7 - Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

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THE YOGA

OF

SRI AUROBINDO

PART SEVEN

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM

PONDICHERRY

1955

Publishers :

SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM

PONDICHERRY

First Edition March, 1955

All rights Rtserbed

SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PRESS
PONDICHERRY

PRINTED IN INDIA

CONTENTS

SECTION ONE

I. Realisation Past and Future 3

II. The Spiral Universe 8

III. This Expanding Universe II

IV. The World Serpent 15
V. This Mystery of Existence 17

VI. Record of World-History 19

VII. Freedom and Destiny 22

SECTION Two

VIII. The Divine Truth Its name and form 27

IX. The Symbolic Ignorance 30

X. Diseases and Accidents 31

XI. The Problem of Evil 39

XII. This Ugliness of the World 45

XIII. Divine Justice 49

XIV. The Divine Suffering 53
XV. "Divine Disgust" 57

SECTION THREE

XVI. Things Significant and Insignificant 63

XVII. Why do we forget things? 64

XVIII. How to get rid of troublesome thoughts 67

XIX. Bad Thought Formation 69

XX. Why are Dreams Forgotten 78

XXI. To the Children of the Ashram 81

CONTENTS

Page,
SECTION FOUR

XXII. On Occultism 87

XXIII. Mysticism and Occultism 92

XXIV. Meditation and Some Questions 96
XXV. Meditation and Meditation 101

XXVI. Prayer and Aspiration 105

XXVII. Offering and Surrender 109

XXVIII. Equality of the Body Equality of the Soul 1 1 1

XXIX. Personal Effort and Will 113

XXX. How to feel that we belong to the Divine 115

XXXI. Sincerity is Victory 120

XXXII. Images of gods and goddesses 124

SECTION FIVE

XXXIII. Yogic Centres 129

XXXIV. The Inner and the Outer 134
XXXV. And This Agile Reason 135

XXXVI. The Force of Body Consciousness 137

XXXVII. The Body and the Psychic 139

XXXVIII. The Psychic BeingSome Mysteries 148

XXXIX. The Past Lives and the Psychic Being 157

XL. The Homogeneous Being 161

XLI. Service Human and Divine 164

XLII. The Divine Family 170

SECTION Six

XLIII. The Nature and Destiny of Art 175

XLIV. Music Its Origin and Nature 182

XLV. Indian and European Music 187

XLVI. Specialisation 189

THE YOGA

OF

SRI AUROBINDO

Section One

REALISATION, PAST AND FUTURE

THE whole material and physical world, the whole
earth I mention earth, because we are concerned
directly and much more with it than other regions has
been till now governed by forces of consciousness that
come from what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind.
Even the thing man has named God is a force, a power
in the Overmind. The entire universe has been, so to say,
under the domination of this status of consciousness.
Even then, you have to pass through many intermediary
grades or levels to arrive at the Overmind and when
you reach there the first impression is that of a dazzling
light that almost blinds you. But one can and has to
press on and go beyond. Sri Aurobindo says, the rule
of the Overmind is precisely coming to its end and the
rule of the Supermind will replace it. All the past
spiritual experiences were concerned with the Overmind:
so it is a thing known to all who have found the Divine
and are identified with Him. What Sri Aurobindo says
is this that there is something more than the Overmind,
something that lies a step higher and that it is now the
turn of this higher status to come down and reign. We
need not talk much of Overmind, because all the saints
and seers, all religions and spiritual disciplines, scriptures
and philosophies have spoken about it at length. All
the gods known and familiar to men are there in its

3

4 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

Pantheon. What we want, what is needed at present is
a new revelation, a manifestation in a new manner of
which very few were conscious in the past. We are not
here merely to repeat the past.

But it is so difficult. It is difficult for people to come
out of experiences they have had, of what they have
heard and read about always and everywhere. It is
difficult for them not to think of the Supermind in terms
of the Overmind, not to confuse the Supermind with
the Overmind. They are unable to conceive of anything
beyond or different. Sri Aurobindo used to say always
that his Yoga began where all the past Yogas ended:
in order to realise his Yoga one must have already arrived
at the extreme limit of what the ancients realised. In
other words, one must have had already the perception
of the Divine, the union and identification with the
Divine. This divinity, Sri Aurobindo says, is the Divine
of the Overmind which is itself something quite un-
thinkable for the human consciousness, and even to reach
there one has to rise through many planes of consciousness
and, as I said, one gets dazzled and dazed even at this
level.

There are beings of the vital who, whenever they
appear to man, are taken by him for the supreme godhead.
You may caU it a disguise, but it is a very successful
disguise, for people who see it most often get thoroughly
convinced that what they see is indeed God himself.
And yet such a god is only a vital being. Even so, the
beings of the Overmind are stupendous in comparison

REALISATION PAST AND FUTURE 5

with us, human beings, who are truly bewildered when-
ever we come in contact with such entities. And Super-
mind and suprsrnental beings are yet beyond. So you
realise the distance to be covered.

But there is a kind of Grace that comes to your help.
If the scientist had again to go over all the experiments
that have been done, all what others have found in the
past in his line in order to make a further progress, to
come to a new discovery, then he will have to pass his
whole life in repeating the past and will have no time
for anything else. The scientist just opens instead a
book or consults another person who is conversant with
the past and gets all the knowledge he requires of it.
Sri Aurobindo wanted to do something like that in the
spiritual domain. He asks you to gather the experience
of the past, it is all there recorded in earth's history,
and pass on; basing yourself upon that, you rise up to
still higher ranges.

You may pertinently ask, however, why we have not
started with ovetmental beings, we should have had
here, say, Vivekanandus only and not ordinary frail
human creatures.

You think the work \vould have been easier? Such
beings, on the contrary, would have been less manageable
and malleable. For what is most difficult is to convince
someone who has had already a realisation. He believes
he has reached the goal and no further progress is ne-
cessary for him. It generally happens especially to men
who have made effort and realised the object of the

6 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

effort that they stop with that, because they feel they
have reached their final goal. They get settled and
fixed there. It was their personal goal and they have
got it. Their brain gets crystallised and their con-
sciousness fossilised. They will live there all their life
and will never know how to move. So I say, those who
have had an experience or a realisation in themselves
are not necessarily the most advanced. Such a person
lacks an element of simplicity, modesty, plasticity that
spontaneously come to one who feels that he has not
grown fully and has to develop further.

A "realised person", if I may say so graphically and
somewhat strongly, is a finished product to be kept in
a glass-case for show in a museum. He is a sample
showing what has been done and what could be done,
But you do not have there the stuff to do more. I would
prefer for my work to have someone who may have little
knowledge, but who has much good will, a great aspira-
tion, who feels within him this flame, this need to go on.
I say, he may know little, he may have realised even less,
but here is good material with which one can go far,
very far. Besides, there is another point to note. As
in mountain-climbing a guide is very useful, even in-
dispensable, who can show you the proper way and make
it easy for you to climb higher and higher altitudes, so
in spiritual ascension, a guide, if you have the good
fortune to meet one, will help you to rise much higher
than you could do yourself with your own personal
strength and your own personal view of a fixed goal

REALISATION PAST AND FUTURE 1

you are not proud of your discovery and you do not waste
time or energy in useless searches and enquiries.

That is why I prefer children children in body or
in soul and fear grown-ups steeped in erudition and
realisation.

THE SPIRAL UNIVERSE

EVOLUTION does not proceed in a straight line, but in
a spiral. That is to say, it is not a constant progress in
one direction, but consists of progression, regression
and an ultimate progression. The spiral movement
means that all things must enter into the phenomenon
of evolution, so that it is not one thing only that pro-
gresses and others remain behind but that all move
forward all move forward but at different speeds and
also from different starting-points. And they move
not straight as the crow flies, but in a circle like the
soaring eagle. When you concentrate upon one point
of the circle, you will see relatively to it many others
not advancing at all but receding and the point itself
will seem at times to be going back towards a position
already left behind. One goes back to pick up certain
elements that have not been included in the progress,
not properly dealt with. It happens usually that when
you progress in one thing, you forget another; so you
have to turn back and take up the neglected element.
Thus you have to go round and round, as it were, until
you include the totality of your being, even embrace
the totality of the universe. When you have, however,
gathered the bypassed factor and come back to the
original position from where you seemed to have

8

THE SPIRAL UNIVERSE 9

regressed, you find that you are not exactly at the same
point but at a corresponding point on a higher plane.
That forms a spiral, not merely a circle.

There are, in the universe, an infinite number of
points moving, each forming a spiral; so there are an
infinite number of spirals. And these spirals do not lie
only side by side, but cross each other and thus give
an aspect of contrariness and contradictoriness. So if
you wish to take a total view of the movement of uni-
versal progress, you will be somewhat puzzled. There
are so many lines that advance and there are so many
which recede at the same time. Some come into the
light, others go into the background and none indepen-
dent or self-sufficient. There is a sort of intermingling,
even coordination.

The universe can thus be conceived as a globe con-
sisting of an infinite number of intersecting spirals.
One can give to each spiral a different colour, each
representing one aspect of nature's movement. A model
globe of this kind may perhaps be constructed. A section
only of the curve of a spiral is on the outside, the rest is
within the globe and can be seen because of its special
colour, provided we consider the globe as something
transparent. It is these multiple sections outside that
form the surface of the globe. The inside is of course
full of spirals, excepting that section of a spiral which
is outside. And yet though crossing and recrossing they
do not form an opaque mass. One can see through and
follow the brilliant lines of various colours. That is

10 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

how I see it. You can try to make a geometrical figure
of it, if possible.

Nature has a plan of its own. It is not like the coherent
rational plan of man. Nature's plan is made of an
aspiration, a decision and a goal. But the way is quite
fantastic, so it appears to man. Nature seems to move
from moment to moment, under the stress of the occa-
sion; there are advances, withdrawals, trials, contra-
dictions, demolitions of things, laborious building up,
and again throwing down. It is a complete chaos. She
begins a thing, leaves it half done, takes up another,
rejects one thing altogether, begins anew something left
off, makes, remakes, unmakes, separates, mixes up.
She follows a million lines of advance at the same time
but not from the same point and each with its own speed
and rhythm. There is such a tangle that seems to make
no sense. Still there is a plan, she pursues an object
which seems to be very clear to her, although veiled to
the human eye. The spiral globe I spoke of was meant
to give some idea of this complex unity in Nature's
plan.

You can bring in a better order, with less waste and
more efficiency a more conscious organisation. But for
that man must change his own inner organisation first.
In his own consciousness and being he must bring out
a new order, a new cosmos.

THIS EXPANDING UNIVERSE

THE universe is a manifestation, that is to say, the un-
folding of infinite possibilities. The unfolding has not
stopped, it is continuing and will continue, throwing
out or bringing into physical expression all that lies
behind and latent. The universe may be considered as
a sphere or globe, a totality or assemblage containing
everything that exists here and is being manifested.
Beyond and outside, as it were, this circle of creation
lies the transcendent, the Supreme Divine, in his own
status. The transcendent means the unmanifest. It does
not mean, however, the void; for it contains all that is
to be manifested, each and everything in its potentiality,
its essence, in a seed form. All is there as a secret possi-
bility, a fundamental truth of being all is there not
simply as a general idea, but in every detail, though as
it were on a microscopic scale, something like the chro-
mosomes in life plasm. The transcendent is beyond time
and space. Manifestation or creation begins with the
formulation of time and space, the frame in which what
lay latent is gradually brought out and displayed. The
transcendent is consciousness absorbed in itself, identified
with itself; manifestation is consciousness waking and
looking at itself as its object (La prise de conscience
objective de soi).

Now, one can be seated or fixed exclusively in the

ii

12 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

status of the unmanifest; to such a one the infinite and
eternal is an everpresent reality., there is nothing like
past or future, everything is. One knows and is in the
presence of a fixed actuality; whatever happened, whatever
will happen as it seems to us all are there realised on
the same plane and at the same moment (although the
terms plane and moment do not quite apply there). It
is the world or status of the absolutely determined.
Free choice or indeterminacy, the unexpected and the
unforeseen have no place here.

On the contrary, the sphere of manifestation is pre-
cisely the field of the sudden and the incalculable, that
is to say, of free will. Things appear here that were not
before, forces come into play that were not expected or
even imagined. They all move along lines that shift
and change continually. This is the status of becoming
sambhuti) as designated by the Upanishad and described
by the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, in the words,
panta reei, everything flows on. Here 3 often a certain
disposition that seems quite stable or predictable is upset
all of a sudden by the irruption of a new and novel
factor from somewhere else.

But in between the two, on the borderland, as it were,
there is a poise of consciousness which combines both
in an integral perception, it is a single movement of both
being and becoming. It is the Supermind. It is the
point where what is or exists in the unmanifest just
becomes in the manifest, the pure truth or reality above
at standstill stirs and begins to come out or disengage

THIS EXPANDING UNIVERSE 13

itself through a play of possibles. It is like a cinema
film that is rolled up and kept in a spool till it is put
on the projector and rolled out gradually upon the screen
of life and in life-size 11 presentation.

The transcendent then is an integral reality, for it
contains all and the whole, but it is of fixed dimension
avyaya, it neither increases, nor decreases: it is the
Stable, the Stagnant sthanuracaloyam. The cosmos,
on the other hand, is not only moving and changing, but
also ever increasing or expanding. For new possibles
are becoming reals here and adding to the sum of its
factors. Out of the transcendent, the unmanifest, are
constantly shooting down potentials and becoming
dynamic in the universe making it richer and ever richer.

Furthermore, this expansion is not merely accretion
but a growth, that is to say, it is directed and has a sense
and purpose and end in view. In fact all the possibles
that find play, the elements that enter here below are
necessary in as much as they contri bute to the meaning
of the Play, to the working out of the denouement. We
can take again the analogy of the cinema film and say
that the unrolling film is interesting because it has a
continuous and developing story to tell, with a beginning,
a middle and an end. Likewise, the manifestation too
tells a connected story it is not a drivel, but has a goal;
it is a process elaborated by a final cause. Even like an
individual being it is an organism, ever growing and
bringing out its latent possibilities, moving towards a
high fruition of its aspiration and destiny.

14 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

In this sense manifestation is a more complete and
more and more complete reality than the non-manifest
Supreme. The non-manifest, the transcendent is an
integral reality, the manifestation a completer reality,
since it adds to it its own reality, the actuality of concrete
expression.

THE WORLD-SERPENT

THE universe is often conceived as a serpent coiling
round and eating itself, the head turning about and
swallowing the tail. The image is that of a sphere or
globe enclosing the whole existence and that of something
without end or beginning, infinite. It also gives the idea
of a perpetual leng thening out, that is, constant creation,
but at the same time of a turn back: the unrolling of the
universe is not in a straight line, but circular.

The universe is however a complex entity. It is not
made of only one plane, but consists of many planes
superimposed upon each other. Thus at the bottom
as the basis is the physical matter and at the top as
the acme is the most subtle, the spiritual: in between
there are gradations whose number varies according to
the mode of the outlook.

Reverting to the image of the serpent, one can say that
its head represents the spirit, the supreme consciousness,
and the tail the other end, matter or supreme uncon-
sciousness. The image, furthermore, gives a graphic
picture of the great truth that extremes meet, the head
bends round and catches the tail. Psychologically this
means that if one rises higher and higher in consciousness,
starting from the body consciousness, traversing Life
and Mind and Overmind and reaches the very source,
the head and front of consciousness, then, curious to

15

16 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

say, one finds oneself all on a sudden landed in the heart
of matter. In the occult language this is expressed by
saying that the consciousness that shines on the highest
peak, is imbedded also here below in the cavern of dead
matter. If one rises sufficiently high, rung by rung, to
the extreme end of the ladder, one comes round exactly
at the point from where one started without having to
pass through all the rungs. Conversely too if one probes
sufficiently deep into the farthest corner of matter, the
last limit of inconscience, one comes out into the blaze
of the same infinity that covers above and below and
around.

One can recall here the curious conclusion reached by
some modern scientists in regard to the spherical character
of the universe that the universe being an endless bounded
plane it is quite likely that a particular star you see in
front of you may not at all be situated direct against you y
but that it might be sending out rays that have come
round the whole sphere and taken you, as it were, from
behind!

THIS MYSTERY OF EXISTENCE

HAVE you ever asked yourself why there is this universe
at all, at least this earth with which we are so much
concerned and which seems to us so real, so au thentic?
It would perhaps be very wise on your part if you did
not! I have often spoken to you of Theon. He was truly
a sage in his own way. People used to come to him and
ask questions. Many asked why there was an universe.
He would answer, "But what is that to you?" Some
would ask, "Why is the universe like this?" To that
he would say, "It is what it is, how does it matter?"
Others again would remark, "I do not consider the world
a satisfactory affair." There, we begin to come more
to the point. To those who find the world unsatisfactory
I would say, c 'Get to work, try to change it. Find a way
that it may be otherwise, that it may be made better.
Things are what they are, it is no use speculating over
that and getting worried. Seek for the means of remedy,
so that things may be made what they should be. Why
are things what they are? Not that one cannot know the
reason, although one may not always be sure of it. The
best thing to do is to take whatever is as it is and try
to change it towards that which it should be. Now the
wonder of it is that if you are sincere, if you want to
know sincerely and work sincerely, you will come to
know why things are what they are the cause, the origin
2 i?

1 8 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

and the process, for they are all one. There is one truth
at the base of things; if that were not there, nothing
would be. If you seize that truth, you seize at the same
time the origin of the creation and the means of changing
it as well. In other words, if you are in contact with the
Divine for the Divine is that base you are in possession
of the key to all things, you know the why, the how and
the process for change. One thing to do then is to start
doing the thing. But you might say, it is too much, too
difficult, too big for you to work in the world or for
the world. Well then, start with yourself. You are a little
mass of substance, a symbol or representative of the
universe. Let your work then be to form and fashion
that particle. Concentrate upon it, go within even
within that little person of yourself you will find the
long looked-for key."

RECORD OF WORLD-HISTORY

ALL that has happened upon earth, everything from the
beginning of creation till now, everything without ex-
ception has been recorded somewhere in some particular
world or region of consciousness. All that man has
thought, his researches and discoveries, his findings and
conclusions are kept intact, carefully stored. If you
want to know anything of the past history of the earth,
the happening at a particular time and place, you have
simply to transplant yourself into that world and look
into the records.

It is a very curious place, something like a vast library.
It consists of an infinite number of cells, as it were, each
containing all information on a particular subject. They
seem to be squares in shape and they remain closed
normally. If you have to consult a particular square,
you press a button and it opens and out of it comes a
roll of written matter. You unroll it and find out what
you want. There are millions and millions and millions
of these cells and rolls, around, above, everywhere.
Fortunately in the mental world you can move anywhere
as you like, you do not require lifts and ladders to 'get up.

The point, however, is how to go there at all. Well,
the first thing is that you must completely silence your
mind. Mental cogitations, agitations you must leave
behind, no thoughts must enter your consciousness, it

19

20 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

must be tranquil and still, like a transparent sheet of
water or smooth and polished like a mirror. The des-
cription I have given of a library is only an image, the
real thing is something different. However, you have in
this way some idea to go upon. In the silent mind you
form a point of consciousness and send it out as an
emissary to gather the required information. This point
of consciousness must be absolutely detached and free
to go as it likes; for if it were in any way kept tied to the
normal movements of your own mind, then you will not
go further than what is in your head. You must be able
to make your brain a blank, you must have no precon-
ceived notion, no idea that the solution of your problem
might lie in this way or that. As I say, your mind has
to be a thoroughly blank page, a clean slate, with nothing
written on it, no mark even. There should be instead a
sincere aspiration to know the truth, without postulating
beforeh and what kind of truth it might be; otherwise
you will meet your own formation in the brain.

You can certainly test and correct the information you
get from your inner voyage by outside information, what
others have found or yrtiat is recorded in books. The
inner knowledge need not and should not replace the
outer knowledge, but supplement it, both should support
and complete each other. But there is a mixture about
which you must be very careful. Your silent mind, your
inner consciousness receives the necessary knowledge,
but as you want to express it or translate in normal terms,
that is to say, as your brain gets active again, it may and

RECORD OF WORLD HISTORY 21

often does supply its own materials and formations and
the original knowledge gets disturbed and distorted.
Sometimes what you may do is to dictate most passively
the things you see or perceive and let another take down
in writing as you proceed. You must say exactly as you
see and the other write down exactly as he hears.

It is the image of reading a book that I have given
you. But it is, as I said, only an image. What it is really
is a kind of perception. And the perception may be in
the form of an image, it may be in the form of a narrative.
At other times it may be a simple answer to a particular
question. There are many kinds and varieties of record,
differing according to the types or levels of consciousness
that you go to.

Naturally the process is not easy and available to every-
body, as an ordinary book. It requires a special aptitude
and a special discipline.

FREEDOM AND DESTINY

FROM a certain point of view whatever happens here in
the material world is a reproduction or realisation of
whatever has already happened or existed on another
level of reality. In this world then there would be no
free choice, everything being predetermined. From
another standpoint, however, one can say with equal truth
that the world here is being recreated every moment;
it is not a mere replay or flash-back of a past event, a
pre-existent phenomenon, but something ever new and
fresh. Take, for an example, a material body, of a parti-
cular chemical composition, having some well-defined
properties; it behaves according to that nature and pro-
duces inevitably results deducible from it. Now, if a
new element is introduced into the thing at any moment,
the whole quality of the composition and its behaviour
will change. Something like that happens in the universe.
The universe is a huge mass of innumerable elements
forming a certain composition and in accordance with
this composition all are organised within itself. But such
an arrangement is not the end or the culmination; it is
not static, but moving forward; it is in the process of
development. For at any moment, through the action of
a different kind, one or more new elements can be intro-
duced into the total mass that forms the universe at a
t

given time and that will necessarily change the whole
inner composition. The universe, the material universe*

22

FREEDOM AND DESTINY 23

I mean, is a concretisation of a certain aspect or emana-
tion of the Supreme. This concretisation is progressive,
not necessarily in a constant and regular way, but in
answer to a law, with a subtle kind or degree of liberty.
Thus, in the composition of the universe at a moment
new elements penetrate and alter the organisation. The
organisation that was perfect in itself and moved and
unrolled itself according to a definite plan and pattern,
suddenly finds itself changed and the inner relations
too are modified and attain a different poise. That may
give the impression of something incoherent or imprecise
or miraculous, according to the manner in which one
looks at the problem. So there are these two simulta-
neous facts or factors: there is a determinism which is
absolute in its way with a complementary movement of
liberty, the unforeseen addition into a fixed existing sum.

This addition comes from the aspiration of the supreme
consciousness. There is nothing to wonder at the phe-
nomenon. There is an aspiration acting in the world,
moving with a certain end in view; the purpose is to
bring back the fallen and obscured consciousness to its
original and normal state of the divine consciousness.
Each time that this aspiring consciousness meets an
obstacle in its working, a new resistance to conquer or
to transform, it calls for a new Force. And this new
Force is a kind of new creation. In the human being
too there are different domains in obedience to a law of
correspondence; in each there is for him a different
destiny and each is absolute in its line. But there is also

24 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

in him, through his aspiration, a capacity to enter into
relation with a domain higher than where he happens
to be and bring down an action of this higher domain
into the lower determinism. So we can say that there
is a horizontal determinism in each domain, absolute
in its normal working; but there is also a vertical inter-
vention from other higher domains or even from the
highest and then the lower determinism is changed
completely. Thus every human being is at once a sum
of various determinisms, absolute in their way, and
there is also an absolute liberty that can intervene by
bringing down other forces into the apparently rigid
frame of destiny of the lower worlds and alter it. That
is how things in the world give the impression of the
unforeseen, the incalculable, the miraculous.

