Life of Sri Aurobindo

Appendix 2: Dilip Kumar Roy’s Interview

[Condensed from Dilip Kumar Roy, Among the Great (Bombay: Jaico
Publishing House, 1950), pp. 320-59.)]

May I be permitted to begin with what Sri Aurobindo has since explained to me in a letter? The context is this: a friend of mine was visited in an omnibus (where she had no friend to help) with a terrible heart-attack of thrombosis and felt she was dying. She prayed to Sri Aurobindo and Mother and lo, she was cured "miraculously" and that in five minutes with not a trace of weakness left! She was impressed because thrombosis attacks leave their victims weak as waifs. I wrote to Sri Aurobindo whether she was imagining things or whether the Mother had actually been aware of her appeal for help. To this Sri Aurobindo wrote back in a letter dated 24th March 1949:

“As to the experience, certainly X‘s call for help did reach the Mother, even though all the details she relates in her letter might not have been present to the Mother’s physical mind. Always calls of this kind are coming to the Mother, sometimes a hundred close upon each other and always the answer is given. The occasions are of all kinds, but whatever the need that occasions the call, the Force is there to answer it. That is the principle of this action on the occult plane. It is not of the same kind as an ordinary human action and does not need a written or oral communication from the one who calls; an interchange of psychic communication is quite sufficient to set the Force at work. At the same time it is not an impersonal Force and the suggestion of a divine energy that is there ready to answer and satisfy anybody who calls it is not at all relevant here. It is something personal to the Mother and if she had not this power and this kind of action she would not be able to do her work; but this is quite different from the outside practical working on the material plane where the methods must necessarily be different, although the occult working and the material working can and do join and the occult power give to the material working its utmost efficacy. ….”

Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother: Calling the Mother in Difficulty

Now for the personal experience:

I returned to Calcutta from Pondicherry in 1924 in a state of mind where the last traces of optimism, not to mention self-confidence, had been expunged now that there was no prospect of initiation in the near future. Do what I would, I could not keep my mind from brooding on his last words tantamount to a rebuff: "Yours is still a mental seeking: for my Yoga something more is needed.". . .

... At this juncture I heard a lecture of Swami Abhedananda, a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna. He spoke among other things of vairdgya mevabhayam and explained forcefully why turning away from life must mean deliverance from fear and bondage. I approached him and he kindly agreed to give me diksa – that is, initiation. But a friend of mine, a quondam disciple of Sri Aurobindo, intervened at the psychological moment and took me to consult a friend of his, a Yogi with remarkable occult powers. It was in a far-off village where we had to be his guests for the night. I told him how desperate was my need of a Guru and sought his advice. "Sit down and close your eyes," was all the answer he made. A little nettled, I obeyed all the same.

I don't know how long we sat there with closed eyes for a deepening peace had made me lose count of the passage of time; it filled every crevice of my thirsty soul. My friend gave me a nudge. I opened my eyes to meet my host's scrutinizing me. He smiled.

"But why are you hunting for a guru," he asked me abruptly, "now that Sri Aurobindo himself has accepted you?"

"But how can that be?" I asked sceptically. "I told you he hasn't."

"But I tell you he has."

My heart skipped a beat. "I don't understand," I faltered out. "Will you have the goodness to be a little more explicit?"

"But it is simplicity itself," he returned bluntly with a half smile; then, appraising me for a second or two, added almost casually: "He just appeared there – yes, just behind you – and told me to advise you to wait. He asked me to tell you that he would draw you to him as soon as you were ready. Is that explicit enough?"

His eyes twinkled in irony. I was puzzled: was he laughing at me – but then –"Look here," he chimed in his downright way, "shall I tell you something more convincing still?"

I held his eyes. . . . My heart beat faster.

He seemed to deliberate for a moment before he added: "Tell me: do you happen to have some ailment in your left abdomen?"

I stared at him in blank surprise. "But how did you know?"

"I didn't – that is, not before he told me."

"T – told you?" I stammered. "B – but who?"

He smiled in evident amusement. "Who else but your Guru – who came to tell me that you had already been advised by him to wait till the ailment was cured before you practised Yoga." He paused for a moment and then added: "But what is it?" "It – it's hernia. A tug-of-war caused the rupture."

