Sri Aurobindo:  Surrender means to consecrate everything in oneself to the Divine, to offer all one is and has, not to insist on one’s ideas, desires, habits etc., but to allow the divine Truth to replace them by its knowledge, will and action everywhere.    Surrender means to be entirely in the Mother’s hands and not to resist in any way by egoism or otherwise her Light, Knowledge, Will, the working of her Force etc.    The essence of surrender is not to ask the Mother before doing anything — but to accept whole-heartedly the inﬂuence and the guidance, when the joy and peace come down to accept them without question or cavil and let them grow, when the Force is felt at work to let it work without opposition, when the Knowledge is given to receive and follow it, when the Will is revealed to make oneself its instrument.


Sri Aurobindo:   To believe that one is being constantly guided by the Divine in the heart is not necessarily surrender. It is necessary to be detached, to see what are the divine forces and undivine and to reject the undivine forces. It is only by this discrimination that one can make a true surrender to the Divine in the heart.


Sri Aurobindo:  It [] begins when there is the true self-offering.  The Divine can lead, he does not drive. There is an internal freedom permitted to every mental being called man to assent or not to assent to the Divine leading — how else can any real spiritual evolution be done?


Sri Aurobindo: All the play in this world is based on a certain relative free will in the individual being. Even in the sadhana it remains and his consent is necessary at each step — even though it is by surrender to the Divine that he escapes from ignorance and separateness and ego, it must be at every step a free surrender.     Each person has his own freedom of choice up to a certain point — unless he makes the full surrender — and as he uses the freedom, has to take the spiritual or other consequences.


Sri Aurobindo: The help can only be offered, not imposed. Silence, absence of frank confession, means a desire in the vital to go its own way.  When there is no longer concealment, when there is the physical self-opening to the Divine, then the Divine can intervene.  All can be done by the Divine, the heart and nature puriﬁed, the inner consciousness awakened, the veils removed, if one gives oneself to the Divine with trust and conﬁdence — and even if one cannot do so fully at once, yet the more one does so, the more the inner help and guidance comes and the contact and the experience of the Divine grows within. If the questioning mind becomes less active and humility and the will to surrender grow in you, this ought to be perfectly possible.


Sri Aurobindo: No other strength and tapasya are then needed, but this alone.     Surrender cannot be made at once — it is not so easy; for there is much in the being that resists. But one must have the will to surrender.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the same with becoming an instrument. If one has the will and calls on the Mother and opens oneself as much as possible to her, then gradually these things develop in the nature.     If the difﬁculties that arise are in the nature itself, it is inevitable that they should rise and manifest themselves.


Sri Aurobindo: Surrender is not easy, it is resisted by a large part of the nature. If the mind forms the will to surrender, all these inner obstacles are bound to show themselves; the sadhak has then to observe them and detach himself from them, reject them from his nature and overcome.  This may take a very long time but it has to be done.  Outer obstacles cannot prevent the inner surrender unless they are supported by a resistance in the nature itself.  It was never my intention to suggest that there was only a faint hope of your sadhana depending on the of surrender.


Sri Aurobindo: I have always said the contrary, that since your soul wants the Divine truly, you are sure to reach him; only if you give up — and that is why I strongly object to these despondencies apart from the suffering they inﬂict, because they try to drive you to that — can it be frustrated or rather postponed to a far future.  What I wrote was in answer to your statement about your former idea of the Yoga that if one wanted the Divine, the Divine himself would take up the purifying of the heart and develop the sadhana and give the necessary experiences. I meant to say that it can and does happen in that way if one has trust and conﬁdence in the Divine and the will to surrender. For such a taking up involves one’s putting oneself in the hands of the Divine rather than trusting to one’s own efforts alone and it implies one’s putting one’s trust and conﬁdence in the Divine and a progressive self-giving. It is in fact the principle of sadhana that I myself followed and it is the central part of the Yoga as I envisage it.


Sri Aurobindo: It is, I suppose, what Ramakrishna meant by the method of the baby cat in his image. But all cannot follow that at once; it takes time for them to arrive at it — it grows most when the mind and vital fall quiet.  What I meant by surrender was this inner surrender of the mind and vital. There is of course the outer surrender also, the giving up of all that is found to conﬂict with the spirit or need of the sadhana, the offering, the obedience to the guidance of the Divine, whether directly, if one has reached that stage, or through the psychic or to the guidance of the Guru. I may say that does not seem to me to have anything to do with surrender; it is a form of tapasya of a very austere and in my opinion very excessive kind, often dangerous.


Sri Aurobindo: But what I was speaking of in my letter was the inner surrender.  The core of this inner surrender is trust and conﬁdence in the Divine. One takes the attitude, “I want the Divine and nothing else.” I do not know why you should think that you can be asked to give up that — if there is not that, then the Yoga cannot be done. “I want to give myself entirely to him and since my soul wants that, it cannot be but that I shall meet him and realise him.


Sri Aurobindo: I ask nothing but that and his action in me to bring me to him, his action secret or open, veiled or manifest. I do not insist on my own time and way; let him do all in his own time and way, I shall believe in him, accept his will, aspire steadily for his light and presence and joy, go through all difﬁculties and delays relying on him and never giving up. Let my mind be quiet and turn to him and let him open it to his light; let my vital be quiet and turn to him alone and let him open it to his calm and joy.  All for him and myself for him. Whatever happens, I will keep to this aspiration and self-giving and go on in perfect reliance that it will be done.”


Sri Aurobindo: That is the attitude into which one must grow; for, certainly, it cannot be made perfect at once; mental and vital movements come across; but if one keeps the will to it, it will grow in the being. The rest is a matter of obedience to the guidance when it makes itself manifest — not allowing one’s mental or vital movements to interfere.  It was not my intention to say that this way is the only way and sadhana cannot be done otherwise — there are so many others by which one can approach the Divine. But this is the only one I know by which the taking up of the sadhana by the Divine becomes a sensible fact before the preparation of the nature is done. In other methods the Divine action and help may be felt from time to time, but it remains mostly behind the veil till all is ready.


Sri Aurobindo: In some sadhanas the Divine action is not recognised; all must be done by tapasya. In most there is a mixing of the two, the tapasya ﬁnally calling the direct help and intervention. The idea and experience of the Divine doing all belongs to the Yogas based on surrender.  But whatever way is followed, the one thing to be done is to be faithful and go to the end. You have so often taken that decision — stand by it, do not let the storms of the vital quench the aspiration of your soul.


Sri Aurobindo:   It depends on the sadhak [ ]. Some may ﬁnd it necessary to surrender the external activities ﬁrst so as to bring the inner surrender.  I have said that if one has the principle of surrender and union in the mind and heart there is no difﬁculty in extending it to the obscurer parts of the physical and the subconscient.


Sri Aurobindo: As you have this central surrender and union, you can easily complete it everywhere. A quiet aspiration for complete consciousness is all that is needed. Then the material and subconscient will become penetrated by the light like the rest and there will come in a quietude, wideness, harmony free from all reactions that will be the basis of the ﬁnal change.


Sri Aurobindo: When the psychic being and the heart and the thinking mind have surrendered, the rest is a matter of time and process — and there is no reason for disturbance. The central and effective surrender has been made.  If you are surrendered only in the higher consciousness, with no peace or purity in the lower, certainly that is not enough and you have to aspire for the peace and purity everywhere.   It [] cannot be absolutely complete in the beginning, but it can be true — if the central will is sincere and there is the faith and the Bhakti. There may be contrary movements, but these will be unable to stand for long and the imperfection of the surrender in the lower part will not seriously interfere with the power and pervasiveness of the inner attitude.


Sri Aurobindo:   A complete surrender is not possible in so short a time, — for a complete surrender means to cut the knot of the ego in each part of the being and offer it, free and whole, to the Divine.  The mind, the vital, the physical consciousness (and even each part of these in all its movements) have one after the other to surrender separately, to give up their own way and to accept the way of the Divine. But what one can do is to make from the beginning a central resolve and self-dedication and to implement it in whatever way one ﬁnds open, at each step, taking advantage of each occasion that offers itself to make the self-giving complete.


Sri Aurobindo: A surrender in one direction makes others easier, more inevitable; but it does not of itself cut or loosen the other knots, and especially those which are very intimately bound up with the present personality and its most cherished formations may often present great difﬁculties, even after the central will has been ﬁxed and the ﬁrst seals put on its resolve in practice.     You can get the full surrender only by degrees. Meanwhile you have to go on the straight path not regarding the suggestions that are put into you through the vital or physical parts.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is on that consciousness of complete surrender that the psychic foundation of sadhana can be made. If once it ﬁxes itself, then, whatever difﬁculties remain to be overcome, the course of the sadhana becomes perfectly easy, sunlit, natural like the opening of a ﬂower. The feeling you have is an indication of what can and must develop in you.


Sri Aurobindo:  It depends on what is meant by absolute surrender — the experience of it in some part of the being or the fact of it in all parts of the being. The former may easily come at any time; it is the latter that takes time to complete.     The absolute surrender must be not only an experience in meditation, but a fact governing all the life, all the thoughts, feelings, actions.


Sri Aurobindo: Till then the use of one’s own will and effort is necessary, but an effort in which also there is the spirit of surrender, calling in the Force to support the will and effort and undisturbed by success or failure. When the Force takes up the sadhana, then indeed effort may cease, but still there will be the necessity of the constant assent of the being and a vigilance so that one may not admit a false Force at any point.     It is never too early to make the complete surrender.


Sri Aurobindo: Some things may need to wait, but not that.  The surrender of the vital is always difﬁcult, because of the unwillingness of the forces of the universal vital Ignorance. But that does not mean a fundamental incapacity.


