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Section Two
Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life
1911 1928 Extracts from Letters to the Mother and Paul Richard, 1911 c. 1922
To Paul Richard
[1]
I need some place of refuge in which I can complete my Yoga unassailed and build up other souls around me. It seems
to me that Pondicherry is the place appointed by those who are Beyond, but you know how much effort is needed to establish
the thing that is purposed upon the material plane. . . .
I am developing the necessary powers for bringing down the
spiritual on the material plane, and I am now able to put myself into men and change them, removing the darkness and bringing
light, giving them a new heart and a new mind. This I can do with great swiftness and completeness with those who are near
me, but I have also succeeded with men hundreds of miles away. I have also been given the power to read men’s characters and
hearts, even their thoughts, but this power is not yet absolutely complete, nor can I use it always and in all cases. The power of
guiding action by the mere exercise of will is also developing, but it is not so powerful as yet as the other. My communication
with the other world is yet of a troubled character, though I am certainly in communication with some very great powers. But
of all these things I will write more when the final obstacles in my way are cleared from the path.
What I perceive most clearly, is that the principal object of my Yoga is to remove absolutely and entirely every possible
source of error and ineffectiveness, of error in order that the Truth I shall eventually show to men may be perfect, and of ineffectiveness in order that the work of changing the world, so far as I have to assist it, may be entirely victorious and irresistible.
It is for this reason that I have been going through so long a discipline and that the more brilliant and mighty results of Yoga
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have been so long withheld. I have been kept busy laying down the foundation, a work severe and painful. It is only now that the
edifice is beginning to rise upon the sure and perfect foundation that has been laid.
12 July 1911 [2]
My Yoga is proceeding with great rapidity, but I defer writing to you of the results until certain experiments in which I am
now engaged, have yielded fruit sufficient to establish beyond dispute the theory and system of yoga which I have formed and
which is giving great results not only to me, but to the young men who are with me. . . . I expect these results within a month
if all goes well.
20 September 1911
[3]
A great silence and inhibition of action has been the atmosphere of my Yoga for the last year and it is only now beginning to lift from me. The most serious part of my difficulties,
— the
inward struggle, — is over; I have conquered, or rather One whose instrument I am has conquered for me. I am turning now
to the outward struggle, preparing my powers for it, awaiting the time and the signal to begin. The details I will not write to
you now; the hour has not yet struck; for the enemy in the subtle parts of the material world, although beaten, is still struggling
desperately to prevent my Yoga materialising in the objective plane. I await the issue of the struggle, towards which every day
of the Yoga brings me nearer with a long stride.
***
In spite of that, however, my work in its foundations proceeds. There are means in this world, fortunately for the humanity,
which Govts.. & authorities cannot touch or prevent. For the outward work, I see now, why it has been held back. It was
necessary for me to have myself a perfect knowledge & power before I seriously undertook it. My knowledge and my power
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are now making rapid strides towards the necessary perfection and, once that is secured, it will be impossible for the material
difficulties to remain.
18 December 1912
To the Mother and Paul Richard
[1]
All is always for [the] best, but it is sometimes from the external point of view an awkward best.
***
I had one of my etheric writings, “Build desolated Europe
into a city of God”. I give it [to] you for what it is worth. Perhaps it is only an aspiration of the powers that have brought about
your recall. But is not the whole world and not Europe only in a state of decomposition? As for the idea of a quiet country
somewhere in Asia, where does it exist? The whole earth is now under one law and answers to the same vibrations and I am sceptical of finding any place where the clash of the struggle will not pursue us. In any case, an effective retirement does not seem to
be my destiny. I must remain in touch with the world until I have either mastered adverse circumstances or succumbed or carried
on the struggle between the spiritual and physical so far as I am destined to carry it on. This is how I have always seen things and
still see them. As for failure, difficulty and apparent impossibility I am too much habituated to them to be much impressed by their
constant self-presentation except for passing moments.
***
One needs to have a calm heart, a settled will, entire
self-abnegation and the eyes constantly fixed on the beyond to live
undiscouraged in times like these which are truly a period of universal decomposition. For myself, I follow the Voice and
look neither to right nor to left of me. The result is not mine and hardly at all now even the labour.
6 May 1915
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[2]
Heaven we have possessed, but not the earth; but the fullness
of the yoga is to make, in the formula of the Veda, “Heaven and Earth equal and one”.
20 May 1915
[3]
Everything internal is ripe or ripening, but there is a sort of locked struggle in which neither side can make a very appreciable
advance (somewhat like the trench warfare in Europe), the spiritual force insisting against the resistance of the physical world,
that resistance disputing every inch and making more or less effective counter-attacks. . . . And if there were not the strength
and Ananda within, it would be harassing and disgusting work; but the eye of knowledge looks beyond and sees that it is only a
protracted episode.