You may call this intervention Grace; for without the
Divine Grace this could not happen. There is a con-
sciousness and a vision of things where all are brought
back to this single source; Grace only exists, nothing
else is there. That does every thing. But as you have
not risen to that summit, had not that extreme realisation,
you have to take into account your own person, your
personal aspiration, the thing that calls for the Grace
and to which the Grace responds. The two are needed
here. Both are ultimately ways of viewing the same
truth. The mind, however, finds it difficult to conceive
both in a simultaneous movement. The rigid distinctions
it makes takes away much from the supple and subtle
and integral truth of a total experience.

Section Two

THE DIVINE TRUTH ITS NAME AND FORM

THE divine truth at the heart of things, people have called
by all kinds of names, every one presenting it from his
own angle of experience. But always it is the one Reality*
There are millions of ways leading towards it; but one
thing is certain, you can find it, whatever the way you
follow, whatever the form you give it: the result is the
same, the final experience is identical. If all have touched
the thing, they touch the same thing always. And the proof
that they have touched the thing is that it is the same for
all; if it is not the same thing, then they have not touched
it. You can give it any name you like: a name is only a
word.

What is the value of a word, after all? Have you not
noticed that there are people who do not understand you,
however clearly you speak to them. There are others
again who understand you if you utter only two words.
The external form the sound of a word has a meaning,
if there is a force of thought behind; the greater the
force of thought, the more powerful and precise and clear
it is, the greater the chance of people receiving the force
and understanding the word that carries the force. But
if someone speaks without thinking, usually it is impos-
sible to understand him; he would seem to you to make
only a noise. You must have noticed also that people
who have lived together and are habituated to each other's

27

28 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

thought and talk, do not require any definition of the words
they use or even a large use to understand each other.
There has been a mental adjustment and the words are
only an excuse for the inner contact, the contact between
brain and brain which underlies or even precedes the
words. But when you meet a new person, it takes you time
to adapt and adjust yourself to understand the words he
uses.

It is the meaning, the thought behind the word that is
important. When the thought is powerfully thought, it
produces a vibration of which the word is only a carrier,
an intermediary. Indeed, you can develop the thought-
power to such an extent that you are able to establish a
direct material contact with the minimum or even no
words at all. Naturally this requires a strong power of con-
centration. But you will find that the bodily mechanism
is only a mechanical means; it is an instrument, but not
always important or indispensable.

When we are conscious of the Divine, do we see Him
in all things in some particular form ?

You expect to see a divine form in each and all things?
It may happen so. But I am not sure; I have the impres-
sion that there is a large part of imagination in such expe-
riences. You may, for example, see the form of Krishna
or Christ or Buddha in every being or thing. But I say
that much of human conception enters into this percep-
tion. Otherwise what I was telling you just now would

THE DIVINE TRUTH ITS NAME AND FORM 29

not be true. I said all who have the consciousness of the
Divine, all who get the contact with the Divine, wherever
one may be, to whatever age or country he may belong, all
have the same essential experience. If it were not so, the
Hindus would always see one of their gods, the Europeans
one of theirs, the Japanese a third variety and so on. This
may be an addition of each one's own mental formation,
but it would not be the Reality in its essence or purity
which is beyond all form. One can have a perception of
the Divine Presence, a very concrete perception, one can
have even a personal contact with the Divine, but it need
not happen in and through the kind of form you imagine;
it is something inexpressible, beyond all explanation or
definition, it is eyident only to one who has the experience.
It may be as you are suddenly lifted up into a peculiar
condition, you find yourself in the presence of the Divine
which takes a form familiar to you, a form you have been
accustomed to associate with the Divine, because of your
education, your upbringing and tradition. But, as I say,
it is not the supreme essence of the experience: the form
gives after all a limitation to the experience, takes a^ay
from it its universality and a large measure of its power.

THE SYMBOLIC IGNORANCE

How can there be dark spots in the light of the full
consciousness (the Mother's consciousness)? The dark-
ness is only relative and depends upon the degree or status
of consciousness. At the outset, on lower and narrower
ranges, the light is dim and confined: it is surrounded
by a much greater and denser area of darkness. As the
consciousness grows, that is to say, manifests itself, as
it rises and widens, the obscurity too recedes more and
more -and slowly fades away. This consciousness is not
personal, but something impersonal. In^ other words, it
holds within itself the universe including especially the
earth. And earth is a dark object; it is made of ignorance
and unconsciousness. The light envelops it and only
gradually penetrates and transforms it. The Mother's
consciousness is thus the representative consciousness;
it represents all that is yet unconscious and striving
secretly without knowing towards consciousness; it is
also at the same time the light itself that acts and
transforms., The divine consciousness embodied acting
upon itself thus symbolises and embodies its action
upon what would be viewed as others.

30

DISEASES AND ACCIDENTS

If the body is ill, does the mind too fall ill?

NOT necessarily, to be sure. Illnesses are, as I have
told you, generally a dislocation among the different
parts of the being, a kind of disharmony. It may well
be that the body has not followed the movement of
progress, it might have lagged behind while the other
parts have, on the contrary, made progress. In that case
there is an unbalance, a breaking of harmonv and that
produces an illness, I mean, in the body, for the mind
and the vital also might remain all right. There are
many people who have been ill for years, suffering from
terrible and incurable diseases, and still maintained
their mental power marvellously clear and active and
continuing to make progress in that domain. There was
a French poet, a very good poet, Sully Prudhomme, by
name; he was mortally ill and it was during that time
that he wrote his most beautiful poems. He was always
in a very good humour, charming, smiling, pleasant to
everyone even while his body was going to bits. You
may remember how the great Louis XIV used to joke
and laugh, while, in his last days, his body was being
lacerated and given over to leeches by his doctors and
surgeons. It depends upon individual and individual.
For there are people of the other type who get thoroughly

32 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

disturbed from head to foot if there is the slightest bodily
indisposition. Each one has his own combination of the
elements.

There is of course a relation between the mind and
the body, quite a close relation. In most cases it is the
mind that makes the body ill, at least it is the most im-
portant factor in the illness. I have said, there are people
who keep their mind clear although their body suffers.
But it is very rare and very difficult to keep the body
healthy when the mind suffers or is unbalanced. It is
not impossible, but very very exceptional. For I ex-
plained to you that it is the mind which is the master of
the body, the body is an obedient and obliging servant.
Unfortunately one does not usually know how to make
use of one's mind, not only so, one makes bad use of it
and as bad as possible. The mind possesses a considerable
power of formation and of direct action on the body.
It is precisely this power which is used by people to
make their body ill. As soon as there is something which
does not go well, the mind begins to worry about it,
makes formations of coming catastrophes, indulges in
all kinds of imaginary dangers ahead. Now, instead of
thus letting the mind run amuck and do havoc, if the
same energy were used for a better purpose, if good
formations are made, namely, giving self-confidence to
the body, telling it that there is nothing to be anxious
about, it is only a passing unease and so on, in that case,
the body would be put in a right condition of receptivity
and the illness pass away quietly even as it came. That

DISEASES AND ACCIDENTS 33

is how the mind is to be taught to give good suggestions
to the body and not to throw mud into it. Marvellous
results follow if you do it properly.

When an accident happens there is in it a critical
moment. For example, you slip and you fall. Now
between the moment when you slip and the moment
when you fall, there is just a fraction of a second when
you are., as it were, given the choice. It can either be
nothing or something very serious. Only to make the
choice you must have a perfectly awakened consciousness
and your being must be constantly in contact with the
psychic. There is no time to bring in the contact, one
must already be in contact. So, just between the slip
and the fall, if the mental and psychic formation is suffi-
cient, you come out unscathed. If, on the contrary, the
body thinks, as it is its habit, "Oh, I have slipped" and
becomes apprehensive it is, as I say, a matter of a
fraction of a second, even less then the catastrophe
happens. You have the capacity to prevent an accident
happening, you are given the choice at a momentary
moment. But for that you must learn to be wide awake,
to be fully conscious. When you are in that condition
you can prevent an accident, you can stop an illness
coming into you. But it is just the matter of a split
second and you must not miss it.

And yet there is still another moment. When you

have fallen and are already hurt; you have still now the

open chance whether it will turn well or ill, whether it

will stop at being just a mishap or become something

3

34 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

really serious or as serious as possible. I do not know
if you have noticed that there are certain people who
do not seem to miss any occasion for an accident. Every
time there is a possibility, they have it. And the accident
is never slight, it tends to be serious and often very
serious. People say, what an unlucky fellow! Chance
is never on his side! etc. etc* But all that is sheer igno-
rance. Everything depends absolutely upon the working
of the consciousness. I could cite any number of examples
and such striking examples. There are people who might
have been killed but came out of the accident safe and
sound. There are others for whom what was quite
harmless in the beginning turns worse and worse and
proves in the end, perhaps, fatal.

But you must understand it is not the working of
thought, ordinary thought. The thought may be as
good in one as in the other. It all depends upon the
moment of choice. There are people who know how to
react in the right manner and at the right moment.
It is the character that matters. Such people have a
wakeful, alert consciousness; they are not asleep, they
are on the watch constantly within themselves. And at
the right moment they call for the aid, they invoke the
divine force, yes, exactly at the right moment. And
the danger is warded off. On the other hand, whenever
there is something going wrong, some dislocation in the
beings if you are seized by fear, dark foreboding or
defeatism in the consciousness, then you are done
for.

DISEASES AND ACCIDENTS 35

It is not the mind, as I say, which decides. It is an
inner attitude, a poise of the being, the right conscious-
ness which reacts in the right manner. Its effect goes
very far. You do not know what a power it is. Even
if it is there just for a fraction of a second, it works
miracles. Only it must be there already, you must be
already in the state of wakefulness, you cannot order
it at the moment, you have no time.

You may say again that it is the Divine Grace that
saves. But would you explain to me how it works?
It would be interesting indeed to find out who had
precisely the awakened consciousness, had the faith and
the inner trust, had called for the help and had in him
that which answered automatically and even in a way
unconsciously to something that came in. Human
intelligence is a relative thing and has varying degrees
of power. Usually it understands by contrasts and con-
traries. It does not understand a truth in its absoluteness.
For example, I have received hundreds of letters thanking
me because they were saved from dangers. But I do
not remember to have received a letter thanking me
because things were normal and nothing had happened.
Men perceive the action of Grace only when there is the
atmosphere of the pessimist and there is a danger and
they have escaped from it, that is to say, when there is
already the beginning of the accident, when the accident
has come to pass. When they come out of the danger
safely only then they take note of the force that saved.
Otherwise they would not have even thought of it.

36 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

If the voyage they undertook came off without 'any
accident they would not think of any action of Grace
present there. They would take it as a matter of course.
But precisely because it is so, there may be acting here
a Grace of a higher order and there may be existing
already a deeper preexistent harmony between the
consciousness of the person and the higher force to
which it responds. The chance of an accident is already
the beginning of the dislocation I spoke of. But the
situation becomes complicated if it is a case of collective
accident. The result here depends upon the atmosphere
of the persons involved. It is the proportion of these two
elements in the personnel of a collective accident that
determines the character and magnitude of the accident.
I will tell you a story, I mean a true story, in this connec-
tion. There was a pilot who was considered what is called
an ace among his fellowmen in the first Great War. He
was an extraordinary aviator and the hero of many
victories. Nothing had happened to him at any time. But
towards the end of his life, an event occurred some pri-
vate tragedy and all at once he had the feeling that some-
thing was going to happen to him; an accident perhaps,
and it was all finished with him. He had come out of the
war but was still in the army. He wanted to make a flight
to South Africa, from France right up to the south of
Africa. He started from France and made for Madagascar,
so far as I remember, and then wanted to fly back to
France. Now, my brother was at that time the Governor
of Congo and needed to join his post as soon as possible.

DISEASES AND ACCIDENTS 37

He asked for a place in the aeroplane of the pilot I am
speaking about. It was not a regular service plane, but one
of those used for experimentation to show what the ma-
chines were capable of and the skill of the airmen. Many
tried to dissuade my brother from making the journey,
saying that these adventurous trips were always dangerous.
My brother however did not mind the risk. Nothing se-
rious happened,, but for a slight breakdown in the middle
of the Sahara which was easily got over, and the plane
made safe journey and deposited him at his place in Congo.
The plane continued further down, to Madagascar, as I
said. Now the pilot started back, he did half the journey,
Ms plane crashed and he was killed forthwith. I shall
explain to you what really the matter was. What happened
had to happen, it was a foregone conclusion. My brother
had an absolute faith in his destiny, a certainty that nothing
would touch him. The consciousness of the other was
on the contrary full of doubt and apprehension. So the
mixture of the two atmospheres brought about this that
in the first instance the accident could not be prevented,
but it stopped short of catastrophe. But once the destiny
of my brother was not there with the machine, like
Caesar's destiny that made the boatman go safely across
the river through a storm the protection was also with-
drawn and the pilot had to go down under the full blast
of his bad fate. I can narrate another analogous story,
it is with regard to a ship. There were two persons, hus-
band and wife. They went by air to Indo-China. They
had an accident, a very serious accident. All were killed

38 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

except only these two. Now they had to return to France.
They did not want to travel by air, they had the experience
of it. So they took a boat, I mean a ship, which they
thought would be quite safe. Now what happened
was absolutely unexpected, quite extraordinary. In the
middle of the Red Sea, in broad daylight, the ship struck
against a reef and sank a thing that does not happen
even once perhaps in a million cases. All the passengers
were drowned except, miraculous again to say, the pair.
There are people like that, they carry misfortune with
them, but the misfortune is for others, they themselves
escape somehow.

If you look at the thing in an ordinary way, you do
not notice it. But the fact is there. You must be very
careful about your associations. An unfortunate asso-
ciation may prove disastrous to you. The karma of
others may fall upon you, unless you have the inner
knowledge, the vision and the necessary power. If you
see a person with something like a dark whirl around
avoid him at all cost. The moral of it all is that it is very
useful to look into things a little more deeply than to
observe the surface only.

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

GOD has created the world, the material world as it is?
Yes and No, more "No" than "Yes". For he has not
created it directly. There have been many creators,
rather formateurs, form-makers, in between the world
and God, who joined in the work of creation. Who are
they? They have been given various names. Creation
generally follows a principle of gradation. It is done
step by step, world rising out of world successively.
Each world is a particular state of being, a particular
mode of consciousness. Each state is inhabited by
entities, individualities, personalities and each one has
created a world around him or assisted in the creation
of certain types or species upon earth. The last of these
creators or Fashioners are those of the vital. At the top
are those of what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind. It
was these that created, that is to say, gave the first forms
to earthly beings and things. They sent out their emana-
tions and these again theirs in their turn and so on.
Thus it was not the Divine Will which acted directly
upon Matter and gave the world the form it could or
should have had. There are layers and planes, graded
intermediaries through which the Will has had to act.
I spoke of the overmental and the vital plane. There
is also the mental plane between them. There are mental
beings who are also creators, giving form to some beings
that have taken body upon earth.

39

40 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

Thus, there is a tradition which says that the world of
insects is the outcome of the creators of the vital world.
That is why when yon see the insects under a microscope
they take on appearances that are absolutely diabolical.
Enlarged on a screen they look like veritable monsters,
so terrifying they are. Microscopic monsters they are.
So it is said, beings of the vital world thought of amusing
themselves and created these impossible beasts making
human existence uncomfortable.

You can of course ask ho\v these intermediaries them-
selves came into being, not out of the Divine? Inter-
mediaries come out of other still higher and higher
intermediaries till the chain reaches the Supreme. Origi-
nally, that is to say, if you trace back to the original
source, there is there, of course, only the Divine. Then
how has the deformation come in? I explained to you
once that if you do not remain one with the Divine,
under his direct influence, do not follow the movement
of creation or expansion exactly as the Divine wills,
this rupture of contact is sufficient to bring about the
greatest evil of all, division. Even the most luminous,
the most powerful beings may decide to follow their
own movement instead of obeying the divine movement.
They may be in themselves marvellous beings, and
human beings, if they saw them, would take them for
the Divine himself, yet they can, since they follow their
own will and work not in harmony with the universe,
be the source of the greatest disorders. There is nothing
that is not the Divine, only there comes about a disorder,

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 4!

that is to say, each thing is not in its proper place. The
problem is, this has to be remedied.

As to the question why this deviation, this evil at all,
I can say, first of all, what you call evil may be only what
is not convenient to you, but from the standpoint of
universal arrangement that may be the most convenient.
Secondly, the thing might have been just an accident,
so to say, in the beginning. And what we are concerned
with is not so much its why or even how but with the
remedy to be found for the evil that is there. Viewing
philosophically, however, we may note that the .universe
in which we live is evidently one movement out of many
(actual and possible), that it follows its own law which
is not the same elsewhere, that if the principle on which
this universe has been created is that of free will, then
you cannot prevent the disorderly movement from
happening until a knowledge comes and illumines the
choice. If one is free to choose, one may choose the
wrong thing, not necessarily the right thing, for if it
were decided from beforeh and that the choice must be
always good and in the right direction, then the choice
will no longer be free.

But in reality these questions cannot be adequately
answered in that way. It is a problem to which mental
answers of which the mental formulations even only
serve to diminish the dimensions of the problem; the
question itself reduces the problem to a more or less
elementary formula corresponding only vaguely and
superficially and incompletely to the reality of things.

42 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

To be able to understand you must become. If you
want to understand the why and the how of the universe
you must identify yourself with the universe. And that
is not easy.

In truth the question itself is wrong. It is childish.
It presupposes things that are themselves questionable.
There are certain ideas about creation which have been
almost universally current, more or less permanently
accepted by human thought during ages; they are of an
astounding simplicity. There is a world here, it is said,
and up there somewhere there is a being called God.
This person one day thought of creating some kind of
thing, a visible form. The world was the result. Evidently
we see a lot of mistakes in his work. We conclude the
creator perhaps is a well-meaning benevolent person,
but not all-powerful; some other thing or being there
is that contradicts him. Or perhaps he is all-powerful
but then has no heart and must be cruelty itself viewing
the condition of his creation which is a story of sorrow
and trouble and misery. Such an idea, I say, is simplicity
itself, the simplicity of a child brain. When one speaks
of God the creator as a potter making a pot, one thinks
of him as a human being, only in bigger proportions.
Truly, it is not God who has made man in his image,
it is man who has made God in his image.

As I say, the question is wrongly put. The very form
of the question already assumed a certain notion about
God and creation. Your postulates or axioms themselves
are vitiated.

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 43

The universe and its creator are not separate things,
they are one and identical in their origin. The universe
is God himself projected into Space (and Time). So
the universe is the Divine in one aspect or another. You
cannot divide the two, making one the creator and the
other his work, the watchmaker and his watch. You
put your idea of the Divine upon him and ask, why he
has created such a nasty world. If the Divine were to
answer, "It is not I, it is yourself. Become myself again,
you will no longer feel and see as you do now. You are
not yourself, therefore your question and your problem" !
Indeed when you unite your consciousness with the
divine consciousness there is no longer any problem.
Everything appears then natural and simple, and correct
and as it should be. It is when you cut yourself from
your origin and stand outside, in front of him and against
him that all the trouble begins. Of course you may ask,
how is it that the Divine has tolerated a part of himself
going out and separating itself and creating all this
disorder? I would reply on behalf of the Divine, "If you
want to know, you had better unite yourself with the
Divine, for that is the only way of knowing why he has
done so. It is not by questioning him by your mind
that you will get the answer. The mind cannot know.
And I repeat, when you come to this identification, all
problems are solved. The feeling, one can explain, that
things are not all right, that they should be otherwise
comes precisely from the fact that there is a divine will
unfolding itself in a continuous progression, that things

44 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

that were and are have to give place to things that shall
be and shall be better and better than they have been.
The world that was good yesterday will no longer be so
tomorrow. The universe might have appeared quite
harmonious in some other age but now appears quite
discordant: it is because we see the possibility of a better
universe. If we found it as it should be, we would not
do what we have to do, we would not try to make it
better. Even so, we would conceive the Divine in a very
human way; for we remain imprisoned within ourselves,
confined to this consciousness of ours which is like a grain
of sand in the infinite immensity. You want to understand
the immensity? That is not possible. It is possible only
under one condition; be one with the immensity. The
drop of water cannot very well ask how is the ocean:
it has to lose itself into the ocean.

THIS UGLINESS IN THE WORLD

EVERYTHING in the world has at its source a supreme
truth, how is it then that the world has become ugly
in its expression? Why are things at all ugly? Because
there are other things that intervene between the Source
and the manifestation. For example, if I asked you:
"do you know your true being"? what would you say?
You do not know; it would be wonderful if you did.
It is the same with all beings and things. And yet you
are already a sufficiently developed being, a thinking
being, and have gone through many stages of refinement;
you are not quite the lizard walking on the wall! Still
you cannot tell what is the truth of your being. That
is the secret of the deformation in the world. It is because
there is all the unconsciousness the Inconscient that
has been created by the fact of separation from one's
origin. It is this inconscience which prevents the Source
from manifesting in its own nature, although it is there
always. It is there, therefore all things exist, the world
exists; but in its expression it is deformed, because it
has to manifest itself through inconscience, through
ignorance and obscurity. But how did it come about?
The will to create was originally a will that projected
itself towards individual formation; what it arrived at,
however, was not the true individual (or individualisa-

45

46 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

tion) but a breaking up of the solid unity into infinitesimal
fragments. The original indivisible unity became a sum
of infinitely divided unities. These unities or units were
individualisations of things separate and feeling and
acting as such. It is precisely the feeling of separation
from others that gives you the impression that you are
an individual. Otherwise you would feel that you were
only a fluid mass. That is to say, you are no longer
conscious simply of your rigid outer form and all that
cuts you off from others and makes of you a separate
individual, you are conscious of the vital forces that move
about everywhere, of the inconscient that is the founda-
tion of all, you have the impression that you are a moving
mass with all kinds of contradictory movements in it
which cannot be separated from each other. You would
not have the impression that you are an individual being,
but that you are something like one note or vibration in
a whole complex. The original will was to form indi-
vidual beings capable of becoming conscious again of
their divine origin. This process of individualisation
created the necessity that to be an individual one must
feel oneself separate: that is why one is cut off from the
original consciousness, at least apparently, and is fallen
into inconscience. For the Life of life is the Origin alone
and if it is separated from that source, consciousness
naturally turns into unconsciousness and you lose trace
of the truth of your being. That is the process of the
creation or formation of the world by which the pure
origin does not manifest directly in its essence and

THIS UGLINESS IN THE WORLD 47

purity, but through deformation, that is to say, un-
consciousness and ignorance. That is how ugliness came
in, death and disease, wickedness and misery and all.
It is the movement, I say, brought in by the necessity of
individual formation that has produced these things,
each and every one of them, that is the one source of the
multiple evil in all its modes and vibrations. I do not
say this was indispensable that problem I may take up
later on. But for the moment I direct you to the source
in order to show the remedy. And there is no point in
questioning why it is so. As I said, the only way to
settle the world problem is to be conscious again, to
recover the lost consciousness. Of course, if you say
like some religions that good is good and evil evil and
they will always remain so, then there is no longer any
problem. An eternal struggle binds the two together
and whichever wins for the moment will make the world
a little better at one moment and a little worse at another.
But the two exist, continue to exist eternally and in-
dissolubly intertwined. But you have seen it is not like
that; one can come out of the tangle into the perfect
unity of the truth, for it is that which is the only and
original source.

It is this perfect truth, let me repeat, that has scattered
itself abroad, into these innumerable little atoms, into
these insignificant brain cells which, in spite of all their
ignorance, are still moved by a secret stir of consciousness:
these little specks of darkness reach out towards light
which they can find, for it is within them. They will

48 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

arrive at what they seek. It may take time more or less,
but they will reach in the end. That is then the remedy:
it lies in the very heart of evil itself.