Sri Aurobindo: The ordinary vital is never willing to surrender. The true inmost vital is different — surrender to the Divine is as necessary to it as to the psychic.    If there is any identiﬁcation with the vital demands or outcries, that necessarily diminishes the surrender for the time.


Sri Aurobindo: What is this surrender to which there is no response? Surrender and demands don’t go together. Evidently the vital is not afraid of thinking illogical and self-contradictory nonsense. So long as the vital keeps up its demand, these things will come.


Sri Aurobindo: It was from your description of the reaction that I said there was a vital demand. In the pure psychic or spiritual self-giving there are no reactions of this kind, no despondency or despair, no saying, “What have I gained by seeking the Divine?”, no anger, revolt, abhiman, wish to go away — such as you describe here — but an absolute conﬁdence and a persistence in clinging to the Divine under all conditions. That is what I wanted you to have; it is the only basis in which one is free from troubles and reactions and goes steadily forward.    Not to impose one’s mind and vital will on the Divine but to receive the Divine’s will and follow it, is the true attitude of sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: Not to say, “This is my right, want, claim, need, requirement, why do I not get it?” but to give oneself, to surrender and to receive with joy whatever the Divine gives, not grieving or revolting, is the better way. Then what you receive will be the right thing for you.   The Divine is not bound to do that [], He can give or not give; whether He gives or does not give makes no difference to the one who is surrendered to Him. Otherwise, there is an arri`ere-pens´ee in the surrender which is not then complete.


Sri Aurobindo:   Most of the sadhaks have similar thoughts [ ] — or had them at one time or another. They rise from the vital ego which either does not want the Divine or wants It for its own purpose and not for the Divine’s purpose.  It gets furious when it is pressed to change or when its desires are not satisﬁed — that is at the root of all these things. That is why we insist on surrender in this Yoga — because it is only by the surrender (especially of the vital ego) that these things can go — to accept the Divine for the Divine’s sake and for no other motive and in the Divine’s way and not in one’s own way or on one’s own conditions.


Sri Aurobindo:   Difﬁcult? It is the ﬁrst principle of our sadhana that surrender is the means of fulﬁlment and so long as ego or vital demand and desire are cherished, complete surrender is impossible — the self-giving is incomplete. We have never concealed that. It may be difﬁcult and it is; but it is the very principle of the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: Because it is difﬁcult it has to be done steadily and patiently till the work is complete.    Your mind and psychic being are concentrated on the spiritual aim and open to the Divine — that is why the Inﬂuence comes down into the head and as far as the heart. But the vital being and nature and the physical consciousness are under the inﬂuence of the lower nature. As long as the vital and physical being are not surrendered or do not on their own account call for the higher life, this struggle is likely to continue.


Sri Aurobindo: Surrender everything, reject all other desires or interests, call on the divine Shakti to open the vital nature and bring down calm, peace, light, Ananda into all the centres. Aspire, await with faith and patience the result. All depends on a complete sincerity and an integral consecration and aspiration.  The world will trouble you so long as any part of you belongs to the world.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only if you belong entirely to the Divine that you can become free.  For surrender it is necessary not to insist on the mind’s opinions, ideas and preferences, the vital’s desires and impulses, the physical’s habitual actions, the life of the ego — all such insistence is contrary to surrender. All egoism and self-will has to be abandoned and one must seek to be governed only by the Divine Shakti. No complete surrender is possible without the psychic opening.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is impossible to become like a child giving oneself entirely until the psychic is in control and stronger than the vital.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the psychic coming forward that brings the force of surrender.    The power of experience is not gone — but what is most important now is to develop the psychic condition of surrender, devotion, love and cheerful conﬁdence in the Mother, an unshaken faith and a constant inner closeness, and also to bring down from above the peace, wideness, purity etc. of the higher Self which is that of the Mother’s consciousness. It is these things that are the basis of the siddhi in this Yoga — other experiences are only a help, not the basis.


Sri Aurobindo:  It is the psychic surrender in the physical that you have begun to experience.  All the parts are essentially offered, but the surrender has to be made complete by the growth of the psychic self-offering in all of them and in all their movements separately and together.  To be enjoyed by the Divine is to be entirely surrendered so that one feels the Divine Presence, Power, Light, Ananda possessing the whole being rather than oneself possessing these things for one’s own satisfaction. It is a much greater ecstasy to be thus surrendered and possessed by the Divine than oneself to be the possessor. At the same time by this surrender there comes also a calm and happy mastery of self and nature.


Sri Aurobindo:  No surrender to the psychic being is demanded, the surrender is to the Divine. One approaches the Divine through faith; concrete experience comes as a result of sadhana. One cannot demand a direct experience without doing anything to prepare the consciousness for it. If one feels the call, one follows it — if there is no call, then there is no need to seek the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: Faith is sufﬁcient to start with — the idea that one must ﬁrst understand and realise before one can seek is a mental error and if it were true would make all sadhana impossible — realisation can come only as a result of sadhana, not as its preliminary.    There is no need of all this complication. If the psychic manifests, it will not ask you to surrender to it, but to surrender to the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo:   The surrender must be to the Mother — not even to the Force, but to the Mother herself.  Surrender and love-bhakti are not contrary things — they go together. It is true that at ﬁrst surrender can be made through knowledge by the mind, but it implies a mental bhakti and, as soon as the surrender reaches the heart, the bhakti manifests as a feeling and with the feeling of bhakti love comes.


Sri Aurobindo:   Self-surrender at ﬁrst comes through love and bhakti, more than through Atmajnana. But it is true that with Atmajnana the complete surrender becomes more possible.  There can be [ ], but it is not inevitable as in the psychic. In the higher mind one may be too conscious of identity with the “Brahman” to have devotion or surrender.


Sri Aurobindo:   The Brahmic condition brings a negative peace of shanti and mukti in the soul. Self-giving brings a positive freedom which can become also a dynamic force of action in the nature.


Sri Aurobindo:   One can have the Brahmic condition without self-giving, because it is the impersonal Brahman to which one turns. Renunciation of desires and of all identiﬁcation with Nature is its condition.  One can have self-giving of the nature to the Divine as well as of the soul and reach by it the Brahmic condition which is not only negative but positive, a release of the nature itself and not only a release from the nature.  If there is no surrender, there can be no transformation of the whole being.


Sri Aurobindo:  A surrender by any means is good, but obviously the impersonal is not enough — for surrender to that may be limited in result to the inner experience without any transformation of the outer nature.  Active surrender is when you associate your will with the Divine Will, reject what is not the Divine, assent to what is the Divine.  Passive surrender is when everything is left entirely to the Divine — that few can really do, because in practice it turns out that you surrender to the lower nature under pretext of surrendering to the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo:   I wanted to stress two things, that is why I have written so much about them.  (1) There must be no tamasic (inert, passive) surrender to the Mother — for that will bring as its reaction a passive inert helplessness before the lower or hostile forces or suggestions, an unresisting or helplessly resisting acquiescence or sufferance of these inroads. A passive condition can bring much peace, quietude, joy even, but it disperses the being instead of concentrating it in wideness and the will becomes atrophied. Surrender must be luminous, active, a willed offering to the Mother and reception of her Force and support to its workings, at the same time a strong vigilant will to reject all that is not hers.


Sri Aurobindo: Too many sadhaks cry before the attacks of their lower nature, “I am helpless, I cannot react, it comes and makes me do what it wants.” This is a wrong passivity.  (2) One must not get into the habit of a state in which one is always in a struggle with suggestions and forces. People very easily fall into this and make it a habit — the vital part takes a sort of glowing satisfaction in crying out, “I am attacked, overborne, suffering, miserable! How tragic is my fate!


Sri Aurobindo: Why do you not help, O Divine? There is no help, nor divine Grace? I am left to my misery and downfall etc. etc. etc.” I do not want one more sadhak to fall into this condition — that is why I am calling Halt! before you get entangled in this kind of habit of constant struggle. It is what these forces want — to make you feel helpless, defeated, overborne.


Sri Aurobindo: You must not allow it.    You are always expecting the Mother to do it [ ] — and here again the laziness and tamas come in — it is the spirit of tamasic surrender. If the Mother puts you back into a good condition, your vital pulls you down again. How is that to stop so long as you say Yes to the vital and accept its discouragement and restlessness and anguish and the rest of it as your own?


Sri Aurobindo: Detachment is absolutely necessary.    Talk of surrender or a mere idea or tepid wish for integral consecration will not do; there must be the push for a radical and total change.  It is not by taking a mere mental attitude that this can be done or even by any number of inner experiences which leave the outer man as he was. It is this outer man who has to open, to surrender and to change.


Sri Aurobindo: His every least movement, habit, action has to be surrendered, seen, held up and exposed to the divine Light, offered to the divine Force for its old forms and motives to be destroyed and the divine Truth and the action of the transforming consciousness of the Divine Mother to take their place.    It [ ] is a truth but a truth that does not become effective for the consciousness until or in proportion as it is realised. The people who stagnate because of it are those who accept the idea but do not realise — so they have neither the force of tapasya nor that of the Divine Grace. On the other hand those who can realise it feel even behind their tapasya and in it the action of the Divine Force.


Sri Aurobindo: Yoga is an endeavour, a tapasya — it can cease to be so only when one surrenders sincerely to a higher Action and keeps the surrender and makes it complete. It is not a fantasia, devoid of all reason and coherence or a mere miracle. It has its laws and conditions and I do not see how you can demand of the Divine to do everything by a violent miracle.   When the will and energy are concentrated and used to control the mind, vital and physical and change them or to bring down the higher consciousness or for any other Yogic purpose or high purpose, that is called Tapasya.