28 July 1915
[4]
I have begun in the issue of the Arya which is just out a
number of articles on the Ideal of Human Unity. I intend to proceed very cautiously and not go very deep at first, but as if
I were leading the intelligence of the reader gradually towards the deeper meaning of unity,
— especially to discourage the idea
that mistakes uniformity and mechanical association for unity.
***
Nothing seems able to disturb the immobility of things and all that
is active outside our own selves is a sort of welter of dark and
sombre confusion from which nothing formed or luminous can emerge. It is a singular condition of the world, the very
definition of chaos with the superficial form of the old world resting apparently intact on the surface. But a chaos of long
disintegration or of some early new birth? It is the thing that is being fought out from day to day, but as yet without any
approach to a decision.
***
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These periods of stagnation always conceal work below the surface which produces some advance afterwards.
16 September 1915 [5]
Reflection, where there is no directing voice, thought or impulse, does not carry one any farther. It only makes the mind
travel continuously the round of [uncertain]1 possibilities.
_____
These things really depend on ourselves much more than on
outside factors. If we do not raise difficulties by our thoughts and mental constructions or do not confirm them if they rise, if
we have the calm and peace within and there is not that in us which excites the enemy to throw himself on us, then outward
possibilities, usually, will not concretise themselves.
_____
Our business at present is to gather spiritual force, calm
knowledge and joy regardless of the adverse powers and happenings around us so that when our work really begins we shall
be able to impose ourselves on the material world in which our work lies. (This [I] am slowly doing: you, I think, more rapidly.)
_____
I am always of the opinion that the internal must precede the external, otherwise whatever work we attempt beyond our
internal powers and knowledge is likely to fail or be broken.
_____
This is precisely my present struggle to get outside the circle
of forces and possibilities into the light of the Truth, the vijnana.
_____
Abdul Baha’s prevision is possibly correct, but at present it
seems to me to be put into too rigid a form. A centre of light, not necessarily translated into the terms of a physical grouping, but
in which a few can stand, an increasing circle of luminosity into which more & more can enter, and outside the twilight world
1 MS (copy) certain
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struggling with the light, this seems to be the inevitable course.
***
We live still more in the reflection of the light than in the light itself, and until we get nearer to the centre we cannot know.
***
The Scheme that was sent me seems to me to be a mental
construction formed largely under the influence of the environment. I do not think it could be put into practice; for the world
is not ready and if any such thing were attempted it would not be loyally initiated or loyally executed. . . . A change in the
heart of mankind, a new heart, would be necessary before any such scheme could at all serve the great ends we contemplate. I
would prefer a general breaking up to any premature formation, however harmful this dissolution might be.
18 November 1915 [6]
The experience you have described is Vedic in the real sense,2 though not one which would easily be recognised by the modern
systems of Yoga which call themselves [Vedic]3. It is the union of the “Earth” of the Veda and Purana with the divine Principle,
an earth which is said to be above our earth, that is to say, the physical being and consciousness of which this world and the
body are only _images. But the modern Yogas hardly recognise the possibility of a material union with the Divine.
31 December 1915 [7]
The difficulties you find in the spiritual progress are common to us all. In this Yoga the progress is always attended with these
relapses into the ordinary mentality until the whole being is so remoulded that it can no longer be affected either by any
2 See The Mother, Prayers and Meditations (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram,
2003), pp. 311 12; entry of 26 November 1915.
3 MS (copy) Yogic
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downward tendency in our own nature or by the impressions from the discordant world outside or even by the mental state of
those associated with us most closely in the Yoga. The ordinary Yoga is usually concentrated on a single aim and therefore less
exposed to such recoils; ours is so complex and many-sided and embraces such large aims that we cannot expect any smooth
progress until we near the completion of our effort, — especially as all the hostile forces in the spiritual world are in a constant
state of opposition and besiege our gains; for the complete victory of a single one of us would mean a general downfall among
them. In fact by our own unaided effort we could not hope to succeed. It is only in proportion as we come into a more and
more universal communion with the Highest that we can hope to overcome with any finality. For myself I have had to come
back so often from things that seemed to have been securely gained that it is only relatively that I can say of any part of my
Yoga, “It is done”. Still I have always found that when I recover from one of these recoils, it is always with a new spiritual gain
which might have been neglected or missed if I had remained securely in my former state of partial satisfaction. Especially, as
I have long had the map of my advance sketched out before me, I am able to measure my progress at each step and the
particular losses are compensated for by the clear consciousness of the general advance that has been made. The final goal is far
but the progress made in the face of so constant and massive an opposition is the guarantee of its being gained in the end.
