo: naturally has no psychological knowledge and these things are too subtle for her to perceive or realise. She may easily think she is acting in a perfectly innocent and natural way and not at all know this activity of the Nature push in her.   A smile or any movement, appearance or action of the woman can be the starting point for these vibrations. I don’t suppose it is anything inherent in the smile itself, but all these things have been the habitual means by which sex has been excited in man () and the woman uses them, often unconsciously and by mere habit when coming into contact with man, whether she has or has not any intention of pleasing or moving the man, it still comes up as an instinctive movement. is of the type of woman who has this instinctive movement to please the male.


Sri Aurobindo: But even when the woman smiles quite casually and without even the habitual instinctive movement, still there may be the vibration on the man’s side owing to the habit of response in him to feminine attractions. These things are almost mechanical in their starting. As I wrote before it is the automatic answer of the physical or vital mind (imagination etc.) that prolongs it and makes it effective. Otherwise the vibrations would die away after a time.


Sri Aurobindo: Dress has always been used by woman as an aid to her “sexappeal” as it is now called and man has always been susceptible to it; women also often ﬁnd dress in man a cause of attraction (e.g. soldier’s uniform). There are also particular tastes in dress — that a sari of a particular colour should attract is quite normal. The attraction works on the sense and the vital, while it is the mind that dislikes the psychological defects and gets cooled down by their exposure; but this repulsion of the mind cannot last as against the stronger vital attraction.   It is of course the universal sex-force that acts, but certain people are more full of it than others, have the sex-appeal as they now say in Europe. This sex-appeal is exercised especially by women even without any conscious intention of putting it on a particular person.


Sri Aurobindo: Consciously they may turn it on a particular person, but it may exercise itself on many others whom they do not wish particularly to capture. All women have not the sex-appeal, but some force of sex-pull there is in most. There is of course a similar pull in men for women.


Sri Aurobindo: The sex-pull is that of a general force, which uses the individual for its purpose and it takes advantage of any proximity of the other sex to work in. The remedy lies in oneself — in immediate detachment (standing apart, not accepting as one’s own) and rejecting it.     It is certainly naive to think that because a girl is simple, i.e. instinctive and impulsive and non-mental in her movements, she can be relied upon to be an asexual friend.


Sri Aurobindo: Some women can be, but it is usually those who have a clear mental consciousness and strong will of self-control or else those who are incapable of a passion for more than one person in their life and you are lucky enough not to be that person.     Tell on behalf of myself and the Mother that she must not allow herself to be crushed by the burden of the past. All she has to do is to turn her back on this past of sexual weakness, for which she was not herself primarily responsible, and to consecrate herself entirely to the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: If she so consecrates herself, the past will be wiped out and a new life begin for her. This is the true atonement and the only one asked from her.     Write to that this case of and is perfectly clear.


Sri Aurobindo: The girl [] is moved by sexual desire and its impulse of vital interchange; not being satisﬁed in her married life, she seeks the satisfaction from others. All these pleas about affection etc. are the usual tricks with which women (and men too) cover their approach to the vital and sexual interchange. Sometimes they use the trick knowingly, sometimes they try to deceive themselves also with it — or in some cases they actually believe in it, the vital covering up the mind and deluding it. It does not matter which it is, — the actual fact behind the cover and the ﬁnal outcome are the same.


Sri Aurobindo: Even sadhaks when moved by the sexual force are deceived by their vital or try to deceive themselves, alleging spiritual afﬁnities, psychic ties or anything else that can justify their lapse; if they yield they can go far out of the way.  For it is a test, — difﬁcult for him because he is at an age when the sexual element is awake but there is not sufﬁcient experience for a true understanding of its workings and not sufﬁcient maturity of mind to make up for want of experience.  If he yields to the girl’s pressure, he is likely to lose his sadhana, perhaps for a long time — if he is led too far it might even be a decisive fall. If he wants the spiritual life, he must be on his guard and draw back entirely from this movement.  In an Asram or other religious institution men and women are not usually allowed to live together.


Sri Aurobindo: Where they do, as among the Vaishnavas, these difﬁculties [] invariably arise. The difﬁculty lies in the enormous place given to sex in the lower Nature. But there is no reason if one ﬁxes oneself ﬁrmly in the spiritual consciousness why one should not speak and act between men and women without the least reference to sex.


Sri Aurobindo: You can have right relations with women only when you can forget that they are women and meet them as human beings — when you can forget sex in your feeling and action towards them.      All that [] happens because the vital is conscious of sex in the approach and immediately assumes the “man to woman” attitude.


Sri Aurobindo: To get rid of that, one must be able to look on the woman and feel to her as to a human being only. That is difﬁcult and needs a certain training; for even if the mind is able to take the position, the vital is unreliable and one has to be on guard that it does not suddenly or surreptitiously get in into the relation with its partiality for the sex-interchange.     Of course one must be able to come in contact with women without feeling or thinking about sex; but to seek contact and test is not the way, it can too easily turn the other side when the mastery is not complete.