Sri Aurobindo:   Tapasya has predominated in your sadhana, for you have a fervour and active energy which predisposes you to that. No way is entirely easy, and in that of surrender the difﬁculty is to make a true and complete surrender. Once it is made, it certainly makes things easier — not that things are all done in no time or that there are no difﬁculties, but there is an assurance, a support, an absence of tension which gives the consciousness rest as well as strength and freedom from the worst forms of resistance.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes, of course you are right. The process of surrender is itself a Tapasya. Not only so, but in fact a double process of Tapasya and increasing surrender persists for a long time even when the surrender has fairly well begun. But a time comes when one feels the Presence and the Force constantly and more and more feels that that is doing everything — so that the worst difﬁculties cannot disturb this sense and personal effort is no longer necessary, hardly even possible. That is the sign of the full surrender of the nature into the hands of the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: There are some who take this position in faith even before there is this experience and if the Bhakti and the faith are strong it carries them through till the experience is there. But all cannot take this position from the beginning — and for some it would be dangerous since they might put themselves into the hand of a wrong Force thinking it to be the Divine. For most it is necessary to grow through Tapasya into surrender.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes, if there is the sense of the Divine Will behind all the Tapasya and receiving it and bestowing the fruit — it is at least a ﬁrst form of surrender.  There are always two ways of doing the Yoga — one by the action of a vigilant mind and vital seeing, observing, thinking and deciding what is or is not to be done. Of course it acts with the Divine Force behind it, drawing or calling in that Force — for otherwise nothing much can be done. But still it is the personal effort that is prominent and assumes most of the burden.  The other way is that of the psychic being, the consciousness opening to the Divine, not only opening the psychic and bringing it forward, but opening the mind, the vital and the physical, receiving the Light, perceiving what is to be done, feeling and seeing it done by the Divine Force itself and helping constantly by its own vigilant and conscious assent to and call for the Divine working.


Sri Aurobindo: Usually there cannot but be a mixture of these two ways until the consciousness is ready to be entirely open, entirely submitted to the Divine’s origination of all its action. It is then that all responsibility disappears and there is no personal burden on the shoulders of the sadhak.     There are two possibilities, one of puriﬁcation by personal effort, which takes a long time, another by a direct intervention of the Divine Grace which is usually rapid in its action.


Sri Aurobindo: For the latter there must be a complete surrender and self-giving and for that again usually it is necessary to have a mind that can remain quite quiet and allow the Divine Force to act supporting it with its complete adhesion at every step, but otherwise remaining still and quiet. This last condition which resembles the baby cat attitude spoken of by Ramakrishna, is difﬁcult to have. Those who are accustomed to a very active movement of their thought and will in all they do, ﬁnd it difﬁcult to still the activity and adopt the quietude of mental self-giving. This does not mean that they cannot do the Yoga or cannot arrive at self-giving — only the puriﬁcation and the self-giving take a long time to accomplish and one must have the patience and steady perseverance and resolution to go through.


Sri Aurobindo: If there is not a complete surrender, then it is not possible to adopt the baby cat attitude, — it becomes mere tamasic passivity calling itself surrender. If a complete surrender is not possible in the beginning, it follows that personal effort is necessary.    In the early part of the sadhana — and by early I do not mean a short part — effort is indispensable. Surrender of course, but surrender is not a thing that is done in a day.


Sri Aurobindo: The mind has its ideas and it clings to them; the human vital resists surrender, for what it calls surrender in the early stages is a doubtful kind of self-giving with a demand in it; the physical consciousness is like a stone and what it calls surrender is often no more than inertia. It is only the psychic that knows how to surrender and the psychic is usually very much veiled in the beginning. When the psychic awakes, it can bring a sudden and true surrender of the whole being, for the difﬁculty of the rest is rapidly dealt with and disappears. But till then effort is indispensable. Or else it is necessary till the Force comes ﬂooding down into the being from above and takes up the sadhana, does it for one more and more and leaves less and less to individual effort — but even then, if not effort, at least aspiration and vigilance are needed till the possession of mind, will, life and body by the Divine Power is complete.


Sri Aurobindo: I have dealt with this subject, I think, in one of the chapters of.  On the other hand, there are some people who start with a genuine and dynamic will for a total surrender. It is those who are governed by the psychic or are governed by a clear and enlightened mental will which having once accepted surrender as the law of the sadhana will stand no nonsense about it and insists on the other parts of the being following its direction. Here there is still effort, but it is so ready and spontaneous and has so much the sense of a greater Force behind it that the sadhak hardly feels that he is making an effort at all. In the contrary case of a will in mind or vital to retain self-will, a reluctance to give up your independent movement, there must be struggle and endeavour until the wall between the instrument in front and the Divinity behind or above is broken.


Sri Aurobindo: No rule can be laid down which applies without distinction to everybody — the variations in human nature are too great to be covered by a single trenchant rule.   It is not possible to get rid of the stress on personal effort at once — and not always desirable; for personal effort is better than tamasic inertia.  The personal effort has to be transformed progressively into a movement of the Divine Force. If you feel conscious of the Divine Force, then call it in more and more to govern your effort, to take it up, to transform it into something not yours, but the Mother’s. There will be a sort of transfer, a taking up of the forces at work in the personal adhar — a transfer not suddenly complete but progressive.


Sri Aurobindo: But the psychic poise is necessary: the discrimination must develop which sees accurately what is the Divine Force, what is the element of personal effort, and what is brought in as a mixture from the lower cosmic forces. And until the transfer is complete, which always takes time, there must always be as a personal contribution, a constant consent to the true Force, a constant rejection of any lower mixture — that is very important.  At present to give up personal effort is not what is wanted, but to call in more and more the Divine Power and govern and guide by it the personal endeavour.   It is not advisable in the early stages of the sadhana to leave everything to the Divine or expect everything from it without the need of one’s own endeavour. That is only possible when the psychic being is in front and inﬂuencing the whole action (and even then vigilance and a constant assent are necessary) or else, later on in the ultimate stages of the Yoga when a direct or almost direct supramental force is taking up the consciousness; but this stage is very far away as yet.


Sri Aurobindo: Under other conditions this attitude is likely to lead to stagnation and inertia. (See , Part I.)  It is only the more mechanical parts of the being that can truly say they are helpless: the physical (material) consciousness, especially, is inert in its nature and moved either by the mental and vital or by the higher forces. But one has always the power to put the mental will or vital push at the service of the Divine.  One cannot be sure of the immediate result, for the obstruction of the lower Nature or the pressure of the adverse forces can often act successfully for a time, even for a long time, against the necessary change.


Sri Aurobindo: One has then to persist, to put always the will on the side of the Divine, rejecting what has to be rejected, opening oneself to the true Light and the true Force, calling it down quietly, steadfastly, without tiring, without depression or impatience, until one feels the Divine Force at work and the obstacles beginning to give way.  You say you are conscious of your ignorance and obscurity.  If it is only a general consciousness, that is not enough. But if you are conscious of it in the details, in its actual working, then that is sufﬁcient to start with; you have to reject steadfastly the wrong workings of which you are conscious and make your mind and vital a quiet and clear ﬁeld for the action of the Divine Force.


Sri Aurobindo:   Certainly one ought not to fret [ ] — and certainly one ought to dedicate [ ] to the Divine. But our experience is that merely leaving the Divine to do everything (to fulﬁl) does not carry one very far. There must be a cooperation, a consent, an aspiration, a will to change.


Sri Aurobindo:   If there were no conditions at all [], then there would be no need of sadhana; all would be done automatically by the Force or help without any need of effort by the sadhak. The help is always there and it has pulled you out of many difﬁculties and attacks. It is, I suppose, because of the feeling “I do not want to do anything” that you have not been able to receive the help, but that is a temporary inertia of the physical mind and will. I do not see the use of your going back for a few months to a life which could not now satisfy you.


Sri Aurobindo: The only course is to shake off the inertia of the will and persevere.   So long as there is not the full presence and conscious working of the higher Force, some amount of personal effort is indispensable. To do the sadhana for the sake of the Divine and not for one’s own sake is of course the true attitude.


Sri Aurobindo: Faith, reliance upon God, surrender and self-giving to the Divine Power are necessary and indispensable. But reliance upon God must not be made an excuse for indolence, weakness and surrender to the impulses of the lower nature; it must go along with untiring aspiration and a persistent rejection of all that comes in the way of the Divine Truth. The surrender to the Divine must not be turned into an excuse, a cloak or an occasion for surrender to one’s own desires and lower movements or to one’s ego or to some Force of the ignorance and darkness that puts on a false appearance of the Divine.    It is always better to make an effort in the right direction; even if one fails the effort bears some result and is never lost.


Sri Aurobindo:   For those who do not make any effort, — that absence of effort is itself a difﬁculty — they do not progress.  Faith is a general word = — the soul’s belief in the Divine’s existence, wisdom, power, love and grace — conﬁdence and trust are aspects of faith and results of it.  Conﬁdence is a feeling of sureness that the Divine will hear when sincerely called and help and that all the Divine does is for the best.


Sri Aurobindo: Trust is the mind’s and heart’s complete reliance on the Divine and its guidance and protection.     — a dynamic entire belief and acceptance.   — intellectual acceptance only.   — intellectual belief held on what seem to be good reasons.


Sri Aurobindo: — dependence on another for something, based on trust.   — the feeling of sure expectation of another’s help and reliance on his word, character etc.   — the sense of security that goes with trust.    Faith is a feeling in the whole being, belief is mental; conﬁdence means trust in a person or in the Divine or a feeling of surety about the result of one’s seeking or endeavour.