He beamed, a picture of complacency. "That explains it. For Yoga will mean pressure on these parts, the vitals. Maybe that's why he asked you to wait till it healed up."

"There you are wrong." I demurred. "For he told me that my seeking was still a mental one." Then I related to him the gist of our conversation in Pondicherry.

He listened very attentively and when I had come to the end of my story looked very kindly at me and said: "It's quite clear now. He wanted you to wait till you recognised in him your Guru. You don't today, evidently; for otherwise you wouldn't have dreamed even of going to another for guidance." He then went on to tell me many things about the forces that acted in and through Yoga, about Guruvada, about the hindrance of mental preconceptions and above all about the greatness of Sri Aurobindo and his, endeavour to invoke a Force – the Supramental descent for which our minds and the earth-consciousness were still far from ready. He told me also how he had visioned in his meditations "the greatest Yogi of this age" (Yugavatar was the word he used) and how he had seen also "the Mother" who was at once his disciple and collaborator of identical status. Lastly, he gave me some excellent practical directions as to how I might best profit by Sri Aurobindo's help during my novitiate. I do not remember all that he told me but I will never forget his final warning.

"You have been called," he said. "But remember it is even more difficult to be chosen. For that you will have to surrender your will utterly to your Guru so that he may mould you as he will but not as you will, mind you. For this you must have faith– a complete faith in his superior wisdom, not only because he is your Guru but also because he has attained the peak of occult powers."

Yoga-bibhuti was the word he used.

I was thrilled. For I had never yet come face to face with "occult powers" and such verifiable powers at that. I was especially impressed by the fact that he had told me the precise advice Sri Aurobindo had given me – a disciple of his, Moni, had communicated this to me in 1924 – though I still wondered whether the assurance about Sri Aurobindo's waiting till I was ready for surrender might not, after all, be too good to be true! And last, though by no means least, I was now delivered once and for all from my sense of responsibility which, like a cruel horseman, kept goading me all the time to be more alert in my aspiration. . . .

And I went to Pondicherry for the second time in August, 1928. But I was not a little crestfallen to learn that Sri Aurobindo had in the meanwhile gone into seclusion and made it a rule to see none except on three days in the year and even then he would not speak with them, they could only see him, make him their obeisance and then pass on in a file. But, I heard, the presiding deity of the Ashram – "the Mother", as they called her – had accepted to guide, in consultation with Sri Aurobindo, all who came and I was told that she was a radiant personality adored of all the inmates of the Ashram and looked upon by the disciples as the equal of the great Yogi. So I sought an interview with her after the darshan day as it was called. She was exceedingly kind to me and listened to me with great sympathy. I was charmed by her personality at once effulgent and soothing. . . .

... I felt overjoyed but told her, somewhat ruefully, that I had never yet had what is popularly termed "an experience" and that this made me doubt whether Yoga could be utterly convincing to a sceptic like myself. She only smiled and said she would try and told me to meditate in my room at nine in the evening when she would do the same in hers.

. . . One thing I was determined to be: watchful; in other words, not to accept any experience that might come. I had little use for the credulity of the devout and had a rooted aversion to accept as authentic any experience which might be explained away as auto-suggestion. The thing must be as concrete and indubitable as sense-experience before I could possibly admit it as valid. . . . I am at pains to stress this because what did come was so utterly unexpected as to rule out all auto-suggestion or wishful thinking. At all events, I was convinced that a Force was acting like a ferment within me which was too concrete to be dismissed.

The next day I surrendered to the Mother my will to be moulded by her and Sri Aurobindo. I was accepted and came finally to follow their lead three months later, on the 22nd November, to be more precise, dedicating all I had to what I have learned to love more and more as the holiest cause to which I could possibly consecrate my life. . . .

On February 4, 1943 I entered his room, the sanctum from which he had never once stirred out since 1926, and made my obeisance. He blessed me.

"Feeling better?" he asked, his eyes soft with kindness.

"Yes," I answered with some difficulty. I was moved. He bent his starry eyes on me expectantly. But not a word came to my lips. This was unusual with me for I had come equipped with a quiverful of questions. He came to my help and broke the silence, to put me at my ease. .

"You sent me some questions in writing this morning," he said. "Suppose we start with the first?"

I nodded and hung on his every word. . . .