But the time is in other hands than ours. Therefore I have put impatience and dissatisfaction far away from me.
An absolute equality of the mind and heart and a clear purity and calm strength in all the members of the being have long
been the primary condition on which the Power working in me has insisted with an inexhaustible patience and an undeviating
constancy of will which rejects all the efforts of other powers to hasten forward to the neglect of these first requisites. Wherever
they are impaired it returns upon them and works over and again over the weak points like a workman patiently mending
the defects of his work. These seem to me to be the foundation
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and condition of all the rest. As they become firmer and more complete the system is more able to hold consistently and vividly
the settled perception of the One in all things and beings, in all qualities, forces, happenings, in all this world-consciousness and
the play of its workings. That founds the Unity and upon it the deep satisfaction and the growing rapture of the Unity. It is
this to which our nature is most recalcitrant. It persists in the division, in the dualities, in the sorrow and unsatisfied passion
and labour, it finds it difficult to accustom itself to the divine largeness, joy and equipoise
— especially the vital and material
parts of our nature; it is they that pull down the mind which has accepted and even when it has long lived in the joy and
peace and oneness. That, I suppose, is why the religions and philosophies have had so strong a leaning to the condemnation
of Life and Matter and aimed at an escape instead of a victory. But the victory has to be won; the rebellious elements have to
be redeemed and transformed, not rejected or excised.
When the Unity has been well founded, the static half of
our work is done, but the active half remains. It is then that in the One we must see the Master and His Power,
— Krishna
and
Kali as I name them using the terms of our Indian religions; the Power occupying the whole of myself and my nature which
becomes Kali and ceases to be anything else, the Master using, directing, enjoying the Power to his ends, not mine, with that
which I call myself only as a centre of his universal existence and responding to its workings as a soul to the Soul, taking upon
itself his image until there is nothing left but Krishna and Kali. This is the stage I have reached in spite of all setbacks and recoils,
imperfectly indeed in the secureness and intensity of the state, but well enough in the general type. When that has been done,
then we may hope to found securely the play in us of his divine Knowledge governing the action of his divine Power. The rest is
the full opening up of the different planes of his world-play and the subjection of Matter and the body and the material world
to the law of the higher heavens of the Truth. To these things towards which in my earlier ignorance I used to press forward
impatiently before satisfying the first conditions — the effort,
Page – 290 however, was necessary and made the necessary preparation of the material instruments — I can now only look forward as a subsequent eventuality in a yet distant vista of things. To possess securely the Light and the Force of the supramental being, this is the main object to which the Power is now turning. But the remnant of the old habits of intellectual thought and mental will come so obstinate in their determination to remain that the progress is hampered, uncertain and always falls back from the little achievement already effected. They are no longer within me, they are blind, stupid, mechanical, incorrigible even when they perceive their incompetence, but they crowd round the mind and pour in their suggestions whenever it tries to remain open only to the supramental Light and the higher Command, so that the knowledge and the will reach the mind in a confused, distorted and often misleading form. It is, however, only a question of time: the siege will diminish in force and be finally dispelled. 23 June 1916
He wishes me to say that he sent back the MS according to your request because he felt that it was quite impossible for him to deal with it in the near future.4 He is now living entirely retired and engrossed in his yoga. He has put off all external activities and so organised his time as to be able entirely to concentrate upon it alone. He has removed from his immediate surroundings all who are out of harmony with the atmosphere necessary to the yogic quietude. He sees no one and receives no visits. His friends in Madras do not see him when they come. Even his old guru Vishnu Lele who proposed to come here at this time has been requested to postpone indefinitely his visit. For the same reason he has ceased altogether to write. His own works, even those of which the publication has been arranged, — except the few of which others take the responsibility and which make no demand on him, — are lying unpublished for want of time to
4 In this draft, Sri Aurobindo referred to himself in the third person because he intended the letter to be sent over the signature of his secretary. — Ed.
Page – 291 retouch them. It is not only that he does not wish but that he cannot any longer allow himself to be disturbed or interrupted by anything that would perturb the balance or break the mould of his present arrangement of his life or draw him aside from the concentration of his energies. All else must be postponed until he has finished what he has to do and is free again to apply himself to external things and activities. Under these conditions a work so considerable as the retranslation or revised translation of the “ Seigneur des Nations” becomes quite impossible. If he undertook it, he would not be able to carry it out. He hopes therefore that you will be able to make some other arrangement for it, as for the translations of your recent addresses which have been admirably done. Once you understand in the light of the above the conditions here, you can understand also why — apart from all other considerations — he is unable to assent to the suggestions in your letter.
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