Sri Aurobindo:  You have seized the right principle again, to be all for the Mother and to have full conﬁdence that one has only to go on quietly in that conﬁdence and all will come that needs to come and all be done that the Divine wills to be done. The workings of the world are too subtle and strange and complex for the human mind to understand it — it is only when the knowledge comes from above and one is taken into the higher consciousness that the understanding can come. Meanwhile what one has to follow is the dictates of the deeper psychic heart within based on that faith and love which is the only sure guiding star.


Sri Aurobindo: Faith in its essence is a light in the soul which turns towards the truth even when the mind doubts or the vital revolts or the physical consciousness denies it. When this extends itself to the instruments, it becomes a ﬁxed belief in the mind, a sort of inner knowledge which resists all apparent denial by circumstances or appearances, a complete conﬁdence, trust, adhesion in the vital and in the physical consciousness, an invariable clinging to the truth in which one has faith even when all is dark around and no cause of hope seems to be there.     Faith in the spiritual sense is not a mental belief which can waver and change.


Sri Aurobindo: It can wear that form in the mind, but that belief is not the faith itself, it is only its external form. Just as the body, the external form, can change but the spirit remains the same, so it is here. Faith is a certitude in the soul which does not depend on reasoning, on this or that mental idea, on circumstances, on this or that passing condition of the mind or the vital or the body. It may be hidden, eclipsed, may even seem to be quenched, but it reappears again after the storm or the eclipse; it is seen burning still in the soul when one has thought that it was extinguished for ever. The mind may be a shifting sea of doubts and yet that faith may be there within and, if so, it will keep even the doubt-racked mind in the way so that it goes on in spite of itself towards its destined goal.


Sri Aurobindo: Faith is a spiritual certitude of the spiritual, the divine, the soul’s ideal, something that clings to that even when it is not fulﬁlled in life, even when the immediate facts or the persistent circumstances seem to deny it. This is a common experience in the life of the human being; if it were not so, man would be the plaything of a changing mind or a sport of circumstance.   How to conciliate these two notions: (1) that the Divine’s Will is behind all movements and happenings, (2) that the Divine Will is distorted in the manifestation.


Sri Aurobindo: There are two kinds of faith: The faith that calls down the equanimity and the faith that calls down the realisation.   These two faiths correspond to two different aspects of the Divine.  There is the Transcendent Divine and there is the Cosmic Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: The Will of realisation is that of the Transcendent Divine.  The Cosmic Divine is what is concerned with the actual working out of things under the present circumstances. It is the Will of that Cosmic Divine which is manifested in each circumstance, each movement of this world.  The Cosmic Will is not, to our ordinary consciousness, something that acts as an independent power doing whatever it chooses; it works through all these beings, through the forces at play in the world and the law of these forces and their results.  It is only when we open ourselves and get out of the ordinary consciousness that we can feel it intervening as an independent power and overriding the ordinary play of the forces.


Sri Aurobindo: Then too we can see that even in the play of the forces and in spite of their distortions the Cosmic Will is working towards the eventual realisation of the Will of the Transcendent Divine.  The supramental realisation is the Will of the Transcendent Divine which we have to work out. The circumstances under which we have to work it out are those of an inferior consciousness in which things can be distorted by our own ignorance, weaknesses and mistakes, and by the clash of conﬂicting forces.  That is why faith and equanimity are indispensable.  We have to have the faith that in spite of our ignorance and errors and weaknesses and in spite of the attacks of hostile forces and in spite of any immediate appearance of failure the Divine Will is leading us, through every circumstance, towards the ﬁnal realisation.


Sri Aurobindo: This faith will give us equanimity; it is a faith that accepts what happens not deﬁnitively but as something that has to be gone through on the way. Once equanimity is established there can be established too another kind of faith, supported by it, which can be made dynamic with something from the supramental consciousness and can overcome the present circumstances and determine what will happen and help to bring down the realisation of the Will of the Transcendent Divine.  The faith that goes to the Cosmic Divine is limited in the power of its action by the necessities of the play.  To get entirely free from these limitations one must reach the Transcendent Divine.  Faith is a thing that precedes knowledge, not comes after knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a glimpse of a truth which the mind has not yet seized as knowledge.     Until we know the Truth (not mentally but by experience, by change of consciousness) we need the soul’s faith to sustain us and hold on to the Truth — but when we live in the knowledge, this faith is changed into knowledge.  Of course I am speaking of direct spiritual knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo: Mental knowledge cannot replace faith; so long as there is only mental knowledge, faith is still needed.     The phrase [“”] has no real meaning. I suppose they mean they will not believe without proof — but the conclusion formed after proof is not faith, it is knowledge or it is a mental opinion.


Sri Aurobindo: Faith is something which one has before proof or knowledge and it helps you to arrive at knowledge or experience.  There is no proof that God exists, but if I have faith in God, then I can arrive at the experience of the Divine.  Mental theories are of no fundamental importance, for the mind forms or accepts the theories that support the turn of the being.  What is important is that turn and the call within you.  The knowledge that there is a Supreme Existence, Consciousness and Bliss which is not merely a negative Nirvana or a static and featureless Absolute, but dynamic, the perception that this Divine Consciousness can be realised not only beyond but here, and the consequent acceptance of a divine life as the aim of Yoga, do not belong to the mind.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not a question of mental theory — even though mentally this outlook can be as well supported as any other, if not better, — but of experience and, before the experience comes, of the soul’s faith bringing with it the mind’s and the life’s adhesion. One who is in contact with the higher Light and has the experience can follow this way, however difﬁcult it may be for the lower members to follow; one who is touched by it, without having the experience, but having the call, the conviction, the compulsion of the soul’s adherence, can also follow it.   There is much in your letter that would need long explanation for an adequate reply — but I want to say something about the faith which you say you don’t have and can’t have in the absence of experience. First of all, faith does not depend upon experience; it is something that is there before experience. When one starts the Yoga, it is not usually on the strength of experience, but on the strength of faith.


Sri Aurobindo: It is so not only in Yoga and the spiritual life, but in ordinary life also. All men of action, discoverers, inventors, creators of knowledge proceed by faith and, until the proof is made or the thing done, they go on in spite of disappointment, failure, disproof, denial, because of something in them that tells them that this the truth, the thing that must be followed and done. Ramakrishna even went so far as to say, when asked whether blind faith was not wrong, that blind faith was the only kind to have, for faith is either blind or it is not faith but something else — reasoned inference, proved conviction or ascertained knowledge.  Faith is the soul’s witness to something not yet manifested, achieved or realised, but which yet the Knower within us, even in the absence of all indications, feels to be true or supremely worth following or achieving. This thing within us can last even when there is no ﬁxed belief in the mind, even when the vital struggles and revolts and refuses.


Sri Aurobindo: Who is there that practises the Yoga and has not his periods, long periods of disappointment and failure and disbelief and darkness — but there is something that sustains him and even goes on in spite of himself, because it feels that what it followed after was yet true and it more than feels, it knows. The fundamental faith in Yoga is this, inherent in the soul, that the Divine exists and the Divine is the one thing to be followed after — nothing else in life is worth having in comparison with that. It was this faith growing in you that made you come for Yoga and this faith has not died or diminished — to judge from what you say in your letters, it has become more insistent and abiding. So long as a man has that, he is marked for the spiritual life and I will say that, even if his nature is full of obstacles and crammed with denials and difﬁculties, and even if he has many years of struggle, he is marked out for success in the spiritual life.  What you really have not yet a ﬁxed faith in is the guidance of the Divine, his will to manifest to you or your capacity to receive him.


Sri Aurobindo: It is this that the adverse attacks which began when you were on the threshold of the inner experience — as so often happens in the Yoga — try constantly to ﬁx in your brain. They want to have a ﬁxed mental formation there, so that whenever you make the attempt there will be in the physical mind an expectation of difﬁculty, a dwelling on the idea of difﬁculty and unsuccess and incapacity, if not always in the front of the mind, yet at the back and by that they hope to prevent the experience from coming. It is these mental formations that you must reject, for they are a much greater obstacle than the vital failings to which you give such an exaggerated importance. It is not a fact that you have not had experiences — you had them but you did not give them their full value, because you were expecting something else. Otherwise the sense of the Divine Guidance and the faith in attainment would have formed in spite of difﬁculties and relapses such as everyone has in the Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: It is this faith that you need to develop, — a faith which is in accordance with reason and common sense — that if the Divine exists and has called you to the Path, as is evident, then there must be a Divine Guidance behind and that through and in spite of all difﬁculties you will arrive. Not to listen to the hostile voices that suggest failure or to the voices of impatient vital haste that echo them, not to believe that because great difﬁculties are there, there can be no success or that because the Divine has not yet shown himself he will never show himself, but to take the position that everyone takes when he ﬁxes his mind on a great and difﬁcult goal, “I will go on till I succeed and I will succeed — all difﬁculties notwithstanding.”  To which the believer in the Divine adds, “The Divine exists, he is there, and since he exists, my following after the Divine cannot fail. I will go on through everything till I ﬁnd him.”


Sri Aurobindo: I am rather surprised at Krishnaprem’s surprise about my statement of faith. I thought he had said once you should not hanker after experiences. As for experience being necessary for faith and no faith possible without it, that contradicts human psychology altogether. Thousands of people have faith before they have experience and it is the faith that helps them to the experience. The doctrine “No belief without proof” applies to physical science, it would be disastrous in the ﬁeld of spirituality — or for that matter in the ﬁeld of human action.


Sri Aurobindo: The saints or bhaktas have the faith in God long before they get the experience of God — the man of action has the faith in his cause long before his cause is crowned with success — otherwise they would not have been able to struggle persistently towards their end in spite of defeat, failure and deadly peril. I don’t know what Krishnaprem means by true faith. For me faith is not intellectual belief but a function of the soul; when my belief has faltered, failed, gone out the soul has remained steadfast, obstinately insisting, “This path and no other; the Truth I have felt is the Truth whatever the mind may believe or not believe.” On the other hand experiences do not necessarily lead to faith. One sadhak writes to me, “I feel the grace of the Mother descending into me, but I cannot believe it because it may be a vital imagination.”