"As to your first question," he said, "there are, broadly, two ways. One is that of Buddha who held, as you know, that although you may get some help or guidance from others, Guru or not, you will have to tread the Path alone, that is, hewing your way out of the wood with your own effort: in other words, the time-old path of tapasya. The other way is to take the Guru as a Representative of the Divine who knows the Way and therefore is in a position, obviously, to help others in finding it. That is the path followed by the aspirants here, in the Ashram – the path of Guruvad."

I nodded and said: "I know that. But I asked you in one of my questions: what should be one's attitude when one feels oneself held up by certain human limitations of the Guru?". . .

. . . "But I think I have gone into the question before and said that though something is determined by the power of the channel – that is to say, the Guru – much more is determined by that of the recipient, the disciple." He paused and gave me a half smile as he went on: "You see, the modem mind often makes a mental muddle in such questions for the simple reason that in the way of the Spirit the Force that works things out does not achieve its results on the lines laid down by mental reason. That is why it fails to appreciate this simple fact that once the disciple accepts the Guru as a Representative of the Divine, the Divine too accepts him through the Guru: put differently, when he opens to the Guru he opens to the Divine so that the Guru can, in spite of his 'human limitations' help him by the simple process of invoking a Force that acts through the Guru's personality – a Force which is not dwarfed by his human limitations. I wrote to you also once, I think, that the Guru's imperfections need be no stumbling block to a disciple who may contact the Divine through the Guru even before the Guru himself; so what matters, in the last analysis, is the Guru's spiritual capacity to get him the desired contact and not his human limitations – because these don't block the way. Do you follow?"

The next question was about certain occult phenomena like materialisation or levitation. I had had a discussion with a friend to whom he had said, when told of my scepticism, that these were by no means all trickery and humbug as contended by many dogmatic scientists. ...

"But you needn't be alarmed," he put in placidly. "For Yoga has for its ultimate object the realisation of the Divine and achieving the Divine life. These are side-issues and as such need not be looked upon as germane to spiritual experience. So belief in them is not necessary, far less indispensable for realisation. You have the right of private judgment in matters such as these."

My heart-beat abated, and I said: "I am very much relieved. For I feared lest the inability to accept the Guru's view in every instance be looked upon by the Guru as a sure sign of one's unfitness to profit by the master's guidance."

"You may be reassured once more," he said kindly. "For you can take it from me that when I say or write anything it's only to state my findings or else explain my point of view. I don't insist on it as a law for others. And can you imagine, knowing me as you do all these years, that I should impose my outlook on others? I have never cared to be a dictator; neither do I insist that everybody's views must be moulded by mine, any more than I insist that everybody must follow me or my Yoga." He paused and pointed at a bronze image in front. "For instance," he added, "I find that image very beautiful. But if you disagree why should I mind?". . .

". . . But," I hastened to add: "I revere you so much that even to have to differ from you on a small matter causes me a pang. . . . I want my mind to abdicate. But where is the new ruler whom I am to put on its throne. . . ?"

He gave me a long look, then said: "It would be easier for the mind to get the new light if it didn't insist as it does that its old Ruler, Reason, was fully capable of coping with the situation. For, boiled down, it comes to an insistence, really, that the mind was the ultimate judge of all experience. But spiritual experience has it that you can never hope to understand – get to the root of – anything by your mind alone. The mind by its very constitution is unable to apprehend more than a very small fraction of the Divine reality and its action. Of this action occult phenomena is an instance in point. You cannot understand the true nature of such phenomena with your mental probings and since this is a fact, it would be better if instead of dismissing them as fraud you could suspend your judgment till you became competent to judge. For this deeper judgment only comes through the dawn of a greater consciousness by whose light alone can you hope to understand Divine action behind its terrestrial or occult disguises."

"But – I mean – it's all right in theory," I still demurred, "but when one is actually confronted – for instance, take the case of Sri Bijoy Goswami who said that his Guru had spirited away his wife to a far off place across the sky. Do you mean to say that it can be authentic or possible?"