DIVINE JUSTICE

Why do people receive force from the Divine even when
He knows that they are not sincere?

You must understand once for all that the Divine,
when he acts is not moved by human notions. Possibly
he does things even without what we call reason. In
any case the reasons are not of the human kind; above
all, the Divine has not that sense of justice which man
has. For example, when you see a man full of greed
for money, trying to cheat people just for the sake of
getting a few rupees, your idea of justice cries out that
such a man should be deprived of all money, he must
be reduced to poverty. But actually you find things
happening to the contrary. Although that is only the
appearance of the situation; behind there is an altogether
different picture. The greedy gets the object of his
greed, but he has to make an exchange, give up some
other possibilities. He gets money but he loses in his
consciousness. And then it also happens very often that
when he does get what he desired so much, he finds
himself not so happy, generally he is even less happy
than before: he is tormented by the wealth he has gained.
You must not judge things by apparent success or by
apparent failure. One can say, on the whole, that the
Divine gives what one asks for and that is the best

49
4

50 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

way Jin which one gets his lesson. If your desire is igno-
rant, unconscious, obscure, selfish, you increase in
yourself ignorance, unconsciousness, obscurity and sel-
fishness, that is to say, you move away more and more
from truth and consciousness and happiness, away from
the Divine, in other words. For the Divine, however,
there is only one thing which is true, the Divine Con-
sciousness, the Divine Union. Each time you put ma-
terial things in front of you, you become more and more
material, you push behind more and more the Divine.
To the eye of the ignorant you may have all the appear-
ance of wonderful success, but this success, from the
standpoint of truth, is a terrible defeat, you have bartered
truth for falsehood.

To judge by appearances, by apparent success is an
act of complete ignorance. Even in the case of a person
hardened to the core, who has apparently the utmost
success, there is a counterpart: exactly this hardening,
this veil that is put up thicker and thicker between the
outer consciousness and the inner truth becomes also
more and more unbearable. The outer success has to be
paid for very dearly. One must be very great, very pure,
one must have a very high, very unselfish spiritual con-
sciousness to be able to succeed and yet not be affected.
There is nothing so difficult to bear than success. That
is the true test in life. When you are not successful,
you turn very naturally to yourself, go within you, seek
there comfort for the outer failure. And they who have
the Flame within them and the Divine helping them truly,

DIVINE JUSTICE 5!

that is to say, if they are mature enough to get the help,
if they are ready to follow the path, must expect blows
coming upon them one after another, because that helps.
Indeed that is the most powerful, most direct and most
effective help. But if you have success take care! Ask
yourself, at what price you have had it. What is the
thing you have paid for the success? Of course there are
people of a different kind. They who have gone beyond,
who are conscious of their soul, who are entirely sur-
rendered, they can succeed and success does not touch
them. But one has to rise very high to be able to shoulder
the burden of success. It is perhaps the last and final
test that the Divine puts to anyone. He says: "Now
that you are noble and high and unselfish, you belong to
Me alone. I shall make you triumph. We shall see if
you can bear the blow"

To the Asuras too the Divine gives what they ask for.
Generally it is in that way that their end comes all the
sooner. An Asura is a conscious being. He knows that
he has an end. He knows that the attitude he has taken
in this universe will necessarily destroy him after a time.
Of course the Asura's time is much longer than human
time. Even then he knows that there will come an end
for him, for he has cut himself from Eternity. What he
seeks is to carry out his desires to the utmost extent
possible till the day of his doom, the final defeat comes.
And very possibly if he is allowed his way the defeat
will be hastened. That is why exactly when great things
are about to happen, at that moment the adverse forces

52 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

become the most active, most violently active and appa-
rently the most successful. They are given a free field
as it were to rush to their doom.

THE DIVINE SUFFERING

GENERALLY speaking, when one is unhappy, it is one
more suffering added to the collective suffering of the
Divine. The Divine acts upon Matter in a state of deep
compassion: this compassion is translated in Matter and
is figured there by what we call Psychic Sorrow. It is,
as it were, a reversed image of the original reality.

The Divine's compassion, translated in the individual
physical consciousness, becomes a sorrow that is not
egoistic, a sorrow that is an expression of one's identi-
fication with the universal sorrow through sympathy.
I have described the experience at some length in one of
the Prayers and Meditations. I spoke there of "the sweet-
est tears that I shed in life"; for those tears were not for
my sake, I was not weeping for myself. In almost every
case man grieves for egoistic reasons, in the human way.
Whenever anyone loses a person he loves, he suffers
and weeps, not over the condition of the person: in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred or even more, people
do not know in what condition the person gone may be,
they do not and cannot know if the person is happy or
unhappy, if he is suffering or is in peace. It is the sense of
separation that causes the grief, the feeling that he will
not be with them any more which they so much wish.
At the root of all human sorrow, there lies this return
upon one's own self, more or less conscious, more or less

53

54 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

admitted. But when you feel unhappy for the unhappi-
ness of others, there comes in a mixture. That is to say,
to your personal grief is added a psychic element which
I described as the reversed image of the Divine Com-
passion. Now, if you can distinguish between the two,
the personal anguish and the disinterested sorrow, come
out of what is egoistic and concentrate upon the divine
element, make yourself one with it, then you can in that
way come in contact with the great universal compassion,
which is something immense, vast, calm, mighty, pro-
found, which is perfect peace and infinite Bliss. If you
know then how to enter into your suffering, go down
to the very bottom of it, pass beyond the portion that
is egoistic and personal, go farther on, then you arrive
at the door of a wonderful revelation. Not that you should
seek suffering for the sake of the suffering and in order
to have the experience; but when it is there, when it has
come upon you, then try what I have suggested, cross the
border, the barrier of egoism in your suffering: note first
where is the egoistic part, what is it that makes you suffer,
what is the egoistic reason of your suffering, then step
across and beyond, towards something universal, to-
wards a greater principle. You enter then into the vast,
the infinite compassion, the door of the Psychic opens
for you. If, in that domain, you see me in tears, as you
say you did in your dream, then you can identify your-
self with me at the moment, enter into those tears as it
were, melt into them. That will open the door and it
will bring you an experience, a very unique experience

THE DIVINE SUFFERING 55

that leaves always a deep mark upon the consciousness.
It is never blotted out altogether even if the door closes
again and you become once more what you are in your
ordinary movements. That experience, that mark re-
mains behind and you can recall it, go back to it, refer to
it in your moments of concentration. You feel then the
immensity of an infinite sweetness, a great peace, per-
vading all your being, it is not in your thought only; it
goes out and sympathises with everything and can cure
everything.

Only you must sincerely wish, you must have the will,
to be cured. Everything lies there. Now I always come
back to the same theme. You must be sincere. If you
want an experience for the sake of the experience and,
once you have it, to go back to your ordinary ways, that
will not do. You must sincerely will to be cured cured
precisely of the ordinary ways you must have the
aspiration, the true aspiration to overcome the obstacle,
to mount up and up, above and beyond yourself, so that
you may drop all that pulls you back, drags you down,
to break all limits, clarify and purify yourself, rid your-
self of all that lies in your way. If you have this will, the
true intense will not to fall back into past errors, to rise
out of obscurity and ignorance towards the light, shorn
of all that is human, too human too small, too ignorant
then that will and that aspiration shall act, act gradually,
strongly and effectively bringing you a complete and
definitive result. But beware, there must be nothing that
clings to the old movements, that does not declare itself

56 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

but hides its head and when the occasion is opportune
puts up its snout.

So I say you must be truly sincere, very truly. If you
discover anything clutching, sticking somewhere in the
depths, you must be ready to pluck it out, wholly erase it
and see no mark of it is left behind. Yes, sometimes you
repeat your mistakes. You repeat till your suffering be-
comes too acute to bear and compels you to be sincere in
spite of yourself as it were. But you need not try that
line. It is a method, but a bad method: bad, because it
destroys so many things, wastes so much energy, leaves
such wrong vibrations. In the intensity of your suffering
you do discover the will towards perfect sincerity. But you
can be sincere also in less arduous and tortuous a way.

There is a moment in the life of every one, there is a
moment when this need of perfect sincerity comes as a
matter of ultimate choice. There is a moment in the life
of the individual and there is a moment in the life of the
group also to which the individual belongs, when that
choice has to be made, the final purification has to be
performed. It is a question then almost of life and
death, the progress has to be made if one is to survive.

DIVINE DISGUST

IT is a "disgust" filled with all compassion. It is something
which takes upon itself the wrong vibrations in others to
cure them. Instead of throwing a wrong movement back
upon the wrong doer in a spirit of cold justice, it draws it
within itself, absorbs it in order to eliminate it or trans-
form it, reducing as much as possible its material conse-
quences. You know the ancient legend of Shiva who has a
dark patch upon his throat, because he swallowed all
the poison of the world: it is a figure of divine disgust.

Naturally, the poison will not have the same effect upon
the Divine as upon man. For there is an essential differ-
ence between a state of ignorance and a state of knowledge.
Something untoward happens to you in your normal
state of ignorance, it has a certain character and brings
mentally certain results: but the same thing happening to
you in a state of knowledge will not carry the same effect.
For example, take a very material thing, a blow, a right
royal physical blow; well, if you are in a state of incon-
science and ignorance, as you usually are, you will have to
suffer the full consequence that depends wholly upon the
force of the blow, who or what gave the blow and the help-
lessness of the object. But the same blow delivered in the
same way by the same agent but upon a being who is con-
scious and full of knowledge, will produce instantly a
reaction reducing the natural consequences to a minimum,

57

58 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

even annulling the consequences altogether; for the reac-
tion here is a reaction of knowledge, of light and not that
of ignorance, of obscurity. On the moral level the action
can be clearly noticed. For example, you can receive
an emotional shock, not in egoistic blindness, that is to
say, identifying yourself with it or drowned in it; you can
hold it away from you, look at it in an objective manner,
see what it is, note the nature of its vibration 'etc. etc.,
and then you put the light of your knowledge, the ultra-
violet ray, as it were, of truth upon it. As a result, there
comes a new disposition, the shock loses its effectivity.
Even so, the physical result of a physical blow can likewise
be obviated. If that were not possible what would be the
utility of the Divine taking upon himself the evil thing.
Evil would continue in the same way and the world con-
tinue suffering in the same way. Precisely because the
obscure vibrations are transformed into vibrations of light
in the divine consciousness that the Divine takes upon and
within himself all the ills of the world.

In the case of the physical occurrence, the knowledge I
speak of is the inner knowledge of the body cells, their
existence, composidon, distribution and the knowledge
of the consequences of the blow, its natural and expected
effects. Also at the same time there should be the know-
ledge of what the cells should be like, how they ought to
react to the blow. And the procedure adopted too is quite
different from that of physical Nature which takes hours,
days, months to repair a damage; the inner knowledge can
do the thing immediately. This inner knowledge can be

DIVINE DISGUST 59

brought down from its highest source. Instead of the
mere psychological knowledge, one can call down the sup-
ramental knowledge and focus it upon the part of the body
endangered. If the elements of the body, the cells come
under the influence of the force of truth and receive it,
then there can be an immediate new ordering of the ele-
ments according to the higher law. That will bring about
not only the cure from the blow received, the mending
of the accident, but initiate a big progress in the general
consciousness. This power to comm and the consciousness
has no limit. If you have committed an error, even a
grave error, and if you can yet call upon the consciousness
of truth, this power of the supramental and allow it to
work, it will give you an occasion to make a formidable
progress. In other words, never be discouraged if you
have blundered, blundered even more than once. Only
you must keep your will firm, and take sometime the un-
shakable resolution not to repeat. Rest assured you will
in the end triumph over your difficulty.

Section Three

THINGS SIGNIFICANT AND INSIGNIFICANT

ALL things are insignificant in ordinary life. The thoughts
you think 5 the actions you do, the feelings you experience,
all your movements have no significance at all, they possess
no value. They belong to the superficial part of your
being, they come and pass away, like ripples on the sea,
leaving no trace or effect in the depths. Only at a rare
moment, if ever you come in contact with a corner of your
soul, if something of that inmost consciousness touches or
gazes at any limb of yours, that flash of a moment is the only
significant thing that happens in the midst of all the useless
mass that is your life. This is the only precious point and
the rest a world of rubbish. To make your life significant,
to give it its true meaning and value, you must then draw
back from the surface trivialities and look for something
else behind. You must go very deep indeed if things are
to cease being insignificant.

WHY DO WE FORGET THINGS?

THERE are many reasons, of course. First and the most
important is that we use the faculty of "memory" in order
to remember. Memory is a mental instrument depending
upon the formation and growth of the brain. Your brain
is developing constantly unless, of course, it is already
degenerating; the development can continue for a long
time, longer than that of the body. In the process there
are necessarily things replaced by others; and as the instru-
ment grows, elements that were useful at one stage are
no longer so at a subsequent state and have to give place
to others more suitable. The net result of our acquisi-
tions remains there in essence, but all that led to it, the
intermediary steps are suppressed. Indeed, a good
memory means nothing more than that that is to say, to
remember the results only, so that the fundamentals are
sifted and stored, namely, those alone that are useful for
further construction. This is more important than
just trying to retain some particular items in a rigid
manner.

There is another thing. Apart from the fact that
memory by itself in its very nature is a defective organ,
there is the other fact that there are different states of con-
sciousness one following another. Each state faithfully
records the phenomena of that moment, whatever they

64

WHY DO WE FORGET THINGS? 65

may be. Now, if your mind is calm and clear, wide and
strong, you can by concentrating your consciousness on
thai moment bring out of it and recall in your present
active state what is recorded there of your movements
then; you can, that is to say, go back to the particular state
of consciousness at a given moment and live it again. What
is registered in your consciousness is never obliterated and
hence not really forgotten. You can live a thousand years
and you will not have forgotten that. Therefore, if you
do not want to forget a thing, you must retain it through
your consciousness, and not through your mental memory.
As I have said, the mental memory fades away, new things,
things of today replace old things, things of yesterday.
But that of which you are conscious in your consciousness,
you can never forget. It lies somewhere in the back-
ground, returns to you at your bidding. You have only to
withdraw to that state of the consciousness where it lies
embedded. In this way you can recall things that you knew
perhaps centuries ago. It is how you remember your
past lives. For, a movement of consciousness never dies
out, it is only the impressions on the surface brain-mind
that are fugitive. What you have learnt with this super-
ficial instrument laboriously only read, heard, noted,
underlined leaves no lasting mark, but what is imbibed,
breathed in into the stuff of consciousness remains. The
brain is being constantly renewed and reformed. Old
cells, cells that have become weak and atrophied are
replaced by younger and stronger ones or the old cells
combine differently or enter into other organisations.
5

66 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

Thus the old impressions or memories they carried are
obliterated.

It is, as I say, by entering into a previous state of con-
sciousness where you experienced a thing that you can
always call back the thing. Only you must know how to
get at the point, submerged somewhere in the depths.
The body, after death, dissolves, the greater part of the
vital and the mind dissolves also only a small portion
that has been well organised, given a compact cohesive
form endures. Such an achievement is a rare pheno-
menon. But it is otherwise with the consciousness.
Consciousness is eternal. If you contact the consciousness
you discover the whole mystery of the earth and creation.
It is consciousness that can create.

HOW TO GET RID OF
TROUBLESOME THOUGHTS?

THERE are several ways and also it depends upon the case.
The first and the easiest way is to think of something else,
Concentrate your attention upon a subject which has
nothing to do with what troubles you. You can read
something interesting or take up a work that demands care
and consideration. Something creative would be more
effective; writers and artists, for example, when they are
engaged in their particular occupation forget everything
else, their whole mind is engrossed in that one matter.
But, of course, once the work is done, the trouble begins
again, if one has not learnt to control the thoughts in the
meanwhile. So there is the second method which is a
little more difficult. You have to learn a movement of rejec-
tion. As you reject or throw away a physical object, even
so you must throw away and reject the thought. It is
more difficult, but if you succeed, it is more effective.
You have to practise and continue the endeavour, repeat
and persevere and there is no reason why you should not
succeed, if you are thoroughly sincere and serious.

There is a third method. It is to bring down from above
a greater light which is in its nature the very opposite of
the thoughts you are dealing with, opposite in a very
radical and deep sense; that is to say, if the thoughts that
trouble you are obscure and ignorant, especially if they

6?

68 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

happen to rise from the subconscient or the inconscient^
supported by the mere instincts, then, by calling down the
light from above and turning it upon the dark thoughts
you can simply dissolve them or transform them, wher-
ever possible. It is the supreme means, but perhaps not
within the easy reach of all. But if you succeed in it, not
only the thoughts do not come, their very cause is re-
moved. The first method is to turn aside, the second to
face and fight, the third to rise above and transform. In
the third you are not only cured, but you make a progress
true progress.

BAD THOUGHT-FORMATION

A BAD thought is a bad act. You may not know it, but an
evil thought is truly an evil act. If you think ill of a man
and wish him ill, you are responsible for the mishaps that
may befall him to the same degree as when you act ill
towards him. Unfortunately, an evil thought is not a
recognised crime and nobody intervenes when you think
ill. Not only so, there are a good many people who con-
sider it a play to excite wicked thoughts in others. They
do so (innocently, they think,) sometimes through
sheer stupidity, more often through vanity, through
an air of self-importance for having said something
interesting.

When you have a bad thought, you make an evil forma-
tion and you carry it about you or throw it out. It happens
sometimes that when you pass by a man, you suddenly
feel unwell, you may not connect the two and you may
know nothing of the matter, but in fact the man may have
been entertaining an evil thought and it has pounced upon
you.

When you find out the cause, then what you have to do
is to chase it away, as if it were a fly. The flies are some-
times very troublesome, the more you drive them away
the more they come and take it as an amusing game. But
if you are serious and have the will, you succeed in driving
them out. In the same manner when an evil formation.

69

7O THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

seeks to possess or touch you, push it away immediately,
push it away again and again till it disappears.

Why should there be a bad will at all, you ask?

You go into the very origin of things. Why is there
inconscience, ignorance and obscurity? You ask for the
why and wherefore of the universe. Why is creation
like this and not otherwise? Every one has explained
in his own way. The philosophers have done so, the
scientists have done so on different lines. But, none has
found the way out. You ask why there is bad will, but the
truly interesting and important thing is to find a means
whereby there would be no bad will. What is the use of
asking why there is pain and suffering and misery, unless
it is to find out the remedy? If you look for the why,
you may find as many explanations as you like, each may be
useful in a way, but none leads you anywhere, except into
a blind alley.

There are many things in the world you do not ap-
prove of. Some people who, as they put it, wish to have
the knowledge, want to find out why it is so. It is a line
of knowledge. But I say it is much more important to
find out how to make things otherwise than they are at
present. That is exactly the problem Buddha set before
himself. He sat under a tree and continued till he found
the solution. The solution, however, is not very satis-
factory: "You say, the world is bad, let us then do away
with the world"; but to whose profit, as Sri Aurobindo

BAD THOUGHT-FORMATION Jl

asks very pertinently? The world will no longer be bad,
since it will exist no more. The world will have to be
rolled back into its origin, the original pure existence or
non-existence. Then man will be, in Sri Aurobindo's
words, the all-powerful master of something that does
not exist, an emperor without an empire, asking without
a kingdom. It is a solution. But there are others, which
are better. We consider ours to be the best. There are
some who say, like the Buddha, evil comes from ignorance,
remove the ignorance and evil will disappear. Others
say that evil comes from division, from separation; if
the universe were not separated from its origin, there
would be no evil. Others again declare that it is an
evil will that is the cause of all, of separation and
ignorance. Then the question is, from where does this
bad will come? If it were at the origin of things, it
must have been in the origin itself. And then some
question the bad will itself, there is no such thing,
essentially, fundamentally, it is pure illusion.

Do animals have a bad will?

I do not think so. Things spoken of in relation to
animals as monstrous are not really due to a bad will.
Let us take for example the insect world. Of all animals
it is this species which seems to have most the attri bute
of wickedness, something akin to a bad will. It may,
however, be simply that we are applying our own mode
of consciousness to theirs, we impute bad will to an

72 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

action which is not really of the kind. For example, there
are insects whose larva can live only upon a living being;
they have to feed upon a living creature, they do not get
nourishment from dead flesh. So the parent insect be-
fore laying the eggs that are to become larvae first pre-
pares the ground: it finds another insect or a small animal,
stings into a nerve centre and paralyses it; then safely
lays eggs in that paralysed body, which not being dead
feeds the larvae when they come out of the eggs. All this
looks very much machiavellian. But nothing is reasoned
out here, it is pure instinct. Would you call it bad will?
it is simply the will to propagate. You can say perhaps
that these insects are moved by a spirit of the species
which is conscious and has a conscious will and that this
will is an evil will. These beings that create or form the
various species of the insect world many working in a
much more monstrous way than the example I have
given must then truly be frightful, inspired by a per-
verse and diabolic imagination. Quite possible. For it
is said that the origin of the insect world is in the vital;
the builders of that world belong to the vital and not to
the material plane of consciousness; in other words,
they not only symbolise, but they represent and live
the evil will. They are fully conscious of their evil will
and they exerdse that will deliberately and with a set
purpose. Man's bad will is often only a reflection, an
imitation of the bad will of vital beings which is a will
clearly hostile to the created world, whose express inten-
tion it is to make things as painful, as difficult, as ugly,

BAD THOUGHT-FORMATION 73

as monstrous as possible. It is these beings, some say,
that have created the insects. Even then, the insects
cannot be described as representing the evil will, since
they do not do mischief purposely, they are moved by
an unconscious will in them. The bad will is really
that will which does evil for the sake of doing evil, which
seeks to destroy for the sake of destroying, that takes
pleasure in doing wrong. In the animal I do not think
there is this kind of evil will, especially in the higher
species. What is there is the instinct of self-preservation,
obscure and violent reactions, but not the kind of evil
that human will shows in the perverse human mental.
I believe it is the human mind under the direct
influence of vital beings that begins to work in the
perverse way. Titans, Asuras are the beings of ill-will,
they belong totally to the vital world and when they
manifest themselves in this world of ours, they mean
mischief, they do evil for the sake of doing evil, they
destroy for the sake of destroying, they have the delight
of negation.

People speak of the wickedness of cats, when the cats,
for example, play with the mice before eating them. I
have observed the matter and I know what it is. It is not
at all as you think. The cats do what they do, not through
wickedness or wanton cruelty. The mother cat hunts
for the sake of her young ones. She catches a mouse; if
she gave it immediately as it is to the babies, they would
not be able to eat, it would be hard and toujh flesh. So
she plays with it, to us she seems to do so; she plays,

74 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

that is to say, throws it up, rolls it, catches it again, gives
it a few blows, tosses it once more, all that simply to
soften the flesh, to prepare it beforehand, so that the little
ones can put their teeth into it and eat easily. It is not
certainly playing with the intention of only playing, for
the pleasure of it. There is as much ill-will behind it
as there is behind man's killing in the slaughter-house.
The animal hunts and prepares its food, its prey, in the
best way it can. It has no oven, no fireplace, no cooking;
it must have some way of its own to make its food soft
and edible.

