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SECTION ONE
Integral Yoga and Partial Spiritual Paths
The Aim of Integral Yoga and the Ideal
of Supermanhood
To come to this Yoga merely with the idea of
being a superman would be an act of vital
egoism which would defeat its own object. Those
who put this object in the front of their preoccupations
invariably come to grief, spiritually and otherwise.
The aim of this Yoga is, first, to enter into the
divine consciousness by merging into it the separative
ego (incidentally, in doing so one finds one’s
true individual self which is not the limited, vain
and selfish human ego but a portion of the Divine)
and, secondly, to bring down the supramental consciousness
on earth to transform mind, life and body.
All else can be only a result of these two aims, not
the primary object of the Yoga.
Page-3
Difference between Integral Yoga and
Old Yogas
(1)
THERE are many planes above man’s mind—the
supramental is not the only one, and on all of them
the Self can be realised,—for they are all spiritual planes.
Mind, vital and physical are inextricably mixed
together only on the surface consciousness—the inner
mind, inner vital, inner physical are separated from
each other. Those who seek the Self by the old
Yogas separate themselves from mind, life and body
and realise the self of it all as different from these
things. It is perfectly easy to separate mind, vital
and physical from each other without the aid of Supermind. It is done by the ordinary Yogas. The
difference between this and the old Yogas is not that
they are incompetent and cannot do these things–
they can do this perfectly well—but that they proceed
from realisation of Self to Nirvana or some Heaven
and abandon life. The Supramental is necessary for
the transformation of terrestrial life and being, not
for reaching the Self. One must realise Self first, only
afterwards can one realise the Supermind.
16-4-1936
Page-4
(2)
The former Yogins preferred to remain in the
wide consciousness aloof from the play of the energies
—they regarded the latter as something belonging
to the life of illusion which would fall away only by
the rejection of the physical life through knowledge.
It is when you oscillate from one consciousness to
another that you seem to lose the higher one or feel
as if it were lost.
18-5-1933
Wrong Attitude towards Old Yogas
WONDERFUL! The realisation of the Self which
includes the liberation from ego, the consciousness
of the One in all, the established and consummated
transcendence out of the universal Ignorance, the
fixity of the consciousness in the union with the
Highest, the Infinite and Eternal is not anything
worth doing or recommending to anybody—is "not
a
very difficult stage"!
Nothing new! Why should there be anything
new? The object of spiritual seeking is to find out what is eternally true, not what is new in Time.
Page-5
From where did you get this singular attitude
towards the old Yogas and Yogis? Is the wisdom
of the Vedanta and Tantra a small and trifling
thing? Have then the sadhakas of the Ashram
attained to self-realisation and are they liberated
Jivanmuktas, free from ego and ignorance? If not,
why then do you say, "it is not a very difficult
stage", "their goal is not high. Is it such a long process?"
I have said that this Yoga is "new" because it
aims at the integrality of the Divine in this world
and not only beyond it and at a supramental realisation.
But how does that justify a superior contempt
for the spiritual realisation which is as much the
aim of this Yoga as of any other?
3-4-1936
Difficulty of Self-realisation
IT (self-realisation) is not a long process? The whole
life and several lives more are often not enough
to achieve it. Ramakrishna’s Guru took 30 years
to arrive and even then he did not claim that he
had realised it.
Page-6
Absurdity of Depreciating Old Yogas
As for the depreciation of the old Yogas as
something
quite easy, unimportant and worthless and
the depreciation of Buddha, Yajnavalkya and
other great spiritual figures of the past, is it not
evidently absurd on the face of it?
14-4-1936
Spiritualisation and Supramental Change
(1)
SPIRITUALISATION means the descent of the higher
peace, force, light, knowledge, purity, Ananda,
etc., which belong to any of the higher planes
from Higher Mind to Overmind, for in any of these
the Self can be realised. It brings about a subjective
transformation; the instrumental Nature is only
so far transformed that it becomes an instrument
for the Cosmic Divine to get some work done, but
the self within remains calm and free and united
with the Divine. But this is an incomplete individual
transformation—the full transformation of the
instrumental Nature can only come when the
Page-7
supramental change takes place. Till then the
nature remains full of many imperfections, but the
Self in the higher planes does not mind them, as it
is itself free and unaffected. The inner being down
to the inner physical can also become free and
unaffected. The Overmind is subject to limitations
in the working of the effective Knowledge, limitations
in the working of the Power, subject to a partial
and limited Truth, etc. It is only in the Supermind
that the full Truth-consciousness comes, into being.
25-3-1936
(2)
Certainly, they (higher planes) can realise the
Self. It is not at all necessary to get the Supramental
planes for that.
14-4-1936
(3)
A complete silence makes realisation of the Self
more possible—but that can be had on the Higher
Mind level, far below Overmind.
21-8-1936
Page-8
Realisation of the Impersonal Self and the
Integral Knowledge
THE sadhaka of integral Yoga who stops short at the
Impersonal is no longer a sadhaka of integral Yoga.
Impersonal realisation is the realisation of the silent
Self, of the pure Existence, Consciousness and
Bliss in itself without any perception of an Existent,
Conscient, Blissful. It leads therefore to Nirvana.
In the integral knowledge the realisation of the
Self and of the impersonal Sachchidananda is only a
step, though a very important step, or part of the
integral knowledge. It is a beginning, not an end of
the highest realisation.
25-5-1936
The Impersonal and the Integral Divine
IT is rather surprising that you should be unable
to understand such a simple and familiar statement;
for that has been always the whole reason of this
Yoga that to follow after the Impersonal only brings
inner experience or, at the most, mukti. Without
the action of the integral Divine there is no change
of the whole nature. If it were not so, the Mother would not be here and I would not be here if a realisation
of the Impersonal were sufficient.
15-9-1936
Page-9
Living in the True Consciousness and Having
the Complete Truth
LIVING in the true consciousness is living in a consciousness
in which one is spiritually in union with
the Divine in one way or another. But it does not
follow that by so living one will have the complete,
exact and infallible truth about all actions, all things
and all persons.
12-7-1936
Supramental All-Knowledge and Lower Ignorance
IT is only the Supramental that is all-knowledge.
All below that from Overmind to Matter is Ignorance
—an Ignorance growing from level to level towards
the full knowledge. Below Supermind. there may
be knowledge but it is not all-knowledge.
20-9-1936
Page-10
Vedantic Laya and the Highest Truth
IT is the Vedantic Adwaita experience of laya. It
is only one phase of the experience, not the whole or
the highest Truth of the Divine.
1933
Laya and Supramentalisation
No. The impulse towards laya is a creation of the
mind, it is not the sole possible destiny of the soul.
When the mind tries to abolish its own Ignorance,
it finds no escape from it except by laya, because it
supposes that there is no higher principle of cosmic
existence beyond itself—beyond itself is only the pure
Spirit, the absolute impersonal Divine. Those who
go through the heart (love, bhakti) do not accept
laya, they believe in a state beyond of eternal companionship
with the Divine or dwelling in the Divine
without laya. All this quite apart from Supramentalisation.