"Whether what he claimed did happen in his wife's case is more than I can tell you," he answered. "But since levitation has been seen to be possible and can be verified by the Yogis and has been, I don't see how it can be dismissed out of hand as impossible. Thousands of experiences testify to phenomena which utterly baffle the mind. For when all is said and done, experience is and must be the last touchstone of reality and experience has it that levitation or materialisation is possible–"There," I interjected, "You have just anticipated me. For, I was going to ask you precisely about materialisation. One hears of such occurrences but I have so far met none who has seen these with his own eyes. One must have reliable evidence you know – not merely hearsay –"

He smiled and said: "Let me tell you then what I have seen with my own eyes if only to obviate your objection about the hearsay evidence. And it was an occurrence witnessed to by at least half-a-dozen people besides, who were with me.". . . ;

"The stone-throwing began unobtrusively with a few stones thrown at the guest-house kitchen – apparently from the terrace opposite, but there was no one there. The phenomenon began at the fall of dusk and continued at first for half-an-hour, but daily it increased in frequency, violence and size of the stones, and the duration of the attack increased also, sometimes lasting for several hours until, towards the end, in the hour or half hour before midnight, it became a regular bombardment; and now it was no longer at the kitchen only but thrown in other places as well: for example, the outer verandah. At first we took it for a human-made affair and sent for the police, but the investigation lasted only for a short time and when one of the constables in the verandah got a stone whizzing unaccountably between his two legs, the police abandoned the case in a panic. We made our own investigations, but the places whence the stones seemed to be or might be coming were void of human stone-throwers. Finally, as if to put us kindly out of doubt, the stones began falling inside closed rooms; one of these – it was a huge one and I saw it immediately after it fell – reposed flat and comfortable on a cane table as if that was its proper resting place. And so it went on till the missiles became murderous. Hitherto the stones had been harmless except for a daily battering of Bijoy's door – during the last days – which I watched the night before the end. They appeared in mid-air, a few feet above the ground, not coming from a distance but suddenly manifesting and, from the direction from which they flew, should have been thrown close in from the compound of the guest-house or the verandah itself, but the whole place was in clear light and I saw that there was no human being there nor could have been. At last the semi-idiot boy servant who was the centre of the attack and was sheltered in Bijoy's room under his protection, began to be severely hit and was bleeding from a wound by stones materialising inside the closed room. I went in at Bijoy's call and saw the last stone fall on the boy: Bijoy and he were sitting side by side and the stone was thrown at them in front but there was no one visible to throw it – the two were alone in the room. So unless it was Wells' Invisible Man – !

"So far we had only been watching or scouting around, but this was a little too much, it was becoming dangerous and something had to be done about it. The Mother, from her knowledge of the process of these things, decided that the process here must depend on a nexus between the boy servant and the house, so if the nexus were broken and the servant separated from the house, the stone-throwing would cease. We sent him away to Hrishikesh's place and immediately the whole phenomenon ceased; not a single stone was thrown after that and peace reigned.

"That showed . . . that these occult phenomena are real, have a law or process as definite as that of any scientific operation and that the knowledge of the processes can not only bring them about but put an end to or annul them."

(I must pause here to be able to explain the episode for the general reader. I was told afterwards by Amrita, who had been an eye-witness of the whole drama that all this had happened in mid-winter in 1921 day after day. And fortunately, he had kept a record of the whole incident which he showed me. From this I gathered that a cook called Vattal was the author of the mischief. Infuriated for having been dismissed, the fellow had threatened that he would make the place too hot for those who remained. And he went for help to a Mussalman Faqir who was versed in black magic, and then it all began. I asked Amrita whether the stones could have been illusory. He smiled and said he had had them collected and kept as exhibits for months and that they had a very curious feature in that they were all covered with moss. I was also told that among those who were then on the spot there was the rationalist stalwart Upendra Nath Banerji who had at first pooh-poohed the black-magic story and girded up his loins to unearth the miscreants who were responsible for it all. But even he had to confess himself beaten in the end as he could not make any sense out of the strange episode. But it all transpired when Vattal's wife came in an extremity of despair and threw herself at the mercy of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Her husband had realised that nemesis had overtaken him for he knew occultism enough to realise that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had hurled the force back. When such occult forces are aroused against one who can repel them they inevitably recoil back upon the head of its original author. So her husband had fallen desperately sick. Sri Aurobindo in his generosity forgave the fellow and said in Amrita's presence: "For this he need not die." The black magician recovered after that.)