It is said also that the first expression of love in living
beings is the desire to eat him whom one loves. To love
means to embrace, to absorb, to devour. This seems to
prove the fact that when the tiger catches its victim or
the snake his, the victim in either case, although alarmed
in the beginning, do not at all suffer, but lets himself go
in a sort of delight of being devoured. I shall narrate
to you a true story, the experience of a person from whom
I heard it. A man was passing through a bush in the
company of friends. The friends were a little ahead,
he was behind. Suddenly he was caught by a tiger, a
man-eater. The companions turned back to know what
had become of their absent friend. They followed the
marks and ran up just in time to prevent the tiger from
swallowing their friend. When he had recovered a little
he was told what a frightful experience he must have
gone through. "Not at all", he declared to the astonish-
ment of everybody, "just imagine, I did not know what

BAD THOUGHT-FORMATION 75

had happened, but as I was being dragged along by the
tiger, I felt a great love for him and I had a great desire
that he should eat me!" Well, it is a true fact and I do
not exaggerate. Once upon a time I saw with my own
eyes something very similar. In the zoological gardens
of Paris, a huge python was kept in a cage. It was the
hour of feeding the animals and I happened to be present^
The cage was opened and a young white rabbit was
put in. It was a pretty little animal. As soon as it saw
the serpent, it ran to the other corner of the cage and
sat doubled up all trembling. The serpent had not moved
at all, had simply turned round its head. It seemed as
if it was half asleep, quietly it put out its neck and head
and began to look at the rabbit. It was horrible, the
picture. The serpent only looked at the rabbit without
moving. Now I saw another picture. The rabbit that
was a mass of fright, ceased trembling; it had shrunk
itself, it became normal. Then it lifted its head, opened
wide its eyes and gazed at the serpent; it began to move
slowly, very slowly, forward and when it had come
sufficiently near, the neck of the serpent shot out and the
rabbit was in its mouth. Then came the task of preparing
the food. The serpent rolled, twisted, broke the limbs
of its prey, munched it into something like a soft mass
that might more easily go down the gullet. Where is
the ill will, the wickedness in all this? When a man does
anything like it, he does not do it spontaneously, through
his natural instinct, but driven by his mind and mental
perversions, a thing different from the healthy instinct

J6 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

that he has no more. But man wanted to act freely and
independently!

What is instinct exactly? It is Nature's consciousness.
Nature is conscious of her action; it is not an individual
consciousness. It is a global or collective consciousness.
There is also a consciousness of the species. Each species
has its consciousness which is called sometimes the
spirit of the species, that is to say, a conscious being
presiding over a particular species. Nature is conscious
in the sense that she knows what she wants, she knows
her whither and her how, her end and the way to go
towards it. To man much of Nature seems incoherent,
because his consciousness is narrow and he has not an
over-all vision. When you look at the small details,
the little fragments, you do not understand; you do not
find any link, sequence, sense. But Nature has a con-
scious will, she is a conscious being. Perhaps the word
"being" is too human. When we speak of Nature's being,
we naturally think of the human being, only a little
bigger, or perhaps much bigger but working more or
less in the same way. But it is not so. Instead of the
word "being", I would prefer the word "entity". The
conscious entity that is Nature has a conscious will and
it does things much more deliberately and purposively
than man, and it has formidable forces at its disposal.
Man speaks of blind and violent Nature. But it is man
who is blind and violent, not Nature. You say an earth-
quake is a terrible affair. Thousands of houses crash
into dust, millions of people are killed, whole cities

BAD THOUGHT-FORMATION JJ

devastated, entire portions of earth are swallowed up
etc. etc. Yes, from the human point of view Nature
seems monstrous. But what has she done after all?
When you get a knock on your body somewhere, there
appears a blue patch. Are you worried about it? Your
earthquake is nothing more than a reshuffling of a cell
in your body. You destroy thousands of cells every
moment of your life. You are monstrous? That is the
relative proportion. And consider, we are speaking of
earth alone and earthly events. But what is this earth
itself in the bosom of the universe? A point, a zero.
You are walking on the ground and are not looking down.
You place one step forward and then another and you
trample thousands of innocent ants under your feet. If
you were an ant you would have cried out, what a cruel
and stupid force! Imagine other forces stalking about
much bigger than yourself and under their casual steps
millions of creatures like you are crushed, continents
are pressed down and mountains kicked up. They do
not even notice such catastrophic happenings ! The only
difference between man and ant is that man knows what
happens to him and the ant does not. But even there
are you sure?

WHY ARE DREAMS FORGOTTEN?

IT is because dreams do not occur always in the same
domain. It is not always the same part of the being that
dreams nor is it the same place where one dreams. If one
were in conscious communication with all the parts of
one's being then one would remember all his dreams.
But it is only with a few parts of your being that you re-
main in conscious contact in sleep. For example, you have
a dream in the subtle physical, that is to say, in the domain
very near the physical. This generally happens towards
the end of the night, in the early hours of the morning
just before you get up (say between four and five). Before
rising from bed, if you remain very quiet, without making
any movement and concentrate a little, you will be able
to remember the dreams that you had immediately be-
fore: the communication between the physical and the
subtle physical being close, you would be able to remem-
ber easily enough. Now if you begin from the beginning
what happens is something like this. As you fall into
sleep, the body becomes quiet and the vital too goes to
rest; but the mind continues to be active, it has not gone
to sleep. You have now what are called mental dreams
built out of all kinds of ideas and imaginations set free.
After a time the mind gets tired and falls silent; the
vital has rested sufficiently and wakes up in its turn
and moves about. Your dreams of the mental domain

78

WHY ARE DREAMS FORGOTTEN 79

are pushed back giving place to vital dreams. When
you are active in the vital you very often go out of your
body, visit all kinds of places and get involved in various
exploits and adventures. If you wake up suddenly then,
you would remember your vital exploits in sleep. Some
people train themselves to get up at fixed hour of the
night. They thus bring to memory the dreams they
had just before waking. Now the vital too after having
been sufficiently active gets tired and goes to rest. Yet
another part of the being now replaces the vital and
comes forward. It may be the turn of the subtle physical
to enter the arena. The vital is pushed back and you lose
contact with it.

To become conscious of all the various movements of
your nights, to recover them in your memory, some sort
of training is necessary. The different states of the being
in which you roam at night are, as you have seen, usually
separate from each other. There is a gap in between
two states; you jump from one to the other. There is no
highway passing through all the domains of your con-
sciousness connecting them without break or interrup-
tion. That means forgetfulness. When you leap from
one into the other, you push back, that is forget, the one
you leave behind. So you have to construct a bridge
and very few people know how to do it; it requires more
engineering skill than to build a material bridge. You
may have very wonderful experiences in sleep, but you
forget them all; perhaps you remember, as I have said,
the last one, the one nearest to the physical mind. The

8o THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

best way then to remember and become conscious of the
whole night is to begin at the end and go backward.
Catch hold of ths last image that still persists in your
memory, like the loose end of a thread and then pull, pull
slowly, till image after image comes back: it is something
like the unrolling of a cinema film in the reverse direc-
tion. When you lose trace, stop and concentrate a little;
try to call back whatever stray bit or faint impression
still persists or can be more easily revived and then again
pull slowly, gently, pick up whatever shows itself, try
to join the bits. In this way, after some trial and training
you will be able to recover a good part of the lost
underworld.

There are, however, many ways of going about the
thing. For you must know that your nights are not all
the same. Each one is different and brings its own kind
of sleep and dream. As each day is different having its
own particular kind of activity, each night too likewise
comes with its peculiar experiences. You may think
that one day is more or less exactly like the previous day,
that you are doing the same thing from day to day;
but it is not so. Outwardly the activities may appear to
be the same, but reaUy*their nature and significance vary
from one day to another. No two moments are alike in
the universe. Your night too is an universe of its own kind.
Each night brings its own problem and needs its own
solution.

TO THE CHILDREN OF THE ASHRAM

IN the beginning^ naturally, there were no children in
the Ashram. They were not accepted, they were refused
admittance. It is only after the last great war that they
began to come in, that is to say, when their families
sought for a safe shelter. Since then they are being
accepted and I do not regret it. I believe that for the
future there is much more stuff among children who
know nothing than among grown up men who think
they know everything. Have you any idea of the art of
sculpture? how they make images out of clay? you take
a quantity of clay and then moisten it with water. The
earth must be very fine powder and with water you make
a good paste of it. Then you begin to work upon it, to
give it a form gradually. But so long as you work, the
clay must be kept soft, moist; then only you can change
it, refashion it as you like. And* when it is done the
figure is baked and it becomes hard and fixed. If you
have to make a change now, you can only break it and
begin anew; for it is now solid and unchangeable. In
life too something like that happens. As you grow you
lose your softness, suppleness, malleability, you become
more and more crystallised, fossilised, immobilised.
Unless you break the form into a thousand bits, there
is no chance of its being remoulded, reshaped according
to a new pattern. A child is an unformed paste and one
6 81

82 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

can do something with it. The great advantage of the
child is that it has not grown, it wishes to grow, the
one idea that possesses children is how to become grown
up men. They do not know, however, that once they
are grown up, that is to say, developed and formed,
they lose three-fourths of their value which lies precisely
in this element in them which is unformed and yearns
for a form, which seeks always to go forward, to progress
and need not be broken in order to be corrected or
reshaped.

A grown-up man is somewhat like a traveller who has
taken a whole life-time to come up on the peak, he has
been going round and round the hill-side, not knowing
the straight road or the easy ascent. Once on the top
such men are already old and exhausted and have now
neither the energy nor the time to scale a further height.
There are some, however, who know the way or who
have been shown the way, they follow the short cut and
are soon on the top. They are still full of youthful energy,
look out on the horizon and see what other ranges are
to be negotiated. The others have not only no inclina-
tion to see beyond, but they are full of the feeling that
they have done considerable work in wandering about,
that is to say and now yearn for a well-earned rest.
You, my children, are, on the other hand, being carried
up from the very bottom by a funicular railway, as it
were, straight to the summit. There you will stand
before the whole world, before yourselves and see and
make your choice for a further adventure. All this on

TO THE CHILDREN OF THE ASHRAM 83

one condition, you remain young, childlike, glad, happy,
happy to be a child, plastic matter in the hand of the
Divine.

Why were children not accepted before?

It is because where there are children, you have to do
nothing else but to be busy with them. The children
are an all-absorbing subject. Everything must be or-
ganised for and about them, everything must turn round
them; all must be planned in view of their welfare.
So the outlook changes totally. Things were different
before. First of all, there was a kind of austerity and
bareness which suited the grown-ups, but which could
not be imposed upon children. To the grown-up you
can say, "Take it or leave it". If you are not pleased
with the conditions, if you find it hard to bear, you are
not obliged to be here, you may see your own way. You
cannot say the same thing to a child. You have no right
to ask of a child what is not suitable to his normal growth
and development. Children must reach a certain state
of maturity before they can make a choice. You cannot
compel them to choose before they have the capacity
to choose. So first of all you have to give them all things
they are normally in need of. Well, that brings about a
revolution in the organisation. I have lived a solitary
life, I know the life of solitary men living in a group.
That is quite a different thing. Children demand other
conditions, other arrangements.

84 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

We no longer tell the young newcomers, you are going
to do yoga. We tell them, you will find here conditions
in which you can grow freely and grow better. Here
you will learn under what conditions the world and
society can be made better. Then it will be time for you
to choose your line of destiny.

Section Four

ON OCCULTISM

IT has been often said and it is very true that as soon as
you enter the domain of the invisible, the very first things
you meet are literally frightful. If you have no fear, then
alone you are safe; but the least fear means the utmost
peril. It is for this reason that in ancient days the aspi-
rant had to pass through a severe discipline for a long
time precisely with the object of getting rid of fear and
therefore of all possibility of danger before he was
permitted to start on the way.

That is why till now I have not spoken to you of it.
But if any of you feel you have a disposition for such
things, or some special aptitude in this direction and are
ready to surmount all weaknesses, well, I am at your dis-
posal, ready to help you and initiate you into the mys-
teries. But I am afraid you have still to grow a little more,
become more mature before I can take up the charge.

Of course, age is really no bar. I was doing occultism
when I was 12 years old. But I must tell you I had no
fear, I had fear of nothing. Here you come out of the
body, you are connected with the body by the very tiniest,
almost imperceptible, bit of thread, as it were. If the
thread snaps, there is an end of it all, the end of your life.
So you come out into another world and begin to look
about and see what kind of world it is. Generally, the
first things you see, as I said, are absolutely terrifying.

88 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

In your normal view, the air about you is empty; there
is nothing you see the blue of the sky or the white
cloud or the sunshine and everything is beautiful.
But when you have the other sight, the picture is quite
different. You see that the whole atmosphere is filled
with a multitude of small formations, which are the
remains of desires and mental deformations and they
crowd about you in such a way that the whole thing gives
you a very disagreeable impression. Indeed, it is posi-
tively ugly more often than not. They come near you,
attack you, press upon you and you fear and tremble.
Then they assume formidable proportions. But if you
are not shaken, if you can look with the eye of a calm
curiosity, you will find then there is nothing so very ter-
rifying. Things are not beautiful perhaps, but they are
not frightful either.

I shall tell you a story to illustrate my point. I knew
a Dane who was a painter, a painter of some talent. He
was interested in occultism. Some of you might have
heard of him. He had come here and met Sri Aurobindo.
He did a portrait too of Sri Aurobindo. It was during the
first Great War. He returned to France and saw me.
He asked me to teach him this science. I taught him how
to come out of the body, how to maintain control etc.
etc. I told him especially, what I tell you now, not to
have fear. Now he came to me one day and narrated his
experience of a night. He had a dream; but of course it
was not a dream: he knew how to come out of the body
and was out consciously. Once out he was trying to find

ON OCCULTISM 89

where he was. Suddenly he saw moving towards him a
tiger, huge and formidable, evidently with dire inten-
tions. He remembered, however, my advice. So he kept
calm and quiet and said to himself: "There is no danger,
I am protected, nothing can happen to me, I am surroun-
ded by the power of protection." And he looked straight
at the animal calmly and fearlessly. As he continued
looking, strange to say, he saw the tiger diminishing in
size, shrinking and shrinking, till at last it became a small
harmless cat!

What did the tiger represent? I told the painter that
perhaps in the course of the day or at some time he was
angry with some one and indulged in violent thoughts,
wishing him harm etc. Now, as in the physical world,
so too in the occult world there is a law of action and re-
action or return movement. You cherish a bad thought;
it returns upon you as an attack from outside. So the
tiger might have represented some bad thought or im-
pulse in him which came back upon him, like, as it is said,
a boomerang. It is exactly one of the reasons why one
should have control over one's thoughts and feelings and
sensations. For if you think ill of a person, wish unplea-
sant things for him, then in your dream you are likely
to see the person coming to attack you, more violently
perhaps than you thought of doing. In your ignorance
and impulse of self-justification you say, "Just see, was
I not right in my feeling towards this man, he wanted
to kill me!" In point of fact, however, the contrary is the
truth. It is a common law in occultism that if you make

9<> THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

a formation a ^mental formation, for example, to the
effect that an accident or some unpleasant thing should
happen to a person and you send out the formation to da
its work, then, if it so happens that the person concerned
is on a higher level of consciousness, that is to say, if he
wishes harm to none, is quite disinterested and indifferent
in the matter, then the formation approaches him but
does not enter into his atmosphere or touch him, it re-
bounds upon the sender. In that case a serious accident
may happen to the sender of the formation: if one wishes
death to another, death may come to himself. That is
often the result of black magic which is a deformation
of occultism.

Formations are of many kinds. A formation is made
for a particular work. When the work is done, the forma-
tion too dissolves. But it is a huge and complex subject.
You cannot learn the whole of chemistry in one hour.

I shall tell ;*you another story in this connection, for
it has an occult bearing.

There was a very well-known scientist in Paris. He
has written the story in a book of his. He wanted to
know to what extent man's reason can affect or influence
his reflex movements, how far one can control one's
instinctive or subconscious impulsions by the force of
conscious intelligence. So one day he went to the Zoo.
Among the animals there were huge snakes, one was
particularly notorious for its vicious character, that is
to say, it could be easily excited and put into anger. It
was a very big animal, black but beautiful. The serpents

ON OCCULTISM 91

were of course kept within glass cases* the glass being
sufficiently thick to prevent any possibility of accident.
He came before meal-time, when it was hungry; for
after food they go to sleep. He stood before the glass-
pane, quite near and began teasing and exciting the
animal. I do not remember exactly what he did to rouse
the animal, but there it was wild with anger; it shot out
like a spring and darted at the face of the gentleman who
was just on the other side of the glass almost touching it.
He knew very well that nothing could happen to him,
the barrier was sound and secure and yet each time the
snake darted at him, he leaped back to avoid the blow
as it were. The thing repeated continually and however
much he repeated to himself all the reasons of his safety
and security, the reflex gesture could not be controlled.
Only the scientist did not know one thing an ele-
ment of occult knowledge escaped him. The physical
movement of the serpent was accompanied by a consi-
derable amount of a vital projection of its nervous energy,
It was that which struck him with an irresistible force.
It was almost like a violent physical shock and mere
reason has no power to control it. To check and control,
you must learn the occult way.

MYSTICISM AND OCCULTISM

MYSTICISM is more or less an emotional relation with
what one feels to be a Divine Power it is a relation very
intimate, emotive and intense with something invisible
which one takes for the Divine.

Occultism is the knowledge of invisible forces and
the power to handle them. It is a science, altogether a
science. I always compare occultism with chemistry or
physics; for occult "knowledge is very much like scienti-
fic knowledge, only science deals with material objects
and forces, while occultism deals with invisible entities
and energies, their potentials of combination and asso-
ciation. And as by your chemical or physical knowledge
you control material phenomena, in the same way by the
occult knowledge you control subtle phenomena, make
them active and effective. The procedure also is quite
scientific. It is to be learnt exactly as you do a science.
It is not a matter of feeling or emotion: it is nothing
vague or uncertain. You must work as in a laboratory.
You have to learn the laws of action and reaction and
apply them. Only there are not many people to teach
you. Also it is not without danger. There are in this field
combinations as explosive as any chemical combination.

It is a thing, however, that can be learnt. But one
must have the aptitude. If you have the power latent

92

MYSTICISM AND OCCULTISM 93

in you, you can develop it by practice; but if you have
not, you can try for 50 years, it will come to nothing.
Everybody cannot have the occult power; it is as if you
said that everybody in the world could be a musician
or a painter or a poet. There are people who can and
there are those who cannot. Usually, if you are interested
in the subject, unless it is a mere idle curiosity, it is a
sign that you have the gift. You then try. But, as I say,
it is to be done with great precaution.

Thus, for example, when one goes out of the body
I have often spoken to you of this phenomenon even
if it be just to a little extent, even if only mentally then
what goes out is a part of the consciousness that controls
the normal activities of the body, what remains is the
portion that is automatic, producing the spontaneous
involuntary movements such as blood circulation or
secretion etc.; also other nervous or automatic thought
movements; this region isjio longer under the control
of the conscious thinking part. NOW T , there is always in
the atmosphere around you a good number of small
entities, quite small often, that are generally formed out
of the disintegrated remains of a dead human being:
they are like microbes, the microbes of the vital.
They have forms and can be visible and they have a will
of their own. You may not say they are always wicked,
but they are full of mischief, that is to say, they like
amusing themselves at the cost of human beings. As
soon as they see that someone is not sufficiently pro-
tected, they rush in and take possession of the automatic

94 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

mentality and bring about all kinds of disagreeable
happenings nightmares, various physical disturbances
you feel choked, bite or swallow your tongue and even
more serious things. When you wish to go into trance,
to have the experience of being outside the body, you
must have someone by your side, not only to keep watch
on your physical body, but also to prevent the vital
entities from getting possession of the nerve centres
which, as I said, are no longer under the control and
protection of the conscious intelligence. There is a still
greater danger. When one goes out of the body in a
more or less concrete or material way, retaining only a
thin and fragile contact a thread of light, as it were
with the body, this thread of contact must be protected,
for the attack of the hostiles may come upon it and cut
it; if it is cut one can no longer return into the body,
and that means death.

All that signifies that occultism is not a joke or a mere
play; you cannot take to it simply to amuse yourself. It
must be done as it ought to be done, under proper condi-
tions and with great care. The one thing absolutely es-
sential is, I repeat once more, to be totally fearless. If
you happen to meet in your dreams terrible scenes and
are frightened, then you must not approach occultism.
If, on the contrary, you can remain perfectly tranquil in
the face of the most frightful menaces causing you only
amusement, if you can handle such situations safely and
successfully, that would show that you have some capacity
and then you can try seriously. There are people who

MYSTICISM AND OCCULTISM 95

are real fighters in their sleep; if they meet an enemy
they can face him, they can not only defend, but can
attack and conquer.

MEDITATION AND SOME QUESTIONS

Why am I unable to meditate?

BECAUSE you have not learnt it. A sudden fancy seizes
you and you say, "Now I will sit down and meditate".
But to sit down cross-legged, cross-armed, eyes closed
is not doing meditation. You have to learn how to me-
ditate, even as you learn to do mathematics or play on
the piano. There are regular courses of meditation given
by all teachers in all ages and countries. There are so
many rules and regulations. There are all kinds of in-
structions, such as, to keep the mind quiet, to be silent
and not to think, to gather all your thoughts and con-
centrate them etc., etc. You have been taught how to
sit, stand, walk, eat: you do not remember the method
and the discipline, because you did that when you were
very young. In the same way if you were caught how to
meditate in your childhood, you would not find it diffi-
cult to do today. Unfortunately you were not taught.
You are not taught things of that kind. You are not
taught even how to sleep. You think that to go to bed
and lie down anyway is the way to sleep. Not at all. You
are to learn to sleep exactly in the same way as you leam
how to walk or eat. You do not learn so many things,
you are not taught. As you grow in years, slowly, labo-
riously through unpleasant experiences, through suffer-

96

MEDITATION AND SOME QUESTIONS 97

ing and blundering, in the end you come to know of
certain fundamental things. And when you are old,
and your hairs are grey, you see you are beginning to
learn something, when, that is to say, it is too late. In-
stead of that, if your parents, the people who looked
after you took the trouble of teaching you what you have
to do, to do it well to act well, to think well, to feel
well, in the correct manner then you could avoid all
the blunders you have been making all your life. You
are surprised when you fall ill, when you feel tired and
exhausted. For you "know nothing. It requires years to
learn something, to learn even the most elementary
things such as to be clean.

To live as one should, in the right way, is a very diffi-
cult art. It requires study, it requires practice. Try
simply to keep the body healthy, the mind quiet, and
the heart full of good will these are some of the indis-
pensable elements for the basis of decent living; you will
see the thing is not easy.

Is some kind of work necessary for us to do, apart from
our study?

That depends upon you, upon your aim. If you wish
to do sadhana, you should naturally give at least some
time to a work that is not selfish, that is, not done for
the sake of yourself. Study is very good, very necessary,
even indispensable; precisely because it is just one of
the things I referred to a little while ago, which you
7

98 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

should learn when you are young, it becomes difficult
when you are grown up. There may come, of course,
an age when you have done the basic studies and when
you have the urge to do sadhana. Then you must take
up something which is not exclusively personal. You must
do something disinterested, not concerned with yourself.
If you are concerned with yourself only, you shut your-
self within a kind of shell and you are not open to the
universal forces. An unselfish movement, an unselfish
action, however small, opens the door to something other
than your little self. Normally you are imprisoned in
your shell and you know of the existence of other similar
shells only when you knock against them. But to be
aware of the one Force that pervades all, of the mutual
dependence of things and beings is quite another matter:
it is the indispensable basis for Sadhana.

But cannot one study for the sake of the Divine^ to
prepare oneself for the divine work?

One can. But that requires quite a different attitude.
You have to study in altogether another spirit. First of
all, there would be no subject that pleases you, none
that displeases you, neither a class that bores you, nor
one that amuses you. There would be no difficult lessons
nor easy lessons, neither would there be a teacher who is
unpleasant nor another who is pleasant. All such likes and
dislikes, prejudices and preferences disappear. You are
in a condition when you begin to learn from everything

MEDITATION AND SOME QUESTIONS 99

that you meet with, everything is an occasion for an
experience, a knowledge: everything prepares you for
the divine work, everything is interesting. If you study
in that spirit, it is quite all right.