Sri Aurobindo: The facing and conquering must be an inner process — the Tantrik outer method is not indicated.   It [] has been prescribed not only in your case, but to all who drag the sex-idea into their relations with women in the Yoga. External as well as internal renunciation of the sex-relation vital or physical has been made the rule. The idea of internal detachment and external indulgence has been found always to be a cover under which the vital continues its operations. For you the continuance would be dangerous both spiritually and for the body.


Sri Aurobindo:   It usually happens that when actual indulgence of the vital is given up (external exchange, touch or contact), imagination still goes on. But if this can be overcome, then the whole thing is overcome. External indulgence on the other hand keeps the activity alive. This is the raison d’ˆetre of the external avoidance.


Sri Aurobindo: If anything can be got rid of without the necessity of avoidance, so much the better.    Both methods [] have their disadvantage. If one allows the opportunities, the sexmovement continues — if one suppresses only, then the movement goes back into imaginations. If it is only imaginations then there is less harm, for in the end the imaginations can be got rid of, but if the imaginations precipitate into some material act, then nothing is gained.


Sri Aurobindo:   The mental acceptance of’s philosophy about sex was the mistake. It may be true that ordinarily mixing with women removes shyness etc., — though it is not always so, for many people are sex-timid by nature — but that is a means for ordinary life, not Yoga, and in ordinary life marriage is the direct means for getting rid of sex-uneasiness; marriage or else having love affairs with women and satisfying the sex. But that is not the proper means for an Asram and Yoga. In Yoga the proper means is to train the mind and vital to meet women without thought of sex, to look on them as sadhaks and human beings only, not as objects of sexual possession and enjoyment.


Sri Aurobindo:  Strength and purity in the lower vital and wideness in the heart are the best condition for meeting others, especially women, and if that could always be there sex could hardly have a look in.  The association [] with sex is vital-physical — otherwise there need be no connection between the expression of affection by touch and the sex-feeling. Except in unusual cases, when the mother and son or brother and sister embrace, they do not have the sex-feeling. It is a sort of habitual conversion operated in the passage from the emotional to the physical and, being a habit only, though a strong one, can be changed.


Sri Aurobindo:   It [] is vital-physical. All sex movement has a vital element in it, but the mere vital movement is not directly interested in touching or the sex act. It is interested more in the play of the emotions, domination and subjection, quarrels, reconciliations, the interchange of vital forces etc. It is the vital-physical consciousness that gives so much importance to the touch, embrace, sex act etc.


Sri Aurobindo:   In ordinary society people touch each other more or less freely according to the manners of the society. That is quite a different matter because there the sex-impulse is allowed within certain more or less wide or narrow limits and even the secret indulgence is common, although people try to avoid discovery. In Bengal when there is purdah, touching between men and women is conﬁned to the family, in Europe there is not much restriction so long as there is no excessive familiarity or indecency; but in Europe sex is now practically free. Here all sex-indulgence inner or outer is considered undesirable as an obstacle to the sadhana — as it very evidently is.


Sri Aurobindo: For that reason any excessive familiarity of touch between men and women has to be avoided, anything also in the nature of caressing, as it creates or tends to create sex-tendency or even the strong sex-impulse. Casual touching has to be avoided also if it actually creates the seximpulse. These are commonsense rules if the premiss is granted that sex has not to have any indulgence.    It is surprising you should not see that these things [ ] belong to the vital sex-movement, even if there is no physical sex-act.


Sri Aurobindo: If one wants to live in the unreformed vital plane, one can indulge them — but it is certainly unyogic.     The difﬁculty about the kisses and embraces is that they are the expression of a vital love which is not based on the psychic or spiritual or at least does not keep to that basis, so that when it touches the body, it awakens the reactions of the ordinary body love. The ordinary vital and the ordinary body love are intimately connected with sex — and for sex procreative intention is not at all necessary.


Sri Aurobindo:  Avoidance of touch is best so long as there is the sex-response to touch on either side. At a higher stage, it is indifferent to touch or not to touch. What it will be in the supramental culmination, let the supramental decide.  Touch may be neutral or it may imply interchange of forces.


Sri Aurobindo: When the interchange is that of spiritual or spiritualised forces, then it has its meaning and it is that that will justify it in the supramental realisation. But till then, it is better to be circumspect.  Celibacy means ﬁrst “not marrying” — it can be extended to not having sexual (physical) relations with any woman, though that is not its proper meaning. It is not equivalent to Brahmacharya.  Brahmacharya is not binding in or but it is necessary for ascetic as well as for Raja and Hatha yogas.


