object:0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain
book class:Some Answers From The Mother
author class:The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
class:chapter
Series Eight
Series Eight
Letters to a Young Captain
To a young captain in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Department
of Physical Education.
Sweet Mother,
What is the difference between the psychic change
and the spiritual change?
The psychic change is the change that puts you in contact with
the immanent Divine, the Divine who is at the centre of each
being and of whom the psychic being is the sheath and the
expression. By the psychic change one passes from the individual
Divine to the universal Divine and finally to the Transcendent.
The spiritual change puts you directly in contact with the
Supreme.
9 September 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
How can one make one’s psychic personality grow?
It is through all the experiences of life that the psychic personality forms, grows, develops and finally becomes a complete,
conscious and free being.
This process of development goes on tirelessly through innumerable lives, and if one is not conscious of it, it is because
one is not conscious of one’s psychic being — for that is the
indispensable starting-point. Through interiorisation and concentration one has to enter into conscious contact with one’s
psychic being. This psychic being always has an influence on the
outer being, but that influence is almost always occult, neither
seen nor perceived nor felt, save on truly exceptional occasions.
In order to strengthen the contact and aid, if possible, the
development of the conscious psychic personality, one should,
while concentrating, turn towards it, aspire to know it and feel
it, open oneself to receive its influence, and take great care, each
time that one receives an indication from it, to follow it very
scrupulously and sincerely. To live in a great aspiration, to take
care to become inwardly calm and remain so always as far as
possible, to cultivate a perfect sincerity in all the activities of
one’s being — these are the essential conditions for the growth
of the psychic being.
10 September 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
How can one draw energy into oneself from outside?
That depends on the kind of energy one wants to absorb, for
each region of the being has a corresponding kind of energy. If it
is physical energy, we absorb it principally through respiration,
and all that facilitates and improves respiration increases at the
same time the absorption of physical energy.
But there are many other kinds of energies, or rather many
other forms of Energy, which is one and universal.
And it is through the various yogic exercises of breathing,
meditation, japa and concentration that one puts oneself in
contact with these various forms of Energy.
10 September 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
What are these other forms of Energy and how do
they help us in our sadhana?
Each region of the being and each activity has its energies. We
Series Eight – To a Young Captain
may classify them generally into vital energies, mental energies, spiritual energies. Modern science tells us that Matter is
ultimately nothing but energy condensed.
Our yoga being integral, all these various forms or kinds of
energy are indispensable to our realisation.
12 September 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
What is meant by “a subtle physical prolongation
of the superficial form of the mental envelope”?
It means that the ghost one sees and wrongly takes for the
departed being itself, is only an image of it, an imprint (like
a photographic imprint) left in the subtle physical by the superficial mental form, an image that can become visible under
certain conditions. These images can move about (like cinema
images), but they have no substantial reality. It is the fear or
emotion of those who see these images that sometimes gives
them the appearance of a power or an action they do not possess in themselves. Hence the necessity of never being afraid and
of recognising them for what they are — a deceptive appearance.
14 September 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
How can one silence the mind, remain quiet, and
at the same time have an aspiration, an intensity or a
widening? Because as soon as one aspires, isn’t it the
mind that aspires?
No; aspiration, as well as widening and intensity, comes from
the heart, the emotional centre, the door of the psychic or rather
the door leading to the psychic.
The mind by its nature is curious and interested; it sees, it
observes, it tries to understand and explain; and with all this
activity, it disturbs the experience and diminishes its intensity
and force.
On the other hand, the more quiet and silent the mind is,
the more can aspiration rise up from the depths of the heart in
the fullness of its ardour.
17 September 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
How can one eliminate the will of the ego?
This amounts to asking how one can eliminate the ego. It is only
by yoga that one can do it. There have been, throughout the spiritual history of humanity, many methods of yoga — which Sri
Aurobindo has described and explained for us in The Synthesis
of Yoga.
But before eliminating the will of the ego, which takes a very
long time, one can begin by surrendering the will of the ego to the
Divine Will at every opportunity and finally in a constant way.