What then becomes of your starting-point
that laya is the inevitable destiny of the soul and it is
only the personal descent of the Avatar that saves
it from inevitable laya!
Page-11
Beginning and End of Creation—Merging in the
Inactive Brahman
and the Divine
Object in the World
THERE is a world of Ignorance, there are worlds
also of Truth. Creation has no beginning and no
end. It is only a particular creation that can be said
to have a beginning and an end.
13-11-1933
⁂
It is possible for an individual to escape from
this world of Ignorance and merge in the inactive
Brahman but it leaves the divine object in birth
and in the world unfulfilled.
14-11-1933
⁂
The Inactive Brahman and the active Personal
Brahman are two aspects of the Divine—in the
Supreme these are fused into each other, not separate.
November 1933
Page-12
Temporal and Eternal Lila
THE Vaishnavites accept the world as a Lila, but
the true Lila is elsewhere in the eternal Brindavan.
All the religions which believe in the personal
Godhead accept the universe as a reality, a lila or
a creation made by the Will of God, but temporal
and not eternal. The one that is the eternal stands
above.
23-6-1937
Puranic and Vaishnavite Idea of the Kingdom of
Heaven on Earth
THE idea of a temporary kingdom of heaven on
earth is contained in the Puranas and conceived by
some Vaishnava saints or poets; but it is a devotional
idea, no philosophical base is given for
the expectation. I think the Tantric overcoming
of imperfections is an individual achievement, not collective.
23-6-1937
Page-13
Limitation of Religions
IT is correct, religions at best modify only the
surface of the nature. Moreover, they degenerate
very soon into a routine of ceremonial habitual
worship and fixed dogmas.
Shankara and Mayavada
SHANKARA surely stands or fails by the Mayavada,
Even the Bhaja-Govindam poem is Mayavadic in
spirit. I am not well acquainted with these other
writings, so it is difficult for me to say anything
about that side of the question.
23-6-1937
Mayavada, Nirvana and the Integral Yoga
About Nirvana:
WHEN I wrote in the Arya, I was setting
forth an
overmind view of things to the mind and putting
Page-14
it in mental terms, that was why I had sometimes
to use logic. For in such a work—mediating between
the intellect and the supra-intellectual—logic has
a place, though it cannot have the chief place it
occupies in purely mental philosophies. The Mayavadin
himself labours to establish his point of view
or his experience by a rigorous logical reasoning.
Only, when it comes to an explanation of Maya,
he, like the scientist dealing with Nature, can do
no more than arrange and organise his ideas of the
process of this universal mystification; he cannot
explain how or why his illusionary mystifying Maya
came into existence. He can only say, "Well, but
it is there."
Of course, it is there. But the question is, first,
what is, it? Is it really an illusionary Power and
nothing else, or is the Mayavadin’s idea of it a
mistaken first view, a mental imperfect reading,
even perhaps itself an illusion? And next, "Is
illusion the sole or the highest Power which the
Divine Consciousness or Superconsciousness possesses?"
The Absolute is an absolute Truth free from
Maya, otherwise liberation would not be possible.
Has then the supreme and absolute Truth no other
active Power than a power of falsehood and with
it, no doubt, for the two go together, a power of
dissolving or disowning the falsehood,—which is
Page-15
yet there for ever? I suggested that this sounded a
little queer. But queer or not, if it is so, it is so—
for, as you point out, the Ineffable cannot be subjected
to the laws of logic. But who is to decide
whether it is so? You will say, those who get there.
But get where? To the Perfect and the Highest
pūrṇam param. Is the Mayavadin’s featureless
Brahman that Perfect, that Complete—is it the
very Highest? Is there not or can there not be a
higher than that highest, parāt param? That is not a
question of logic, it is a question of spiritual
fact, of a supreme and complete experience. The
solution of the matter must rest not upon logic,
but upon a growing, ever heightening, widening
spiritual experience—an experience which must of
course include or have passed thorough that of Nirvana
and Maya, otherwise it would not be complete
and would have no decisive value.
Now to reach Nirvana was the first radical result
of my own Yoga. It threw me suddenly into a
condition above and without thought, unstained by
any mental or vital movement; there was no ego,
no real world—only when one looked through the
immobile senses, something perceived or bore
upon its sheer silence a world of empty forms,
materialised shadows without true substance. There
was no One or many even, only just absolutely That,
Page-16
featureless, relationless, sheer, indescribable,
unthinkable,
absolute, yet supremely real and solely
real. This was no mental realisation nor something
glimpsed somewhere above,—no abstraction,—it
was positive, the only positive reality—although
not a spatial physical world, pervading, occupying
or rather flooding and drowning this semblance of
a physical world, leaving no room or space for any
reality but itself, allowing nothing else to seem at
all actual, positive or substantial. I cannot say there
was anything exhilarating or rapturous in the
experience, as it then came to me,—(the ineffable
Ananda I had years afterwards), —but what it
brought was an inexpressible Peace, a stupendous
silence, an infinity of release and freedom. I lived
in that Nirvana day and night before it began to
admit other things into itself or modify itself at all,
and the inner heart of experience, a constant
memory of it and its power to return remained until
in the end it began to disappear into a greater
Superconsciousness from above. But meanwhile
realisation added itself to realisation and fused
itself with this original experience. At an early
stage the aspect of an illusionary world gave place
to one in which illusion* is only a small surface
*In fact it is not an illusion in the sense of an imposition
of something baseless and unreal on the consciousness, but a
misinterpretation by the conscious mind and sense and a falsifying
misuse of manifested existence.
Page-17
phenomenon with an immense Divine Reality
behind it and a supreme Divine Reality above it
and an intense Divine Reality in the heart of everything
that had seemed at first only a cinematic
shape or shadow. And this was no reimprisonment
in the senses, no diminution or fall from supreme
experience, it came rather as a constant heightening
and widening of the Truth; it was the spirit that
saw objects, not the senses, and the Peace, the
Silence, the freedom in Infinity remained always,
with the world or all worlds only as a continuous
incident in the timeless eternity of the Divine.
Now, that is the whole trouble in my approach
to Mayavada. Nirvana in my liberated consciousness
turned out to be the beginning of my realisation,
a first step towards the complete thing, not
the sole true attainment possible or even a culminating
finale. It came unasked, unsought for,
though quite welcome. I had no least idea about it
before, no aspiration towards it, in fact my aspiration
was towards just the opposite, spiritual power to help
the world and to do my work in it, yet it came
—without even a "May I come in" or a "By your
leave". It just happened and settled in as if for all
Page-18
eternity or as if it had been really there always.
And then it slowly grew into something not less
but greater than its first self. How then could I
accept Mayavada or persuade myself to pit against
the Truth imposed on me from above the logic of Shankara?