Sri Aurobindo: It is also not demanded from Grihastha yogis. In this Yoga the position is that one must overcome sex, otherwise there can be no transformation of the lower vital and physical nature; all physical sexual connection should cease, otherwise one exposes oneself to serious dangers. The sex-push must also be overcome but it is not a fact that there can be no sadhana or no experience before it is entirely overcome, only without that conquest one cannot go to the end and it must be clearly recognised as one of the more serious obstacles and indulgence of it as a cause of considerable disturbance.    Celibacy is one thing and freedom from sex-pushes is another.


Sri Aurobindo: These have to be conquered and got rid of, but if freedom from them were made a test of ﬁtness to go on, I wonder how many could be declared ﬁt for my Yoga. The will to conquer must be there, but the elimination of the sex-impulse is one of the most difﬁcult things for human nature and, if it takes time, that is only natural.     If it is like that [] then it is the power of self-control, automatic and therefore belonging to the inner being that is coming — the genuine thing.


Sri Aurobindo: Of course to be complete the sexual passion and the thoughts that encourage it should disappear also. The idea about impotence [ ] is rather irrational — impotence comes from overindulgence or wrong indulgence (certain perverse habits); it does not come from self-control. Self-control means only a diversion to other powers, because the controlled sex-power becomes a force for the life-energies, the powers of the mind and the more and more potent workings of the spiritual consciousness.    Why impose one rule of Brahmacharya to an advanced age on all men or the age of 25 on all women?


Sri Aurobindo: Everybody is not intended to be a Brahmachari. Men and women belong to every stage of development and need different kinds of experience suitable for their stage in order to grow and advance farther.  It is not helpful to abandon the ordinary life before the being is ready for the full spiritual life. To do so means to precipitate a struggle between the different elements and exasperate it to a point of intensity which the nature is not ready to bear. The vital elements in you have partly to be met by the discipline and experience of life, while keeping the spiritual aim in view and trying to govern life by it progressively in the spirit of Karmayoga.


Sri Aurobindo: It is for this reason that we gave our approval to your marriage.    If she consents to marry, that would be the best. All these vital disturbances proceed from suppressed sex-instinct, suppressed but not rejected and overcome. A mental acceptance or enthusiasm for the sadhana is not a sufﬁcient guarantee nor a sufﬁcient ground for calling people, especially young people, to begin it.


Sri Aurobindo: Afterwards these vital instincts rise up and there is nothing sufﬁcient to balance or prevail against them, only mental ideas which do not prevail against the instinct but on the other hand also stand in the way of their natural social means of satisfaction.  If she marries now and gets experience of the human vital life, then hereafter there may be a chance of her mental aspiration for sadhana turning into the real thing.    As to the question of marriage in general, we do not consider it advisable for one who desires to come to the spiritual life.  Marriage means usually any amount of trouble, heavy burdens, a bondage to the worldly life and great difﬁculties in the way of single-minded spiritual endeavour.


Sri Aurobindo: Its only natural purpose would be, if the sexual trend was impossible to conquer, to give it a restricted and controlled satisfaction. I do not see in what way it could help you to keep the mind under control and subjugation; a restless mind can only be quieted from within.    It is not right once you have turned to the Divine, to allow despondency of any kind to take hold of you. Whatever the difﬁculties and troubles, you must keep this conﬁdence that by relying on the Divine, the Divine will take you through.


Sri Aurobindo: Now I answer the questions you put to me in your letter.   1. If to follow the spiritual path is your resolve, marriage and family life can only come across it. Marriage would be the right thing only if the sexual push w


Sri Aurobindo: as so strong that there was no hope of overcoming it except by a controlled and rational indulgence for some time during which it could be slowly brought under subjection to the will . But you say its hold on you is diminishing, so that does not seem indispensable.   2.


Sri Aurobindo: As for leaving all and coming away from there that must be only when there is a clear and settled decision within you.  To do so on an impulse would be to feel all the pull of old things after you come here and entail severe disturbance and struggle in the sadhana. When the other things fall away or are cut away from you then it can be done. Persist in your aspiration, insist on your vital to have faith and be more quiet.  It will come.


Sri Aurobindo:   You are right in feeling that the protection and grace are always there and that all has been for the best. In your wife’s condition, the best was that she should change her body and she has been able to do so in the state of mind which would give her the happiest conditions both after death and for a renewal hereafter of the spiritual development for which she had begun to aspire.  It is good also that you have been able to keep your poise and the freedom of your spirit in this occurrence.  Again, you are entirely right in your resolution not to marry again; to do so would be in any case to invite serious and probably insuperable difﬁculties in your following the path of Yoga, and, as in this path of Yoga it is necessary to put away sexual desire, marriage would be not only meaningless but an absolute contradiction of your spiritual life.


Sri Aurobindo: You can expect full support and protection from us in your resolve and, if you keep a sincere will and resolution in this matter, you may be sure that the Divine Grace will not fail you.  These are ideas of the vital plane where the strong demand subservience from those who are not physically or otherwise so strong. The spiritual truth is quite other than these things.  Yes, of course, skin diseases have much to do with sexual desires — not of course always, but often.