Sri Aurobindo: Another has experiences for years together, then falls down because he has, he says, “lost faith”. All these things are not my imagination, they are facts and tell their own tale.  All that, however, is by the way. I have no objection to you or anybody having experiences. I am not a fool.


Sri Aurobindo: Let everybody have as many experiences as possible. What I say is that the hankering for experiences should not be there in such a way as to replace the true attitude and bring disappointment and revolt.  Bhakti is not an experience, it is a state of the heart and soul.  It is a state which comes when the psychic being is awake and prominent. It is for that reason that I asked you to cleave to the psychic way and not go back to that of vital desire.


Sri Aurobindo: I have not said that your psychic being was “in front” in such a way as to be proof against all attack. What I said was that it was becoming awake and active, giving you the right attitude and helping you towards the change of your nature. I certainly did not mean a moral but a spiritual change. Freedom from ego is not a moral but a spiritual change — a moral man may be chock full of ego, an ego increased by his sense of goodness and rectitude. Freedom from ego is spiritually valuable because then one can be centred, no longer in one’s personal self, but in the Divine, and that too is the condition of bhakti.


Sri Aurobindo: I spoke of a strong central and if possible complete faith because your attitude seemed to be that you only cared for the full response — that is, realisation, the Presence, regarding all else as quite unsatisfactory, and your prayer was not bringing you that.  But prayer by itself does not usually bring that at once — only if there is a burning faith at the centre or a complete faith in all the parts of the being. That does not mean that those whose faith is not so strong or surrender complete cannot arrive, but usually they have to go at ﬁrst by small steps and to face the difﬁculties of their nature until by perseverance or tapasya they make a sufﬁcient opening. Even a faltering faith and a slow and partial surrender have their force and their result, otherwise only the rare few could do sadhana at all. What I mean by the central faith is a faith in the soul or the central being behind, a faith which is there even when the mind doubts and the vital despairs and the physical wants to collapse, and after the attack is over, reappears and pushes on the path again.


Sri Aurobindo: It may be strong and bright, it may be pale and in appearance weak, but if it persists each time in going on, it is the real thing. Fits of despair and darkness are a tradition in the path of sadhana — in all Yogas oriental and occidental they seem to have been the rule. I know all about them myself — but my experience has led me to the perception that they are an unnecessary tradition and could be dispensed with if one chose. That is why whenever they come in you or others I try to lift up before them the gospel of faith.  If still they come, one has only to get through them as soon as possible and get back into the sun.


Sri Aurobindo: Your dream of the sea was a perfectly true one — in the end the storm and swell do not prevent the arrival of the state of Grace in the sadhak and with it the arrival of the Grace itself. That I suppose is what something in you is always asking for — the suprarational miracle of Grace, something that is impatient of the demand for tapasya and selfperfection and long labour. Well, it can come, it has come to several here after years upon years of blank failure and difﬁculty or terrible internal struggles. But it comes usually in that way — as opposed to a slowly developing Grace — after much difﬁculty and not at once. If you go on asking for it in spite of the apparent failure of response, it is sure to come.


Sri Aurobindo: I see you have let the demons of self-doubt and doubt in general and melancholy get inside again and sit down at your table.  There is no other reason for your troubles than this readiness to listen to their knock and open the door. You speak of, but that is why gets on because when they knock, he turns them out at once. If you resolutely do that, you will arrive also at security and perfect ease — for there are only two things that create insecurity — doubt and desire. If you desire only the Divine, there is an absolute certitude that you will reach the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: But all these questionings and repinings at each moment because you have not yet reached, only delay and keep an impeding curtain before the heart and the eyes. For at every step when one makes an advance, the opposite forces will throw this doubt like a rope between the legs and stop one short with a stumble — it is their to do that. One must not give them that advantage. Instead of saying, “I want only the Divine, why is the Divine not already here?”, one must say, “Since I want only the Divine, my success is sure, I have only to walk forward in all conﬁdence and his own hand will be there secretly leading me to him by his own way and at his own time.” That is what you must keep as your constant mantra and it is besides the only logical and reasonable thing to do — for anything else is an irrational self-contradiction of the most glaring kind.


Sri Aurobindo: Anything else one may doubt — whether the supermind will come down, whether this world can ever be anything but a ﬁeld of struggle for the mass of men, — these can be rational doubts — but that he who desires only the Divine shall reach the Divine is a certitude much more certain than that two and two make four. That is the faith every sadhak must have in the bottom of his heart, supporting him through every stumble and blow and ordeal. It is only false ideas still casting their shadow on your mind that prevent you from having it.  Push them aside for good and see this simple inner truth in a simple and straightforward way — the back of the difﬁculty will be broken.


Sri Aurobindo:   As for the doubts, such occurrences happen to almost all sadhaks from time to time so long as there is not such a ﬁxity of continuous experience as makes any fundamental doubt impossible, although there may still be questionings about this or that until the knowledge and experience are made complete.  The nature of the doubts and misbeliefs were such as are always suggested to everybody when this kind of Inﬂuence envelops — the part of the mind which responds to them is the physical mind — for the other parts are covered over at such times and the physical mind left to itself naturally doubts everything supraphysical and believes only in its own domain.  Mental faith is very helpful, but it is a thing that can always be temporarily shaken or quite clouded — until the higher consciousness and experience get ﬁxed for good.


Sri Aurobindo: What endures even if concealed is the inner being’s aspiration or need for something higher which is the soul’s faith. That too may be concealed for a time but it reasserts itself — it undergoes eclipse but not extinction.    It is quite sufﬁcient if there is the ﬁrm and constant will towards faith and self-offering. It is understood that it is not possible for the human nature to be always without movements of doubt, obscurity or things not yet offered until the inner consciousness has sufﬁciently grown to make these impossible.


Sri Aurobindo: It is because it is so that the will is necessary so that the Force may work to remove these things with full consent and will of the mind and heart of the sadhak. To try to reject these things and make the will permanent is sufﬁcient, — for it is this effort that brings eventually the permanence.    It is possible for anyone to attain to a complete and living faith in the Divine if he has the sincere will to do so, even though he may not be sattwic in his nature; but, if he is sattwic, it will be easier for him — he will not be hampered by doubts and revolts such as afﬂict the rajasic man on his way.


Sri Aurobindo: Mental faith combats doubt and helps to open to the true knowledge; vital faith prevents the attacks of the hostile forces or defeats them and helps to open to the true spiritual will and action; physical faith keeps one ﬁrm through all physical obscurity, inertia or suffering and helps to open to the foundation of the true consciousness; psychic faith opens to the direct touch of the Divine and helps to bring union and surrender.     Faith can be tamasic and ineffective, e.g. “I believe the Mother will do everything, so I will do nothing. When she wants, she will transform me.”


Sri Aurobindo: That is not a dynamic but a static and inert faith.  When I spoke of being faithful to the light of the soul and the divine Call, I was not referring to anything in the past or to any lapse on your part. I was simply afﬁrming the great need in all crises and attacks, — to refuse to listen to any suggestions, impulses, lures and to oppose to them all the call of the Truth, the imperative beckoning of the Light. In all doubt and depression, to say “I belong to the Divine, I cannot fail”; to all suggestions of impurity and unﬁtness, to reply “I am a child of Immortality chosen by the Divine; I have but to be true to myself and to Him — the victory is sure; even if I fell, I would be sure to rise again”;  to all impulses to depart and serve some smaller ideal, to reply “This is the greatest, this is the Truth that alone can satisfy the soul within me; I will endure through all tests and tribulations to the very end of the divine journey.”


Sri Aurobindo: This is what I mean by faithfulness to the Light and the Call.    I do not see how the method of faith in the cells can be likened to eating a slice of the moon. Nobody ever got a slice of the moon, but the healing by faith in the cells is an actual fact and a law of Nature and has been demonstrated often enough even apart from Yoga. The way to get faith and everything else is to insist on having them and refuse to ﬂag or despair or give up until one has them — it is the way by which everything has been got since this difﬁcult world began to have thinking and aspiring creatures upon it.


Sri Aurobindo: It is to open always, always to the Light and turn one’s back on the darkness. It is to refuse the voices that cry persistently, “You cannot, you shall not, you are incapable, you are the puppet of a dream” — for these are the enemy voices, they cut one off from the result that was coming by their strident clamour and then triumphantly point to the barrenness of result as a proof of their thesis. The difﬁculty of the endeavour is a known thing, but the difﬁcult is not the impossible — it is the difﬁcult that has always been accomplished and the conquest of difﬁculties makes up all that is valuable in the earth’s history. In the spiritual endeavour also it shall be so.


Sri Aurobindo: For the sadhana, your strong distaste (to say the least) for the methods which we ﬁnd most useful but you ﬁnd grim and repellent, makes a great obstacle. But I maintain my idea that if you remain faithful to the seeking for the Divine, the day of grace and opening will come. Nobody will be more pleased than ourselves if it comes over there in the Himalayas, or for that matter anywhere. The place does not matter — the thing itself is all.