How is it that so much money is allowed to be wasted
here? People entrusted with a work seem to spend lavishly
according to their fancy!

Money is not the only thing that is wasted. The
Energy, the Consciousness is wasted a thousand times
more, infinitely more than money. There is not a second
when there is no wastage, sometimes worse things
are there. There is a habit, I hope it is unconscious, to
take in as much energy, as much consciousness as one is
capable of and then use it for one's personal satisfaction.
It is a thing happening every minute. If all this energy,
all this consciousness that is being ceaselessly poured
upon you all were used for the right purpose, that is to
say, for the divine work, for preparing the divine work,
we would have gone by now far on the road, much far-
ther than where we are at present. But unfortunately
everyone, if not consciously, at least instinctively, ab-
sorbs as much as possible this divine gift and misuses
it for selfish ends.

Who thinks of it? that this Force is there which is
infinitely greater, infinitely more precious than all money
power, this force is there and is being given consciously,
constantly, with an endless patience and perseverance

IOO THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

with a single end in view, that of accomplishing the
divine work I say, who thinks of not wasting it? Who
recollects that it is a sacred duty for all to progress, to
prepare themselves so that they may understand better
and live better? It is because you live by the divine
energy and the divine consciousness that you are able
to live upon them, spend them for your own self's sake.
People are shocked when they see a few thousand rupees
wasted, but they do not notice that a whole flood of
consciousness and knowledge is being turned aside from
its true direction.

If one wants to do a divine work upon earth, one must
come there with tons of patience and endurance, one
must be able to live in eternity and wait till consciousness
awakes in every one, the consciousness of true honesty.

MEDITATION AND MEDITATION

SOME people, when they sit for meditation, think they go
into a remarkable condition and are proud of it. But
most often what they do in meditation is simply to let
loose their thoughts: it is a sort of kaleidoscope that moves
in their head. There are some, however, who can remain
without any thought for a while; but if they are called out
all on a sudden at the time for some reason or other,
they wake up furious, saying a nice meditation is spoilt
and fret and fume against the whole world. There are
all the same a few who know how to meditate, they do
come to a sort of union with the Divine. Certainly, this
is very good. There are others who can follow the train
of an idea up to a point, even up to the central point of
the idea. This is also very good. But most get into a half-
sleepy condition^ that is to say, very tamasic. The mind
is inert, aspiration inert, the whole being is inert. They
can remain in that condition for hours together. Well,
nothing is more durable than inertia. And when they
come out of it, they think they have achieved something
very great. But they simply fell into unconsciousness.

Yes, some know how to meditate. But even supposing
you know how to enter into the divine consciousness,
that experience must have some effect upon your external
life naturally it would differ according to the person
concerned. There are some who cut themselves clean

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^*s

into two. These, as I have said, when they enter into
meditation, have or think they have experiences and very
fine experiences. But when they come back and begin to
act, they become the most ordinary people, with the most
ordinary reactions, doing all kinds of things that should
not be done. They think of themselves alone, busy arran-
ging their own life, without a thought for others, whether
one could be useful to the world or not. And yet in
meditation, they came into contact with some higher and
deeper consciousness and reality. It is for this reason that
people who have found it difficult to change human nature,
have declared it an impossibility and advised that the one
thing to do under the circumstances is to abandon the
world and escape. Naturally, if all could run away there
would no more be any world. But, luckily or unluckily,
the existence of the world does not depend upon the will
of individuals: they had no hand in the creation of the
world and they do not know how it came about. Is it
simply because some get away from the world that the
world will cease to exist for them, perhaps, but for
others? Although I am not sure whether even they really
succeed in getting away. In any case, I do not believe that
you can transform yourself by meditation. But when a
work is there before you and you do it as well as you can*
also while doing it you take care not to forget the Divine
and you give yourself up to him so that he may change
your being, change your reactions into something beauti-
ful and luminous, then indeed the Divine will transform
you.

MEDITATION AND MEDITATION 103

I have never seen people who left off everything to sit
in a more or less empty meditation making any progress;
in any case their progress is very small. On the contrary,
I have seen people, full of enthusiasm for the work of
transformation in the world, devote themselves to that
work without reservation: they give themselves up with
no idea of personal salvation. Yes, it is such people I
have seen making the most wonderful progress. On the
other hand I have seen very many living in monasteries:
well, they are not worth talking about. It is not by running
away from the world that you will change it: it is only by
working steadily at it that you can bring about the change.

Does this mean that meditation is of no use at all?

Meditation will come to you as much as is necessary
for you. When it comes it seizes you; then you should
not resist. You sit down and go within yourself, withdraw
yourself inside and you make the needed inner advance.
When that is done you come out and start again with your
work. But above all, do not be vain. People who believe
they are exceptional creatures and have more merit, put
a bar to all their progress. I must insist on the need of
humility. People have often spoken much about it but
without understanding k very well. Be humble,, but ia
the right jvay. If you could but root out this weed that is
vanity! How difficult it is, yes, how difficult! You cannot
do a single good thing, make the slightest progress, with-
out being puffed up secretly somewhere, cherishing a

104 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

hidden self-satisfaction! You have to deal hammer blows
to break that hard core of egoism. You have to work all
your life to destroy this poisonous herb. You think you
have done it and you are so satisfied with the idea of
having done it at last.

PRAYER AND ASPIRATION

THERE are many kinds of prayers. There is one external
and physical, that is to say, simply words learnt by rote
and repeated mechanically. It does not mean much. It
has usually one result, however, making you quiet. If you
go on repeating a few words or sounds for some time, it
puts you into a state of calmness in the end. There is
another kind which is the natural expression of a wish;
you want a particular thing and you express it clearly.
You can pray for an object or for a circumstance, you can
pray also for a person or for yourself. There is still another
kind in which the prayer borders on aspiration and the
two meet: it is the spontaneous formulation of a living
experience; it shoots out of the depth of your being, it
is the utterance of something lived within: it wants to
express gratitude for the experience, asks for its continua-
tion or seeks an explanation. It is then what I said almost
an aspiration. Aspiration, however, does not necessarily
formulate itself in words; if it uses words at all, it makes
of them a kind of invocation. Thus, you wish to be in a
certain condition. You have, for example, found in you
something which is not in harmony with your ideal, a
.movement of obscurity or ignorance or even bad will.
You wish to see it changed. You do not express the thing
in so many words, but it rises up in you like a flame, an
ardent offering of the experience itself which seeks increase

105

IO6 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

and greatening, to be made more clear and precise. It is
true all this ^is capable of being expressed in words, if one
tries to recall and note down the experience. But the ex-
perience, the aspiration itself is, as I say, like a flame
shooting up and contains within it the very tiling it asks
for. I say "asks for", but the movement is not at all that
of a desire; it is truly a flame, the flame of purifying will
carrying at its centre the very object which it wished to
be realised. The discovery of a fault in you impels you to
make it an occasion for more progress, for greater self-
discipline, for further ascension towards die Divine.
It opens out a door upon your future, which you wish to
be clearer, truer, intenser; all that gathers in you like a
concentrated force and hurls you up in a movement of
ascension. It needs no expression in words. It is indeed
a flame that leaps up. Such is true aspiration. Prayer
usually is something much more external; it is about a
very precise object. It is always formulated; for the formu-
lation itself makes what a prayer is. You may have an
aspiration and you can transcribe it into a prayer, but the
aspiration itself exceeds the prayer. It is something
much more intimate, much more sett-forgetful, living only
in the object it wishes to be or to do, almost identified
with it. A prayer can be of a very high quality. Instead
of being a request for a fulfilment of your particular desire,
it may express your thankfulness and gratefulness for
what the Divine has done and is doing for you. You are
not busy with your little self and its egoistic interests,
you ask for the Divine's ways in you and in the world.

PRAYER AND ASPIRATION IO7

This leads you to the border of aspiration. For aspiration
too has many degrees and it is expressed on many levels.
But the core of aspiration is in the psychic being, it is there
at its purest, for there is its origin and source. Prayers
come from the other, the lower or secondary levels of
being. That is to say, there are physical or material
prayers, asking for physical or material things, vital
prayers, mental prayers: there are psychic prayers and
spiritual prayers too. Each has its own character
and its own value. I say again there is a certain
type of prayer which is so spontaneous and so
disinterested, more like an appeal or a call, generally not
for one's own sake, but acting sometimes like an inter-
cession with the Divine on behalf of others. Such a prayer
is extremely powerful. I have seen innumerable cases
where such a prayer had brought about its immediate
fulfilment. It means a great faith, a great fervour, a great
sincerity and also a great simplicity of heart, something
which does not calculate, which does not bargain or barter,
does not give with the idea of receiving. The majority
of prayers are precisely made with the idea of giving so
that one may receive. But I was speaking of the rarer
variety which also does exist, which is a kind of thanks-
giving, a canticle or a hymn.

To sum up then it can be said that a prayer is always
formed of words. Words have different values, according
to the state of consciousness of the person when he for-
mulates it. But always prayer is a formulated thing. But
one can aspire without formulating. And then, prayer

108 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

needs a person to whom one prays. There is, of course,
a certain class of people whose conception of the universe
is such that there is no room in it for the Divine (the
famous French scientist Laplace, for example). Such peo-
ple are not likely to favour the existence of any being supe-
rior to themselves to whom they can appeal or look up for
guidance and help. There is no question of prayer for
them. But even they, though they may not pray, may
aspire. They may not believe in God, but they may be-
lieve, for example, in progress. They may conceive of the
world as a progressive movement, that it is becoming
better and better, rising higher and higher, growing
constantly to a nobler fulfilment. They can ask for, will
for, aspire for such progress; they need not look for the
Divine. Aspiration requires faith, certainly, but not faith
necessarily in a personal God. But prayer is always
addressed to a person, a person who hears it and grants
it. There lies the great difference between the two.
Intellectual people admit aspiration, but prayer they
consider as something inferior, fit for unintellectual
persons. The mystics say, aspiration is quite all right,
but if your aspiration is to be heard and fulfilled, you
must also pray, know how to pray and to whom who
else but the Divine? The aspiration need not be towards
any person; the aspiration is not for a person, but for a
state of consciousness, a knowledge, a realisation. Prayer
adds to it the relation to a person. Prayer is a personal
thing addressed to a person for a thing which he alone
can grant.

OFFERING AND SURRENDER

THEY are not quite the same thing: they are rather two
aspects of the same thing. They do not belong altogether
to the same level of consciousness. For example, you
have resolved to make an offering of your life to the
Divine. All on a sudden there happens a very unpleasant
thing: you did not expect it. Your first movement is to
react and protest. And yet you have made the offering;
but something in you turns. If you are, however, con-
sistent in your offering, you will hold the protesting part
in your hands and put it before the Divine and say,
"let thy will be done". In surrender, on the other hand,
there is a natural spontaneous unprotesting adhesion.
Even if there happens something unpleasant or contrary
to your expectations, you are equally unperturbed and
tranquil.

In the beginning you make a general surrender or
submission, in principle, as it were: it is in your inner
being. It must be brought forth gradually in the outer
being, carried out in all the details of life. That is how
difficulties arise. You have made your offering, you say,
even you have worked at it for a long time, worked hard,
given much time and much will; suddenly you find,
upsetting your calculations, something different happens^
you have not succeeded in something. So there is a
revolt, a turning back and so on. But what you have to

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HO THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

do is to renew your offering, reaffirm your adhesion.
When the adhesion is complete, when there is the spon-
taneous acceptance of the Divine Will in everything, in
every manner of happening, then comes the surrender,
the perfect obedience which is calm, tranquil, at peace
in either case, whether things happen in this way or that.

You ask if you cannot make a mistake unwittingly 5 do
a wrong even if you do not want to. It is not likely. If
you are sincere to the core, you are always conscious and
you cannot be taken unawares. It is some form or degree
of insincerity that veils your sense of right and wrong,
makes you unconscious, as it were. Your discrimination
is clouded, because you wish things to happen in a way,
or do not wish them to happen in another way. On the
other hand, if you are straight, if you are indifferent to
either way and await only the Divine's will, you will
always immediately perceive if there is or likely to be a
wrong move in you; you know it intimately in a very
precise manner, for you are ready to rectify it.

Perfect sincerity does not want to err: it will give up
everything rather than live in an illusion. It is a very
precise movement, but it is also a very delicate move-
ment. For when you do a thing, even the right thing,
the mental and the vital are there that seek to profit by
it, a profit, at least of personal satisfaction, to have a
good opinion of oneself. It is difficult not to hoodwink
oneself.

EQUALITY OF THE BODY-
EQUALITY OF THE SOUL

t

EQUALITY of the external being means good health, a solid
body, controlled nerves when you are not shaken by
the least shock, when you are calm, quiet, poised, balanced.
In that condition you can receive into you a great force in
yourself from above (or, from the environing energy
around you) and yet not get upset. If one of you at any time
had received some such force, he must have known by
experience that without a perfectly sound physical health,
one could not contain or hold it. You cannot remain still,
you are restless, you move about, talk, cry, weep, jump or
dance, just to throw out the energy you are unable to hold.
You scatter about what it is not possible for you to gather
and assimilate. In order to be able to gather and assimilate
the force, the body and the nerves must be quiet and
strong.

Equality of the soul is different; it is psychological, not
physical. It is the power to bear the impact of things, good
or bad, without being grieved or elated, discouraged or
enthused, without any upsetting or disturbance. What-
ever happens you remain serene and at peace. But both
the equalities are necessary. There are many equalities,
in fact. Apart from the equality of the vital, and the
equality of the body, there is also the equality of the mind
proper. That is to say, all ideas from all quarters may

in

112 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

come into your head, even the most contradictory: yet you
remain quiet, untroubled, and even unconcerned. You
are a witness, you see them, sort them, arrange them, put
each idea in its proper place, appreciate the value of
each, determine the relation of each to the other, and ta
the whole, but you are not swayed by any particular one.

PERSONAL EFFORT AND WILL

IN personal effort there is a feeling of effort, of tension:
the effort is felt as personal i.e. you rely upon yourself
and you have the impression that if you do not do at each
step what is to be done all will be lost. Will is different.
It is the capacity to concentrate upon what one does so
that it may be done well and to continue to do so till the
thing is done.

Supposing under given circumstances a work has come
upon you. Take an artist, for example, a painter. He has
an inspiration and has decided to do a painting. He knows
very well that if he has not the inspiration he will not be
able to do anything good, the painting would be nothing
more than a daub. If he is simply passive, with neither
effort nor will, he would tell the Divine: Here I leave the
palette, the brush and the canvas, you will do the
painting now. But the Divine does not act in that
way. The painter himself must arrange everything, con-
centrate upon his subject, put all his will upon a perfect
execution. On the other hand, if he has not the inspira-
tion, he may take all the trouble and yet the result be
nothing more than a work like other thousands of ex-
amples. You must feel what your painting is to express
and know or find out how to express it. A great painter
often gets a very exact vision of the painting he is to do.
He has the vision and he sets himself to work out the
8 113

114 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

vision. He labours day by day, with a will and conscious-
ness, to reproduce as exactly as possible what he sees
clearly with his inner sight. He works for the Divine;
his surrender is active and dynamic. For the poet too
it is the same thing. Anyone who wants to do something
for the Divine, it is the same.

HOW TO FEEL THAT WE BELONG
TO THE DIVINE

How to feel that we belong to the Divine and that the
Divine is acting in us?

NOT with the head, although one can always begin by it;
for the light touches the head first. One must feel with
one's sensation, that is, sense it in a flaming aspiration
that seeks to realise. For example, as it may happen
sometimes to an athlete: supposing you are trying to lift a
heavy weight and are intensely concentrated upon it.
Suddenly you feel without your knowing it how, that
another Force is lifting it up, something has taken hold
of your hands and is making them do the impossible.
The body seems to be inexistent at that moment. Many
writers too have thejsame experience. Something in them
which is not their own'self thinks, sees much more clearly,
is infinitely more conscious, and organises the thoughts
and the words. It is not the writer that writes but this
something else. At such times the small person which
struggles and attempts is no longer there. Indeed, for the
experience to be complete and not to disturb it, the
physical person must keep quiet as much as possible.

To have such an experience, you must first have the
will for it; you must will and aspire, try to be less and less
an egoist, to have less and less the feeling of being a parti-

Il6 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

/

cular person. You must have then within you this flame,
this ardent yearning, this need of union. It is a kind of
luminous enthusiasm that possesses you, an irresistible
necessity of your being to dissolve in the divine and not
to be separately. True, it is a state that does not last
long in the beginning you have the contrary experience
immediately after. But if you continue, persist in your will
and aspiration, the other state will come again. The two
alternate for a time till the complete fusion is achieved
Finally there is no longer the distinction of your personal
being and the Divine Being, the two are one. There is no
more the state of yearning towards, an ecstatic sense of
submission in which the two are still separate. The state
of fusion and mingling, of complete identity is extremely
simple and supremely spontaneous. I heard once from an
Indian Sufi at Paris of this state of consciousness. They
too knew of it.

Is that then the final stage, no more progress after that?

There is no end to progress. For, this perfect union can
happen before the transformation of the body. The
union is a thing of the consciousness. There is a great
difference between even physical consciousness and phy-
sical matter. The most advanced mystic may get to the
realisation in the physical consciousness, but that does not
include physical matter. The transformation of the mate-
rial body has not been done nor even attempted perhaps
in the past. It can be done only if life is sufficiently pro-

HOW TO FEEL THAT WE BELONG TO THE DIVINE 1 17

longed; you do not leave the body unless you will it so and
thus have the necessary time at your disposal to bring
about the change. Sri Aurobindo once said and he said
it without the least hesitation that it will take about three
hundred years to do it, I can add, from the time when the
last stage of union with the Divine I have described is
achieved.

Three hundred years is the minimum, I should say.
You must realise what it means to transform the body.
The body with all its organs and functionings works auto-
matically without the intervention of your consciousness,
and is built upon an animal plan. If your heart stops for
the hundredth part of a second, your body goes off. You
cannot do without a single of your organs and you must
keep watch over their proper functioning. Transforma-
tion means the replacement of this purely material arrange-
ment by a systematic concentration of forces. You must
bring about an arrangement of forces, according to a
certain kind of vibrations, replacing each organ by a centre
of self-conscious energy which governs through the
concentration of a higher force. There will no longer be a
stomach, no more a heart even. These things will give
place to a system of vibrations which respresent what
they really are. The material organs are symbols of energy
centres; they are not the essential reality, they only give a
form or figure to it under certain circumstances. The
transformed body will function through its real energy
centres, not through their representatives as developed
in an animal body. For that you must first of all be

Il8 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

conscious of these centres and their functionings; instead
of an unconscious automatic movement there has to be a
movement of conscious control. Thus one will have at his
disposal not physical animal organs but the symbolic
vibrations, the symbolic energies. This does not mean
that there will not be any definite recognizable form. The
form will be built up with qualities rather than with solid
(dust) particles. It will be so to say a practical or prag-
matic form: it will be supple and mobile, unlike the fixed
grossly material shape. As the expression of your face
changes with your feeling, impulsion, even so the body
will change according to the need of the inner movement;
have you never had this kind of experience in your
dream? You rise up in the air and you give as it were a
push with your elbow in one direction and your body
extends that way; you give a kick with your foot and you
land somewhere else: you can be transparent at will and
go easily through a solid wall! The transformed body
will behave somewhat in the same way, it will be light,
luminous, elastic. Lightness, luminosity, elasticity will
be the very fundamental qualities of the body.

To prepare such a body 300 years is nothing; even a
thousand years will not be too much. Naturally, I am
speaking of the same body. If you change your body
in between, it will no longer be the same body. At 50
the body already begins to wear out. But, on the contrary,
if you have a body that goes on perfecting itself, if each
passing year represents a step in progress, then you can
continue indefinitely: for after all, you are immortal.

HOW TO FEEL THAT WE BELONG TO THE DIVINE 119

There is another difficulty one has to face in the work
of transformation. A particular body cannot change un-
less there is some sort of a corresponding change in the
surrounding bodies and in the surroundings generally
also; for one lives and moves through mutual interchange
in the midst of others. A collective change takes more
time than individual change. So it is no longer an indi-
vidual consciousness, but the collective consciousness
that has to do the work.

The world progresses. And being in the world you
too must progress. It is a progress, however, which the
Divine effects in you without your knowledge or col-
laboration. The progress is therefore very slow; Nature
does not calculate the time she takes for her work, she
has eternity before her and she is not in a hurry. Cen-
turies and millenniums are mere instants in her march
forward. One day she will arrive at the goal she has
fixed for her, even at the complete transformation of the
body and the advent of the superman. But the work will
be hastened if there is conscious collaboration from
man. Most people, by far the largest majority indeed,
are not conscious of the action of the Divine in them.
To be conscious means to be attentive to what is being
done, to be receptive and to be passive to its influence.
The more you give yourself and the more sincere you
are, the swifter and the more assured is your realisation.
You can do in a few moments what would otherwise
take years. That is the aim of Yoga.

SINCERITY IS VICTORY

To be sincere and to be candid are not the same thing.
To be candid means a simplicity based, in a large measure,
upon an ignorance of things. A child is candid, because
he is simple and ignorant and hides nothing; he is incapa-
ble of it and has no will to deceive anyone. But sincerity
is different.

Sincerity is a most difficult thing to have, but it is also
the most effective of things. If you have sincerity, you
are sure of victory. But it must be true sincerity. Sincerity
means that all the elements of your being, all its move-
ments, each and every one, from the most spiritual to the
most physical, from the inmost to the outermost, from
the topmost to the bottom-most, all parts, severally and
wholly and equally are turned to the Divine, they ask
for nothing else than the Divine, they live for and by the
Divine.

And it is not an easy thing. To be sincere in a part,
to be sincere on the whole, to be sincere at moments is
easy enough; everybody can have or achieve that much.
It is within the capacity of any human being with normal
good will, to bq sincere in his psychic movements, even
if these are rare. But to be sincere in the very cells of
your physical body is a still rarer and arduous achieve-
ment. To make the body cells so one-pointed that they
too feel they cannot live but for the Divine and in and

120

SINCERITY IS VICTORY 121

through the Divine. That is true sincerity and that is
what you must have.

First you must observe that there is not a day in your
life, not an hour, not even a minute when you have not
got to rectify or intensify your sincerity. I do not say
that you deceive the Divine. None can deceive the Divine,
not even the greatest of the Asuras. When you have un-
derstood that, still then you will always find moments
in your everyday life when you try to deceive yourself.
Almost automatically you bring forward reasons in
favour of whatever you do. I do not speak of grosser
things as when you have quarrelled with a person, for
example, and in your anger throw the whole blame upon
him. I knew a child who gave a good blow to the door,
because it thought the door was at fault. It is always the
other party who is in the wrong. But even when you
have passed beyond this baby stage, when you are sup-
posed to be a little more reasonable, you do the stupidest
of things and produce reasons in self-justification. The
real test of sincerity, the very minimum of true sincerity
lies here; in your reaction to a given situation, whether
you can take automatically the right attitude and do
exactly the thing to be done. When, for example, one
speaks angrily to you, do you catch the contagion and
become angry on your side also or are you able to maintain
an unshakable calm and lucidity, see the other man's
point or behave as one should?

This is, I say, the very beginning of sincerity, its
rudiments. And if you look into you with keener eyes.