But I do not insist on everybody passing through
my experience or following the Truth that is its
consequence. I have no objection to anybody accepting
Mayavada as his soul’s truth or his mind’s truth
or their way out of the cosmic difficulty. I object
to it only if somebody tries to push it down my
throat or the world’s throat as the sole possible,
satisfying and all-comprehensive explanation of
things. For it is not that at all. There are many
other possible explanations; it is not at all satisfactory,
for in the end it explains nothing; and it is—and
must be unless it departs from its own logic—
all-exclusive, not in the least all-comprehensive.
But that does not matter. A theory may be wrong
or at least one-sided and imperfect and yet extremely
practical and useful. This has been amply shown by
the history of Science. In fact, a theory whether philosophical
or scientific, is nothing else than a support
for the mind, a practical device to help it to deal
with its object, a staff to uphold it and make it walk
more confidently and get along on its difficult
Page-19
journey. The very exclusiveness and one-sidedness of
the Mayavada make it a strong staff or a forceful
stimulus for a spiritual endeavour which means
to be one-sided, radical and exclusive. It supports
the effort of the Mind to get away from itself and
from Life by a short cut into superconscience.
Or rather it is the Purusha in Mind that wants to get away from the limitations of Mind and Life
into the superconscient Infinite. Theoretically, the
way for that is for the mind to deny all its perceptions
and all the preoccupations of the vital and
see and treat them as illusions. Practically, when
the mind draws back from itself, it enters easily
into a relationless peace in which nothing matters,
—for in its absoluteness there are no mental or
vital values—and from which the mind can rapidly
move towards that great short cut to the superconscient,
mindless trance, suṣupti. In proportion to
the thoroughness of that movement all the perceptions
it had once accepted become unreal to it—
illusion, Maya. It is on its road towards immergence.
Mayavada therefore with its sole stress on Nirvana,
quite apart from its defects as a mental theory
of things, serves a great spiritual end and, as a
path, can lead very high and far. Even, if the Mind
were the last word and there were nothing beyond
it except the pure Spirit, I would not be averse to
Page-20
accepting it as the only way out. For what the
mind with its perceptions and the vital with its
desires have made of life in this world, is a very
bad mess, and if there were nothing better to be
hoped for, the shortest cut to an exit would be the
best. But my experience is that there is something
beyond mind; Mind is not the last word here of
the Spirit. Mind is an ignorance-consciousness and
its perceptions cannot be anything else than either
false, mixed or imperfect—even when true, a
partial reflection of the Truth and not the very
body of Truth herself. But there is a Truth-
Consciousness, not static only and self-introspective,
but also dynamic and creative, and I prefer to get
at that and see what it says about things and can
do rather than take the short cut away from things
offered as its own end by the Ignorance.
Still, I would have no objection if your attraction
towards Nirvana were not merely a mood of the
mind and vital but an indication of the mind’s true
road and the soul’s issue. But it seems to me that
it is only the vital recoiling from its own disappointed
desires in an extreme dissatisfaction, not the soul
leaping gladly to its true path. This vairagya is
itself a vital movement; vital vairagya is the reverse
side of vital desire—though the mind of course is
there to give reasons and say ditto. Even this
Page-21
vairagya, if it is one-pointed and exclusive, can
lead or point towards Nirvana. But you have
many sides to your personality or rather many
personalities in you; it is indeed their discordant
movements each getting in the way of the other,
as happens when they are expressed through the
external mind, that have stood much in the way of
your sadhana. There is the vital personality which
was turned towards success and enjoyment and
got it and wanted to go on with it but could not
get the rest of the being to follow. There is the
vital personality that wanted enjoyment of a deeper
kind and suggested to the other that it could very
well give up these unsatisfactory things if it got an
equivalent in some faeryland of a higher joy.
There is the psycho-vital personality that is the
Vaishnava within you and wanted the Divine
Krishna and bhakti and Ananda. There is the
personality which is the poet and musician and a
seeker of beauty through these things. There is
the mental-vital personality which, when it saw the
vital standing in the way, insisted on a grim struggle
of Tapasya, and it is no doubt that also which
approves Vairagya and Nirvana. There is the
physical-mental personality which is the Russellite,
extrovert, doubter. There is another mental-emotional
personality all whose ideas are for belief in
Page-22
the Divine, Yoga, bhakti, Guruvada. There is the
psychic being also which has pushed you into the
sadhana and is waiting for its hour of emergence.
What are you going to do with all these people?
If you want Nirvana, you have either to expel them
or stifle them or beat them into coma. All authorities
assure us that the exclusive Nirvana business
is a most difficult job (kaṣṭam dehavadbhiḥ, says the
Gita), and your own attempt at suppressing the
others was not encouraging,—according to your
own account it left you as dry and desperate as
a sucked orange, no juice left anywhere. If the
desert is your way to the promised land, that does
not matter. But—well, if it is not, then there is
another way—it is what we call the integration,
the harmonisation of the being. That cannot be
done from outside, it cannot be done by the mind
and vital being—they are sure to bungle their
affair. It can be done only from within, by the
soul, the Spirit which is the centraliser, itself the
centre of these radii. In all of them there is a truth
that can harmonise with the true truth of the others.
For there is a truth in Nirvana—Nirvana is nothing
but the peace and freedom of the Spirit which can
exist in itself, be there world or no world, world-
order or world-disorder. Bhakti and the heart’s
call for the Divine have a truth—it is the truth of
Page-23
the divine Love and Ananda. The will for Tapasya
has in it a truth—it is the truth of the Spirit’s
mastery over its members. The musician and poet
stand for a truth, it is the truth of the expression of
the Spirit through beauty. There is a truth behind
the mental affirmer; even there is a truth behind
the mental doubter, the Russellian, though far
behind him—the truth of the denial of false forms.
Even behind the two vital personalities there is a
truth, the truth of the possession of the inner and
outer worlds not by the ego but by the Divine.
That is the harmonisation for which our Yoga
stands—but it cannot be achieved by any outward
arrangement, it can only be achieved by going
inside and looking, willing and acting from the
psychic and from the spiritual centre. For the
truth of the being is there and the secret of Harmony
also is there.
The Snake-rope Image and Illusionism
YOUR objection is correct. The snake-rope image
cannot be used to illustrate the non-existence of the
world, it would only mean that our seeing of the
world is not that of the world as it really is. The idea
Page-24
of complete illusion would better be illustrated by
the juggler’s rope-climbing trick where there is
no rope and no climber, and yet one is persuaded
that they are there.
1933
The Real Difficulty*
SRI AUROBINDO has no remarks to make on Huxley’s
comments with which he is in entire agreement.
But in the phrase "To its heights we can always
reach", very obviously "we" does not refer to
humanity in general but to those who have a sufficiently
developed inner spiritual life. It is probable
*These remarks were dictated by Sri Aurobindo a
propos the
phrase "To its heights we can always reach" occurring in the
following passage in The Life Divine quoted and commented
upon by Aldous Huxley in his book. The Perennial Philosophy,
(P. 74:)
"The touch of Earth is always reinvigorating to the son of
Earth, even when he seeks a supraphysical Knowledge. It may
even be said that the supraphysical can only be really mastered
in its fullness—to its heights we can always reach—when we
keep our feet firmly on the physical. ‘Earth is His footing,’ says
the Upanishad whenever it images the Self that manifests in the
universe." (Vol. I, chap. II)
Page-25
that Sri Aurobindo was thinking of his own experience.