Sri Aurobindo:   I ask you to have faith in the Divine, in the Divine Grace, in the truth of the sadhana, in the eventual triumph of the spirit over its mental and vital and physical difﬁculties, in the Path and the Guru, in the existence of things other than are written in the philosophy of Haeckel or Huxley or Bertrand Russell, because if these things are not true, there is no meaning in the Yoga.    If his faith depends on the perfection of the sadhaks, obviously it must be a rather shaky thing! Sadhaks and sadhikas are not supposed to be perfect.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only siddhas for whom one can claim perfection and even then not according to a mental standard.  Do not allow any discouragement to come upon you and have no distrust of the Divine Grace. Whatever difﬁculties are outside you, whatever weaknesses are inside you, if you keep ﬁrm hold on your faith and your aspiration, the secret Power will carry you through and bring you back here. Even if you are oppressed with opposition and difﬁculties, even if you stumble, even if the way seems closed to you, keep hold on your aspiration; if faith is clouded for a time, turn always in mind and heart to us and it will be removed. As for outer help in the way of letters we are perfectly ready to give it to you.


Sri Aurobindo: But keep ﬁrm on the way — then in the end things open out of themselves and circumstances yield to the inner spirit.    Whatever adverse things present themselves you must meet them with courage and they will disappear and the help come. Faith and courage are the true attitude to keep in life and work always and in the spiritual experience also.


Sri Aurobindo:   In moments of trial faith in the Divine protection and the call for that protection; at all times the faith that what the Divine wills is the best.  It is what turns you towards the Divine that must be accepted as good for you — all is bad for you that turns you away from the Divine.    That is the true resolution.


Sri Aurobindo: Keep it ﬁrm inside you even if waves of other consciousness cover on the surface. If one plants a faith or resolution like that ﬁrmly in oneself, then it remains and even if the mind for a time gets clouded or the resolution dimmed, yet one ﬁnds it reemerging automatically like a ship out of a covering wave, and goes invincibly on with the journey through all vicissitudes till it reaches the harbour.     They [] have to be put into every part and atom of the being so that there may be no possibility of a contrary vibration anywhere.


Sri Aurobindo:  You must keep the faith always that however the lower nature may rise or hostile forces attack, victory will be yours and the transformation is sure.   Keep ﬁrm faith in the victory of the Light and face with calm equanimity the resistances of Matter and human personality to their own transformation.     Even if there is much darkness — and this world is full of it and the physical nature of man also — yet a ray of the true Light can prevail eventually against a tenfold darkness.


Sri Aurobindo: Believe that and cleave to it always.  Consecration is a process by which one trains the consciousness to give itself to the Divine.    The general principle of self-consecration and self-giving is the same for all in this Yoga, but each has his own way of consecration and self-giving. The way that takes is good for, just as the way that you take is the right one for you because it is in consonance with your nature.


Sri Aurobindo: If there were not this plasticity and variety, if all had to be cut in the same pattern, Yoga would be a rigid mental machinery, not a living power.  When you can sing out of your inner consciousness in which you feel the Mother moving all your actions, there is no reason why you should not do it. The development of capacities is not only permissible but right, when it can be made part of the Yoga; one can give not only one’s soul, but all one’s powers to the Divine.    It is very evident that has had a sudden opening to spiritual experience — a surprisingly sudden opening, one would think, but it happens often in that way, especially if there is a sceptical mind outside and a soul ready for experience within.


Sri Aurobindo: In such cases also it comes often after a blow such as his brother’s illness, but I think there was already a turning of the mind which prepared it. This sudden and persistent visualisation also shows that there is a faculty within that has broken the gates which shut it in — the faculty of supraphysical vision. The coming up of the word “consecration” is also a familiar phenomenon of these experiences — it is what I call the voice of the psychic, an intimation from his own soul to the mind as to what it wants him to do. Now he has to accept it, for the assent of the nature, of the outward man to the inner voice, is necessary so that it may be effective. He is standing at the turning point and has been given an indication of the new road his inner being, the Antaratman, wants him to follow — but, as I say, the assent of his mind and vital is necessary.


Sri Aurobindo: If he can decide to consecrate, he must make the of consecration, offer himself to the Divine and call for the help and the guidance. If he is not able to do that at once let him wait and see, but keeping himself open, as it were, to the continuation and development of the experience that has begun till it becomes deﬁnitely imperative to his own feeling. He will receive help and, if he becomes conscious of it, then there can be no further question — it will be easy for him to proceed on the way.  One offers to the Divine in order to get rid of the illusion of separation — the very act of offering implies that all belongs to the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo:   Have attachment to nothing [] — aspire until you get the consciousness of the Divine — call on the Divine to control and take up all you are and have.    (1) Offer yourself more and more — all the consciousness, all that happens in it, all your work and action.  (2) If you have faults and weaknesses, hold them up before the Divine to be changed or abolished.


Sri Aurobindo: (3) Try to do what I told you, concentrate in the heart till you constantly feel the Presence there.     Remain quiet, put your will always on the side of the Truth, offer yourself entirely to the Divine.  Opening is a change of the consciousness by which it becomes receptive to the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo:  Opening means that the consciousness becomes opened to the Truth or the Divine to which it is now shut — it indicates a state of receptivity.     Opening is a thing that happens of itself by sincerity of will and aspiration.


Sri Aurobindo: It means to be able to receive the higher forces that come from the Mother.     Opening means only to be able to receive the Mother’s force.  Whether one is open or not is shown by two things.


Sri Aurobindo: If one is conscious of the force working in one, then one is open. But even if one is not conscious, yet if results of the working happen, then that also means that in the inner being some opening has been made. Aspiration, sincerity and the quietude of the mind are the three best conditions for opening.


Sri Aurobindo: These [] are acts of the mind, openness is a of consciousness which keeps it turned to the Mother, free from other movements, expecting and able to receive what may come from the Divine.   There is a state in which the sadhak is conscious of the Divine Force working in him or of its results at least and does not obstruct its descent or its action by his own mental activities, vital restlessness or physical obscurity and inertia. That is openness to the Divine. Surrender is the best way of opening; but aspiration and quietness can do it up to a certain point so long as there is not the surrender.


Sri Aurobindo: The object of the self-opening is to allow the force of the Divine to ﬂow in bringing light, peace, Ananda etc. and to do the work of transformation. When the being so receives the Divine Shakti and it works in him, produces its results (whether he is entirely conscious of the process or not), then he is said to be open.  In this Yoga the whole principle is to open oneself to the Divine Inﬂuence. It is there above you and, if you can once become conscious of it, you have then to call it down into you. It descends into the mind and into the body as Peace, as a Light, as a Force that works, as the Presence of the Divine with or without form, as Ananda.


Sri Aurobindo: Before one has this consciousness, one has to have faith and aspire for the opening. Aspiration, call, prayer are forms of one and the same thing and are all effective; you can take the form that comes to you or is easiest to you. The other way is concentration; you concentrate your consciousness in the heart (some do it in the head or above the head) and meditate on the Mother in the heart and call her in there. One can do either and both at different times — whatever comes naturally to you or you are moved to do at the moment.  Especially in the beginning the one great necessity is to get the mind quiet, reject at the time of meditation all thoughts and movements that are foreign to the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: In the quiet mind there will be a progressive preparation for the experience. But you must not become impatient if all is not done at once; it takes time to bring entire quiet into the mind; you have to go on till the consciousness is ready.   In this Yoga all depends on whether one can open to the Inﬂuence or not. If there is a sincerity in the aspiration and a patient will to arrive at the higher consciousness in spite of all obstacles, then the opening in one form or another is sure to arrive. But it may take a long or a short time according to the prepared or unprepared condition of the mind, heart and body; so if one has not the necessary patience, the effort may be abandoned owing to the difﬁculty of the beginning.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no method in this Yoga except to concentrate, preferably in the heart, and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness; one can concentrate also in the head or between the eyebrows, but for many this is a too difﬁcult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is a beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.


Sri Aurobindo: A Fire in the heart is usually the psychic ﬁre and that should rather grow and be fed by the tendency or aspiration to the personal sadhana. The main principle of the personal sadhana is the surrender, the aspiration to the Divine touch, presence, control in the heart — the opening of the psychic being from within and its coming in front to govern and change mind, vital, physical consciousness. There are two openings that are necessary, one from above, the other from within. The one from above which can come by the impersonal Path or by the personal and impersonal together, seems to have come to you. Your feeling about the Personal probably comes from the push from within for the psychic to emerge fully.


Sri Aurobindo: It is this aspiration therefore that should be the beginning of the personal path and a reliance on the Inner Power to guide and do what is needed.     Well, that is the idea in Yoga — that by a right passivity one opens oneself to something greater than one’s limited self, and effort is only useful for getting that condition. There is also a notion that even in the ordinary life the individual is only an instrument in the hands of a Universal Energy though his ego takes the credit of all he does.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is the law of the sadhana to open to the inﬂuences of the higher worlds.


Sri Aurobindo: It is true that through whatever is strongest in him a sadhak can most easily open to the Divine.     In the practice of Yoga, what you aim at can only come by the opening of the being to the Mother’s force and the persistent rejection of all egoism and demand and desire, all motives except the aspiration for the Divine Truth. If this is rightly done, the Divine Power and Light will begin to work and bring in the peace and equanimity, the inner strength, the puriﬁed devotion and the increasing consciousness and self-knowledge which are the necessary foundation for the siddhi of the Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo:   Open with sincerity. That means to open integrally and without reservation: not to give one part of you to the divine working and keep back the rest; not to make a partial offering and keep for yourself the other movements of your nature. All must be


Sri Aurobindo: opened wide ; it is insincerity to hold back any part of you or keep it shut to the Divine.   Open with faithfulness.


Sri Aurobindo: That means to be open constantly and always; not to open one day and withdraw the next.   The opening is the same for all. It begins with an opening of the mind and heart, then of the vital proper — when it reaches the lower vital and physical the opening is complete. But with the opening there must be the full self-giving to what comes down, which is the condition of the complete change. It is this last stage that is the real difﬁculty and it is there that everyone stumbles about till it is overcome.


