Vol 2 contains letters in which Sri Aurobindo speaks about the practice of his system of Yoga.
Integral Yoga Sri Aurobindo : corresp.
Vol 2 contains letters in which Sri Aurobindo speaks about the practice of his system of Yoga. Four volumes of letters on the integral yoga, other spiritual paths, the problems of spiritual life, and related subjects. In these letters, Sri Aurobindo explains the foundations of his integral yoga, its fundamentals, its characteristic experiences and realisations, and its method of practice. He also discusses other spiritual paths and the difficulties of spiritual life. Related subjects include the place of human relationships in yoga; sadhana through meditation, work and devotion; reason, science, religion, morality, idealism and yoga; spiritual and occult knowledge; occult forces, beings and powers; destiny, karma, rebirth and survival. Sri Aurobindo wrote most of these letters in the 1930s to disciples living in his ashram. A considerable number of them are being published for the first time.
THEME/S
What you say is quite true. A simple, straight and sincere call and aspiration from the heart is the one important thing and more essential and effective than capacities. Also to get the consciousness to turn inwards, not remain outward-going is of great importance—to arrive at the inner call, the inner experience, the inner Presence.
The help you ask will be with you. Let the aspiration grow and open the inner consciousness altogether.
One has only to aspire sincerely and keep oneself as open as possible to the Mother's Force. Then whatever difficulties come, they will be overcome—it may take some time, but the result is sure.
One has to suppose that [the Mother's] force everywhere around and call it in—if one feels it, so much the better, but even otherwise if there is faith and power in the call, it can flow in.
One must rely on the Divine and yet do some enabling sadhana—the Divine gives the fruits, not by the measure of the sadhana but by the measure of the soul and its aspiration. Also worrying does no good—"I shall be this, I shall be that, what shall I be?" Say "I am ready to be not what I want, but what the Divine wants me to be"—all the rest should go on that base.
I mean by the measure of the soul's sincerity a yearning after the
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Divine and its aspiration towards the higher life.
But why allow anything to come in the way between you and the Divine, any idea, any incident; when you are in full aspiration and joy, let nothing count, nothing be of any importance except the Divine and your aspiration. If one wants the Divine quickly, absolutely, entirely, that must be the spirit of approach, absolute, all-engrossing, making that the one point with which nothing else must interfere.
What value have mental ideas about the Divine, ideas about what he should be, how he should act, how he should not act—they can only come in the way. Only the Divine Himself matters. When your consciousness embraces the Divine, then you can know what the Divine is, not before. Krishna is Krishna, one does not care what he did or did not do; only to see Him, meet Him, feel the Light, the Presence, the Love, the Ananda is what matters. So it is always for the spiritual aspiration—it is the law of the spiritual life.
Don't waste time any longer in these ideas of the mind or in any starts of the vital—blow these clouds away. Keep fixed on the one thing indispensable.
There is no deep meaning [of aspiration]—the meaning is plain. It is the call of the being for higher things—for the Divine, for all that belongs to the higher or Divine Consciousness.
It [aspiration] is the call in the being for the Divine or for the higher things that belong to the Divine Consciousness. (To "aspire" always means to call for higher things.)
Aspiration is a turning upward of the inner being with a call, yearning, prayer for the Divine, for the Truth, for the
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Consciousness, Peace, Ananda, Knowledge, descent of Divine Force or whatever else is the aim of one's endeavour.
Aspiration is to call the forces. When the forces have answered, there is a natural state of quiet receptivity concentrated but spontaneous.
Aspiration is a call to the Divine,—will is the pressure of a conscious force on Nature.
Aspiration is a call in the being, it is not opening.
The aspiration should be for the full descent of the Truth and the victory over falsehood in the world.
Aspire for the constant contact and the light. It is in the Light that the being will get organised in the Truth.
Aspire for your will to be one with the Divine will, concentrate in the heart and be plastic to whatever experience comes, neither forcing nor resisting any spiritual experience.
The aspiration for the supramental would be premature. What you have to aspire for is for the psychic change and the spiritual change of the whole being—which is the necessary condition before one can even think of the supramental.
To want to be a superman is a mistake, it only swells the ego.
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One can aspire for the Divine to bring about the supramental transformation, but that also should not be done till the being has become psychic and spiritualised by the descent of the Mother's peace, force, light and purity.
There is no need of words in aspiration. It can be expressed or unexpressed in words.
The aspiration need not be in the form of thought—it can be a feeling within that remains even when the mind is attending to the work.
It depends on the stage which one has reached. Personal aspiration is necessary until there is the condition in which all comes automatically and only a certain knowledge and assent is necessary for the development.
Even if there is no rising up, the aspiration connects you with the higher consciousness and helps or prepares to bring down something from it.
It [the higher consciousness] may not come exactly according to the aspiration, but the aspiration is not ineffective. It keeps the consciousness open, prevents an inert state of acquiescence in all that comes and exercises a sort of pull on the sources of the higher consciousness.
Aspiration during the period of experience is not so necessary.
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It is in the intervals that it should be there.
Why do you write "If I get" [aspiration]—one can always aspire. It is your mistake to think that everything must come of itself and nothing is within your own power to do. This kind of belief in the necessity of passivity to all movements should be thrown aside. Will, aspiration, surrender are things that you must do yourself—although even in doing them you must call in the Divine Power to help your will, aspiration and surrender and make them effective.