Sri Aurobindo:  I suppose it [] is often the result of suppressed sexuality — suppressed in act but still internally active. These things do not act in the same way with all, with some it may act on the blood, with some it may not or else not in the same form.  Moreover I do not suppose that sex is the only cause of pimples on the face — there are other things also that can give that.  Whatever it may be — the power of the illness to prevent the sadhana ought not to exist. The Yogic consciousness and its activities must be there whether there is health or illness.


Sri Aurobindo:  You ought not to allow the physical illnesses to interfere with your sadhana or affect your mind — these illnesses are nothing compared with what many others have had to pass through — you have some constipation, headaches, rheumatic pains, that ought not to be so difﬁcult to bear. You have to separate yourself from the body consciousness and not allow yourself to be overpowered by it.     Physical sufferings are due to attacks of the forces of the Ignorance.


Sri Aurobindo: But if one knows how to do it, one can make them a means of puriﬁcation. There are however better and less difﬁcult means of puriﬁcation.     Illness must not be accepted as a means of transformation; it rather indicates certain difﬁculties encountered by the force of transformation especially in the vital and the body.


Sri Aurobindo: But it is not necessary that these difﬁculties should be allowed to take this obscure form of illness. All illness should be rejected and all suggestions of illness; the Force should be called in to cure by the assent to health and the refusal of assent to the suggestions that bring or prolong its opposite.     All illnesses are obviously due to the imperfect nature of the body and the physical nature.


Sri Aurobindo: The body can be immune only when it is open to the higher consciousness and the latter can descend into it. Till then what he writes is the remedy — if he can also call in the force to throw out the illness, that is the most powerful help possible.     It is only by the conquest of the material nature that illness can cease altogether to come.


Sri Aurobindo:  I do not think’s trance has anything to do with her ill health; I have never known the habit of trances of that kind to have any such result, only the violent breaking of a trance might have a bad result though it would not necessarily produce a disaster.  But there is the possibility that if the conscious being goes out of the body in an absolutely complete trance, the thread which connects it with the body might be broken or else cut by some adverse force and it would not be able to return into the physical frame. Apart from any such fatal possibility there might be a shock which might produce a temporary disorder or even some kind of lesion; as a rule, however, a shock would be the only consequence.  The general question is a different matter. There is a sort of traditional belief in many minds that the practice of Yoga is inimical to the health of the body and tends to have a bad effect of one kind or another and even ﬁnally leads to a premature or an early dropping of the body.


Sri Aurobindo: Ramakrishna seems to have held the view, if we can judge from his remarks about the connection between Keshav Sen’s progress in spirituality and the illness which undermined him, that one was the result and the desirable result of the other, a liberation and release from life in this world, mukti. That may or may not be; but I ﬁnd it difﬁcult to believe that illness and deterioration of the body is the natural and general result of the practice of Yoga or that that practice is the cause of an inevitable breakdown of health or of the ﬁnal illnesses which bring about their departure from the body. On what ground are we to suppose or how can it be proved that while non-Yogis suffer from ill health and die because of the disorders of Nature, Yogis die of their Yoga? Unless a direct connection between their death and their practice of Yoga can be proved — and this could be proved with certainty only in particular cases and even then not with an absolute certainty — there is no sufﬁcient reason to believe in such a difference. It is more rational to conclude that both Yogis and non-Yogis fall ill and die from natural causes and by the same dispensation of Nature; one might even advance the view, since they have the Yoga Shakti at their disposal if they choose to use it, that the Yogi falls ill and dies not because of but in spite of his Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: At any rate, I don’t believe that Ramakrishna (or any other Yogi) fell ill because of his trances; there is nothing to show that he ever suffered in that way after a trance. I think it is said somewhere or he himself said that the cancer in his throat of which he died came by his swallowing the sins of his disciples and those who approached him: that again may or may not be, but it will be his own peculiar case. It is no doubt possible to draw the illnesses of others upon oneself and even to do it deliberately; the instance of the Greek king Antigonus and his son Dimitrius is a famous historical case in point. Yogis also do this sometimes; or else adverse forces may throw illnesses upon the Yogi, using those round him as a door or a passage or the ill wishes of people as an instrumental force. But all these are special circumstances connected, no doubt, with his practice of Yoga; but they do not establish the general proposition as an absolute rule.