122 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

you will discover thousands of insincerities, more subtle*
none the less seizable. Try to be sincere, occasions will
multiply when you catch yourself insincere: you will
know how difficult a thing it is. You say you belong to
the Divine, to the Divine alone and to nothing or to
nobody else; "it is the Divine who moves me and does
everything in me". And then you do whatever pleases
you; you use the Divine as a cloak to cover your indul-
gence of desires and passions. This also is a gross in-
sincerity and it should not be difficult for you to detect
it. Although this is a very common deception, more
perhaps to deceive others than to deceive oneself. The
mind catches hold of an idea, "all this is Brahman",
"I am Brahman", and you believe or pretend to believe
that you have realised it and you can do nothing wrong.
There are however subtler movements of insincerity or
want of sincerity, even when you have not put on the
divine cloak as the cover for your lapses. Even when
you think you are sincere there may be movements which
are not quite straight, behind which, if you probe un-
flinchingly, you will find lurking something undesirable.
Look to the little movements, thoughts, sensations and
impulses, that crowd the margin of your daily life; how
many of them are solely turned to the Divine, how many
of them are fired with an aspiration towards something
higher? You should consider yourself fortunate if you
find a few of the kind.

When I say that if you are sincere you are sure of
victory, I mean that kind of sincerity, whole and

SINCERITY IS VICTORY 123

undivided: the pure flame that burns like an offering,
the intense joy of existing for the Divine alone where
nothing else exists, nothing has any meaning or reason
for existence but in the Divine. Nothing has value or
interest if it is not this call, this aspiration, this opening
to the supreme truth; all this that we call the Divine. You
must serve the only reason for which the universe exists:
take it away, all disappears.

IMAGES OF GODS AND GODDESSES

Are the usual images of gods and goddesses true to reality?

WELL, when a little child draws a picture of an object,
is there any likeness? It is about the same or even worse
here. For the child is simple and sincere, while the
image-maker is full of prejudices and preconceived ideas,
stuffed with things he has heard or read. And he is tied
to his constructions. But at times, here and there, very
rarely indeed, artists appear with an inner vision, with
a great aspiration and a great purity of soul; they do
things that are acceptable. But they are exceptions, the
contrary is the rule.

I have seen some of these forms in the vital world and
also in the mental world; they are truly creations of man.
There is a Power from beyond that manifests, but in
this triple world of Ignorance man creates God Himself
in his own image and beings that appear there are more
or less the outcome of the creative human thought. So
at times we do have things that are truly frightful. I have
seen formations that are so obscure, so ununderstandable,
so inexpressive! There are some divine beings that are
treated worse than the others. Take, for example, this
poor Mahakali. What has man made of her, wildly
terrible, a nightmare beyond imagination! Such creations
however live in a very inferior world, in the lowest vital

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IMAGES OF GODS AND GODDESSES 125

world; and if there is anything there of the original being,
it is such a far reflection that it is hardly recognisable.
And yet it is that which is pulled by the human con-
sciousness. When, for example, an image is made and
installed and the priest calls down into it a form, an
emanation of a god, through an inner invocation there
is usually a whole ceremony in this connection if the
priest is someone having the power of evocation, then
the thing succeeds (what Ramkrishna did in the Kali
temple). But generally priests are people with the com-
monest ideas and the most traditional training and educa-
tion; when they think of the gods they give them attri butes
and appearances which are popular, which belong
normally to entities of the vital world, at best to mental
formations but which do not represent in any way the
truth of the beings behind. All idols in temples or
the household gods worshipped by the many are in-
habited by beings who know only how to lead you to
unhappiness and disaster. They are so far away from
the divinity that one means to worship. There are
certain family Kalis that are real monsters. I have even
advised some to throw such an image into the Ganges
to get rid of the evil influence emanating from it. But
of course it is always the fault of man and not of the
divinity. For man wishes so much to make his gods in
his own image.

Section Five

THE YOGIC CENTRES

THERE are, of course, the seven well-known yoga-centres
in the human body. They are, beginning from below,
(i) the end of the spine, (2) the lower abdomen, (3) the
navel, (4) the heart, (5) the throat, (6) between the eye-
brows and (7) the crown of the head. But there are
others extending from below the spine which are not so
well-known. It is true, however, that the centres in the
individual being end with the spine; what is below belongs
more to the universal nature. There is a centre above
and beyond the crown; there is also, on the other side,
a centre below and away from under the feet. The yoga-
centres are centres of consciousness and energy; they
are the sources of the various types and qualities of
consciousness and energy they indicate the many
planes of consciousness-energy. There are people who
actually feel that their force and strength come from
below, as if these stream into them like a spring from
under the feet. This region from below the spine-end
to the feet is that of the subconscient and what extends
further down is the domain of the inconscient. We may
distinguish five more centres in this lower or infra-spinal
region apart from the spine-end itself (mulddhdra) y (i)
the knee, (2) the leg, (3) the feet, (4) the sole of the foot
and (5) below the feet. That would make the total number

129

9

130 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

of centres as twelve the mystic number for completeness
or integrality.

The centre at the bottom of the spine, which is the
basis of the individual consciousness is seen as a serpent
a serpent coiled up and asleep, with perhaps just the
head sticking up in a very somnolent manner. It re-
presents the normal human consciousness, bottled up>
narrow, ignorant, asleep; human energy, too, at this
level is obscure and mechanical, extremely limited. The
whole energy potential, the consciousness-force is locked
up in the physical body consciousness. Now the serpent
does not remain asleep forever. It has to wake up, it
wakes up. That is to say, man's consciousness awakes,
grows and rises ypward. The serpent one day shakes
its head, lifts it up a little more, begins to sway its hood,
as if trying to throw off the sleep and look about. It
slowly uncoils itself and rises more and more. It
rises and passes through the centres one by one, becomes
more and more awake, gathers new light and potency
at each centre. Finally, fully awakened, it rises to its
full height, erect, straight like a rod, its tail-end at the
bottom of the spine and its hood touching the crown of
the man's head. The man is then the fully awakened,
the perfectly self-conscious man. The movement does
not stop there, however; for the serpent presses further
on, it strikes with its hood the bottom of the crown and
in the end breaks through and passes beyond like a
flash of lightning. One need not fear the break through,
there is no actual, physical breaking or fracture of the

THE YOGIC CENTRES 131

skull. Although it is said that once you have gone over
and beyond your head, you are not likely to return, you
go for good. In other words, the body does not hold
together very long after the experience, it drops and dies.
And yet it need not be so, it is not the whole truth. For
when you have gone beyond, you can come back too,
carrying the superconscient light with you. That is to
say, the serpent, now luminous, pure and free energy
can enter the body again, this time with its head down
and the tail up. It enters blazing, illumining with its
superconscient light the centres one by one, giving man
richer and richer consciousness, energy and life, trans-
forming the being more and more. The Light comes
down easily enough to the heart region; then the diffi-
culty begins, the regions below gradually become darker
and denser and it is hard rask for the Light to penetrate
as it goes further down. If it succeeds in reaching the
bottom of the spine, it has achieved something miraculous.
But there is a further progress necessary, if man and
the world with him is to realise a wholly transformed
supraconscient life. In other words, the Light must
touch and enter not only the physical stratum of our being
but the others too that lie below, the subconscient and
inconscient. That has been till now a sealed dungeon,
something impossible to approach and tackle.

And yet it is not an impossibility. Not only it is not
impossible, we have to make it possible. Not only so,
man's destiny demands that it should be inevitable.
If man is to be a transformed being, if he is to incarnate

132 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

here below something of the Divine Reality, if his social
life on earth is to be the expression of the light and
harmony of the Spirit Consciousness, then he has to
descend into these nether regions, break open the nether-
most as he has done in regard to the uppermost and
unite the two.

Here is a curious story about man and his destiny,
What is he, the normal man? He is a slave, a bond
slave. He may have the illusion that he has ideas and
movements, his own, he has even free scope to put them
to execution. But it will not take long to discover that
it is an illusion, a great deception. His plans do not
mature, his efforts beat against an iron wall. The more
he observes and sees things squarely he finds that he is
bound hand and foot. He is driven by forces and things
over which he has no control whatsoever. He is a slave
to circumstances; he is checked by the will of others.
His own will has no power or scope; it is wholly in-
effectual. He feels more and more a great burden pressing
upon the back of the head bending it down, a heavy
weight lies upon his shoulders. He somehow trudges
on like a beast of burden. He has no free choice or will;
his wishes and desires are not consulted. He is driven
helplessly on.

But the story does not end here. Man can, if he
chooses, alter the situation, turn the tables. He has in
him the source of freedom what he vaguely feels in
his outer consciousness; there is a centre from where
he is capable of reacting and reasserting. It is the centre

THE YOGIC CENTRES 133

where lies his dharma y the law of his being. It is his
soul. If he once comes in contact with that, makes that
the base of his life, he is free from that moment. He
holds his head erect. He is no longer bent down. The
burden of inexorable circumstances weighs no more on
him. He has transcended the circumstances, he stands
over them, looks over them. He is now the master and
they obey him., he has not to obey them.

This consummation is supremely effected when there
is the double breaking of the barrier I was speaking about.
The first is the piercing of the veil above, when the
consciousness rises into the superconscient, takes the
human being into the divine being; the second is the
rending of the lower veil and the descent of the divine
consciousness into the most material, the subconscient
and the inconscient, realising the divine life on earth.

THE INNER AND THE OUTER

THE external part of the being is turned to the Divine:
you are conscious of your ideal and as much as possible
you conform your behaviour to it. You appear what you
want to be. But just behind the line, on the other side
of your consciousness in the subconscious, as it is called
the picture is different. The light has not touched
there: the movements go the other way. Things
thoughts, impulses, feelings hide which you would not
like to own. Not that you consciously and deliberately
hide them: but they are there as inevitable part and parcel
of the original ordinary nature. They form the back-
yard of the consciousness; there are all kinds of nooks and
corners, if not quite open spaces, which have accumulated
darkness and dirt. This two-sidedness is common, in
fact, universal; you have to be one-sided, that is, of one
piece, wholly turned to the light. You must be conscious
of these hidden elements and bring them out, expose
them to the light calmly, candidly, fearlessly, so that the
luminous force may act on them. They have to be drawn
out and rejected, or if possible, to be purified and changed.
Some are capable of change and become right move-
ments; others are wholly wrong, they belong to the
inferior consciousness and have to be cast away without
pity.

134

AND THIS AGILE REASON

REASON is an agility gymnast. It can move in all varieties
of ways, make infinite twists, the most impossible con-
tortions with equal ease and skill. It does not seek the
truth, although it may pretend to do so; for it cannot
find the truth. The law of uncertainty or indeterminacy
seems also to be the last word of modern Science. What
Reason does and can do is to justify, find arguments for
whatever position it is put in or called upon to support.
Its business is to supply "proofs": it can do so as the spider
brings out of itself the whole warp and woof of the cob-
web. There is no truth, that is to say, no conclusion
which it cannot demonstrate and all with equal cogency.
That was indeed the great discovery of the great Kant
who described it as the antinomies of Reason. Reason
finds it infinitely exhilarating to pirouette ad infinitum,
i.e., beating about the bush without caring to look for the
fact or reality hidden in the bush.

Is it then to say that this faculty is a falsehood and that
it can lead you only to falsehood? Not necessarily. It
becomes a falsehood when you try to live according to
it, according to an idea or ideas it has taken a fancy to;
for then it is bound to land you in contradictions. Other-
wise, if it is not a question of practical application, if it
is merely a play or playfulness in the mental world, it is
harmless acrobatics; and even in its own way it can be of

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136 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

some use in making your brain sharp, alert, strong and
supple.

Reason is a bad master; a free-lance, it often goes amuck.
But controlled and yoked, reined in and guided by the
higher light, it is a help, even a necessity; for it gives the
immediate form in which to hold and fix in the physical
world the truth-movements of the higher consciousness.

THE FORCE OF BODY-CONSCIOUSNESS

THERE is a state of consciousness in which you perceive
that the effect of things, circumstances, movements, all
the activities of life upon yourself depends almost exclu-
sively upon your attitude towards them. You become then
conscious, conscious to the extent of realising that things
in themselves are neither good nor bad, they are so only
in relation to ourselves: their effect, I say, depends en-
tirely upon the way in which we regard these things. If
we take, for example, a circumstance as a gift from God,
as a divine Grace, as an outcome of the total harmony, it
will help us to become more conscious and truer and
stronger. The same identical circumstance, if we take it
differently, as a blow of Fate, as a bad force wishing us
harm, becomes, on the contrary, a damper on our con-
sciousness, it takes away our strength, brings obscurity,
creates disharmony. And yet in either case it is altogether
the same circumstance. I would like you to have the
experience and make the experiment. For your ideal is
to be master of yourselves. But not that only. You
should not only be master of your own selves, but master
of the circumstances of your life, the circumstances, at
least, that immediately surround you and concern you.
You must note further that it is an experience that is not
confined to the mind alone: it need not happen in your
head only, it may and indeed must continue into the body.

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138 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

Certainly, this is a realisation needing great labour, much
concentration and self-mastery: you have to force the
consciousness into the body, into dense Matter. It is the
attitude of the body that will in the end determine every-
thing: shocks and contacts of the outside world will change
its nature according to the way in which they are received
by the body. And if you attain perfection in that line, you
can become even master of accidents. Such a thing is
possible, not only possible, but it is sure to happen, for
it is a forward step in man's progress. First of all, you
have to realise the power in your mind to the extent that
it can act upon circumstances and change their effect
upon you. Then the power can descend into Matter, into
the substance, the cells of your body and endow the body
with this capacity of control over things outside and
around you.

There is nothing impossible in the world. We ourselves
put the limit; always we say, this is possible, that is im-
possible, one can do this, one cannot do that. Sometimes
We admit a thing to be possible but ask who would do it,
so it is impossible and so on. Like slaves, like prisoners
we bind ourselves to our limits. You call it common sense,
but it is a stupid, narrow, ignorant sense; it does not
truly know the laws of life. The laws of life are not what
we think them to be, what our mind or intellect conceives
them to be; they are quite otherwise.

THE BODY AND THE PSYCHIC

You ask why the body has a limited receptive power.
The reason is that in the physical world things must not
get mixed up, they must remain somewhat stable, in
shape and position. For example, if your body suddenly
began to melt and flow towards another, it would be
rather troublesome; you would find it disgusting if the
body of your neighbour, like a fluid, were to pour into
your own fluid body. It is to prevent such a mixture
that a greater concentration in masses was necessary, a
kind of fixity of force that separates them. Indeed it was
to separate one individuality from another that this
fixity was needed. And it is precisely this fixity again
that prevents the body from progressing as rapidly as it
could and should. As you grow up and attain your nor-
mal size and constitution, you become more and more
rigid in your body. As a child you have this plasticity of
growth. Children change continually, they change visibly.
This plasticity, this growth and development continue,
so long as you remain young. But beyond, say, forty,
people generally feel that they have reached their goal,
they sit down to gather the fruits of their labour; they
gradually become dry as dust, hard like wood, and even
like stone in the end. The body then not being able to

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I4O THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

adapt itself to the movement of the inner change, gets
fossilised and crumbles, which means death.

After death there is then no further progress?

That depends. There is a kind of progress sometimes.
There are, for example, writers, musicians, artists, people
who lived on a high mental level, who feel that they have
yet something to do upon earth, they did not finish their
work, fulfil their mission, reach the goal they set before
them. So they wish to remain in the earth's atmosphere
as much as possible, retain as much cohesion of their
being as needed and seek to manifest themselves and
progress through other living human forms. I have seen
many such cases. I shall tell you the very interesting
case of a musician, a pianist, a pianist of a very high
order; he had hands that had become something mar-
vellous, full of skill, accuracy, precision, force, swiftness;
it was truly remarkable. The man died comparatively
young and with the feeling that had he lived he would
have continued to advance in his musical self-expression.
Such was the intensity of his aspiration that his subtle
hands retained their form without getting dissolved and
wherever there was someone passive and receptive and
at the same time good musician the hands of the dead
man would enter into the living hands that played. In
the case that I saw the man used to play well enough
normally but quite in the ordinary way; he became,
however, as he continued to play all on a sudden not

THE BODY AND THE PSYCHIC 141

only a virtuoso, but a marvellous artist; it was the hands
of the other person who made use of him. The same
thing may happen with regard to a painter; in his case
too, the hands are the instrument. For ceitain writers
also a like thing may happen; but here it is the brain of
the dead man that retains its formation and it is this that
enters the brain of the living writer which must be
receptive enough to allow the formation in all its pre-
cision. I have seen a writer who was nothing extra-
ordinary in his normal capacity, but used to write things
much more beautiful in those moments than he was capa-
ble of doing or was doing usually. I know the case of a
musical composer, not executor like the one I cited be-
fore, which was particularly remarkable. In the case of
the composer, like the writer, it is the brain that serves
him; for the executor the hands are the chief instrument.
Beethoven, Bach, Cesar Franck were great composers,
although the last one was an executor also. The compo-
sition of music is a cerebral activity. Now the brain of
a great musician used to enter in contact with that of
the composer and made him compose marvellous pieces.
The man was writing a musical opera. You must re-
member what a complicated thing an opera music is.
It is a complex whole in which roles are distributed to
a very large number of performers each playing differently
on different instrument and they must all of them
together and severally express the idea and the theme
the composer has in his mind. Now, this man I am
speaking of, when he sat down with the blank paper ia

142 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

front., used to receive the musical formation in his brain
and wrote down continuously as if he was recording
something ready-made placed before him. I saw him
filling up a whole page from top to bottom with all the
details of orchestration. He had no need to hear any
instrument, he did it all on paper; and the distribution
was perfect. He himself was not very unconscious, he
used to feel that something entered into him and helped
him to bring out the music.

You must note here that when I speak of a formation
entering into a living person, the formation does not
mean the man himself who is dead, that is to say, his
soul or psychic being. I say that it is only a special
faculty which continues to remain in the earth atmos-
phere, even after the death of the man to whom the
faculty belonged: it was so well developed, well formed
that it continues to retain its independent identity. The
soul, the true being of the man is no longer there; I have
told you often that after death it goes away as soon as
possible to the psychic world, its own world, for rest,
assimilation and preparation. Not that it cannot happen
otherwise. A soul incarnating as a great musician may
incarnate again in or as a great musician, although I said
in another connection that a soul usually prefers to vary,
even to contrast and contradict its incarnations with
each other. Take, for example, the great violinist, Isaie;
he was a Belgian and the most marvellous violonist of
his century. I knew him and I am sure he was an in-
carnation, at least, an emanation, of the soul that was the

THE BODY AND THE PSYCHIC 143

great Beethoven. It may not have been the whole psy-
chic being that so reincarnated, but the soul in its musical
capacity. He had the same appearance, the same head.
When I saw him first appearing on the stage I was greatly
surprised, I said to myself, he looks so like Beethoven,
the very portrait of that great genius. And then he
stood, the bow poised, one stroke and there were in it
three or four notes only, but three or four supreme
notes, full of power, greatness and grandeur; the entire
hall was suffused with an atmosphere marvellous and
unique. I could recognise very well the musical genius
of Beethoven behind. It may be possible here too the
soul of Beethoven in its entirety the whole psychic
being was not present; the central psychic might have
been elsewhere gathering more modest commonplace
experiences, as a shoemaker, for example. But what was
left and what manifested itself was something very
characteristic of the great musician. He had disciplined
his mental and vital being and even his physical being,
in view of his musical capacity and this formation
remained firm and sought to reincarnate. The musical
being was originally organised and fashioned around
the psychic consciousness and therefore it acquired its
peculiar power and its force of persistence, almost an
immortality. Such formations, though not themselves
the psychic being, have a psychic quality, are indepen-
dent beings, possess their own life and seek their
fulfilment by manifesting and incarnating themselves
whenever the occasion presents itself.

144 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

Can a Psychic Being take two bodies at the same time?'

The matter is not so simple. I have told you often
that the psychic being is the result of an evolution, that
is to say, it is the expression of the divine consciousness
that has entered and spread itself into Matter and slowly
raises Matter and develops it so that it may return to the
Divine. The psychic being is formed progressively by
the divine centre through many lives or incarnations.
There comes a time when it attains a kind of perfection,
the perfection of its growth and formation. It has then
often an aspiration towards greater realisation, a further
progress to manifest better or further the Divine. As
the result of this pull, it generally draws towards itself a
being of a higher order, from a higher plane, from the
Overmind, as Sri Aurobindo calls it, a being of involu-
tion who incarnates in the psychic being. These over-
mental entities are termed gods or divinities by men.
Now when the fusion takes place, of a god into a psychic
being, the latter naturally increases in stature and par-
takes of the nature of the god and acquires also the
capacity to produce emanations; that is to say it throws
out of itself a part which possesses an independent
existence and can incarnate in others. In this way there
may be not only two but several emanations or projec-
tions of the same original being. In other words, there
may be a single psycho-divine origin but many per-
sonalities coming out of it. That is how it happens some-
times that different people feel a sort of affinity and

THE BODY AND THE PSYCHIC 145

even identity, and with reason, because they carry within
them the same deity, out of which they, that is, their
psychic being came. It is not the same thing as the
doubling of the personality where in throwing oneself
out of oneself one loses a portion, as when you cut a
body into two there are only two halves. Here the pro-
jection is a whole and independent personality. If you
emanate a being out of you, you remain whole and entire
without losing anything of yourself and the emanation
too is a being whole and entire living its independent life.

II

What is the work of the Psychic? What is its function?

The Psychic is like the wire between the generator and
the lamp. What is the generator and what is the lamp,
or rather, who is the generator and who the lamp? The
Divine is the generator and the body, the visible being
is the lamp. The function then of the Psychic is to
connect the two. In other words, if there were no Psy-
chic in Matter, Matter could not come in direct contact
with the Divine.* All human beings, including yourself,
all carry the Divine within you, you have only to enter
within you to find Him. It is a unique speciality of the
human being^rather of all embodied beings living upon
earth.' In the human being, the psychic becomes more
conscious andjformed; more conscious and therefore also
10

146 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

more free, it is individualised. You should note that it
is a speciality of the earth alone. It is the direct infusion
of a purifying and redeeming agent into the most obscure
and unconscious Matter to waken it by degrees towards
the divine consciousness, the divine presence, to the
Divine Himself. It is the psychic presence that makes of
man an exceptional being. Perhaps it is not good to tell
it to him too often, for as it is he is already puffed up and
thinks very highly of himself and there is no need to
encourage him in that direction. Still it is a fact: so much
so that beings from other worlds, worlds of what are
known as demi-gods or even gods, beings from what
Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind, are anxious to take a
physical body upon earth so that they may experience
the Psychic, as they do not possess it. These beings have
very many qualities which men have not, but they lack
this divine presence which is quite an exceptional thing
belonging to the earth alone. All the inhabitants of the
higher worlds the Higher Mind, the Overmind and
other domains do not have the psychic being. Naturally,
the beings of the vital worlds have not got it either.
But these vital beings do not regret, for they do not
want to have it. There are, however, a few exceptional
beings on this level who wish to be converted and there-
fore desire a physical body; but the rest do not want,
they are bound to the law of their being and cannot
repudiate it.

So I say and we are bound to admit that it is an excep-
tional virtue in the human being to bear the psychic in

THE BODY AND THE PSYCHIC 147

him. But to tell the truth, he does not seem to have
profited much by it. He does not look like considering
his virtue as something very desirable, from the manner
he has been treating this presence. He prefers to it his
mental ideals, he prefers to it his vital demands and he
prefers to it his physical habits. I do not know how
many of you have read the Bible. But there is a story
that I used to like always. There were two brothers,
Esau and Jacob. Esau had gone out hunting and felt
tired and hungry. He came back home and found his
brother preparing a dish. He asked Jacob to feed him.
Jacob said he would give him food if he, Esau, sold his
birthright to him. Esau said, of what use is the birth-
right to me now, and sold it to his brother. You under-
stand the significance? You can of course take it quite
in the superficial way. But I took it diiferently. The
birthright is the right to be son of God. And Esau was
quite ready to give up his divine right for a mess of
pottage. It is an old story, but it is eternally true.