After three years of spiritual effort with
only minor results he was shown by a Yogi the way
to silence his mind. This he succeeded in doing
entirely in two or three days by following the
method shown. There was an entire silence of
thought and feeling and all the ordinary movements
of consciousness except the perception and recognition
of things around without any accompanying
concept or other reaction. The sense of ego disappeared
and the movements of the ordinary life
as well as speech and action were carried on by
some habitual activity of Prakriti alone which was
not felt as belonging to oneself. But the perception
which remained saw all things as utterly unreal;
this sense of unreality was overwhelming and
universal. Only some undefinable Reality was perceived
as true which was beyond space and time and
unconnected with any cosmic activity, but yet was
met wherever one turned. This condition remained
unimpaired for several months and even when the
sense of unreality disappeared and there was a
return to participation in the world-consciousness,
the inner peace and freedom which resulted from
this realisation remained permanently behind all
surface movements and the essence of the realisation
itself was not lost. At the same time an experience
Page-26
intervened: something else than himself took up his
dynamic activity and spoke and acted through
him but without any personal thought or initiative.
What this was remained unknown until Sri
Aurobindo came to realise the dynamic side of the
Brahman, the Ishwara and felt himself moved by that
in all his sadhana and action. These realisations
and others which followed upon them, such as
that of the Self in all and all in the Self and all as the
Self, the Divine in all and all in the Divine, are the
heights to which Sri Aurobindo refers and to which
he says we can always rise; for they presented to him
no long or obstinate difficulty. The only real difficulty
which took decades of spiritual effort to carry
out towards completeness was to apply the spiritual
knowledge utterly to the world and to the surface
psychological and outer life and to effect its transformation
both on the higher levels of Nature and on
the ordinary mental, vital and physical levels down
to the subconscience and the basic Inconscience
and up to the supreme Truth-consciousness or
Supermind in which alone the dynamic transformation
could be entirely integral and absolute.
4-11-1946
Page-27
This-Worldliness, Other-Worldliness and
the Integral Yoga
ONE thing I feel I must say in connection with your
remark about the soul of India and X’s observation
about "this stress on this-worldliness to the exclusion
of other-worldliness". I do not quite understand in
what connection his remark was made or what he
meant by this-worldliness, but I feel it necessary to
state my own position in the matter. My own life
and my Yoga have always been since my coming to
India both this-worldly and other-worldly without
any exclusiveness on either side. All human interests
are, I suppose, this-worldly and most of them have
entered into my mental field and some, like politics,
into my life, but at the same time, since I set foot on
the Indian soil on the Apollo Bunder in Bombay, I
began to have spiritual experiences, but these were
not divorced from this world but had an inner and
infinite bearing on it, such as a feeling of the Infinite
pervading material space and the Immanent
inhabiting material objects and bodies. At the same
time I found myself entering supraphysical worlds
and planes with influences and an effect from them
upon the material plane, so I could make no sharp
divorce or irreconcilable opposition between what I
have called the two ends of existence and all that lies
Page-28
between them. For me all is Brahman and I find
the Divine everywhere. Everyone has the right to
throw away this-worldliness and choose other-worldliness
only, and if he finds peace by that choice he is
greatly blessed. I, personally, have not found it
necessary to do this in order to have peace. In my
Yoga also I found myself moved to include both
worlds in my purview—the spiritual and the material
—and to try to establish the Divine Consciousness
ad the Divine Power in men’s hearts and earthly
life, not for a personal salvation only but for a life
divine here. This seems to me as spiritual an aim
as any and the fact of this life taking up earthly
pursuits and earthly things into its scope cannot,
I believe, tarnish its spirituality or alter its Indian
character. This at least has always been my view
and experience of the reality and nature of the
world and things and the Divine: it seemed to me
as nearly as possible the integral truth about them
and I have therefore spoken of the pursuit of it as
the integral Yoga. Everyone is, of course, free to
reject and disbelieve in this kind of integrality or to
believe in the spiritual necessity of an entire other-
worldliness altogether, but that would make the
exercise of my Yoga impossible. My Yoga can
include indeed a full experience of the other worlds
the plane of the Supreme-Spirit and the other planes
Page-29
in between and their possible effects upon our life
and the material world; but it will be quite possible
to insist only on the realisation of the Supreme
Being or Ishwara even in one aspect, Shiva, Krishna
as Lord of the world and Master of ourselves and
our works or else the Universal Sachchidananda,
and attain to the essential results of this Yoga and
afterwards to proceed from them to the integral
results if one accepted the ideal of the divine life and
this material world conquered by the Spirit. It is
this view and experience of things and of the truth of
existence that enabled me to write The Life Divine
and Savitri. The realisation of the Supreme, the
Ishwara, is certainly the essential thing; but to
approach Him with love and devotion and bhakti,
to serve Him with one’s works and to know Him, not
necessarily by the intellectual cognition, but in a
spiritual experience, is also essential in the path of
the integral Yoga. If you accept K’s insistence that
this and no other must be your path, it is this you
have to attain and realise, then any exclusive other-worldliness
cannot be your way. I believe that you
are quite capable of attaining this and realising the
Divine and I have never been able to share your
constantly recurring doubts about your capacity
and their persistent recurrence is not a valid ground
for believing that they can never be overcome.
Page-30
Such a persistent recurrence has been a feature in
the sadhana of many who have finally emerged and
reached the goal; even the sadhana of very great
Yogis has not been exempt from such violent and constant
recurrences, they have sometimes been special
objects of such persistent assaults, as I have indeed
indicated in Savitri in more places than one, and
that was indeed founded on my own experience.
In the nature of these recurrences there is usually
a
constant return of the same adverse experiences,
the same adverse resistance, thoughts destructive
of all belief and faith and confidence in the future
of the sadhana, frustrating doubts of what one
has known as the truth, urgings to abandonment of
the Yoga or to other disastrous counsels of déchéance.
The course taken by the attacks is not indeed the
same for all, but still they have strong family resemblance.
One can eventually overcome if one begins
to realise the nature and source of these assaults
and acquires the faculty of observing them, bearing,
without being involved or absorbed into their gulf,
finally becoming the witness of their phenomena
and understanding them and refusing the mind’s
sanction even when the vital is still tossed in the
whirl and the most outward physical mind still
reflects the adverse suggestions. In the end, these
attacks lose their power and fall away from the
Page-31
nature; the recurrence becomes feeble or has no
power to last: even, if the detachment is strong
enough, they can be cut out very soon or at once.
