Letters On Yoga - Part 4

Transformation of the Mind - IV

For one who wants to practise sadhana, sadhana must come first—reading and mental development can only be subordinate things.

Mental development may or may not help sadhana—if the mind is too intellectually developed on certain rationalistic lines, it may hinder.

Page 1270

I don't know that it [mental work] helps the sadhana and I don't quite understand what is meant by the phrase. What is a fact is that mental work like physical work can be made a part of the sadhana,—not as a rival to the sadhana or as another activity with equal rights and less selfish and egoistic than seeking the Divine.

It is obvious that poetry cannot be a substitute for sadhana; it can be an accompaniment only. If there is a feeling (of devotion, surrender etc.), it can express and confirm it; if there is an experience, it can express and strengthen the force of experience. As reading of books like the Upanishads or Gita or singing of devotional songs can help, especially at one state or another, so this can help also. Also it opens a passage between the external consciousness and the inner mind or vital. But if one stops at that, then nothing much is gained. Sadhana must be the main thing and sadhana means the purification of the nature, the consecration of the being, the opening of the psychic and the inner mind and vital, the contact and presence of the Divine, the realisation of the Divine in all things, surrender, devotion, the widening of the consciousness into the cosmic Consciousness, the Self one in all, the psychic and the spiritual transformation of the nature. If these things are neglected and only poetry and mental development and social contact occupy all the time, then that is not sadhana. Also the poetry must be written in the true spirit, not for fame or self-satisfaction, but as a means of contact with the Divine through inspiration or of the expression of one's own inner being as it was written formerly by those who left behind them so much devotional and spiritual poetry in India; it does not help if it is written only in the spirit of the western artist or litterateur. Even works or meditation cannot succeed unless they are done in the right spirit of consecration and spiritual aspiration gathering up the whole being and dominating all else. It is lack of this gathering up of the whole life and nature and turning it towards the one aim, which is the defect in so many here that lowers the atmosphere and stands in the way

Page 1271

of what is being done by myself and the Mother.

Study cannot take the same or a greater importance than sadhana.

If the power to meditate long is there, a sadhak will naturally do it and care little for reading—unless he has reached the stage when everything is part of the yogic consciousness because that is permanent. Sadhana is the aim of a sadhak, not mental development. But if he has spare time, those who have the mental turn will naturally spend it in reading or study of some kind.

Dhyāna and work are both helpful for this yoga to those who can do both. Reading also can be made helpful.

Half an hour's meditation in the day ought to be possible—if only to bring a concentrated habit into the consciousness which will help it, first to be less outward in work and, secondly, to develop a receptive tendency which can bear its fruits even in the work.

Yes, reading can be done for the improvement of the mental instrument as part of the sadhana.

In the beginning of the sadhana you need nothing more than just what you say, "concentration with faith, devotion and sincerity"

Page 1272

on a form of the Divine Being—you can add prayer or the name, if you like.

Reading good books can be of help in the early mental stage—they prepare the mind, put it in the right atmosphere, can even, if one is very sensitive, bring some glimpses of realisation on the mental plane. Afterwards the utility diminishes—you have to find every knowledge and experience in yourself.

This is quite a normal movement. In reading these books you get into touch with the Force behind them and it is this that pushes you into meditation and a corresponding experience.

Yes, if one has thought much of one kind of realisation and absorbed the idea deeply—then it is quite natural that the spiritual experience of it should be one of the first to come.

Your objection was to learning languages and specially French as inimical to peace and silence because it meant activity. The mind, when it is not in meditation or in complete silence, is always active with something or other—with its own ideas or desires or with other people or with things or with talking etc. None of these is any less an activity than learning languages. Now you shift your ground and say it is because owing to their study they have no time for meditation that you object. That is absurd, for if people want to meditate, they will arrange their time of study for that; if they don't want to meditate, the reason must be something else than study and if they don't study they will simply go on thinking about "small things". Want of time is not the cause of their non-meditation and pressure for study is not the cause.

Page 1273

Study and inner silence are good but develop one part of the being only—the inner silence can also support a wider work and life.

It [reading] does not take one inwards in any real sense—it only takes one from the more physical to the more mental part of the external consciousness.

A time must come when the reading as well as any other outward occupation does not interfere with the pressure or activity of the higher consciousness.

The reading must learn to accommodate itself to the pressure—that is, be done by the outer mind while the inner being remains in concentration.

That is good. Reading ought not to absorb the consciousness—there ought to be the larger part behind detached and conscious in a larger way.

You can remember at the beginning and offer your reading to the Divine and at the end again. There is a state of consciousness in which only a part of it is reading or doing the work and behind there is the consciousness of the Divine always.

When the passion for reading or study seizes hold of the mind, it is like that; one wants to spend all the time doing it. It is a force that wants to satisfy itself—like other forces—and takes hold of the consciousness for its purpose. One has to utilise these forces without letting them take hold; for this there must be the

Page 1274

central being always in control of the forces of Nature that come to it, deciding for itself the choice of what it shall accept, how use, how arrange their action. Otherwise each Force catches hold of some part of the personality (the student, the social man, the erotic man, the fighter) and uses and drives the being instead of being controlled and used by it.

The movements you describe are not peculiar to you, they are the natural turn of the vital mind and take similar forms in most people. In sadhana this mind has to be quieted like the rest and its energy controlled, transformed and put to proper purpose; but that takes time and comes only with the growth of the larger consciousness. The pressure of these movements is too normal for it to be a good cause for discouragement.

I do not think you should stop reading so long as the reading itself does not, as a passion, fall away from the mind; that happens when a higher order of consciousness and experiences begin within the being. Nor is it good to force yourself too much to do only the one work of painting. Such compulsion of the mind and vital tends usually either to be unsuccessful and make them more restless or else to create some kind of dullness and inertia.

For the work simply aspire for the Force to use you, put yourself inwardly in relation with the Mother when doing it and make it your aim to be the instrument for the expression of beauty without regard to personal fame or the praise and blame of others.

Writing itself on ordinary subjects has the externalising tendency unless one has got accustomed to write (whatever be the subject) with the inner consciousness detached and free from what the outer is doing.

It is not so easy to do mental work and do sadhana at the same time, for it is with the mind that the sadhana is done. If one gets

Page 1275

back from the mind as well as the body and lives in the inner Purusha consciousness then it is possible.

The only way is to separate the Prakriti and Purusha. When you feel something within watching all the mental activities but separate from them, just as you can watch things going on outside in the street, then that is the separation of Purusha from mental Prakriti.

That only means that you cannot separate yourself from your mental consciousness in its activity. Naturally, if you take your mental consciousness off the reading, you can't understand what is being read, for it is with the mental consciousness that one understands. You have not to make the mental consciousness separate from the reading, but yourself separate from the mental consciousness. You have to be the Witness watching it reading or writing or talking, just as you watch the body acting or moving.