"So you see," he said, at the end of his narration, "the Mother who had studied occultism in North Africa could understand it all because of her deep occult knowledge."

"And you?"

He smiled but deliberated for a split second before he answered: "I too have had hundreds of personal experiences about occult forces."

"What about the question of levitation?"

“I take levitation as an acceptable idea, because I have had myself experience of the natural energies which if developed would bring it about and also physical experiences which would not have been possible if the principle of levitation were untrue.”

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram: The Principle of Levitation

"But why is it then," I asked after a slight pause, "that the modern mind is so definitely against accepting such experiences as valid?"

"I have answered that question in my various writings," he answered, "and have said there that the mind is an instrument of Ignorance growing towards knowledge. This does not mean that mind has no place at all in the spiritual life; but it does mean that it cannot be even the main instrument much less the authority to whose judgment all must submit themselves including the Divine. Mind must learn from the greater consciousness it is approaching and not impose its own standards on it. ... The popular notion that you can judge what is beyond the ordinary consciousness when you are still in the ordinary consciousness is untenable. So the best way is to make your mind as passive as you can and open to the Truth delivered from these preconceptions. The thing is to grow in consciousness as to be able to realise the higher truths. If you can do that and let your psychic being take the lead, it will, in due time, lead you to the opening you seek where the mind with its half-lit consciousness will no longer circumscribe your vision because a higher Light, descending from above," he pointed at a region above his head, "will then take its place and knowledge will pour in from the higher reaches of the mind up to Overmind and Supermind. That is my Yoga, as you know."

I nodded without enthusiasm. "I know," I answered, "and I see, too, that 'mental passivity' is likely to be helpful if one can but achieve it. But my difficulty is that my mind is too refractory to abdicate obligingly. And then," I hesitated for a split second and added: "the difficulty is by no means lessened when I catch myself wondering. . . whether mental questioning too may not have some use . . . serving some purpose! At such moments I would ask myself if... if even our doubts too might not be helpful through the very suffering they entailed. ..."

The next day I wrote to him confessing my inability to recapture what he had answered apropos and went on to explain what had been at the back of my mind. In conclusion I asked him if he would be so kind as to write from memory what he had said hereanent reminding him about what he had written in his Life Divine with regard to "grief, pain, suffering, error" etc. ...

. . . [Sri Aurobindo replied:]

“I don’t think mere doubt can bring any gain; mental questioning can bring gains if it is in pursuit of truth, but questioning just for the sake of sceptical questioning or in a pure spirit of contradiction can only bring, when it is directed against the truths of the spirit, either error or a lasting incertitude. If I am always questioning the Light when it comes and refusing its offer of truth, the Light cannot stay in me, cannot settle; eventually, finding no welcome and no foundation in the mind, it will retire. One has to push forward into the Light, not be always falling back into the darkness and hugging the darkness in the delusion that that is the real light. Whatever fulfilment one may feel in pain or in doubt belongs to the Ignorance; the real fulfilment is in the divine joy and the divine Truth and its certitude and it is that for which the Yogin strives. In the strife he may have to pass through doubt, not by his own choice or will, but because there is still imperfection in his knowledge”.

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: Depression and Despondency

The next question I asked was whether mental evolution might not on occasion hinder the psychic evolution.

"It may and very often does," he answered, "especially if the attitude is wrong; that is, if the mind presumes that it is the last term of our personality. The reason I have told you before. It is that the higher Light which comes to expedite the evolution invites our co-operation. Consequently if the pride of the mind and vital in the surface mental ideas declines to make room for it it cannot effect an entry. That is why I have told you more than once, I think, that in the realm of the Spirit it is only when one knows that one is ignorant that one really begins to know. For so long as one is unwilling to go beyond the mind one is unlikely to have any but the vaguest ideas of the higher functions of the consciousness. For instance, men who live and are content to live in the mental, regard themselves generally as physical beings or beings of life or mental beings without feeling any urge to posit a soul. For, they don't feel it except perhaps in the hope that it is something which survives the dissolution of the body. But beyond this they are not prepared to go for the simple reason that they have not experienced the soul as distinct from the mind. So these," he added, "identify themselves with their mental beings and assert that the soul is a fiction because they don't feel they have any souls. And this happens so long as the psychic being remains still veiled – behind.". . .