Sri Aurobindo:   It takes time to open all the parts fully. Let the mind and heart remain open and the rest will follow. Clouds that pass and coverings that come cannot prevent it.


Sri Aurobindo: It is certainly not by merely repeating “to will” and “to open” (with the mental idea), that the will or the opening will come. It is by using the will that the will becomes effective, it is by using the aspiration and the will also that the opening comes. The ﬁrst thing is to call down the calm into the mind and the vital; with the calm established or in course of preparation to invite more and more the Mother’s workings and grow conscious of them within you and give your assent to them and refuse all else. All the rest then comes in its time and by the proper process.


Sri Aurobindo: It is by conﬁdence in the Mother that the opening needed will come when your consciousness is ready. There is no harm in arranging your present work so that there will be time and energy for some meditation, but it is not by meditation alone that what is needed will come. It is by faith and openness to the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: Keep yourself open to the Mother, remember her always and let her Force work in you, rejecting all other inﬂuences — that is the rule for Yoga.  It is certain that an ardent aspiration for the Divine helps to progress, but patience is also needed. For it is a very big change that has to be made and, although there can be moments of great rapidity, it is never all the time like that. Old things try to stick as much as possible; the new that come have to develop and the consciousness takes time to assimilate them and make them normal to the nature.  Keep this ﬁrm faith in your mind that the thing needed is being done and will be done fully.


Sri Aurobindo: There can be no doubt about that.    There are always difﬁculties and a hampered progress in the early stages and a delay in the opening of the inner doors until the being is ready. If you feel whenever you meditate the quiescence and the ﬂashes of the inner Light and if the inward urge is growing so strong that the external hold is decreasing and the vital disturbances are losing their force, that is already a great progress. The road of Yoga is long, every inch of ground has to be won against much resistance and no quality is more needed by the sadhak than patience and single-minded perseverance with a faith that remains ﬁrm through all difﬁculties, delays and apparent failures.


Sri Aurobindo:  Determination is needed and a ﬁrm patience, not to be discouraged by this or that failure. It is a change in the habit of the physical nature and that needs a long patient work of detail.   One who has not the courage to face patiently and ﬁrmly life and its difﬁculties will never be able to go through the still greater inner difﬁculties of the sadhana. The very ﬁrst lesson in this Yoga is to face life and its trials with a quiet mind, a ﬁrm courage and an entire reliance on the Divine Shakti.


Sri Aurobindo: It is true that a great patience and steadfastness is needed. Be then ﬁrm and patient and ﬁxed on the aims of the sadhana, but not over-eager to have them at once. A work has to be done in you and is being done; help it to be done by keeping an attitude of ﬁrm faith and conﬁdence. Doubts rise in all, they are natural to the human physical mind — reject them. Impatience and overeagerness for the result at once are natural to the human vital; it is by ﬁrm conﬁdence in the Mother that they will disappear.


Sri Aurobindo: The love, the belief in her as the Divine to whom your life is given, — oppose with that every contrary feeling and then those contrary feelings will after a time no longer be able to come to you.     It is an impatience and restlessness in the vital which makes it feel as if it were no use staying here because things are not moving forward. Sadhana is a thing which takes time and needs patience.


Sri Aurobindo: There are often periods of quiescence in which a working is going on behind of which the mind is not aware — all seems then to be inert and dull; but if one has patience and conﬁdence, the consciousness passes through these periods to new openings and things which seemed to be impossible to effect at that time, get done. The impulse to rush away is always a mistake — perseverance in the path is the one rule to cling to and with that ﬁnally all obstacles are overcome.   Impatience is always a mistake, it does not help but hinders. A quiet happy faith and conﬁdence is the best foundation for sadhana; for the rest a constant opening wide of oneself to receive with an aspiration which may be intense, but must always be calm and steady. Full Yogic realisation does not come all at once, it comes after a long preparation of the Adhara which may take a long time.


Sri Aurobindo:   In a more deep and spiritual sense a concrete realisation is that which makes the thing realised more real, dynamic, intimately present to the consciousness than any physical thing can be.  Such a realisation of the personal Divine or of the impersonal Brahman or of the Self does not usually come at the beginning of a sadhana or in the ﬁrst years or for many years. It comes so to a very few; mine came ﬁfteen years after my ﬁrst pre-Yogic experience in London and in the ﬁfth year after I started Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: That I consider extraordinarily quick, an express train speed almost — though there may no doubt have been several quicker achievements. But to expect and demand it so soon and get fed up because it does not come and declare Yoga impossible except for two or three in the ages would betoken in the eyes of any experienced Yogi or sadhaka a rather rash and abnormal impatience. Most would say that a slow development is the best one can hope for in the ﬁrst years and only when the nature is ready and fully concentrated towards the Divine can the deﬁnitive experience come. To some rapid preparatory experiences can come at a comparatively early stage, but even they cannot escape the labour of the consciousness which will make these experiences culminate in the realisation that is enduring and complete. It is not a question of my liking or disliking your demand or attitude.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a matter of fact and truth and experience, not of liking or disliking, two things which do not usually sway me. It is the fact that people who are grateful and cheerful and ready to go step by step, even by slow steps, if need be, do actually march faster and more surely than those who are impatient and in haste and at each step despair or murmur. It is what I have always seen — there may be instances to the contrary and I have no objection to your being one, — none at all. I only say that if you could maintain “hope and fervour and faith”, there would be a much bigger chance — that is all.  This is just a personal explanation — a long explanation but which seemed to be called for by your enhancement of my glory — and is dictated by a hope that after all in the long run an accumulation of explanations may persuade you to prefer the sunny path to the grey one.


Sri Aurobindo: My faith again perhaps? But, sunny path or grey one, the one thing wanted is that you should push through and arrive.     You say after several years you have not changed your nature.


Sri Aurobindo: I only wish the external nature were so easy to transform that it could be done in a few years. You forget also that the real problem — to get rid of the pervading ego in this nature — is a task you have seriously tackled only a short time ago. And it is not in a few months that that can be done. Even the best sadhaks ﬁnd after many experiences and large changes on the higher planes that here much remains to be done. How do you expect to get rid of it at once unlike everybody else?


Sri Aurobindo: A Yoga like this needs patience, because it means a change both of the radical motives and of each part and detail of the nature. It will not do to say — “Yesterday I determined this time to give myself entirely to the Mother, and look it is not done, on the contrary all the old opposite things turn up once more; so there is nothing to do but to proclaim myself unﬁt and give up the Yoga.” Of course when you come to the point where you make a resolution of that kind, immediately all that stands in the way does rise up — it invariably happens. The thing to be done is to stand back, observe and reject, not to allow these things to get hold of you, to keep your central will separate from them and call in the Mother’s Force to meet them. If one does get involved as often happens, then to get disinvolved as soon as possible and go forward again.


Sri Aurobindo: That is what everybody, every Yogin does — to be depressed because one cannot do everything in a rush is quite contrary to the truth of the matter. A stumble does not mean that one is unﬁt, nor does prolonged difﬁculty mean that for oneself the thing is impossible.   The fact that you have to give up your ordinary work when you get depressed does not mean that you have not gained in steadiness — it only means that the steadiness you have gained is not a personal virtue but depends on your keeping the contact with the Mother — for it is her Force that is behind it and behind all the progress you can make. Learn to rely on that Force more, to open to it more completely and to seek spiritual progress even not for your own sake but for the sake of the Divine — then you will go on more smoothly.


Sri Aurobindo: Get the full psychic opening in the most external physical consciousness. That and not despondency is the lesson you ought to draw from your present adverse experience.    They [] go together. By having patience under all kinds of pressure you lay the foundations of peace.


Sri Aurobindo: Your attitude towards the change needed and new life is the right one. A quiet, vigilant but undistressed persistence is the best way to get it done.  For the intimacy within to be reestablished the quietude must deepen so that the psychic may come out in the physical as it had done in the higher parts.   Things that have long acted on the nature take some time to go altogether, but they are bound to go since you have the sincere desire and your psychic being is growing in your nature. Our help is there always with you.


Sri Aurobindo: You have to persist in faith and quietude and let the psychic grow more and more, then all will come right and you will no longer have this trouble.     It is so with all things in the path of sadhana — one must persist however long it takes, so only one can achieve.


Sri Aurobindo: What I want of you besides aspiring for faith? Well, just a little thoroughness and persistence in the method! Don’t aspire for two days and then sink into the dumps, evolving a gospel of earthquake and Schopenhauer plus the jackal and all the rest of it. Give the Divine a full sporting chance. When he lights something in you or is preparing a light, don’t come in with a wet blanket of despondency and throw it on the poor ﬂame.


Sri Aurobindo: You will say it is a mere candle that is lit — nothing at all? But in these matters, when the darkness of human mind and life and body has to be dissipated, a candle is always a beginning — a lamp can follow and afterwards a sun — but the beginning must be allowed to have a sequel — not get cut off from its natural  by chinks of sadness and doubt and despair. At the beginning and for a long time the experiences do usually come in little quanta with empty spaces between — but, if allowed their way, the spaces will diminish and the quantum theory give way to the Newtonian continuity of the spirit. But you have never yet given it a real chance. The empty spaces have become peopled with doubts and denials and so the quanta have become rare, the beginnings remain beginnings.


Sri Aurobindo: Other difﬁculties you have faced and rejected, but this difﬁculty you dandled too much for a long time and it has become strong — it must be dealt with by a persevering effort. I do not say that all doubts must disappear before anything comes — that would be to make sadhana impossible, for doubt is the mind’s persistent assailant.  All I say is, don’t allow the assailant to become a companion, don’t give him the open door and the ﬁreside seat. Above all don’t drive away the incoming Divine with that dispiriting wet blanket of sadness and despair!  To put it more soberly, — accept once for all that this thing has to be done, that it is the only thing left for yourself or the earth. Outside are earthquakes and Hitlers and a collapsing civilisation and — generally speaking — the jackal in the ﬂood?