Sri Aurobindo: A tendency such as’s to desire or welcome or accept death as a release could have a force because of her advanced spiritual consciousness which it would not have in ordinary people.  On the other side there can be an opposite use and result of the Yogic consciousness: illness can be repelled from one’s own body or cured, even chronic or deep-seated illnesses and longestablished constitutional defects remedied or expelled and even a predestined death delayed for a long period. Narayan Jyotishi, a Calcutta astrologer, who predicted, not knowing then who I was, in the days before my name was politically known, my struggle with Mlechchha enemies and afterwards the three cases against me and my three acquittals, predicted also that though death was preﬁxed for me in my horoscope at the age of 63, I would prolong my life by Yogic power for a very long period and arrive at a full old age. In fact I have got rid by Yogic pressure of a number of chronic maladies that had got settled in my body, reduced others to a vanishing minimum, brought about steadily progressing diminution of two that remained and on the last produced a considerable effect. But none of these instances either on the favourable or unfavourable side can be made into a rule; there is no validity in the tendency of human reason to transform the relativity of these things into an absolute.


Sri Aurobindo: Finally I may say of’s trances that they are the usual  kind opening to all kinds of experiences, but the large abiding realisations in Yoga do not usually come in trance but by a persistent waking sadhana. The same may be said of the removal of attachments; some may be got rid of sometimes by an experience in trance, but more usually it must be done by persistent endeavour in waking sadhana.  Illness does not rise up by the descent of the Force, nor hereditary taint nor madness. They come up of themselves, as in’s case who never had even the smallest grain of a descent or a Force anywhere. It is only after he went off his centre, that we are putting Force (not as a descent, but as an agent) to keep him as straight and as sound as possible.


Sri Aurobindo:   A descent [] cannot possibly produce nausea and vomiting etc. There can, if one pulls down too much force, be produced a headache or giddiness; both of these go if one keeps quiet a little, ceases pulling and assimilates. A descent cannot produce blood pressure, madness or apoplexy or heart failure or any other illness.


Sri Aurobindo:   A heat is sometimes created in the body by the pressure of a Force of tapas because there are things that resist in the vital or in the body habit or in the brain-mind — the cause of the heat is therefore not the Force itself but the resistance. As soon as the system is cleared there is no sense of heat any longer. But this heat is clearly distinguishable from illness.


Sri Aurobindo:   Whatever force is sent is for cure. Increase of illness or physical suffering is not the result of the force.  Attacks of illness are attacks of the lower nature or of adverse forces taking advantage of some weakness, opening or response in the nature, — like all other things that come and have got to be thrown away, they come from outside.


Sri Aurobindo: If one can feel them so coming and get the strength and the habit to throw them away before they can enter the body, then one can remain free from illness. Even when the attack seems to rise from within, that means only that it has not been detected before it entered the subconscient; once in the subconscient, the force that brought it rouses it from there sooner or later and it invades the system.  When you feel it just after it has entered, it is because though it came direct and not through the subconscient, yet you could not detect it while it was still outside. Very often it arrives like that, frontally or more often tangentially from the side, direct, forcing its way through the subtle vital envelope which is our main armour of defence, but it can be stopped there in the envelope itself before it penetrates the material body. Then one may feel some effect, e.g. feverishness or a tendency to cold, but there is not the full invasion of the malady.


Sri Aurobindo: If it can be stopped earlier or if the vital envelope of itself resists and remains strong, vigorous and intact, then there is no illness; the attack produces no physical effect and leaves no traces.    Illness is always an attack of contrary forces in Nature — but not always of what are specially called the Hostile Forces or intended to frustrate aspiration. A desire is an ordinary force of the lower Nature, though it may be used by the Hostile Forces.


Sri Aurobindo: Hostile [] here means hostile to the Yoga. An illness which comes in the ordinary course as the result of physical causes — even though adverse universal forces are the ﬁrst cause — is an ordinary illness. One brought by the forces hostile to Yoga to upset the system and prevent or disturb progress — without any adequate physical reason — is a hostile attack. It may have the appearance of a cold or any other illness, but to the eye which sees the action of forces and not only the outward symptoms or results, the difference is clear.


Sri Aurobindo:  These are waves of the hostile force which come trying whom they can touch. When you feel an attack of this kind, you must realise that this comes on you from outside and touches some weak point in you, and you have to remain as quiet as you can, reject it and open yourself. I judge from what you have written that it was the physical and vital-physical consciousness that it made restless and inclined to revolt and it did not take the whole of your consciousness. If you can keep it localised like that when it comes and remain quiet in mind and heart and reject it, then it will not be so difﬁcult to throw it out. The peace and force must be called down into this vital-physical (nervous) part and the whole body until you feel the atmosphere and force pervading you and in you always in all the body and not only upon or around you.


Sri Aurobindo: If you still ﬁnd a difﬁculty, it is because of the past habit of reaction in the nervous being and a certain weakness there; but persevere, do not consent to the invasion of the old forces. The habit will lessen and disappear and the true Force occupying the body will remove the weakness.   It is a hostile pressure that is organising a habit in the body of recurrence at a ﬁxed time or times. This habit of ﬁxed recurrence gives a great force for any illness to persist, as the body consciousness expects the recurrence and the expectation helps it to come.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is this expectation in the mind [ ] that helps most to maintain the rhythm of the attack. If it could be got rid of, the rhythm also could be broken.    According to all statements the deaths in early age are much less in Europe and men live longer on the whole.