For this, the first step is to understand that the Divine knows
better than we what is good for us and what we truly need, not
only for our spiritual progress but also for our material wellbeing, the health of our body and the proper functioning of all
the activities of our being.
Naturally, this is not the opinion of the ego, which thinks
it knows better than anyone else what it needs, and claims for
itself independence of judgment and decision. But it thinks and
feels this way because it is ignorant, and gradually one has
to convince it that its perception and understanding are too
limited for it truly to be able to know and that it judges only
according to its desires, which are blind, and not according to
truth.
Series Eight – To a Young Captain
For the desires are not the expression of needs but of preferences.
19 September 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
Why has the Divine made His path so difficult? He
can make it easier if He wants, can’t He?
First of all, one should know that the intellect, the mind, can
understand nothing of the Divine, neither what He does nor how
He does it and still less why He does it. To know something of
the Divine, one has to rise above thought and enter into the
psychic consciousness, the consciousness of the soul, or into the
spiritual consciousness.
Those who have had the experience have always said that
the difficulties and sufferings of the path are not real, but a
creation of human ignorance, and that as soon as one gets out
of this ignorance one also gets out of the difficulties, to say
nothing of the inalienable state of bliss in which one dwells as
soon as one is in conscious contact with the Divine.
So according to them, the question has no real basis and
cannot be posed.
21 September 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
You have written that to enter into conscious contact
with one’s psychic being, one must “aspire to know it
and feel it, open oneself to receive its influence, and take
great care... to follow it very scrupulously and sincerely”.
But, Sweet Mother, I don’t know how to do this. I find
it easier when I think of you, try to enter into contact
with you and open to you.
This too is a way which is certainly as good as the other.
There are many ways to attain self-realisation, and each one
must choose the way that comes to him most naturally.
But each way has its demands in order to be truly effective.
In thinking of me, you must think not only of the outer
person. but of what she represents, what stands behind her.
For you must never forget that the outer person is only the
form and symbol of an eternal Reality, and through the physical
appearance, it is to this higher Reality that you must turn. The
physical being cannot become truly expressive of the eternal
Reality until it is completely transformed by the supramental
manifestation. And until then, it is through it that you must find
the Truth.
22 September 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
Is it possible to have control over oneself during
sleep? For example, if I want to see you in my dreams,
can I do it at will?
Control during sleep is entirely possible and it is progressive
if you persist in the effort. You begin by remembering your
dreams, then gradually you remain more and more conscious
during your sleep, and not only can you control your dreams
but you can guide and organise your activities during sleep.
If you persist in your will and your effort, you are sure to
learn how to come and find me at night during your sleep and
afterwards to remember what has happened.
For this, two things are necessary, which you must develop
by aspiration and by calm and persistent effort.
(1) Concentrate your thought on the will to come and find
me; then pursue this thought, first by an effort of imagination,
afterwards in a tangible and increasingly real way, until you are
in my presence.
Series Eight – To a Young Captain
(2) Establish a sort of bridge between the waking and the
sleeping consciousness, so that when you wake up you remember
what has happened.
It may be that you succeed immediately, but more often it
takes a certain time and you must persist in the effort.
25 September 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
What is the role of the soul?
But without the soul we wouldn’t exist!
The soul is that which comes from the Divine without ever
leaving Him, and returns to the Divine without ceasing to be
manifest.
The soul is the Divine made individual without ceasing to
be divine.
In the soul the individual and the Divine are eternally one;
therefore, to find one’s soul is to find God; to identify with one’s
soul is to unite with the Divine.
Thus it may be said that the role of the soul is to make a
true being of man.
29 September 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
Is there anything like good luck and bad luck, or is
it something that one creates for oneself?
There is nothing that can truly be called luck. What men call
luck are the effects of causes they do not know.
Nor is there anything that in itself is good or bad luck;
each one characterises circumstances as good or bad depending
on whether they are more or less favourable to him; and this
estimation itself is very superficial and ignorant, for one must
already be a great sage to know what is truly favourable or
unfavourable to oneself.
Moreover, the same event may be very good for one person
and at the same time very bad for another. These estimations are
purely subjective and depend on each one’s reaction to contacts
coming from outside.
