Letters to a Young Disciple

The peace and silence is there all the time during meditation. But what is its value unless it becomes dynamic?

It has a great value — because if there is not that peace and silence the true strength cannot come down in such a way as to settle.

What has the inner being to do with Yoga or spiritual life?

It is the outer being that has nothing to do with Yoga or spiritual life unless the inner awakens it.

Why are so many flowers being seen these days?

It is usually when the psychic is active that this seeing of flowers becomes abundant.

A subtle sound like a peal of bells is heard constantly and loudly. What does it denote?

That is considered to be a sound closely connected with the sadhana.

I would like to know what that sweet flow is and from where it comes into my mouth.

It is a form of the flow of Ananda from above — when it takes a quite physical form the Yogins call it Amrita.

This is my appeal to the Mother: Either give me the psychic love or death. Let no third thing come to me — a final resolution.

That is altogether the wrong attitude. It is once more the vital coming in — it is not a psychic attitude.

After death when the soul returns for a new birth, who moulds the mind, vital and physical?

It is done by Nature under the influence of the soul. In a certain sense it may be said that the soul does it, because what it sees as needed is drawn in as material and shaped.

There is a psychic sorrow which usually comes when the soul feels how strong is the resistance in the vital and how much the Forces in it rage against the Mother, or when some similar feeling is in or behind the consciousness.

Even the higher or deeper experiences do not seem to be of much value if one cannot love the Mother with the true heart.

It is a mistake to think like that. The experiences prepare the different parts of the being for loving in the right way, so that it is not the soul alone that loves. So long as they are open to ignorance and ego they cannot receive and hold the love rightly.

Would you kindly define the nature of Ananda?

Ananda is a thing to be felt — it cannot be defined except negatively that it is not mere joy, but something much more deep and essential.

Could you kindly say something in general about the psychic and spiritual experience and the descent from above?

You have to learn by experience. Mental information (badly understood, as it always is without experience) might rather hamper than help. In fact there is no fixed mental knowledge for these things, which vary infinitely....

There is a great mass of necessary information about the world, one’s body, the evolution of the earth, the history of the human race that one ought to learn and then also the training of the intellect to deal rightly with facts. [...] To neglect one’s studies as R and S have done is therefore a mistake.

My mind has almost lost its power of memory. Can’t remember anything.

There is very often a complaint of this kind made during the course of the sadhana. I suppose that the usual action of memory is for a time suspended by the mental silence or else by the physical tamas.

Why is my physical mind not happy with your answers to what I write?

Something in your physical mind stiffens and begins to defend its views. It is better to wait till it is more supple and plastic. Mental discussions are not good for sadhana but only for clarifying the intellect which is not so important at this stage as other things.

I am much troubled by the frequency of mechanical thoughts.

Reject always without getting disturbed by the recurrences.

If I start studying, it must be taken up as seriously as I did with the sadhana.

Study cannot take the same or greater importance than sadhana [...] If the sadhana were active then study can be done in the spare time i.e., in times not given to work or meditation.

"Y when he was here asked for Yoga. I told him how to make his mind silent and it became silent. He immediately got frightened and said, “I am becoming a fool, I can’t think”, so I took what I had given away from him. That is how the average mind regards silence."