The strongest attitude to take is to regard these
things as what they really are: incursions of dark
forces from outside taking advantage of certain
openings in the physical mind or the vital part,
but not a real part of oneself or spontaneous creation
in one’s own nature. To create a confusion and darkness
in the physical mind and to throw into it or
awake in it mistaken ideas, dark thoughts, false
impressions is a favourite method of these assailants,
and if they can get the support of this mind from
over-confidence in its own correctness or the natural
rightness of its impressions and inferences, then
they can have a field-day until the true mind
reasserts itself and blows the clouds away. Another
device of theirs is to awake some hurt or rankling
sense of grievance in the lower vital parts and keep
them hurt or rankling as long as possible. In that
case one has to discover these openings in one’s
nature and learn to close them permanently to such
attacks or to throw out the intruders at once or as
soon as possible. The recurrence is no proof of a
fundamental incapacity; if one takes the right
inner attitude, it can and will be overcome. One
must have faith in the Master of our life and works,
Page-32
even if for a long time He conceals Himself, and
then in His own right time He will reveal His Presence.
You have always believed in Guruvada: I would
ask you then to put your faith in the Guru and the
guidance and rely on the Ishwara for the fulfilment,
to have faith in my abiding love and affection, in
the affection and divine goodwill and loving kindness
of the Mother, stand firm against all attacks
and go forward perseveringly towards the spiritual
Goal and the all-fulfilling and all-satisfying touch
of the All-Blissful, the Ishwara.
28-4-1949
The Vedantin and the Worldly Experience
No certainly I did not mean that the Vedantin
who sees a greater working behind the appearances
of the world is living in a different world from
this material one—if I had meant that, all that I
had written would be without point or sense. I
meant a Vedantin who lives in this world with all
its suffering and ignorance and ugliness and evil
and has had a full measure of these things, betrayal
Page-33
and abandonment by friends, failure of outward
objects and desires in life, attack and persecution,
accumulated illnesses, constant difficulty, struggles,
stumblings in his Yoga. It is not that he lives in a
different world, but he has a different way of
meeting its ordeals, blows and dangers. He takes
them as the nature of this world and the result of
the ego-consciousness in which it lives. He tries
therefore to grow into another consciousness in
which he feels what is behind the outward appearance,
and as he grows into that larger consciousness
he begins to feel more and more a working behind
which is helping him to grow in the spirit and
leading him toward mastery and freedom from
ego and ignorance and he sees that all has been
used for that purpose. Till he reaches this consciousness
with its larger knowledge of things, he
has to walk by faith and his faith may sometimes
fail him, but it returns and carries him through
all the difficulties. Everybody is not bound to
accept this faith and this consciousness, but there
is something great and true behind it for the
spiritual life.
19-4-1934
Page-34
Comments on Henri Massis’s Views on Transformation
I DO not gather from these extracts* the true nature
of the transformation spoken of here. It seems to be
something mental and moral with the love of God
and a certain kind of union in separateness brought
about by this divine love as the spiritualising
element.
Love of God and union in separateness through
that love and a transformation of the nature by
realising certain mental, ethical, emotional—
perhaps even physical possibilities (for the Vaishnavas
speak of a new cinmaya body) is the principle
of Vaishnava Yoga. So there is nothing here that
was not already present in that line of Asiatic
mysticism which looks to a Personal Deity and
insists on the eternal pre-existence and survival of
the individual being. A spiritual raising of the
nature to its highest possibilities is a part of the
Tantric discipline—so that too is not absent from
Indian Yoga. The writer seems, like most European
writers, to know only Illusionism and Buddhism
and to accept them as the whole wisdom of Asia
(sagesse asiatique); but even there he misinterprets
their idea and their experience. Adwaita even in
*From "La De´fense de l’Occident" by Henri Massis
Page-35
its extreme form does not aim at the extinction of
existence, the adoption of nothingness, the end of
the being and destruction of the essence. Only a
certain kind of Nihilistic Buddhism aims at that
and even so, that Nothingness, Sunya, is described
on another side of it as the Permanent. What
these disciplines aim at is a passing from Time to
Eternity, a putting off of the finite and putting on
of the Infinite, a casting off of the bonds of ego
and its results, desire, suffering, a falsified existence,
in order to live in the true Self. These descriptions
of the Christian writer betray an entire ignorance
of the realisation which he decries, its infinity,
freedom, surpassing peace, the ecstasy of the
Brahmananda. It is an extinction of the limited
individual personality but a liberation into cosmic
and then into transcendent consciousness—an
extinction of thought .and life but a liberation into
an unlimited consciousness and knowledge and
being. The personality is extinguished but in
something greater than itself, not in something
less nor in mere "Néant". If it be said that that
negates earthly life, so does the Christian ideal,
for the Christian ideal aims at the attainment of
a celestial existence beyond the earth existence
(beyond this single earth life, for reincarnation is
not admitted), which is only a vale of sorrows and
Page-36
a passing ordeal. It insists on the preservation of
the spiritual personality, but so do Vaishnavism and
Shaivaism and other "Asiatic" ideals. The writer’s
ignorance of the many-sidedness of Asiatic wisdom
deprives his depreciation of it of all value.
The phrases which struck you as resembling
superficially at least our ideal of transformation
are of a general character and could be adopted
without hesitation by almost any spiritual discipline,
even Illusionism would be willing to include
it as a stage or experience on the way. All depends
on the content you put into the words, what actual
change in the consciousness and life they are
intended to cover. If the transformation be "from
sin to sainthood" by the union of the soul with God
"in an intellectual light full of love"—which is the
most definite description of it in these extracts,
—then it is not at all identical, but rather very
far from what I mean by transformation. For the
transformation I aim at is not from sin to sainthood,
but from the lower nature of the Ignorance to the
Divine Nature of Light, Peace, Truth, Divine Power
and Bliss beyond the Ignorance. It journeys
towards a supreme self-existent good and leaves
behind it the limited struggling human conception
of sin and virtue; it is not an intellectual light that
is the sun of its aspiration but a spiritual
Page-37
supraintellectual supramental light; it is not
saint-hood
that is its culmination but divine consciousness
—or if you like, soul-hood, spirit-hood, conscious self-hood,
divine-hood. There is therefore between
these two kinds or two degrees of transformation
an immense difference.
I. "C’est un abandon héroïque où
l’âme parvient au sommet de 1′activité libre, où la personne se transforme, où ses facultés sont
épurées, déifiées par la grâce, sans que son essence soit détruite."
What is meant by free activity? With us the freedom consists in freedom from the darkness, limitation, error, suffering, transience of the ignorant lower Nature, but also in a total surrender to the Divine. Free action is the action of the Divine in us and through us; no other action can be free. That seems to be accepted in II and III; but this perception, this conception is as old as spiritual knowledge itself—it is not peculiar to Catholicism. What again is meant by the purification and deification of the faculties by Grace? If it is an ethical
purification, that goes a very small way and does not bring deification.
