Champaklal Speaks

30 May 1935

Even though I know that I am very near to you and Mother by Thy Grace, why do I still doubt whether I am progressing or not?

It is the doubt that most or many are raising now in the Ashram. “Where am I? Where am I going? Am I really doing the Yoga? it seems to me I am getting nothing. There is no progress anywhere. All is dry and mechanical. What is the use of being here?” These are the thoughts that have been moving about in the atmosphere of the Ashram and when you get such thoughts, it means that they are coming to you as suggestions from the atmosphere. If they are in the minds of those you move with, it is natural they should try to enter you, but even otherwise they can come to you, just as people catch cold because the germs are in the atmosphere.

At times I feel I am working mechanically without faith and devotion, so why stay here? At times it seems such thoughts are false.

Your attitude is all right, but evidently you have allowed your mind to be clouded by the suggestions of which I have spoken above. The feeling of having lost all one had is one of them; the feeling that all is mechanical and uninteresting and it is no use being here is another. Of course they are all false. When one listens to the suggestions, then things begin to appear like that. These suggestions are natural to the ignorant physical or body consciousness in human nature, just as suggestions of vital passion and disturbance are natural to the ignorant vital consciousness in human nature. You had vital reactions but you did not allow them to overcome you or make you think yourself unfit for the Yoga, because you relied upon the Mother and did not yield to the contrary vital Force. Here also you will have to have constant reliance on the Mother and reject the suggestions of the physical consciousness in the atmosphere when they come.

30.5.1935

Sri Aurobindo