Finally, the circumstances of our life, the surroundings in
which we live and the way in which people regard us are the
expression, the objective projection of what we ourselves are,
within and without. So we may say with certainty that what we
carry in ourselves in all our states of being, mentally, vitally and
physically, is that which constitutes our life objectified in what
surrounds us.
And this is easily verifiable, for in proportion as we improve
ourselves and advance towards perfection, our circumstances
also improve.
Likewise, in the case of those who degenerate and fall back,
the circumstances of their lives also worsen.
5 October 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
What do you give us in the morning at the balcony,1
and what should we try to do in order to receive what
you are giving?
Every morning at the balcony, after establishing a conscious
contact with each of those who are present, I identify myself
with the Supreme Lord and dissolve myself completely in Him.
Then my body, completely passive, is nothing but a channel
through which the Lord passes His forces freely and pours upon
all His Light, His Consciousness and His Joy, according to each
one’s receptivity.
During this period the Mother stood for a while every morning on a balcony facing
the street and gazed at the sadhaks assembled below.
Series Eight – To a Young Captain
The best way to receive what He gives is to come to the
balcony with trust and aspiration and to keep oneself as calm
and quiet as one can in a silent and passive state of expectation. If one has something precise to ask, it is better to ask it
beforehand, not while I am there, because any activity lessens
the receptivity.
12 October 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
What is meant by the “silence of the physical consciousness”2 and how can one remain in this silence?
The physical consciousness is not only the consciousness of our
body, but of all that surrounds us as well — all that we perceive
with our senses. It is a sort of apparatus for recording and transmission which is open to all the contacts and shocks coming
from outside and responds to them by reactions of pleasure and
pain which welcome or repel. This makes in our outer being a
constant activity and noise that we are only partially aware of,
because we are so accustomed to them.
But if through meditation or concentration we turn inward
or upward, we can bring down into ourselves or raise up from
the depths calm, quiet, peace and finally silence. It is a concrete, positive silence (not the negative silence of the absence
of noise), immutable so long as it remains, a silence one can
experience even in the outer tumult of a hurricane or battlefield.
This silence is synonymous with peace and it is all-powerful;
it is the perfectly effective remedy for the fatigue, tension and
exhaustion arising from that internal over-activity and noise
which generally escape our control and cease neither by day nor
night.
Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, p. 906.
This is why the first thing required when one wants to do
Yoga is to bring down and establish in oneself the calm, the
peace, the silence.
15 October 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
How can one enter into the feelings of a piece of
music played by someone else?
In the same way that one can share the emotions of another
person — by sympathy, spontaneously, by an affinity more or
less deep, or else by an effort of concentration which ends in
identification. It is this latter process that we adopt when we
listen to music with an intense and concentrated attention, to
the point of stopping all other noise in the head and obtaining
a complete silence into which fall, drop by drop, the notes of
the music whose sound alone remains; and with the sound all
the feelings, all the movements of emotion can be captured,
experienced, re-felt as if they were produced in ourselves.
20 October 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
How can one distinguish between good and evil in
a dream?
In principle, to judge the activities of sleep one needs the same
capacity of discrimination as to judge the waking activities.
But since we usually give the name “dream” to a considerable number of activities that differ completely from one another,
the first point is to learn to distinguish between these various
activities — that is, to recognise what part of the being it is that
“dreams”, what domain it is that one “dreams” in, and what the
nature of that activity is. In his letters, Sri Aurobindo has given
Series Eight – To a Young Captain
very complete and detailed descriptions and explanations of all
the activities of sleep. Reading these letters is a good introduction
to the study of this subject and to its practical application .
2 November 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
How should we read your books and the books of Sri
Aurobindo so that they may enter into our consciousness
instead of being understood only by the mind?
To read my books is not difficult because they are written in the
simplest language, almost the spoken language. To get help from
them, it is enough to read with attention and concentration and
an attitude of inner good-will, with a desire to receive and live
what is taught.