Why "getting" aspiration? Aspiration is an act of the will and one can always aspire.
Activity in aspiration, tapasya, rejection of the wrong forces, passivity to the true working, the working of the Mother's force are the right things in sadhana.
One has to aspire to the Divine and surrender and leave it to the Divine to do what is true and right with the Adhar once it is perfected.
Intense aspiration is always good, but let there also be calm and peace and joy in the mind and heart, and a confidence that all will be done in its due time.
There can be an intense but quiet aspiration which does not disturb the harmony of the inner being.
Yes—that is the way. The intensity of the aspiration brings
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the intensity of the experience and by repeated intensity of the experience the change.
The impatience and restless disquietude come from the vital which brings that even into the aspiration. The aspiration must be intense, calm and strong (that is the nature of the true vital also) and not restless and impatient,—then alone it can be stable.
It is the psychic that gives the true aspiration—if the vital is purified and subjected to the psychic, then the vital gives intensity—but if it is unpurified it brings in a rajasic intensity with impatience and reactions of depression and disappointment. As for the calm and equality needed, it must come down from above through the mind.
That [fiery aspiration] is all right, that is the psychic aspiration, the psychic fire. Where the vital comes in is in the impatience for result and dissatisfaction if the result is not immediate. That must cease.
One should be satisfied with what one gets and still aspire quietly, without struggle, for more—till all has come. No desire, no struggle—aspiration, faith, openness—and the grace.
There is no doubt the mixture of desire in what you do, even in your endeavour of sadhana, that is the difficulty. The desire brings a movement of impatient effort and a reaction of disappointment and revolt when difficulty is felt and the immediate result is not there and other confusing and disturbing feelings. Aspiration should be not a form of desire, but the feeling of an
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inner soul's need, and a quiet settled will to turn towards the Divine and seek the Divine. It is certainly not easy to get rid of this mixture of desire entirely—not easy for anyone; but when one has the will to do it, this also can be effected by the help of the sustaining Force.
If there are good desires, bad desires will come also. There is a place for will and aspiration, not for desire.
If there is desire there will be attachment, demand, craving, loss of equanimity, sorrow at not getting, all that is unyogic.
Pulling comes usually from a desire to get things for oneself—in aspiration there is a self-giving for the higher consciousness to descend and take possession—the more intense the call, the greater the self-giving.
It is certainly a mistake to bring down the light by force—to pull it down. The supramental cannot be taken by storm. When the time is ready it will open of itself—but first there is a great deal to be done and that must be done patiently and without haste.
Naturally the more one-pointed the aspiration the swifter the progress. The difficulty comes when either the vital with its desires or the physical with its past habitual movements comes in—as they do with almost everyone. It is then that the dryness and difficulty of spontaneous aspiration come. This dryness is a well-known obstacle in all sadhana. But one has to persist and not be discouraged. If one keeps the will fixed even in these barren periods, they pass and after their passage a greater force of aspiration and experience becomes possible.
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You are finding it still difficult to bear the interval periods when all is quiet and nothing being done on the surface. But such interval periods come to all and cannot be avoided. You must not cherish the suggestion that it is because of your want of aspiration or any other unfitness that it is so and, if you had the constant ardent aspiration, then there would be no such periods and there would be an uninterrupted stream of experiences. It is not so. Even if the aspiration were there, the interval periods would come. If even in them one can aspire, so much the better—but the main thing is to meet them with quietude and not become restless, depressed or despondent. A constant fire can be there only when a certain stage has been reached, that is when one is always inside consciously living in the psychic being, but for that all this preparation of the mind, vital, physical is necessary. For this fire belongs to the psychic and one cannot command it always merely by the mind's effort. The psychic has to be fully liberated and that is what the Force is working to make fully possible.
No doubt the true and strong aspiration is needed, but it is not a fact that the true thing is not there in you. If it had not been, the Force could not have worked in you. But this true thing was seated in the psychic and in the heart and whenever these were active in the meditation it showed itself. But for the sake of completeness the working had to come down into the physical consciousness and establish the quietude and the openness there. The physical consciousness is always in everybody in its own nature a little inert and in it a constant strong aspiration is not natural, it has to be created. But first there must be the opening, a purification, a fixed quietude, otherwise the physical vital will turn the strong aspiration into over-eagerness and impatience or rather it will try to give it that turn. Do not therefore be troubled if the state of the nature seems to you to be too neutral and quiet, not enough aspiration and movement in it. This is a passage necessary for the progress and the rest will come.
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Those who come here have an aspiration and a possibility—something in their psychic being pushes and if they follow it, they will arrive; but that is not conversion. Conversion is a definite turning of the being away from lower things towards the Divine.
Aspiration can lead hereafter to conversion; but aspiration is not conversion.
Conversion is a spontaneous movement of the consciousness, a turning of it away from external things towards the Divine. It comes usually as the result of a touch from within and above. Self-consecration may help to open one to the touch or the touch may come of itself. But conversion may also come as the culmination of a long process of aspiration and tapasya. There is no fixed rule in these things.
If the psychic being comes to the front, then conversion becomes easy or may come instantaneously or the conversion may bring the psychic being to the front. Here again there is no rule.
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