Sri Aurobindo: But certain diseases have greatly increased in spite of the advance in hygiene — inﬂuenza, T.B. and venereals. There are also new diseases coming in that hardly existed before. That seems obviously the work of the Hostiles.  The feeling of illness is at ﬁrst only a suggestion; it becomes a reality because your physical consciousness accepts it. It is like a wrong suggestion in the mind; if the mind accepts it, it becomes clouded and confused and has to struggle back into harmony and clearness.


Sri Aurobindo: It is so with the body consciousness and illness.  You must not accept but reject it with your physical mind and  so help the body consciousness to throw off the suggestion. If necessary, make a counter-suggestion, “No, I shall be well; I am and shall be all right.” And in any case call in the Mother’s Force to throw out the suggestion and the illness it is bringing.


Sri Aurobindo:   By suggestion [] I do not mean merely thoughts or words. When the hypnotist says, “Sleep”, it is a suggestion; but when he says nothing but only puts his silent will to convey sleep or makes movements of his hands over the face, that also is a suggestion.  When a force is thrown on you or a vibration of illness, it carries to the body this suggestion. A wave comes in the body — with a certain vibration in it, the body remembers “cold” or feels the vibrations of a cold and begins to cough or sneeze or to feel chill — the suggestion comes to the mind in the form, “I am weak, I don’t feel well, I am catching a cold.”


Sri Aurobindo:   A suggestion is not one’s own thought or feeling, but a thought or feeling that comes from outside, from others, from the general atmosphere or from external Nature, — if it is received, it sticks and acts on the being and is taken to be one’s own thought or feeling. If it is recognised as a suggestion, then it can be more easily got rid of. This feeling of doubt and self-distrust and hopelessness about oneself is a thing moving about in the atmosphere and trying to enter into people and be accepted; I want you to reject it, for its presence not only produces trouble and distress but stands in the way of restoration of health and return to the inner activity of the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: The suggestion of weakness comes to the subconscient part of the body consciousness and therefore the mind is most often unaware of it. If the body itself were truly conscious, then the suggestions could be detected in time and thrown off before they took effect. Also the rejection by the central consciousness would be supported by a conscious rejection in the body and act more immediately and promptly.    All these suggestions that came to you were of course part of the attack on the physical consciousness, — the attack on the body is used to raise these ideas and the ideas are used to make it more difﬁcult for the body to recover.


Sri Aurobindo: At a certain stage attacks fall heavily on the body because the opposing forces ﬁnd it more difﬁcult than before to upset the mind or vital directly, so they fall on the physical in the hope that that will do the trick, the physical being more vulnerable. But the sensibility of the body to attacks is no proof of incapacity, just as a ﬁner sensibility of the mind or vital to attacks was no proof — it can in due time be overcome. As for the feelings about the Mother and that her love is only given for a return in work or to those who can do sadhana well, that is the usual senseless idea of the vital-physical mind and has no value.  There is nothing wrong in taking care of the body in regard to health and, if the liver has gone wrong, the instinct to refuse too sweet or greasy or heavy foods is a right instinct. Mother has no objection to your abstaining while the illness is there nor has she insisted on your taking.


Sri Aurobindo: Her objection is only to what people often do, getting ideas about this or that food and abstaining even when there is no acute illness. During an acute state of bad liver, abstinence is often necessary. Only one must not create by wrong ideas a nervous incapacity of the stomach or a chronic nervous dyspepsia. She had no other meaning.  I hope you will be all right soon.


Sri Aurobindo: If the body does not right itself, you must keep me informed from time to time.     There is a general suggestion in the air about catching dengue or inﬂuenza. It is this suggestion that is enabling the adverse forces to bring about symptoms of this kind and spread the complaints; if one rejects both the suggestions and the symptoms, then these things will not materialise.


Sri Aurobindo:  That is how illnesses try to come from one person to another — they attack, by a suggestion like this or otherwise, the nervous being and try to come in. Even if the illness is not contagious, this often happens, but it comes more easily in contagious illnesses.   The suggestion or touch has to be thrown off at once.


Sri Aurobindo: There is a sort of protection round the body which we call the nervous envelope — if this remains strong and refuses entrance to the illness force, then one can remain well even in the midst of plague or other epidemics — if the envelope is pierced or weak, then illness can come in.  What you felt attacked was not really the physical body, but this nervous envelope and the nervous body () of which it is an extension or cover.    A body is not a cloth — nor is a sick body a torn cloth. A body weak or sick can renew itself, recover its vitality — that happens to thousands of people.