To read what Sri Aurobindo writes is more difficult because
the expression is highly intellectual and the language far more
literary and philosophic. The brain needs a preparation to really
be able to understand and generally this preparation takes time,
unless one is specially gifted with an innate intuitive faculty.
In any case, I always advise reading a little at a time, keeping
the mind as quiet as one can, without making an effort to understand, but keeping the head as silent as possible and letting
the force contained in what one reads enter deep inside. This
force, received in calm and silence, will do its work of illumining
and will create in the brain, if necessary, the cells required for
understanding. Thus, when one re-reads the same thing some
months later, one finds that the thought expressed has become
much clearer and closer and even at times quite familiar.
It is preferable to read regularly, a little every day and at a
fixed hour if possible; this facilitates the brain’s receptivity.
2 November 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
Why does meditation in front of different photos of
you give different experiences?
It is because each photo represents a different aspect, sometimes
even a different personality of my being; and by concentrating
on the photo, one enters into relation with that special aspect or
different personality which the photo has captured and whose
image it conveys.
The photo is a real and concrete presence, but fragmentary
and limited.
4 November 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
Why is the photo a fragmentary and limited presence?
Because the photo catches only the image of a moment, an instant of a person’s appearance and of what that appearance
can reveal of a passing psychological condition and fragmentary soul-state. Even if the photograph is taken under the best
possible conditions at an exceptional and particularly expressive
moment, it cannot in any way reproduce the whole personality.
5 November 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
What exactly are the subconscient and the inconscient?
The inconscient is that part of Nature which is so obscure and
asleep that it seems to be wholly devoid of consciousness; at any
rate, as in the stone, the mineral kingdom, the consciousness
there is entirely inactive and hidden. The history of the earth
begins with this inconscience.
Series Eight – To a Young Captain
We too carry it in ourselves, in the substance of our body,
since the substance of our body is the same as that of the earth.
But by evolution, this sleeping and hidden consciousness
gradually awakens through the vegetal and animal kingdoms,
and in them subconscience begins; this subconscience, with the
appearance of mind in man, culminates in consciousness. This
consciousness likewise is progressive, and in proportion as man
evolves, it will change into superconscience.
We too, then, carry in ourselves the subconscience which
links us to the animal, and the superconscience which is our
hope and assurance of future realisation.
7 November 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
What should one try to do when one meditates with
your music at the Playground?
This music aims at awakening certain profound feelings.
In listening to it, one should make oneself as silent and
passive as possible. And if, in the mental silence, a part of the
being can take the attitude of the witness who observes without
reacting or participating, then one can notice the effect that the
music produces on the feelings and emotions; and if it produces
a state of deep calm and semi-trance, that is very good.
15 November 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
What is the work of the Overmind?3
The overmind is the region of the gods, the beings of divine
origin who have been charged with supervising, directing and
This question and the three that follow are based on terms used by Sri Aurobindo in
The Life Divine, especially in its final chapters.
organising the evolution of the universe; and more specifically,
since the formation of the earth they have served as messengers
and intermediaries to bring to the earth the aid of the higher
regions and to preside over the formation of the mind and its
progressive ascension. It is usually to the gods of the overmind
that the prayers of the various religions are addressed. These religions most often choose, for various reasons, one of these gods
and transform him for their personal use into the supreme God.
In the individual evolution, one must develop in oneself
a zone corresponding to the overmind and an overmind consciousness, before one can rise above it, to the Supermind, or
open oneself to it.
Almost all the occult systems and disciplines aim at the
development and mastery of the overmind.
27 November 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
What is meant by “a zone corresponding to the overmind” and how can one develop it in oneself? What is
meant by the “mastery of the overmind”?
The individual being is made up of states of being corresponding
to cosmic zones or planes, and it is as these inner states of being
are developed that one becomes conscious of those domains.
This consciousness is double, at first psychological and subjective, within oneself, expressing itself through thoughts, feelings,
emotions, sensations; then objective and concrete when one is
able to go beyond the limits of the body in order to move about
in the various cosmic regions, grow conscious of them and act
freely in them — it is this that is called “mastery”; it is this that
I spoke of when I mentioned the mastery of the overmind.