Sri Aurobindo: All the more reason to tend towards the one thing to be done, the thing you have been sent to aid in getting done. It is difﬁcult and the way long and the encouragement given meagre? What then? Why should you expect so great a thing to be easy or that there must be either a swift success or none?


Sri Aurobindo: The difﬁculties have to be faced and the more cheerfully they are faced, the sooner they will be overcome. The one thing to do is to keep the mantra of success, the determination of victory, the ﬁxed resolve, “Have it I must and have it I will.” Impossible? There is no such thing as an impossibility — there are difﬁculties and things of , but no impossibles. What one is determined ﬁxedly to do, will get done now or later — it becomes possible.


Sri Aurobindo: There — that is my counterblast to your variations on Schopenhauer. I conclude — drive out dark despair and go bravely on with your poetry, your novels — and your Yoga. As the darkness disappears, the inner doors too will open.  Whatever method is used, persistence and perseverance are essential. For whatever method is used, the complexity of the natural resistance will be there to combat it.


Sri Aurobindo:  One who fears monotony and wants something new would not be able to do Yoga or at least this Yoga which needs an inexhaustible perseverance and patience. The fear of death shows a vital weakness which is also contrary to a capacity for Yoga.  Equally, one who is under the domination of his passions, would ﬁnd the Yoga difﬁcult and, unless supported by a true inner call and a sincere and strong aspiration for the spiritual consciousness and union with the Divine, might very easily fall fatally and his effort come to nothing.    There can be no doubt about the Divine Grace.


Sri Aurobindo: It is perfectly true also that if a man is sincere, he will reach the Divine. But it does not follow that he will reach immediately, easily and without delay. Your error is there, to ﬁx for God a term, ﬁve years, six years, and doubt because the effect is not yet there. A man may be centrally sincere and yet there may be many things that have to be changed in him before realisation can begin.  His sincerity must enable him to persevere always — for it is a longing for the Divine that nothing can quench, neither delay nor disappointment nor difﬁculty nor anything else.


Sri Aurobindo: You have got troubled again because you have allowed your mind to become active again in its ignorance, questioning, trying to refute the simplest and most established spiritual truths, trying to decide without waiting for the inner knowledge. Throw all that away and go on in quietude, not minding if it takes short or long for things to open up. That was what you had undertaken to do. Keep to it and, however slowly, the consciousness will open and light come.


Sri Aurobindo:  Keep quietude, persevere. These are the clouds that cover the growing Light; but the true consciousness is there increasing behind the clouds.     There is no such impossibility of your victory over the harder parts of your nature as you imagine.


Sri Aurobindo: There is only needed the perseverance to go on till this resistance breaks down and the psychic which is not absent nor unmanifest is able to dominate the others. That has to be done whether you stay here or not and to go is likely only to increase the difﬁculty and imperil the ﬁnal result — it cannot help you. It is here that the struggle however acute has, because of the immediate presence of the Mother, the best chance and certitude of a solution and successful ending.  [] The power to go through effort, difﬁculty or trouble without getting fatigued, depressed, discouraged or impatient and without breaking off the effort or giving up one’s aim or resolution.  A resolution means the will to try to get a thing done by the given time.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not a binding “promise” that the thing will be done by that time. Even if it is not, the endeavour will have to continue, just as if no date had been ﬁxed.   Whether by tapasya or surrender does not matter, the one thing is to be ﬁrm in setting one’s face to the goal. Once one has set one’s feet on the way, how can one draw back from it to something inferior?


Sri Aurobindo: If one keeps ﬁrm, falls do not matter, one rises up again and goes forward. If one is ﬁrm towards the goal, there can be on the way to the Divine no eventual failure. And if there is something within you that drives, as surely there is, falterings or falls or failures of faith make no eventual difference.  One has to go on till the struggle is over and there is the straight and open and thornless way before us.


Sri Aurobindo: One cannot say whether the conquest is near or not — one has to go on steadily with the process of the sadhana without thinking of near and far, ﬁxed on the aim, not elated if it seems to come close, not depressed if it still seems to be far.   You have only to remain quiet and ﬁrm in your following of the path and your will to go to the end. If you do that, circumstances will in the end be obliged to shape themselves to your will, because it will be the Divine Will in you.  Yes, the vigilance is very necessary — to remain and  was always considered as a main requisite by the Yogins.   Openness and, whenever needed, passivity, but to the highest consciousness, not to anything that comes.


Sri Aurobindo: Therefore, there must be a certain quiet vigilance even in the passivity. Otherwise there may be either wrong movements or inertia.     Yes; vigilance should not be relaxed.


Sri Aurobindo: In fact, it is only as the automatic knowledge and action are established in the being that the constant vigilance ceases to be needed — even then it cannot be given up absolutely until there is the full Light.     To give up restraint would be to give free play to the vital and that would mean leave for all kinds of forces to enter in. So long as there is not the supramental consciousness controlling and penetrating everything, in all the being from the overmind downwards, there is an ambiguous play of forces, and each force, however divine in origin, may be used by the Powers of light or intercepted as it passes through the mind and the vital by the Powers of darkness.


Sri Aurobindo: Vigilance, discrimination, control cannot be abandoned till the complete victory has been won and the consciousness transmuted.    Grace is all right, but there should also be care and vigilance.  In putting the cycle, you should ﬁrst observe and be sure that it will stand steady before you withdraw your hand from it or loosen too much your hold.


Sri Aurobindo:   If you want the divine life, you must remain absolutely . Not careless, but always on your guard, sober, vigilant. “Madcaps” cannot contain the Power of the Mother, only those who are calm, poised, balanced. So do not be “something of a madcap”.


Sri Aurobindo: Peace and purity of the consciousness are the very foundation of the necessary change in the nature.    Peace is necessary for all; without peace and an increasing purity, even if one opens, one cannot receive perfectly all that comes down through the opening. Light too is necessary for all — without light one cannot take full advantage of all that comes down.


Sri Aurobindo:   Peace is necessary for the higher states to develop.   Equanimity and peace in all conditions in all parts of the being is the ﬁrst foundation of the Yogic status. Either Light (bringing with it knowledge) or Force (bringing strength and dynamism of many kinds) or Ananda (bringing love and joy of existence) can come next according to the trend of the nature. But peace is the ﬁrst condition without which nothing else can be stable.


Sri Aurobindo:   The ﬁrst thing that you have to bring down is a positive, complete and enduring peace from above — that is the only foundation on which the rest can be done, i.e. the development of the higher consciousness, force, knowledge, love, Ananda.     What you are doing is entirely the right thing and nothing more is needed.


Sri Aurobindo: The peace you feel is the basis, the foundation for the transformation, all the rest will be built on it. To open to the Divine Forces with a quiet and strong aspiration, to become conscious of their working, to allow quietly that working and calmly to contain it, seconding it with one’s aspiration, getting more and more knowledge and understanding of what is being done as one goes on — this is the sound and natural way of the Yoga.   A quiet aspiration can be as effective as an intense call. Peace is the basis of the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: The meditation experience seems to be developing in the right direction. Before it was only an opening; but to get something settled, there must be this assimilation and the growth in stability, in peace. Peace is the basis of the spiritual change — all the rest falls into the peace and is sustained on it as on a sure foundation.    Stability is indeed a great — the ﬁrst necessity, like the foundations of a house.


Sri Aurobindo: I am so glad to hear that you feel it growing in you.  At last you have the true foundation of the sadhana. This calm, peace and surrender are the right atmosphere for all the rest to come, knowledge, strength, Ananda. Let it become complete.  It does not remain when engaged in work because it is still conﬁned to the mind proper which has only just received the gift of silence.


Sri Aurobindo: When the new consciousness is fully formed and has taken entire possession of the vital nature and the physical being (the vital as yet is only touched or dominated by the silence, not possessed by it), then this defect will disappear.  The quiet consciousness of peace you now have in the mind must become not only calm but wide. You must feel it everywhere, yourself in it and all in it. This also will help to bring the calm as a basis into the action.  The wider your consciousness becomes, the more you will be able to receive from above.


Sri Aurobindo: The Shakti will be able to descend and bring strength and light as well as peace into the system.  What you feel as narrow and limited in you is the physical mind; it can only widen if this wider consciousness and the light come down and possess the nature.  The physical inertia from which you suffer is likely to lessen and disappear only when strength from above descends into the system.   Remain quiet, open yourself and call the divine Shakti to conﬁrm the calm and peace, to widen the consciousness and to bring into it as much light and power as it can at present receive and assimilate.


Sri Aurobindo: Take care not to be over-eager, as this may disturb again such quiet and balance as has been already established in the vital nature.  Have conﬁdence in the ﬁnal result and give time for the Power to do its work.    Wideness and calmness are the foundation of the Yogic consciousness and the best condition for inner growth and experience.


Sri Aurobindo: If a wide calm can be established in the physical consciousness, occupying and ﬁlling the very body and all its cells, that can become the basis for its transformation; in fact, without this wideness and calmness the transformation is hardly possible.  Aspire, concentrate in the right spirit and, whatever the difﬁculties, you are sure to attain the aim you have put before you.  It is in the peace behind and that “something truer” in you that you must learn to live and feel it to be yourself. You must regard the rest as not your real self, but only a ﬂux of changing or recurring movements on the surface which are sure to go as the true self emerges.  Peace is the true remedy; distraction by hard work is only a temporary relief — although a certain amount of work is necessary for the proper balance of the different parts of the being.