Sri Aurobindo: A cloth has not a renewable vitality. It is only if one is old beyond ﬁfty-ﬁve or sixty that the renewal becomes difﬁcult — even then health and strength can be kept or recovered enough to keep the body in a good condition.  I do not also quite catch what you mean about the inner being. If you mean by the the development of the sadhana, to recover health and strength is very necessary for that. The body is an instrument for the sadhana no less than the mind and vital, and it should be kept in a good condition as far as possible.


Sri Aurobindo: Not to care for the body, thinking it is of no importance compared with the inner state, is not the rule of this Yoga.     It is a pity that could not write all this time. Formerly when she wrote often she used to get better after writing.


Sri Aurobindo: It is also a pity that she has been told by the doctors that she is not going to live; even if it is true, such a thing should not be told unless in case of necessity (which does not exist in her case) for it takes away much of the power of resistance and diminishes what chances of cure and survival there were. ’s physical destiny has always been against her but this is a thing that can be cancelled if one can have sufﬁcient faith and inner strength and openness and receive the spiritual force.    These auto-suggestions [] — it is really faith in a mental form — act both on the subliminal and the subconscient. In the subliminal they set in action the powers of the inner being, its occult power to make thought, will or simple conscious force effective on the body — in the subconscient they silence or block the suggestions of death and illness (expressed or unexpressed) that prevent the return of health.


Sri Aurobindo: They help also to combat the same things (adverse suggestions) in the mind, vital, body consciousness. Where all this is completely done or with some completeness, the effects can be very remarkable.    In much the same way as Cou´e’s suggestion system cured most of his patients, [,] only by a physical instead of a mental means. The body consciousness responds to the suggestion or the medicine and one gets cured for the time being or it doesn’t respond and there is no cure.


Sri Aurobindo: How is it that the same medicine for the same illness succeeds with one man and not with another or succeeds at one time with a man and afterwards doesn’t succeed at all? Absolute cure of an illness so that it cannot return again depends on clearing the mind, the vital and the body consciousness and the subconscient of the psychological response to the force bringing the illness.  Sometimes this is done by a sort of order from above (when the consciousness is ready, but it cannot always be done like that).  The complete immunity from all illness for which our Yoga tries can only come by a total and permanent enlightenment of the below from above resulting in the removal of the psychological roots of ill health — it cannot be done otherwise.  It is the ﬁnal discovery that one makes that in this world everything depends upon consciousness and its movements, even the things that seem not to do so.


Sri Aurobindo: In these matters of illness, vital trouble etc., that resolves itself into suggestion (hostile) and auto-suggestion. Cou´e, though he did not know these things, had the brilliant intuition of adopting the contrary method of curative auto-suggestion and giving it a thorough and systematic application. Here it does not succeed so well because the anti-Cou´e spirit is very strong in many, the habit of entertaining hostile suggestions or this openness to them. Yet in Yoga also faith and right auto-suggestion are of great use until the point comes when no suggestion is necessary because the Truth-consciousness acts automatically and produces its natural results.   The suggestions that create illness or unhealthy conditions of the physical being come usually through the subconscient — for


Sri Aurobindo: a great part of the physical being, the most material part, is subconscient, i.e. to say, it has an obscure consciousness of its own but so obscure and shut up in itself that the mind does not know its movements or what is going on there. But all the same it is a consciousness and can receive suggestions from Forces outside, just as the mind and vital do. If it were not so, there would not be any possibility of opening it to the Force and the Force curing it; for without this consciousness in it it would not be able to respond. In Europe and America there are many people now who recognise this fact and treat their illnesses by making conscious mental suggestions to the body which counteract the obscure secret suggestions of illness in the subconscient. There was a famous Doctor in France who cured thousands of people by making them persistently put such counter-suggestions upon the body.


Sri Aurobindo: That proves that illness has not a purely material cause, but is due to a disturbance of the secret consciousness in the body.  To bear quietly and in silence does help to release from the reaction of grief, if one makes the vital quiet; but it should be at the same time surrendered to the Mother. For the Mother to know from within is not enough; there must be this laying before her and giving up to her so that the reaction may disappear.    It is certainly better not to dwell on the difﬁculties or give them too much voice, because, our experience shows us, to do so helps to make them return like a recurring decimal.


Sri Aurobindo: The Cou´e formula is too crude and simple to be entirely true in principle, but it has a great practical force, and behind it there is a very great truth in a world and a consciousness governed by the Overmind Maya:  it is this, that what we afﬁrm strongly gets power to persist in the consciousness and experience and calls circumstances to its support, what we deny and reject and refuse to support by the power of the Word, tends, after a time and some resistance, to lose force in the consciousness and the circumstances and movements that support it tend also to recur less often and ﬁnally disappear. It is fundamentally the principle of the mantra. On that ground I approve of your resolution not to give any more the of the written word to these things. A constant afﬁrmation from within on the other side — of that which is to be realised — brings always in the end a response from above.