I nodded somewhat sadly and answered: "But it is one thing to understand but quite another to do the bidding of the undertanding. What I mean is that though I see the wisdom of getting the mind to help, yet I find it enormously difficult to achieve the plasticity you advocate. So why not give me some practical hints as to how I am to set about it?"

: ". . . Didn't I advise you in so many of my letters to get into contact with your inner being, to try to live within, to take the help of your poetry and music, for instance, because these promote your devotion – bhakti – and help you take up the right attitude? I have told you – and you have known this too – how much easier it becomes to tread the psychic path, the sunlit path, when one's attitude is right, since it becomes then ever so much easier for the psychic being to come to the front. And I have told you also, so many times, that the more your psychic being comes to the fore, the less difficult will become the task of transformation of the human nature into its divine absolute. That is why I have always enjoined on you to follow this path – the path of devotion, service and work – since it is easier for your nature to follow this path than any other."

"I follow all that intellectually, you may be sure," I answered ruefully. "Only – well, I find this path anything but easy, as I too have told you again and again. My mental and vital self-will
simply keeps butting in and spoiling all and there I find myself in a quandary taking always the wrong view of things. . . .

". . . The thing is – I mean I simply can't retain the – the psychic attitude. Why can't I?"

"I can answer that. It's because your vital gets restless through impatience and then your mental starts fidgeting and questioning – didn't I tell you all that before?". . .

"But what about the way of knowledge to quieten the mind?"

"Well, there are several approved techniques – for those, I mean who are called to tread the path. The one Vivekananda followed, for instance. You know that process, don't you?"

"I have read about it in his Rajayoga."

(Here is what the great Vedantin wrote: "The first lesson, then, is to sit for some time and let the mind run on. The mind is bubbling up all the time. It is like a monkey jumping about. Let the monkey jump as much as he can; you simply wait and watch. ... Until you know what the mind is doing you can't control it. Give it rein. . . . You will find that each day it is becoming calmer . . . until at last the mind will be under perfect control. . . .")

"Well, that is one way of achieving mastery over your thoughts," Sri Aurobindo said after explaining the process. "There are others. Lele, for instance, showed me one. 'Make your mind quiet,' he told me, 'don't think actively. Then you will see that the thoughts you believe to be yours come from outside; throw them away as they come and your mind will fall silent.' I had never heard of such a thing before. But I did not question the possibility nor doubt the truth of it. I accepted what he told me and made my mind inactive, only watching what thoughts were coming and whence. Then I saw a wonderful thing: the mind as a whole silent and single thoughts coming, indeed, from outside! And I threw these away before they could enter the aura of my mind. Thus in three days I was free from all thoughts and my mental became universal and liberated, and I became the master of the incoming thoughts and no longer their puppet, since I could choose the ones I would and reject the rest. ...

"But in your case . . . you would be better advised to follow the psychic way, as I told you before."

"But I do try," I returned, "through my music and poetry as you put it specifically, and you know very well too how hard I have worked on those lines. But the difficulty is – and. it is a growing one, I fear – that these activities satisfy me no longer, as I wrote to you so many times in the past. For do what I will, I simply can't get rid of a feeling that such activities are – how shall I put it – well, pointless, in the last analysis, like games you don't enjoy and yet you have to pretend you do."

"I know," he answered after a thoughtful pause, "it is the old trend of vairagya which has taken root somewhere in your nature." He paused and looked at me fixedly as he added: "Personally, I do not care for vairagya as you know. I have always preferred the way of samata – equality – of the Gita, in which one is not attached to or bound by anything.". . .

". . . And yet," I added, "the curious and somewhat embarrassing part of it is that others seem to feel that I am a radiant crystal of joy and faith and strength even when I am, in dull earnest, just sad and weak and lonely. How is that?"

"That's simple enough," he said, "they only come in contact with your inner being in which these are sparkling all right. ..."

(When he said this I was reminded of a curious experience in 1936....)

He seemed to read my thoughts. For he said: "Such things do happen in the spiritual field – things which the mind finds difficult to conceive. I will give you an instance. It is a fact of spiritual experience that the Guru may even be less than the disciple and yet able to help; he may even be instrumental in imparting to his disciple what he never himself realised.". ...