It goes without saying that all this is not done in a day,
nor even in a year. This mastery, in whatever domain it may be,
vital, mental, overmental, demands assiduous effort and a great
Series Eight – To a Young Captain
concentration. These masteries are no easier than the mastery
of the physical world; and everyone knows how much time and
effort are needed merely to learn the things indispensable for
leading one’s life properly, not to speak of “mastery”, which is
truly something exceptional on earth.
28 November 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
What is Supernature?
Supernature is the Nature superior to material or physical Nature — what we usually call “Nature”. But this Nature that we
see, feel and study, this Nature that has been our familiar environment since our birth upon earth, is not the only one. There
is a vital nature, a mental nature, and so on. It is this that, for
the ordinary consciousness, is Supernature.
Very often the word “Nature” is used as a synonym for
Prakriti, the executive force of Purusha. But to answer your
question more precisely, the context would be needed in order to
know on what occasion Sri Aurobindo spoke about Supernature.
15 December 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
Sri Aurobindo has written in The Life Divine:
“There is as yet no overmind being or organised overmind nature, no supramental being or organised supermind nature acting either on our surface or in our
normal subliminal parts.”4 Sweet Mother, now after the
descent of the Supermind,5 is it still like that?
SABCL, Vol. 19, p. 921.
On 29 February 1956 there took place, in the Mother’s words, “the manifestation of the Supramental upon earth”; “Then the supramental Light and Force and
Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.”
What Sri Aurobindo means is that only a few exceptional beings
who do not belong to the ordinary humanity, have a conscious
and organised overmind being and overmind life, and still fewer
are those who have an organised supramental being and supramental life, even admitting that there are any at all. Certainly
the very recent descent of the first elements of the Supermind
into the earth’s atmosphere (not yet quite four years ago) cannot
have changed this state of things.
We are still only in a period of preparation.
18 December 1959
*
Sweet Mother,
What is meant by the yoga of devotion and the yoga
of knowledge?
The yoga of knowledge is the path that leads to the Divine
through the exclusive pursuit of the pure and absolute Truth.
The yoga of devotion is the path that leads to union with
the Divine through perfect, total and eternal love.
In the integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo, the two combine
with the yoga of works and the yoga of self-perfection to make
a homogeneous whole, culminating in the yoga of supramental
realisation.
5 February 1960
*
Sweet Mother,
What are the “supreme faculties”?
It is difficult to reply without having the context. Which
“supreme faculties” are being referred to here? Those of man on
the way to becoming superman, or those that the supramental
being will possess when he appears on earth?
In the first case, they are the faculties that develop in man as
he opens to the higher mind and overmind, and through those
Series Eight – To a Young Captain
regions he receives the light of the Truth. These faculties are not
a direct expression of the supreme Truth, but a transcription, an
indirect reflection of it. They include intuition, foreknowledge,
knowledge by identity and certain powers such as that of healing
and, to an extent, of acting upon circumstances.
If it refers to the supreme faculties of the supramental being, we cannot say much about them, for all we can say at the
moment belongs more to the realm of imagination than to the
realm of knowledge, since this supramental being has not yet
manifested on earth.
23 April 1960
*
Sweet Mother,
What are “the different psychological divisions of
the human being”?
These divisions are merely arbitrary. They have been established
in order to facilitate the study of human nature and especially
to constitute a definite basis for the various methods of selfdevelopment and self-discipline. That is why each philosophic,
educational or Yogic system has, as it were, its own division
based on the experience of its founder. Nevertheless, despite
these divergences, there is a sort of tradition which, behind the
different terms, makes for an essential analogy. This analogy can
be expressed by a quaternary: the physical, the vital, the mental
and the psychic or soul.
Sri Aurobindo has written on this subject in great detail in
some of his letters, in The Synthesis of Yoga and in Essays on
the Gita.
30 May 1960
*
Sweet Mother,
Is it possible to have a correct conception of the
Divine?
No conception of the Divine can be correct; for conceptions are
mental activities, and no mental activity is fit to manifest the
Divine.
It is only by experience that one can know Him, and the
experience cannot be translated into words.
20 June 1960
The Mother
ii
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