THE PSYCHIC BEING SOME MYSTERIES
Does the psychic being progress always?

THERE are two kinds of progress in the psychic and they
are very different. One consists in its formation and
building and organisation; for the psychic begins by being
only a little divine spark hidden in the inner person and
out of this spark comes and gradually develops an inde-
pendent conscious person who has his own will and acti-
vity. As I say, the psychic being is originally like a spark
from the divine consciousness: it grows into a conscious
individuality through the experiences of successive lives.
This progress then is like the progress of the growing child*
It is a thing in formation and it remains so for a long time
in most human beings. It is not a fully individualised
being there, not fully conscious and master of itself; it
needs manjr births, one after another, to build itself and
become fully conscious. In the end, however, there does
come a time when it is a completed personality, fully
individualised, fully conscious of itself and its destiny.
When such a psychic being incarnates in a human being,
it makes a great difference. For the man is born free, so to
say, he is not bound to his circumstances, his surroundings
or his origin or atavism, like ordinary people. When he
comes upon earth, he feels he has a work to do in the world,
he has a mission to fulfil. To that extent then his cycle of
progress is completed, that is to say, he has no more need

148

THE PSYCHIC BEING SOME MYSTERIES 149

to take birth in a body to make further progress. Till
then rebirth is a necessity, it is compulsory; for it is
through reincarnation taking up a new body that he
progresses, develops and grows. It is in the physical life
and in the physical body that the soul slowly builds itself
until it becomes a fully conscious being. But once it is
fully formed, it is free either to take birth or not to at will.
There then one kind of progress stops. But if the fully
formed being now wishes to become an instrument for
the work of the Divine, if he chooses to be a worker upon
earth to help in the fulfilment of the cosmic purpose of
the Divine, instead of going away and resting in the psychic
bliss of his own world, then he has to make a new kind of
progress, a progress towards capacity to work, to organise
and execute the work to express and embody the will of
the Divine. As long as the world continues, as long as
he chooses to work for the Divine, he will continue
to progress. But if he wishes to withdraw into the
psychic world and gives up or refuses to work for the
divine Plan, then he can remain in the static state beyond
the range of progress. For, as I have said, progress
exists only upon earth in the physical world. You cannot
progress everywhere. In the psychic world there is a kind
of blissful repose. You remain what and where you are
without moving.

Everything upon earth progresses, has to progress. All
men, without exception, even those who have no sense of
the psychic, whether they wish or not, must progress.
The psychic progresses in them in spite of themselves

150 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

and they have to follow the curve of its growth and
development. That is to say, man ascends in the scale of
life and grows, grows exactly as a child does. In the
process of growth there comes a time when one reaches the
summit and one changes the direction or the plane of
progress. At the outset there is the purely physical
progress, like that of the child; then there comes the
mental progress, later on the psychic progress and the
spiritual progress, so that unless progress changes its
direction, when it has reached its limit on a particular level,
one has to come down the curve, that is to say, instead of
progression there will be retrogression, which means in the
end disintegration and decomposition. Precisely because
in the purely physical world there cannot be a perpetual
and constant progress, there is in this domain this curve
of growth, apogee, decline and decomposition. All that
does not advance must recede. This is exactly what hap-
pens in the domain of matter. Matter does not know how
to progress indefinitely, it has not learnt it; so after a time
it is tired of progressing or growing. Given this consti-
tution, one cannot go beyond a limit. But there is in man
side by side with his physical growth, a vital growth and a
mental growth as well. The mental especially can progress
long after the body has ceased to progress. The body does
not grow; even when it is declining, the mind still can
continue to grow, to rise to higher heights. There is a
mental ascension contrariwise to the physical descent.
But they who do Yoga, who become conscious of their
psychic being and are identified with it, who live with

THE PSYCHIC BEING SOME MYSTERIES 15!

its life, never cease to progress, they move upward till
the last breath of their life; even when they die their prog-
ress does not stop. The body is on the decline, because
it cannot keep step with the inner march forward, it cannot
transform itself and mould itself into the rhythm of the
inner consciousness. The discrepancy increases so much
between the two, that there is a snap at the end and that
is death. However, on the purely spiritual level too there
is no progress. The domain of the pure spirit means a
static condition; there is no progressive movement there,
for it is beyond the field of progress, beyond all manifes-
tation. For when you are merged in the Spirit, you have
come out of creation and there is no question of progress,
or even of any movement.

When the psychic is about to take rebirth does it choose
its form beforehand?

It depends. As I have told you now, there are psychic
beings that are just on the way of formation and growth,
they usually cannot choose at the beginning, they cannot
choose very much. But when they have come to a certain
degree of development and consciousness, they make a
choice; generally when they are still in the body, when
they have gathered a certain amount of experience, they
decide what is to be their next field of experience. I shall
give you an illustration, although somewhat external. A
psychic being, for example, needed the experience of
power, authority, comm and and wanted to know the

152 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

reactions of these movements and also how to turn them
towards the Divine, to learn, in a word, what these things
can teach. So the soul took the body of a king (or a queen).
When it had the necessary experience, learnt what it had
to learn, it gave up the body, no longer useful. It is at
that moment when it decides to leave the body but is still
in the body that the soul makes the choice of the next
experience. The choice very often takes a course of action
and reaction. If the soul has experienced and studied a
particular field, its choice falls upon a contrary field on
the following occasion. Thus if the soul has had the
experience of a kingly position and worked through that
to enter into a conscious relation with the Divine, then at
the moment of leaving the body that served with power
and authority and command, it perhaps would say: "This
time I shall take a middle position, neither high nor low,
where there will be no need to lead mostly an external
life, where one is neither in great luxury nor in great
misery." With that resolution it returns to the psychic
world for the necessary rest, for the assimilation of past
experiences and preparation for the future. When the time
comes for return upon earth, for the descent into a physical
body, it remembers naturally the choice it made, but from
that higher and subtler plane at that moment the material
world is not seen in the way we do, it appears in a different
form; still one can notice the differences in the surround-
ings and activities. One has not the vision of the details,
but a total or global vision is there. It can choose an atmos-
phere, it can choose even a particular country. It has in

THE PSYCHIC BEING SOME MYSTERIES 153

view a certain kind of education, civilisation and influence,
the kind of life that it wishes to lead. Then as it comes
down and looks about, it distinguishes very clearly the
different kinds of vibrations and makes its way accordingly.
It aims, as it were, at the place where to drop. But it can
hit the target only approximative^. For there are one or
two other factors besides which come into play. For there
is not only its own choice, from above, there must also be
a receptivity from below, an aspiration that draws to it
the particular being or the particular type of being.
Usually the call is from a mother, sometimes from both
the parents. If the parent has some aspiration or recepti-
vity, something that is sufficiently passive and open and
looking up towards something higher, in that case, the
thing appears to the psychic being as a luminous vibration
which beckons it. It is the answer to its will. It shows the
place it is to go to. It cannot fix the day of its birth.
There will naturally be a period of uncertainty, but that is
not expected to go beyond a year. The second factor
that somewhat modifies or qualifies his choice comes
from the nature of the birth itself. The soul, the conscious
being, precipitates into the inconscience, for the physical
world, even human consciousness, at its very best,
is an inconscient thing when compared to the psychic
consciousness. It is as though the soul fell head downmost.
That makes it dazed and for a long time it does not know
what is what. It does not know where it is, what it is
doing nor why it is there; a complete blank possesses it.
It is unable to express itself, especially, as a baby, it has

154 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

not the proper amount of brain to understand or manifest
anything. Very r^ely do children show the exceptional
being that they have within them. Cases do occur indeed,
but they are very few and far between. Generally it takes
time for the soul to come to its own. It wakes up but
slowly from its numbness, it is only gradually that it begins
to understand that it is there for some reason and by
choice. This oblivion is occasioned by the presence of the
mind and mental education which completely shuts off
the psychic consciousness. All kinds of circumstances,
happenings, experiences external and emotional are
then needed to strike open the doors within, to bring the
memory that one comes from elsewhere and for a very
special reason. It is the normal longer process. But one
may have the chance of meeting early enough someone
who knows; then instead of groping and fumbling through
ignorance and darkness, you get the light and the help that
give you the swift and straight contact.

The psychic will and psychic development are things
that are completely outside the range of common notions.
Ideas of justice and reward and punishment have no place
here at all. Many people come to me and complain:
"What have I done in my past life that I have to be under
such difficult conditions now, to suffer so much!" I always
reply: "But don't you see it is a blessing for you, the divine
grace upon you? In your past life perhaps you yourself
asked for such conditions so that you may make greater
progress through them! 5 ' This way of looking at the thing
may seem very new. But truth lies that way.

THE PSYCHIC BEING SOME MYSTERIES 155

How is it possible for a psychic being once living the life
of intelligence and creativity to enter again into a life of
stupidity and ordinariness?

I did not say quite like that. The psychic being is not
stupid. What happens may be described in this way:
for example, suppose the psychic being has had the expe-
rience of the life of a writer. The function of the writer is
to express himself, his perceptions and observations
and judgments in words: he has a certain field, a certain
range of associations and circumstances in which to live
and move. But there are other fields and ranges beyond
and outside of which he has no experience. So he may say
to himself: I have lived with my head, I know something
of the intellectual reactions to life: now let me live with
my heart and experience the reactions of feeling and
passion. Indeed, sometimes an overactivity of the intellect
impoverishes the capacities of the heart. So the psychic
being, in order to have this new kind of experience, aban-
dons his intellectual heights, so to say, and comes down to
the vital plane. He is no longer a creative genius, but an
ordinary man, but with a heart enriched or enriching itself
with its intense or generous movements. (One can remem-
ber in this connection the story of Shankaracharya who
being a Sannyasi from boyhood has had no experience of
love; he entered the body of a king in order to gather this
experience.) It is not rare to see psychic beings that have
reached the maximum of their growth in certain directions,
take up a very modest and ordinary life in some other new

156 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

direction or for some other purpose. One who was a king,
for example, as I already narrated once, who has had the
experiences of power and authority and domination, the
imperial heights, may choose to descend to ordinary life,
to work as an obscure person without being troubled by
the pomps of high position; he may choose very bourgeois
surroundings, very mediocre conditions among mediocre
men and things, to procure, so to say, a kind of incognito
so that he may work in peace and quiet. Can you say it is
a decline and a fall? It is only facing life, meeting its
problems from another angle, another point of view. You
must know, for consciousness, the true consciousness
the consciousness of the psychic glory and obscurity
are the same, success and failure are the same. What is
important is the growth of consciousness. Certain condi-
tions which to your human eye appear favourable, may in
reality be quite unfavourable for the growth of con-
sciousness. With your ordinary thoughts and your
ordinary reactions you judge everything according to suc-
cess and failure. But that is the very last way of judging,
for it is the most artificial, most superficial and absolutely
contrary to truth. In human life, as it is organised at
present, it is perhaps only once in a million cases, or even
less than that, that truth is given the first place; always
there is an element of show mixed up. When a man has
success, much success, you may be sure there is mixed up
with it as much show.

PAST LIVES AND THE PSYCHIC BEING

MOST people are not at all conscious of what is happening
in them. Their consciousness or being is a mixture of
mental, vital and physical elements, a kind of hotchpotch.
There are a few, very few indeed, who are conscious
conscious of what is beyond the three, viz. their psychic
being. For it is only that element which endures, conti-
nues through successive lives. Certain people have
known or learnt some rudiments of the matter wha
believe in rebirth, but conceive it in the most childish
manner. Their idea is as if the person changed his body
like a robe. There are persons even who have written
books describing seriously all the lives they passed
through since the time they were monkeys! As I have
said, it is the psychic element alone that persists after
death, all the rest gets dissolved. And in 999 cases out
of i ,000, the psychic is a very small formation lying
behind and taking little part in the actual life of the
person. I speak of the average man, not of the Yogi,
that is to say, one who has a developed psychic being
to the extent that it is capable of controlling and guiding
the outer life. How often does an ordinary man get in
contact with his psychic being! Years and years pass for
many or most to have just a passing taste of this move-
ment. It is this moment that abides and is carried over
to the next life, all other things are simply effaced. At

157

158 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

a given point of our life, there comes a special circum-
stance, there is a call within, an absolute inner necessity
that brings forward the psychic and the contact is made
perhaps for an instant. That experience is preserved in
the psychic memory. More than the outer circumstances
and the physical events, however, what is cherished in
the consciousness is the intimate emotion, the vibration
that accompanied the perception at the time. At the
most, a word said, a phrase heard, just a passing scene
is all that is stored, net and clear, engraved as it were.
But above all it is the soul's state that is the most important
thing. It is these scattered elements that serve as stepping-
stones or signposts on the soul's forward journey. They
are the constants that build up the personality of a man.
On rare occasions there is a larger clearing, the circum-
stances preserved are sufficiently definite to point to a
date and a historical person. Usually, however, one
cannot say, "I was such a person, I lived in such a country
or did such things." These psychic flashes, more in
some cases, less in others, are the only genuine and
au thentic records of the story of a person's lives.

It is a being who is completely identified with his
psychic, who has organised his whole person, in all its
parts, around this centre, in fact, a being of one piece,
entirely and solely turned to the Divine that can alone
remember or hold in his consciousness something like
a totality of his personal history. For in his case even
when the body drops, the other parts being integrated
and taken up into the soul substance maintain their

PAST LIVES AND THE PSYCHIC BEING 159

individual existence; the personality formed around the
psychic continues with its memory intact: even it can
pass from one life to another without losing the
consciousness,

A psychic memory has a very definite character; it has
a wonderful intensity. It stores the unforgettable
moments of life, those when the consciousness was most
luminous, most powerful, most active. They are the
happiest and the most fortunate moments of life. But
they cannot be spoken about.

There are people who say and perhaps believe too
that they were such and such persons and even give a
detailed description of their past lives. There are also
the well-known spirit communications through a medium
at spirit sittings. Someone comes and tells you he was
Napoleon, another was Shakespeare and so on. How
many Shakespeares and Napoleons and Caesars have
manifested in this way, there is no counting! There are
spirits who are extremely talkative and bewitch you with
extraordinary stories, many that seem so true and genuine
on the face, many others, of course, full of the grossest
self-contradictions. The fact, however, is that usually
these spirits are small beings of the vital, often remnants
of a dead person, broken bits of his decomposed persona-
lity, desires that have persisted, coagulated imaginations
set free that move about and seek to possess and settle
upon a living person. The small spirits of the vital are
often not of good disposition; they amuse themselves at
the cost of the gullible human being, making a fool of

160 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

him. In that world it is easy to read the mind of others:
the spirit sees clearly what is there in your head even
if you do not speak it out. That is how it reveals secrets
known to you alone, even secrets you have totally for-
gotten. They can imitate other personalities. They know
many other small tricks to confuse or astound you.

THE HOMOGENEOUS BEING

A THING is homogeneous when all its parts are similar,
are like itself:, in other words, when the whole being is
under the same influence, moved by the same conscious-
ness, the same impulsion, the same will. Normally a
man is formed of many kinds of fragments, all disparate,
each becoming active in its turn at different moments.
A part may become active, so (different from the previous
one, that the man seems altogether a new person. Each
element in us has its own nature and activity, demands
its own fulfilment, acts almost as an independent perso-
nality. We are composed indeed of multiple personalities.

Thus, for example, you are now in a very good state
of consciousness. You have the feeling that you really
live for an ideal, for the Divine and are happy. Suddenly
something happens; you meet someone, not very desirable,
or you do something, not commendable, or you are in
the midst of some untoward circumstances and you find
you have lost your experience, so much so that you may
even lose the memory of it. You wonder how this could
have happened. A submerged part of your being has come
up, an element that lay aside is now in front: it has come
overshadowing or pushing the other into the background.

There are many examples of such double, triple, qua-
druple or multiple personality. The separate personalities
are not conscious of each other, each acts independently
11 161

162 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

and goes its own way. They live together, but do not
mix or mingle with each other; they are contained in the
same body, that is the only connection. It is like a sack
in which pebbles and pearls if they are indeed real pearls
have been thrown together and the only bond of union
is the sack. This is not homogeneity; this is called
heterogeneity.

I knew a person who had a will, a clarity of thought and
ideas, ~who prepared intelligently all that needed to be
done with regard to a particular work. All on a sudden
there was a reversal of the whole being. Another person
surged up who not only did not continue the work of his
predecessor, but undid it all. He destroyed in 10 minutes
what took months for the other to build up. And you can
understand the dismay of the first person when he came
back and saw the havoc done: he had to start over again.

What then one should do? What is the remedy?

You have to find out in you a seat of consciousness, a
signpost firmly planted, deep inside, which is at the same
time a mirror. All things, all happenings must pass in
front of the mirror; they will be reflected there in their
true nature, exactly as they are in their truth and not as
they appear or pretend to be. And according to their
nature and quality you are to give them places around;
the signpost will show where each has to go for its place.
The Mirror will judge and test each sentiment, each im-
pulse, each sensation that comes up. If it is pleasant, if
it is luminous, if it is what it should be, give it a place near
the centre. If, on the other hand, it is grey, obscure,

THE HOMOGENEOUS BEING 163

doubtful, put it away, farther off. If, by chance, any of
the unpleasant elements has forced its way up and occu-
pied a near seat, you must warn it sternly and remove it,
give it its appropriate seat; when it has recognised itself,
changed itself, then only it can be allowed within a nearer
ring. It is in this way that you should arrange and group
all the elements of your being, according to the value and
quality of each one around the central consciousness.
That is how you organise your being. You build up a
pattern of concentric rings, the nearer the ring to the
centre, the purer must be the elements that compose it
and therefore of greater value and significance. If you
can arrange in this way all the parts and parcels of your
being around the psychic centre, each in its own place
according to its role and function and all turned towards
the central consciousness and inspired and moved by it
and there is no element which sounds a differing note,
then you have the perfect homogeneity of your nature.

It is a very interesting exercise in which you can engage
yourself. If you take it up and follow regularly and
assiduously, you will amuse yourself immensely and with
profit. Time will never hang heavy, it will bear golden
fruits. At the end, say of two or three years, you will
see, if you look back, how much you have changed, you
wonder how you could have thought or acted as you did.
You find yourself a considerably changed personality.
You can start the experiment from today itself and see
how life becomes more and more amusing, interesting
and significant.

SERVICE HUMAN AND DIVINE

To wish to serve humanity, to do good to it shows
ambition and egoism? How?

Why do you wish to serve humanity? What is your pur-
pose? What is your motive? Do you know in what consists
the good to humanity? And do you know better than hu-
manity itself what is good for it? Or do you know it better
than the Divine? You say the Divine is everywhere, so
if you serve humanity, it is the Divine whom you serve.
Well, if the Divine is everywhere, he is in you too; so the
best and the most logical thing should be to begin by
serving yourself.

Is there then no need for service to humanity? Hos-
pitals, nursing organisations, charitable institutions have
not been useful to humanity? Has not the spirit of phi-
lanthropy mended and improved the conditions of human
life?

Has it, I ask? You have tried to help a few people here
and there. But what does it amount to compared to what
needs to be done? The proverbial drop in the ocean or
less than that even. You remember the story of St. Vin-
cent de Paul? He began giving alms to the poor. On the
first day there were ten, on the second some twenty, on
the third more than fifty and the number went on swelling
in more than geometrical progression. And then? Colbert,
the King's Minister, remarked seeing the plight of the

164

SERVICE HUMAN AND DIVINE 165

saint: "Our brother seems to be giving birth endlessly to
his poor people".

I do not think that the spirit of charity has in any way
improved human conditions. I do not see that men have
become either more or less subject to disease and indi-
gence than before. Charity was always there and misery has
coexisted with it ever. I do riot think the ratio between
the two has diminished in any way. You remember the
ironical but pertinent remark of someone who said in
view of science's attempts to cure and remove misery:
"Poor philanthropists would be in a sad plight, their
occupation will go!" The true reason why one wishes to
do charity is elsewhere, it is to please oneself, it is for
self-satisfaction. It amuses you to do the thing: it gives
you the sense that you are doing something, that you
are a valuable member of humanity, not like the others,
that you are somebody. What else all that is except that
you are vain, full of self-importance., full of yourself?
That is what I meant when I said that it is ambition or
egoism that makes you humanitarian. Of course, if it
pleases you to do the work, if you feel happy in doing it,
you are at perfect liberty to do the work and continue.
But do not imagine that you are doing any real or effective
service to humanity; particularly do not imagine that by
that you are serving God, leading a spiritual life or doing
Yoga.

Just an illustration of the quality of the spirit that ani-
mates humanitarianism. A charitable man will give ge-
nerously for a thing that is known, recognised, appreciated;

166 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

he will be liberal if he finds his name attached to the work y
announced and pronounced, if there is fame for him in
it. But ask him a dole for something genuine, compara-
tively modest or out of the way, something that is truly
spiritual and divine, you will find his purse-strings tight-
ened, his heart closed up. A gift that bears no value to
the giver does not tempt the ordinary humanitarian.
There is indeed another different category of givers, of
the opposite kind, who want precisely to remain anony-
mous: they would be displeased if their name were
announced. But the motive here too is not very different;
in fact it is the same motive acting a rebours, backward as
it were. Here there is the additional element of self-
glorification: one gives and people do not know who,,
it is something all the more to be proud of.

You must look into yourself, question yourself before
you do a thing simply because it is the thing normally
done and it is how things are normally done. You can do
good to others, if you know what is that good and if you
possess that in yourself. If you wish to help others, you
must be on a higher level than theirs. If you are one with
the others, level with them in nature and consciousness,
what can you do but share in their ignorance and blind
movements and perpetuate them? So it happens really
that the first thing to do is to serve yourself.

You will make a remarkable discovery as you proceed
to know what you are and who you are. That is
how you should begin. "I want to serve humanity. How
can I serve? Who is this T that wants to serve?" You say>

SERVICE HUMAN AND DIVINE 167

"I am such a person, this form and this name." But the
form you have now was not there when you were a baby:
it has been changing constantly. All the elements of your
body are being renewed totally. Neither are your sensa-
tions and feelings those you had a few years ago.
Your thoughts and ideas have moved through revolutions.
The "I" covers a sum of everchanging factors. There is
nothing particularly to be called "I": it is only a ring of
changes. An empty name seems to be the only constant
thing. One element at a time comes forward an idea,
a feeling, an impulse and that is your "I" for the mo-
ment. At another moment another element comes up
and becomes your "I". You are not one "I" but a crowd
of many "I"s. So what is the value of the declaration of
one of the Fs that it has found the goal, the truth, the duty
you have to follow? Thus if you proceed further, ques-
tioning and analysing yourself thoroughly and sincerely,
you will stumble upon the reality. You will find that
"I" does not exist at all. What exists is something else:
it is the one indivisible reality, the Divine alone.

It is this 'self-discovery that will give you the basic
knowledge, the foundation of your life, the discovery
that your self as yourself does not exist, you are indeed
nothing. This sense of nothingness must pervade your
being, fill all the elements of your being before the truth
can dawn upon you and the Divine Presence can be
felt. And what you have been doing all along is the very
contrary thing, asserting your egoism, your vanity
pretending that you were somebody, you could do some-

168 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

thing, that the world needed your help and you can give
that help. Nothing of the kind. When you discover this
truth and accept it, when you are humbled and in true
humility you approach life and reality, you will find your
real career and vocation.