Again, if the deification is limited by the intellectual light, it must be a rather petty affair at the best. There was a similar aim in ancient Indian spirituality, but it had a larger sweep and a higher height than that. No spiritual
Page-38
discipline aims at purification or deification by the destruction of the essence—there can be no such thing, the very phrase is meaningless and self- contradictory. The essence of the being is indestructible. Even the most rigid Adwaita discipline does not aim at any such destruction; its object is the purest purity of the essential self. Transformation aims at this essential purity of the pure Spirit, but it asks also for the purity and divinity of the supreme Nature; it is not the essence of being but the accidents of our undeveloped imperfect nature that are destroyed and replaced by the manifestation of the divine Nature. The monistic Adwaita aims at the disappearance of the ego, not of the essence of the person; it arrives at this disappearance by identity with the One, by dissolution of the Nature-constructed ego into the reality of the eternal Self, for that, it says, not ego, is the essence of the person—so a’ham, tat tvam asi. In our idea of transformation also there is the destruction of the ego, its dissolution into the cosmic and the divine consciousness, but by that destruction we recover the true or spiritual person which is an eternal portion of the Divine.
II.
"La contemplation du Chrétien est inséparable de l’état de la Grâce* et de
vie divine. S’il
* Grace is not a conception peculiar to the Christian spiritual
idea—it is there in Vaishnavism, Shaivaism, the Shakta religion,
—it is as old as the Upanishads.
Page-39
doit s’anéantir, c’est encore sa personnalité qui triomphe en se laissant arracher
à tout ce qui n’est pas elle, en brisant tous les liens qui 1′unissent à son individu de chair, afin que
le Dieu vivant puisse s’en saisir, 1′assumer, 1′habiter."
III. "Liberté consiste d’abord
â subordonner ce qui est inférieur dans sa nature a ce qui lui est supérieur."
These passages can be taken in the above sense and as approximating to our ideal; but the confusion
here is in the use of the word "personality". Personality is a temporary formation and to eternise it would be to eternise ignorance and limitation. The
true "I" is not the mental ego or the present personality which is only a mask, but the eternal "I" which assumes various personalities in various lives. The Christian and European conception of a single life on earth tends to bring about this error by making our present personality appear as if it were our whole self.. .. Again, it is not merely the bodily individuality to which ignorance ties
us, but the mental individuality and vital individuality also; All these ties have to be broken, the imperfect forms of mind and life transcended,
Page-40
mind transformed into something beyond mind, life into divine life, if the transformation is to be real and not merely a new shaping or heightening
of the lights of the Ignorance.
IV. "Cette solitude de 1′âme (de 1′ascète asiatique)…. n’est pas
le vrai loisir spirituel, la solitude active où s’opère la transformation du pèche en sainteté par 1′union de 1′âme avec Dieu dans une lumière intellectuelle toute pleine d’amour."
I have commented already on this description of the transformation to be effected and have to add only one more reserve. The solitude of the self in the Divine has no doubt to be active as well as passive and static; but none who has not arrived at the silence and motionless solitude of the eternal Self can have the free and integral activity of the higher divine Nature. For the action is based on the silence and by the silence it is free.
V. "..la vie chrétienne—mystique progressive qui est un enrichissement, un
élargissement infini de la personne humaine."
This is not our idea of transformation—for the human person is the mental
being limited by life and body. An enrichment and enlargement of it cannot go beyond the extreme limit of that formula, it can only widen and adorn its present poverty and narrowness. It cannot ascend out of the mental
Page-41
ignorance into a greater Truth and Light or bring that down in any fullness into earthly nature, which is the aim of transformation as we conceive it.
VI. "Pour 1′asiatique la personnalité est la chute de 1′homme; pour
le chrétien, c’est le dessein même de Dieu, le principe de 1′union, le sommet naturel de la création, qu’il appelle tout entière
à la Grace."
The personality of this single life in man is a formation in the Ignorance, therefore a fall; it cannot be the summit of the being. We do not admit
that it is the summit of the natural creation either, but say there are higher summits to which we have to climb and reveal their powers in earthly nature.
The natural creation is an evolution of the hidden Divine Consciousness in Nature which is limited
and disguised at first by the Ignorance. It has still to climb out of the
Ignorance—therefore to get beyond the human person into the divine person. It is in this spiritual evolution that the Plan Divine (dessein de Dieu) manifests its central and significant line and calls all creation to the crowning Grace.
You will see, therefore, that the resemblance of the transformation here to our ideal is only on the surface, in the words, but not in the content of the words which is much narrower and of another order. So far as there is agreement and coincidence,
Page-42
it is because there is contained in them what is common (a certain conversion of the consciousness) to all spiritual disciplines; for all, in the East or in the West, have a common core of experience—it is in their developments, range, turn to this or that aspect or else their will towards the totality of the Truth that they differ.
9-1-1936
Opening of Chakras in the Integral Yoga
and the Tantric Sadhana
IN our Yoga there is no willed opening of the chakras,
they open of themselves by the descent of the
Force. In the Tantric discipline they open from
down upwards, the Muladhar first; in our Yoga,
they open from up downward. But the ascent of the
force from the Muladhar does take place.
12-9-1933
Occultism and Occult Forces
OCCULTISM is the knowledge and right use of the
hidden forces of Nature.
Page-43
Occult forces are the forces that can only be
known by going behind the veil of apparent phenomena
—especially the forces of the subtle physical
and supraphysical planes.
10-3-1932
Occultism and Integral Yoga
AN activity on the astral plane in contact with the
astral Forces attended by a leaving of the body is
not a spiritual aim but belongs to the province of
occultism. It is not a part of the aim of Yoga. Also
fasting is not permissible in the Ashram, as its practice
is more often harmful than helpful to the spiritual
endeavour.
This aim suggested to you seems to be part of a
seeking for occult powers; such a seeking is looked
on with disfavour for the most part by spiritual
teachers in India, because it belongs to the inferior
planes and usually pushes the seeker on a path which
may lead him very far from the Divine. Especially, a contact with the forces and beings of the astral
(or, as we term it, the vital) plane is attended with
great dangers. The beings of this plane are often
Page-44
hostile to the true aim of spiritual life and establish
contact with the seeker and offer him powers
and occult experiences only in order that they
may lead him away from the spiritual path or else
that they may establish their own control over him or
take possession of him for their own purpose. Often,
representing themselves as divine powers, they mislead,
give erring suggestions and impulsions and pervert
the inner life. Many are those who, attracted
by these powers and beings of the vital plane, have
ended in a definitive spiritual fall or in mental and
physical perversion and disorder. One comes inevitably
into contact with the vital plane and enters
into it in the expansion of consciousness which
results from an inner opening, but one ought never
to put oneself into the hands of these beings and forces
or allow oneself to be led by their suggestions and
impulsions. This is one of the chief dangers of the
spiritual life and to be on one’s guard against it
is a necessity for the seeker if he wishes to arrive
at his goal. It is true that many supraphysical or
supernormal powers come with the expansion of the
consciousness in Yoga; to rise out of the body consciousness,
to act by subtle means on the supra-
physical planes, etc. are natural activities for the
Yogi. But these powers are not sought after, they
come naturally, and they have not the astral
Page-45
character. Also, they have to be used on purely spiritual
lines, that is by the Divine Will and the Divine
Force, as an instrument, but never as an instrumentation
of the forces and beings of the vital plane.