Sri Aurobindo:  These things [] are a matter of evidence and the evidence for Cou´e’s success is overwhelming. There have also been many great healers () all over the world whose successes are well-attested. Faithhealing and psychotherapy are also facts.  Most of them [] can be got rid of almost at once by faith and calling in the force. Those that are chronic are more difﬁcult, but they too can be got rid of by the same means if persistently used.


Sri Aurobindo:   You have only to admit that the mind and vital can inﬂuence the body — then no difﬁculty is left. In this action of mind and vital on the body faith and hope have an immense importance. I do not at all mean that they are omnipotent or infallibly effective — that is not so.


Sri Aurobindo: But they assist the action of any force that can be applied, even of an apparently purely material force like medicine. In fact however there is no such thing as a purely material force, but the action may be purely material when it is a question of material objects. But in things that have life or mind and life one cannot isolate the material operation like that. There is always a play of other forces mixed with it in the reception at least and for the most part in the inception and direction also.


Sri Aurobindo:   Remain quiet, within, concentrated only on receiving strength and health, conﬁdent that we are with you all the time, and you will soon be all right.  Your description makes it clear that the obstruction in the throat is not physical, it is the obstruction of a formation of obscure force in the physical mind, — for the throat is the centre of the physical mind. In your other parts of the mental there is not any opposition, but here in the physical mind there is probably a habitual form of old external ideas which are rejected but something of them remains. It is this that translates itself in the obstruction and pain.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a mechanical difﬁculty which we must try to remove.     It is neither the vital nor the body that contains these illnesses — it is a force from outside that creates them and the nervous being (physical vital) and the body respond from habit or inability to throw it away. It is always better not to say, “I will now have no more illness”, it attracts the attention of these malevolent powers and they immediately want to prove that they can still disturb the body.


Sri Aurobindo: Simply when they come, reject them.     The nervous (vital-physical) being supports the body — if it is calm and strong and solid, then the body is well supported and can withstand illness and weakness or, if illness comes, it will bear and more easily get rid of it. If the nervous being is weak, then it is the opposite.


Sri Aurobindo: If the nervous being is not merely weak, but nervous and unstable, over-sensitive, vehement or excitable, then there is much ﬂuctuation, restlessness, exaltation and depression in the being — there may even be a wrongly acute creative imagination which brings in disorders into the body that are nervous and not physical — there is no physical illness of the heart but there are pains and palpitations, nothing physically wrong with stomach and intestines and yet there is inability to digest — nervous dyspepsia; pains are created in different parts of the body and so on — sometimes there is hysteria.  These conditions are not always native to the body — they are often created by troubles in the life, some disturbing illness or other reasons — but often it is due to some hereditary cause or otherwise native to the system. Women tend to get like this sometimes if there is disorder of the menstruation.  When there is this tendency of the nervous being, it is imperative to get down peace and strength into the nervous being and not allow it to upset the body or the general system.


Sri Aurobindo: Always the same rigid mind that turns everything into a statement of miraculous absoluteness! It is my experience and the Mother’s that all illnesses pass through the nervous or vitalphysical sheath of the subtle consciousness and subtle body before they enter the physical. If one is conscious of the subtle body or with the subtle consciousness, one stop an illness on its way and prevent it from entering the physical body. But it may have come without one’s noticing, or when one is asleep or through the subconscient, or in a sudden rush when one is off one’s guard; then there is nothing to do but to ﬁght it out from a hold already gained on the body. Let us suppose however that I am always on guard, always conscious, even in sleep — that does not mean that I am immunised in my very nature from all illness.


Sri Aurobindo: It only means a power of self-defence against it when it tries to come. Self-defence by these inner means may become so strong that the body becomes practically immune as many Yogis are. Still this “practically” does not mean “absolutely” for all time. The absolute immunity can only come with the supramental change. For below the supramental it is the result of an action of a Force among many forces and can be disturbed by a disruption of the equilibrium established — in the supramental it is a law of the nature; in a supramentalised body immunity from illness would be automatic, inherent in its new nature.


Sri Aurobindo: There is a difference between Yogic Force on the mental and inferior planes and Supramental Nature. What is acquired and held by the Yoga Force in the mind and body consciousness is in the supramental inherent and exists not by achievement but by nature — it is self-existent and absolute.     What I meant was that the body consciousness through old habit of consciousness admits the force of illness and goes through the experiences which are associated with it — e.g. congestion of phlegm in the chest and feeling of suffocation or difﬁculty of breathing etc.


Sri Aurobindo: To get rid of that one must awaken a will and consciousness in the body itself that refuses to allow these things to impose themselves upon it. But to get that, still more to get it completely is difﬁcult. One step towards it is to get the inner consciousness separate from the body — to feel that it is not you who are ill but it is only something taking place in the body and not affecting your consciousness. It is then possible to see this separate body consciousness, what it feels, what are its reactions to things, how it works. One can then act on it to change its consciousness and reactions.