In a deeper sense it is indeed by serving yourself that
you serve others best. When you discover a dark spot
in you, a grain of egoism, ambition, selfishness, when
you do not yield to its impulsion but surmount it, when
you thus conquer in your self a movement that leads
you astray, in the same gesture you make the conquest
for the sake of others too, you create the same possibility
in others. There can be nothing more dynamic than
this setting of personal example. It is not that others
observe you and imitate you; the influence is more subtle
and more powerful. You create the opportunity, make
an opening, bring into active play the force of your
realisation, even without the knowledge of others; the
others are only benefited by the invisible help that is
lent to them. But you must be on your guard here too.
You must not say, "I will help others, so let me improve
myself." There should not be any such spirit of barter
or bargain. Confine yourself to your own business; how
others are affected or not affected is not your concern.
If ypu entertain that kind of idea, you invite the same
vanity and egoism, by the backdoor. Yours should be
like the blooming of a flower; it blooms out of its own
joy and delight of self-fulfilment; in the process, by its
very existence it spreads its perfume all around, fills the

SERVICE HUMAN AND DIVINE 169

surrounding with its glad vibration, but that simply
happens, it does not do all that purposely or intentionally.
Even so the soul that perfects himself: the victory he
wins for himself is contagious and extends automatically.

I have said your ego is an illusion. Your "I" does not
exist at all. There is nothing like separate, distinct indi-
vidualities and individual fulfilments. The Divine alone
exists and the Divine's Will. He is the single and unique
and all-embracing reality. What then is the source of
this variety and diversity of existence? What is the
significance, if any, of the many individualities and
personalities, their appearance and play on the
world-stage?

That is another story. I leave it for a future occasion.

THE DIVINE FAMILY

WHEN people, far separated from one another, belonging
to different parts of the world or pursuing most diverse
professions, meet and gather and work for a common
purpose, it means that they are kindred souls and have
met together and worked together before in other lives..
They felt they belonged to the same family and resolved
to act together and collaborate in a common endeavour
for a common ideal. Indeed, the souls, in their psychic
reality, are grouped in big families, as it were; they come
down in groups again and again to take up and continue
the work they are engaged in till it is complete.

At a given moment, when the time is ripe, they are
called up. The souls are like children asleep, in the
peace and repose of the psychic world, awaiting the
urge or order for another birth. As soon as the order is
given, they wake up and rush down towards the earth.
When they drop thus into the earth's atmosphere, they
are no longer together, they are scattered about all over
the earth. One does not know even where one drops^
Also once under the material conditions and circum-
stances here below, things take a very different aspect.
For, the inner impulse, the original purpose gets veiled;
the psychic forgets itself and is now surrounded and
hedged in by forces, things and persons perhaps quite
foreign and contradictory to its nature. Now comes the

170

THE DIVINE FAMILY 1 71

labour of the soul, to find itself, to look about for the
lost end of the thread. The inner urge must be strong
enough, the original will categorical enough for the
being to surmount all obstacles, pass through all vicissi-
tudes, work through all the windings of a labyrinthine
journey and finally arrive. Some perhaps do not arrive
at all in a particular life or arrive only to stop at a distance:
others arrive not in a straight line, but, as I have said,
after a tortuous and round-about wandering. In other
words, in their external mind and impulsion, they look
for other things, they are interested in objects that are
far other than the soul's interest like the person who
enquired of Yoga, as she thought a Yogi could give her
back her spoilt beauty. And yet the soul makes use of
such trivial or absurd means to turn the man towards
itself, guide him gradually to the place or the family to
which he really belongs.

The material world is full of things that draw you
away from your soul's quest, from approaching your
Home. Normally you are tossed about by the forces of
ignorant Nature and you are driven even to do the
utmost stupidities. There is but one solution, to find
your psychic being; and once you have found it, cling
to it desperately and not to allow yourself to be drawn
out by any temptation, any other impulsion whatsoever.

Section Six

THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF ART

TRUE art means the expression of beauty in the material
world. In a world wholly converted, that is to say,
expressing integrally the divine reality, art must serve
as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life.
In other words, the artist must be able to enter into
communion with the Divine and receive the inspiration
as to what should be the form or forms for the material
realisation of the divine beauty. At the same time, in
expressing true beauty in the physical, he also sets an
example, becomes an instrument of education. Art not
only creates beauty, but educates the taste of people to
find true beauty, the essential beauty that expresses the
divine truth. That is the true role of art. But between
that and what it is now there is a great difference.

The decline comes in the normal course of evolution
which follows a spiral movement. From the beginning
of the last century to the middle of it, art became totally
a debased thing, commercial, obscure, ignorant, some-
thing very far from its true nature and function. But
the spirit of art cannot die; only as it rose as a movement
of protest or^revolt, the forms it chose were equally
bad. In attempting to counteract the general debasing of
taste it went to the other extreme, as is the character of
all movement of nature. One was a servile copy of nature,
it was pointed out or not even that. In those days it used

175

1 76 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

to be called photographic art, if one were to abuse it,
But now it is no longer a term of abuse, for photography
has developed into a consummate art. Neither could it
be truly called realism, for there are realistic paintings
which belong to a very high order. That art was con-
ventional, artificial, lifeless. Now the reaction to this
movement said: we do not concern ourselves with phy-
sical life any more, the reality as we see with outward
eyes is no longer our business; we want instead to ex-
press the vital life, the mental life. Hence came a whole
host of reformers and rebels cubists, surrealists,
futurists and so on who sought to create art with their
head. They forgot the simple truth that in art it is not
the head that commands, but the feeling of beauty in the
heart. So art landed into the most absurd, ridiculous
and frightful of worlds. Indeed with the two wars behind
us we have gone further in that direction. Each war has
brought down a world in decomposition. And now we
seem to be in the very heart of chaos.

Perhaps we are at the bottom of the curve and it is time
to mount up. This disintegration is a necessary prelude;
it is even from a certain point of view a better condition
than that of the epoch of Queen Victoria or the Second
Empire in France, the age of the practical successful
bourgeoisie, of snug contentment and dull mediocrity,
of death in life. As I say, the movement of progress
follows a curve. In a certain epoch some fine things are
expressed in a fine way. Then follows an epoch which
is tired of the old things, wants to find new things and

THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF ART 177

express in a new way. The age of Louis XIV, for example,
was an age dominated by the sense of artistic creation and
it represented the peak of a certain type of the truly
beautiful in art and life. In the course of social evolution
other ideas, other needs appeared those of a commercial
age. So the curve took a downward course. For there is
nothing so antagonistic to art as commerce. For the
association of commerce with art means the popularisa-
tion of something which is exceptional: it is putting
within the reach of all and sundry a thing which is under-
stood and appreciated only by the chosen few, the elite.
Perhaps it is because of this, because art has no outlet
in the world, it has in these days turned to other direc-
tions, into the domains of the mental and the vital, into
sideways and bypaths of consciousness. When, however,
better conditions prevail, when instead of the spirit of
mercantilism, there appears upon earth the sense of
a more beautiful reality, then art will be reborn
and come to its own. That seems to be still a long
way off.

The art of this decadent epoch is what I call mushroom
art. You know how mushrooms grow? They grow any-
where and do not seem to form part, for example, of what
you cultivate or where you cultivate. Just think of it!
There is a spot on the wall which becomes humid and
you see it soon covered with this growth. You have a
tree which does not get the sunlight, you will find ita
roots covered with mushrooms. It is a kind of sponta-
neous growth which is not linked to the spot where it
12

THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

grows. It is not a limb of its environment, but some-
thing extraneous added to it. Instead of mushrooms, I
could have spoken of parasites: they belong to the same
category. You have seen parasite plants? They grow
upon trees, they fix themselves there. They have not
their own life and organs, they do not draw their food
directly from earth, as all normal plants do; they live
upon the life of another, make use of the labour of
another. There are also animal parasites that live upon
another animal, growing and profiting by its labour.
Parasite^ or mushrooms have no raisoit d'etre to be where
they are they are invaders, interpolators, anomalies.
In ancient times, in the great ages, in Greece, for
example or even during the Italian Renaissance, parti-
cularly, however, in Greece and in Egypt, they erected
buildings, constructed 'monuments for the sake of public
utility. Their buildings were meant for the most part
to be temples, sanctuaries to lodge their gods and deities.
What they had in view was something total, whole and
entire, beautiful and complete in itself. That was the
purpose of architecture embodying the harmony of
sweeping and majestic lines: sculpture was a part of archi-
tecture supplying details of expression and even painting
came up to complete the expression: but the whole held
together in a coordinated unity which was the monument
itself. The sculpture was for the monument, the painting
was for the monument; it was not that each was se-
parate from the other and existed for itself and one did
not know why it was there. In India, when a temple was

THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF ART 179

being built., for example, what was aimed at was a total
creation, all the parts combined to give effect to one
end, to make a beautiful vesture for God, the one object
of their adoration. All the great epochs of art were of
this kind. But in modern times, in the latter part of
the last century, Art became a matter of business. A
painting was done in order to be sold. You do your
paintings, put each one in a frame and place them side
by side or group them, that is, lump them together
without much reason. The same with regard to sculpture.
You do a statue and set it up anywhere without any
connection whatsoever with the surrounding. It is al-
ways something foreign, extraneous in its setting, like a
mushroom or a parasite. The thing in itself may not be
quite ugly, but it is out of place, it is not part of an or-
ganic whole. We exhibit art today. Indeed, it is exhibi-
tionism, it is the showing off of cleverness, talent, skill,
virtuosity. A piece of architecture does not incarnate a
living force as it used to do once upon a time. It is no
longer the expression of an aspiration, of something that
lifts up the spirit nor the expression of the magnificence
of the Divine whose dwelling it is meant to be. You
build houses here and there, pell-mell or somehow
juxtaposed without any coordinating idea governing
them, without any relation to the environment where
they are situated. When you enter a house, it is the
same thing. A bit of painting here, a bit of sculpture
there, some objects of art in one corner, a few others in
another. Yes, it is an exhibition, a museum, a kaleido-

ISO THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

scopic collection. It gives a shock to the truly sensitive
artistic taste.

I do not say that a museum is not necessary or useful.
It is a good means of education, that is to say, getting
information about what other people or other epochs did.
It is an aid to the historical knowledge of things. But
it is far from being artistic. A museum is not the place
where art can find its highest or its true expression.
There is an art which seeks to coordinate, integrate
distinct, discrete, contrary objects. It is called decorative
art. And in so far as this art is successful, we are a step
forward even in these days towards true art.

Here in India things are and should be a little different.
In spite of the modern European invasion and in spite
of certain lapses in some directions I may refer to what
Sri Aurobindo calls the Ravi Varma interlude the heart
of India is not anglicised or Europeanised. The Cal-
cutta School is a sign although their attempt is rather
on a small scale yet it is a sign that India's artistic taste,,
in spite of a modern education, still turns to what is
essential and permanent in her culture and civilisation^
You have still before you, within your reach, the old
temples, the old paintings, to teach you that art creation
is meant to express a faith, to give you the sense of tota-
lity and organisation. You will note in this connection
another fact which is very significant. All these paintings,
all these sculptures in caves and temples bear no signa-
ture. They were not done with the idea of making a name.
Today you fix your name to every bit of work you do*

THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF ART l8l

announce the event with a great noise in the papers, so
that the thing may not be forgotten. In those days the
artist did what he had to do, without caring whether
posterity would remember his name or not. The work
was done in an urge of aspiration towards expressing a
higher beauty, above all with the idea of preparing a
dwelling fit for the deity whom one invokes. In Europe
in the cathedrals of the Middle Age, things were done
in the same spirit. There tco at that time works were
anonymous and bore no signature of the author. If any
name came to be preserved, it was more or less by accident.
However, even the commercialism of today, hideous
as it is, has an advantage of its own. Commercialism
means the mixing together of all parts of the world.
It effaces the distinction between Orient and Occident,
brings the Orient near to the Occident and the Occident
near to the Orient. With the exchange of goods, there
happens an exchange of ideas and even of habits and
manners. In ancient days Rome conquered Greece and
through that conquest was herself conquered by the
Culture and Civilisation of Greece. The thing is hap-
pening today on a much greater scale and more intensely
perhaps. At one time Japan was educating herself on
the American pattern; now that America has conquered
Japan physically, she is being conquered by the spirit
of Japan; even in objects manufactured in America,
you notice the Japanese influence in some way or other.

MUSIC ITS ORIGIN AND NATURE

Music, you must remember, like any other art, is a means
for expressing something some idea, some feeling, some
emotion, a certain aspiration and so on. There is even
a domain where all these movements exist and from
where they are brought down under a musical form.
A good composer with some inspiration would produce
good music; he is then called a good musician. A bad
musician can have also a good inspiration, he can re-
ceive something from the higher domain, but possessing
no musical capacity, he would produce only what is
very commonplace, very ordinary and uninteresting.
However, if you go beyond, precisely over to this place
where lies the origin of music, get to the idea, the emo-
tion, the inspiration behind, you can then taste of these
things without being stopped by the form. Still this
musical form can be joined on to what is behind or
beyond the forms for it is that which originally inspired
the musician to compose. Of course, there are instances
where no inspiration exists, where the source is only a
kind of sound mechanics, which is not, in any case,
always interesting. What I mean is this that there is an
inner state in which the outer form is not the most
important thing: there lies the origin of music, the
inspiration that is beyond. It is trite to say, but one
often forgets that it is not sound that makes music, the
sound has to express something.

182

MUSIC ITS ORIGIN AND NATURE 183

There is a music that is quite mechanical and has
no inspiration. There are musicians who play with great
virtuosity, that is to say, they have mastered the technique
and execute faultlessly the most complicated and rapid
movements. It is music perhaps, but it expresses no-
thing; it is like a machine. It is clever, there is much
skill, but it is uninteresting, soulless. The most important
thing, not only in music, but in all human creations, in
all that man does even, is, I repeat, the inspiration be-
hind. The execution naturally is expected to be on a
par with the inspiration; but to express truly well, one
must have truly great things to express. It is not to say
that technique is not necessary; on the contrary, one
must possess a very good technique; it is even indis-
pensable. Only it is not the one thing indispensable,
nor is it as important as the inspiration. For the essen-
tial quality of music comes from the region where it has
its source.

Source or origin means the thing without which an
object would not exist. Nothing can manifest upon earth
physically unless it has its source in a higher truth. Thus
material existence has its source and inspiration in the
vital, the vital in its turn has behind it the mental, the
mental has the overmental and so on. If the universe
were a flat object, having its origin in itself, it would
quickly cease to exist. (That is perhaps what Science
means when it postulates the impossibility of perpetual
motion). It is because there is a higher source which
inspires it, a secret energy that drives it towards manifes-

184 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

tation that Life continues: otherwise it would exhaust
itself very soon.

There is a graded scale in the source of music. A whole
category of music is there that comes from the higher
vital, for example: it is very catching, perhaps even a little
vulgar, something that twines round your nerves, as it
were, and twists them. It catches you somewhere about
your loins navel centre and charms you in its way.
As there is a vital music there is also what can be called
psychic music coming from quite a different source;
there is further a music which has spiritual origin. In its
own region this higher music is very magnificent; it seizes
you deeply and carries you away somewhere else. But if
you were to express it perfectly execute it you would
have to pass this music too through the vital. Your music
coming from high may nevertheless fall absolutely flat
in the execution, if you do not have that intensity of vital
vibration which alone can give it its power and splendour.
I knew people who had very high inspiration, but their
music turned to be quite commonplace, because their
vital did not move. Their spiritual practice put their
vital almost completely to sleep; yes, it was literally asleep
and ciid not work at all. Their music thus came straight
into the physical. If you could get behind and catch the
source, you would see that there was really something
marvellous even there, although externally it was not force-
ful or effective. What came out was a poor little melody,
very thin, having nothing of the power of harmony which
is there when one can bring into play the vital energy. If

MUSIC ITS ORIGIN AND NATURE 185

one could put all this power of vibration that belongs to
the vital into the music of higher origin we would have
the music of a genius. Indeed, for music and for all artistic
creation, in fact, for literature, for poetry, for painting etc.
an intermediary is needed. Whatever one does in these
domains depends doubtless for its intrinsic value upon the
source of the inspiration, upon the plane or the height
where one stands. But the value of the execution depends
upon the strength of the vital that expresses the inspira-
tion. For a complete genius both are necessary. The com-
bination is rare, generally it is the one or the other, more
often it is the vital that predominates and overshadows.

When the vital only is there, you have the music of
cafe concert and cinema. It is extraordinarily clever and
at the same time extraordinarily commonplace^ even
vulgar. Since, however, it is so clever, it catches hold of
your brain, haunts your memory, rings in (or wrings)
your nerves; it becomes so difficult to get rid of its influ-
ence, precisely because it is done so well, so cleverly. It
is made vitally with vital vibrations, but what is behind
is not, to say the least, wholesome. Now imagine the
same vital power of expression joined to the inspiration
coming from above, say, the highest possible inspiration
when the entire heaven seems to open out, then it is
music indeed! Some things in Cesar Franck, some in
Beethoven, some in Bach, some in some others possess
this sovereignty. But after all it is only a moment, it comes
for a moment and does not abide. There is no artist whose
whole work is executed at such a pitch. The inspiration

1 86 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

comes like a flash of lightning, most often it lasts just
long enough to be grasped and held in a few snatches.

Something similar to that experience may happen to
you when your consciousness is all attentive and concen-
trated; you feel suddenly that you are being carried aloft,
that all your energies are gathered and lifted up, as if your
head has opened out and you are thrown into the free air,
into the far spaces of extraordinary heights and magni-
ficent lights. The experience gives you in a few seconds
what one may in the normal course of things achieve after
many years of difficult yoga. Only immediately after
the experience you drop down below upon the earth, be-
cause the basis has not been built; even you may begin to
doubt whether you had really the experience. Still the
consciousness has been prepared, something definitive
has been done and remains.

INDIAN AND EUROPEAN MUSIC

THE difference is both in regard to the source and the
expression and in an inverse way. In European music a
very high spiritual inspiration is a rare thing. The
psychic source also is very rare. But if at all it is a very
high spiritual source or otherwise it is the vital that is the
source. The expression is always there, apart from some
exceptions naturally; but it is almost always vital, because
the source is very often purely vital. At times, as I said, it
comes from high above, then it is really marvellous. At
times, more rarely, it is psychic: something of it was in
the religious music, but it is not frequent. Indian music,
on the other hand, almost always, that is to say, when we
have good musicians, has a psychic source, the source, for
example, of the Ragas. It does not come from the top
heights, it has rather an inner and intimate origin. But it
has very rarely a sufficient vital body. I have heard a good
deal of Indian music, quite a good deal indeed. I came
across very rarely any that has a great vital force, not more
than four or five times. But I have heard oftener that with
a psychic inspiration behind. It is a music directly trans-
lated from the inner into the physical. To listen you must
concentrate, as it is something very thin, very fine and
tenuous, having nothing of the vital vibration with its
strong intense resonances. You can glide into it, let
yourself be carried along the flow, entering the psychic

187

1 88 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

source. It has that effect, it acts something like an intoxica-
tion, something that takes you into a kind of trance. If
you listen well and are attentive and let yourself go, you
slowly glide and dip, dip into the psychic consciousness;
but if you remain in the external consciousness, such a
thin stream expresses' itself there that the vital gives no
response and finds it extremely flat and monotonous.
If, however, along with the psychic vibration there were
also a vital force expressing it, the result would be
interesting indeed.

I like this kind of music, with a theme, a single theme
moving and developing gradually with variations: count-
less variations playing out the same constant theme,
variations branching out and coming back again to the
original basic theme. In Europe too there was something
of the kind in its otherwise very different style. Bach had
it, Mozart too. In modern times some musicians like
Debussy, Raval and the Russian Borodine and a few
others have caught something of it. You take a certain
number of notes, in a certain relation and upon that
scheme you play variations, almost an infinite number of
variations. It is marvellous: it takes you deep inside and,
if you are ready, gives you the consciousness of the
psychic, something that draws you back from the external
physical consciousness and connects you with something
otherwhere within.

SPECIALISATION

You must extend, enlarge, enrich your mind. It must be
fiill of thoughts and ideas. It must be stored with the
results of your observation and study. It must not be a
"poor mind", a mind, that is to say, that has not many
ideas nor the capacity of reasoning and argument. Your
mind must be capable of thinking of many different
things, gathering knowledge of different kinds, consider-
ing a problem from many different sides, not following
only a single line or track: it must be somewhat like a
Japanese fan opening out full circle in all directions.

You have, for example, several subjects to learn at
school. Well, learn as many as possible. If you read at
home, read as many varieties as possible. I know you are
usually asked and advised to follow a different way. You
are to take as few subjects as possible and specialise. Yes,
that is the general ideal: specialisation, to be an expert in
one thing. If you wish to be a good philosopher, do philo-
sophy only; if you wish to be a good chemist, do only che-
mistry; and even you should concentrate upon only one
problem or thesis in philosophy or chemistry. In sports
you are asked to do the same. Choose one item and fix
your attention upon that alone. If you want to be a good
tennis player, think of tennis alone. However, I am not
of that opinion. My experience is different. I believe,
there are general faculties in man which he should acquire

189

I9O THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

and cultivate more than specialise himself. Of course, if
it is your ambition to be a Monsieur or Madame Curie
who wanted to discover one particular thing, to find out
a new mystery of a definite kind, then you have to con-
centrate upon the one thing in view. But even then, once
the object is gained, you can turn very well to other things.
Besides, it is not an impossibility in the midst of the one-
pointed pursuit to find occasions and opportunities to be
interested in other pursuits.

From my childhood I have been hearing of the same
lesson; I am afraid it was taught also in the days of our
fathers and grandfa thers and great grandfa thers, namely,
that if you wish to be successful in something you must do
that only and nothing else. I was rebuked very much
because I was busy with many different things at the same
time. I was told I would be in the end good for nothing.
I was studying, I was painting, I was doing music and
many other things. I was repeatedly warned that my
painting would be worthless, my music would be worth-
less, my studies would be incomplete and defective if I
had my way. Perhaps it was true; but I found my way
had its advantages also precisely the advantages I was
speaking of at the outset, namely, it widens and enriches
the mind and consciousness, makes it supple and flexible,
gives it a spontaneous power to understand and handle
anything new presented to it. If, however, I had wanted
to become an executant of the first order and play in
concerts, then of course I would have had to restrict my-
self. Or in painting if my aim was to be one of the great

SPECIALISATION 19!

artists of the age, 1 could have done only that and nothing
else. One understands the position very well, but it is
only a point of view. I do not see why I should become the
greatest musician or the greatest painter. It seems to me
to be nothing but vanity.

But it is a very natural and spontaneous movement in
man to change from one work to another in order to main-
tain a kind of balance. Change also means rest. We have
often heard of great artists or scholars seeking for rest
and having great need of it. They find it by changing
their activity. For example, Ingres was a painter; painting
was his normal and major occupation. But whenever
he found time he took up his violin. Curiously, it was
his violin which interested him more than his painting.
He was not very good at music, but he took great pleasure
in it. He was sufficiently good at painting, but it interested
him less. But the real thing is that he needed a stable
poise or balance. Concentration upon a single thing is
very necessary, I have said, if one aims at a definite and
special result; but one can follow a different line that is
more subtle, more comprehensive and complete. Natu-
rally, there is a physical limit somewhere to your compre-
hensiveness; for on the physical plane you are confined
in respect of time and space; and also it is true that
great things are difficult to achieve unless there is a special
concentration. But if you want to lead a higher and
deeper life, you can comm and capacities which are much
greater than those available to the methods of restriction
and limitation belonging to the normal consciousness.

192 THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO

There is a considerable advantage in getting rid of one's
limits, if not from the point of view of actual accomplish-
ment, at least from the point of view of spiritual
realisation.

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Wikipedia - Miyamoto Musashi Station -- Railway station in Mimasaka, Okayama Prefecture, Japan

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