To seek their aid for such powers is a great error.
Prolonged fasting may lead to an excitation of the
nervous being which often brings vivid imaginations
and hallucinations that are taken for true experiences;
such fasting is frequently suggested by the
vital Entities, because it puts the consciousness
into an unbalanced state which favours their designs.
It is therefore discouraged here. The rule to be
followed is that laid down by the Gita which says
that "Yoga is not for one who eats too much or who
does not eat"—a moderate use of food sufficient for
the maintenance of health and strength of the body.
There is no brotherhood of the kind you describe
in India. There are Yogis who seek to acquire and
practise occult powers but it is as individuals learning
from an individual Master. Occult associations,
lodges, brotherhoods for such a purpose as described
by European occultists are not known in Asia.
As regards secrecy, a certain discretion or silence
about the instructions of the Guru and one’s own
experiences is always advisable, but an absolute
secrecy or making a mystery of these things is not.
Once a Guru is chosen, nothing must be concealed
Page-46
from him. The suggestion of absolute secrecy is often
a trick of the astral Powers to prevent the seeking for
enlightenment and succour.
Seeking for Powers and Realisation of Truth
ALL these "experiments" of yours are founded upon
the vital nature and the mind in connection with it;
working on this foundation, there is no security
against falsehood and fundamental error. No amount
of powers (small or great) developing can be a surety
against wandering from the Truth; and, if you allow
pride and arrogance and ostentation of power to
creep in and hold you, you will surely fall into error
and into the power of rajasic Maya and Avidya.
Our object is not to get powers, but to ascend towards
the divine Truth-Consciousness and bring its Truth
down into the lower members. With the Truth all
the necessary powers will come, not as one’s own,
but as the Divine’s. The contact with the Truth
cannot grow through rajasic mental and vital self-
assertion, but only through psychic purity and
surrender.
11-12-1931
Page-47
Capacity for Yoga of Orientals and Europeans
THE best way to answer your letter will be, I think,
to take separately the questions implied in it. I will
begin with the conclusion you have drawn of the
impossibility of the Yoga for a non-oriental nature.
I cannot see any ground for such a conclusion;
it is contrary to all experience. Europeans throughout
the centuries have practised with success spiritual
disciplines which were akin to Oriental Yoga
and have followed, too, ways of the inner life which
came to them from the East. Their non-oriental
nature did not stand in their way. The approach
and experiences of Plotinus and the European
mystics who derived from him were identical, as has
been shown recently, with the approach and experiences
of one type of Indian Yoga. Especially,
since the introduction of Christianity, Europeans
have followed its mystic disciplines which were one
in essence with those of Asia, however much they
may have differed in forms, names and symbols. If
the question be of Indian Yoga itself in its own characteristic
forms, here too the supposed inability is
contradicted by experience. In early times Greeks
and Scythians from the West as well as Chinese and
Japanese and Cambodians from the East followed
without difficulty Buddhist or Hindu disciplines;
Page-48
at the present day an increasing number of occidentals
have taken to Vedantic or Vaishnava or other Indian
spiritual practices and this objection of incapacity
or unsuitableness has never been made either from
the side of the disciples or from the side of the Masters.
I do not see, either, why there should be any
such unbridgeable gulf; for there is no essential
difference between the spiritual life in the East and
the spiritual life in the West; what difference there
is has always been of names, forms and symbols or
else of the emphasis laid on one special aim or another
or on one side or another of psychological experience.
Even here differences are often alleged which
do not exist or else are not so great as they appear. I
have seen it alleged by a Christian writer (who
does not seem to have shared your friend Angus’
objection to these scholastic small distinctions) that
Hindu spiritual thought and life acknowledged or
followed after only the Transcendent and neglected
the Immanent Divinity, while Christianity gave due
place to both Aspects; but in point of fact, Indian
spirituality, even if it laid the final stress on the
Highest beyond form and name, yet gave ample
recognition and place to the Divine immanent in
the world and the Divine immanent in the human being.
Indian spirituality has, it is true, a wider and
more minute knowledge behind it; it has followed
Page-49
hundreds of different paths, admitted every kind of
approach to the Divine and has thus been able to
enter into fields which are outside the less ample
scope of occidental practice; but that makes no
difference to the essentials, and it is the essentials
alone that matter.
Your explanation of the ability of many Westerners
to practise Indian Yoga seems to be that
they have a Hindu temperament in a European or
American body. As Gandhi is inwardly a moralistic
Westerner and Christian, you say, so the other
non-oriental members of the Ashram are essentially
Hindus in outlook. But what exactly is this Hindu
outlook? I have not myself seen anything in them
that can be so described nor has the Mother. My
own experience contradicts entirely your explanation.
I knew very well Sister Nivedita (she was for many
years a friend and a comrade in the political field)
and met Sister Christine,—the two closest European
disciples of Vivekananda. Both were Westerners to
the core and had nothing at all of the Hindu outlook;
although Sister Nivedita, an Irish woman, had the
power of penetrating by an intense sympathy into
the ways of life of the people around her, her own
nature remained non-oriental to the end. Yet
she found no difficulty in arriving at realisation on
the lines of Vedanta. Here in this Ashram I have
Page-50
found the members of it who came from the West
(I include especially those who have been here
longest) typically occidental with all the quality
and also all the difficulties of the Western mind and
temperament and they have had to cope with their
difficulties, just as the Indian members have been
obliged to struggle with the limitations and obstacles
created by their temperament and training. No
doubt, they have accepted in principle the conditions
of the Yoga, but they had no Hindu outlook when
they came and I do not think they have tried to
acquire one. Why should they do so? It is not the
Hindu outlook or the Western that fundamentally
matters in Yoga, but the psychic turn and the spiritual
urge, and these are the same everywhere.
What are the differences after all from the view-
point of Yoga between the sadhak of Indian and the
sadhak of occidental birth? You say the Indian has
his Yoga half done for him,—first, because he has
his psychic much more directly open to the Transcendent
Divine. Leaving out the adjective, (for it
is not many who are by nature drawn to the Transcendent,
most seek more readily the Personal the
Divine immanent here, especially if they can find it
in a human body,) there is there no doubt an
advantage. It arises simply from the strong survival
in India of an atmosphere of spiritual seeking and
Page-51
a long tradition of practice and experience, while
in Europe the atmosphere has been lost, the
tradition interrupted, and both have to be rebuilt.
There is an absence too of the essential doubt which
so much afflicts the minds of Europeans or, it may
be added, Europeanised Indians, although that
does not prevent a great activity of a practical and
very operative kind of doubt in the Indian sadhak.