"Well," I apologised a little abashed, "I didn't exactly doubt your word, only I wondered – how shall I put it – I mean I asked myself whether it was a concrete Force you had meant when you speak about it."

Concrete? what do you mean by “concrete”? It [spiritual force] has its own concreteness; it can take a form (like a stream for instance) of which one is aware and can send it quite concretely in whatever “direction” or on whatever object one chooses.

This is a statement of fact about the power inherent in spiritual consciousness. What I was speaking of was a willed use of any subtle force (it may be spiritual or mental or vital) to secure a particular result at some point in the world. Just as there are waves of unseen physical forces (cosmic waves etc.) or currents of electricity, so there are mind waves, thought currents, waves of emotion, e.g. anger, sorrow, etc., which go out and affect others without their knowing whence they come or that they come at all—they only feel the result. One who has the occult or inner senses awake can feel them coming and invading him. Influences good or bad can propagate themselves in that way; that can happen without intention, automatically, but also a deliberate use can be made of them. There can also be a purposeful generation of force, spiritual or other. There can be too the use of the effective will or idea acting directly without the aid of any outward action, speech or other instrumentation which is not concrete in that sense, but is all the same effective.

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II: The Divine Force

As he warmed up his face looked more radiant than ever and I felt a thrill coursing through my spine. And, in a moment, I caught the contagion of his power and felt as though I had been transformed into a being of certitude! The darkness of doubt now seemed, suddenly, so alien! But above all that wonder and exaltation, above the incredible intoxication of drinking in his words face to face there was a feeling of awe that such an incarnation of power and wisdom should be talking to me face to face as a friend! But I felt no pride, only a deep humility, which is shy to the point of declining an invitation, that such a being made of the stuff of Light and Love should have given me the right to laugh with him, to exchange views – even to break a lance with him as a comrade might! . . . A lull intervened and I wondered what was coming next. But he said nothing. I met his eyes and then looked away. Still he did not speak. I then made a strange move which I can't explain. I blurted out a pointblank question apropos of nothing at all. I darted a glance, at him and said: "When are you going to come out?"

He smiled and answered: "I don't know."

"How do you mean? Surely you must be knowing?"

He laughed. "Not in the way you know," he said looking intently at me. He paused for a split second, then added, tantalisingly: "For I stand no longer on the mental plane. I do not decide from the mind."

"But still," I insisted, "You can't really mean to say that a radiant personality like you will be cooped up in this small room
till the – the end of time?"

"But I told you things are not predetermined with me," he said in an unruffled voice. "Suffice it to say for the present that I can't do what I have to do if I go on seeing people etc.". . .

"I have explained to you partly, in my recent letters, what I am busy with," he added after a slight pause. "But you can well imagine there are many other kinds of resistance I have to overcome.". . .

In another letter – 20-10-46 – he wrote to me:

“I know and have experienced hundreds of times that beyond the blackest darkness there lies for one who is a divine instrument the light of God’s victory”.

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram: The Communal Problem

. . . "Have you any direct evidence in favour of such a prognosis?" I asked again.

A half smile edged his lips. He held my eyes for a few seconds without replying, then said: "I have."

"Do I understand that your Supramental means business after all – I mean, by coming down at long last for us humans?"

His smile now broadened into laughter. "Yes," he parried, "only tell them when you meet them that the business is not theirs.". . .

"Do I understand," I pursued again after the laughter had subsided, "that the conquest of the Asuric forces will usher in the Supramental Descent?"

"Not in itself," he said with a far-away look, "but it will create conditions for the Descent to become a possibility."

There was something in his tone and look which stirred a chord deep down in me. I hesitated for a little and then hazarded the question, just to have the answer from his lips, was it? I do not know. All I know is that something irresistible impelled me to it.

"Is your real work this invocation of the Supramental?"

"Yes," he replied, very simply. "I have come for that,"

And I was laughing with him, arguing with him, examining his point of view . . . because he had given me the right by calling
me "a friend and a son," in his infinite compassion! The remorse of Arjuna in the Gita recurred to me, inevitably:

Oft I addressed thee as a human mate

And laughed with thee – failing to apprehend

Thine infinite greatness, sharing with thee my seat

Or couch – by right of love for thee as a friend:

For all such errors of irreverence

Thy forgiveness I implore in penitence.. . .