At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo

20 June 1933

MYSELF: Again stark darkness, and a surge of weeping. No concentration at all. That I can’t move forward towards you is what is most depressing. It is true that the things I loved once are dropping off and that gives joy, but if it is not followed by an intimacy with you as a result, if I can’t advance forward, then what do I gain? What I felt to be the greatest obstacle on the path has been removed, but I remain where I am and consequently within there is a terrible dryness. That I can’t look at the relation between so and so in a better light is also galling to me. The vital nature refuses to come under control; the upshot is that my mind is shattered. I am carrying my own self like a burden — a lifeless corpse.

SRI AUROBINDO: What you have felt is a revival or return on you of the lower vital with its demands and desires. Its suggestion is “I am doing the Yoga but for a price. I have abandoned the life of vital desire and satisfaction but in order to get intimacy with the Mother — instead of satisfying myself with X and the world, to satisfy myself and get my desires fulfilled by the Divine. If I do not get the intimacy with the Mother and immediately and as I want it, why should I give up the old things.” And as a natural result the old things start again — “X and Y and Y and X and the wrongs of Sahana.” You must see this machinery of the lower vital and dismiss it. It is only by the full psychic relation of self-giving that unity and closeness with the Divine can be maintained — the other is part of the vital ego movement and can only bring a fall of the consciousness and disturbance.

(20.6.33)