But when you speak of indifference to fellow human
beings in any deeper aspect, I am unable to follow
your meaning. My own experience is that the
attachment to persons—to mother, father, wife,
children, friends—not out of sense of duty or social
relationship, but through close heart-ties is quite
as strong as in Europe and often more intense; it is
one of the great disturbing forces in the way, some
succumbing to the pull and many, even advanced
sadhaks, being still unable to get it out of their blood
and their vital fibre. The impulse to set up a "spiritual"
or a "psychic" relationship with others—very
usually covering a vital mixture which distracts
them from the one aim—is a persistently common
feature. There is no difference here between the
Western and Eastern human nature. Only the
teaching in India is of long standing that all must
be turned towards the Divine and everything else
either sacrificed or changed into a subordinate and
Page-52
ancillary movement or made by sublimation a first
step only towards the seeking for the Divine. This
no doubt helps the Indian sadhak if not to become
single-hearted at once, yet to orientate himself more
completely towards the goal. It is not always for
him the Divine alone, though that is considered
the highest state; but the Divine, chief and first, is easily grasped by him as the ideal.
The Indian sadhak has his own difficulties in his
approach to the Yoga—at least to this Yoga—
which a Westerner has in less measure. Those of
the occidental nature are born of the dominant
trend of the European mind in the immediate past.
A greater readiness of essential doubt and sceptical
reserve; a habit of mental activity as a necessity
of the nature which makes it more difficult to
achieve a complete mental silence; a stronger turn
towards outside things born of the plenitude of
active life (while the Indian commonly suffers from
defects born rather of a depressed or suppressed
vital force); a habit of mental and vital self-assertion
and sometimes an aggressively vigilant independence
which renders difficult any completeness of internal
surrender even to a greater Light and Knowledge,
even to the divine Influence—these are frequent
obstacles. But these things are not universal in
Westerners, and they are, on the other hand, present
Page-53
in many Indian sadhaks; they are, like the difficulties of the typical Indian nature, superstructural
formations, not the very grain of the being. They
cannot permanently stand in the way of the soul,
if the soul’s aspiration is strong and firm, if the
spiritual aim is the chief thing in the life. They
are impediments which the fire within can easily
burn away if the will to get rid of them is strong,
and which it will surely burn away in the end,—
though less easily,—even if the outer nature clings
long to them and justifies them—provided that
the fire, the central will, the deeper impulse is
behind all, real and sincere.
This conclusion of yours about the incapacity of
the non-oriental for Indian Yoga is simply born
of a too despondently acute sense of your own
difficulties; you have not seen those equally great
that have long troubled or are still troubling others,
Neither to Indian nor to European can the path
of Yoga be smooth and easy; their common human
nature is there to see to that. To each his own
difficulties seem enormous and radical and even
incurable by their continuity and persistence and
induce long periods of despondency and crises of
despair. To have faith enough or enough psychic
sight to react at once or almost at once and prevent
these attacks is given hardly to two or three in a
Page-54
hundred. But one ought not to settle down into a
fixed idea of one’s own incapacity or allow it to
become an obsession; for such an attitude has no
true justification and unnecessarily renders the
way harder. Where there is a soul that has once
become awake, there is surely a capacity within
that can outweigh all surface defects and can in the end conquer.
If your conclusion were true, the whole aim of this Yoga would be a vain thing; for we are not
working for a race or a people or a continent or
for a realisation of which only Indians or only
Orientals are capable. Our aim is not, either, to
found a religion or a school of philosophy or a school
of Yoga, but to create a ground and a way of spiritual growth and experience and a way which will
bring down a greater Truth beyond the mind but not inaccessible to the human
soul and consciousness. All can pass who are drawn to that Truth,
whether they are from India or elsewhere, from
the East or from the West. All may find great
difficulties in their personal or common human
nature; but it is not their physical origin or their
racial temperament that can be an insuperable
obstacle to their deliverance.
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Capacity for the Integral Yoga
ALL can do some kind of Yoga according to their
nature, if they have the will to it. But there are
few of whom it can be said that they have capacity
for this Yoga. Only some can develop a capacity,
others cannot.
16-8-1933
Call to the Path and Family Duties
As for your friend, it is not possible to say that she
can come here; for that depends on many things
which are not clearly present here. First, one must
enter this Path or it must be seen that one is called
to it; afterwards there is the question whether one
is meant for the Ashram life here. The question
about the family duties can be answered in this way —the family duties exist so long as one is in the
ordinary consciousness of the gṛhastha; if the call
to a spiritual life comes, whether one keeps to them
or not depends partly upon the way of Yoga one
follows, partly on one’s own spiritual necessity,
There are many who pursue inwardly the spiritual
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life and keep the family duties, not as social duties
but as a field for the practice of Karmayoga, others
abandon everything to follow the spiritual call
or line and they are justified if that is necessary
for the Yoga they practise or if that is the imperative demand of the soul within them.
Spiritual Life and Social Duties
I DON’T remember the context; but I suppose he
means that when one has to escape from the lower
dharma, one has often to renounce it so as to arrive
at a larger one, e.g., social duties, paying debts,
looking after family, help to serve your country
etc., etc. The man who turns to the spiritual life,
has to leave all that behind him, often and he is
reproached by lots of people for his adharma. But
if he does not do this adharma, he is bound for
ever to the lower life—for there is always some
duty there to be done—and cannot take up the
spiritual dharma or can do it only when he is old
and his faculties impaired.
14-9-1933
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Vairagya for Worldly Life and Call for
the Integral Yoga
THE difficulty is that she seems to have only
vairagya for worldly life without any knowledge or
special call for this Yoga, and this Yoga and the
life here are quite different things from ordinary
Yoga and ordinary Ashram. It is not a life of meditative retirement as elsewhere. Moreover, it
would be impossible for us to demand anything
without seeing her and knowing at close hand
what she is like. We are not just now for taking
more inmates into the Ashram except in a very few
cases.
Political and Social Controversies and Our Aim
You write as if what is going on in Europe were a
war between the powers of the Light and the powers
of Darkness—but that is no more so than during
the Great War. It is a fight between two kinds of
Ignorance. Our aim is to bring down a higher
Truth, but that Truth must be able to live by its
own strength and not depend upon the victory of
one or other of the forces of the Ignorance. That
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is the reason why we not to mix in political or
social controversies and struggles; it would simply keep down our endeavour to a
lower level and prevent the Truth from descending which is none of these things but has a quite different law
and basis. You speak of Brahmatej being overpowered by Kshatratej, but where is
that happening? None of the warring parties incarnate either.
17-2-1937
The Supramental Descent and Change of
the Earth-Consciousness
THERE is no proposal to transform the whole earth-
consciousness—it is simply to introduce the supramental principle there which will transform those
who can receive and embody it.
15-12-1936
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The Intermediate Glimmer and the Full Light
IT is the darkest nights that prepare the greatest
dawns—and it is so because it is into the deepest
inconscience of material life that we have to bring,
not an intermediate glimmer, but the full play of the
divine Light.
27-2-1932
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