Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
03. Basic Requisites of the Path
What I want of you besides aspiring for faith? Well, just a little thoroughness and persistence in the method! Don’t aspire for two days and then go into the dumps, evolving a gospel of earthquake and Schopenhauer plus the ass and all the rest of it. Give the Divine a full sporting chance. When he lights something in you or is preparing a light, don’t come in with a wet blanket of despondency and throw it on the poor flame. You will say, “It is a mere candle that is lit – nothing at all!” But in these matters, when the darkness of human mind and life and body has to be dissipated, a candle is always a beginning – a lamp can follow and afterwards a sun; but the beginning must be allowed to have a sequel and not get cut off from its natural sequelae by chunks of sadness and doubt and despair. At the beginning, and for a long time, the experiences do usually come in little quanta with empty spaces between – but, if allowed its way, the spaces will diminish, and the quantum theory give way to the Newtonean continuity of the spirit. But you have never yet given it a real chance. The empty spaces have been peopled with doubts and denials and so the quanta have become rare, the beginning remains a beginning. Other difficulties you have faced and rejected, but this difficulty you have dandled too much for a long time and it has become strong – it must be dealt with by a persevering effort. I do not say that all doubts must disappear before anything comes – that would be to make sadhana impossible, for doubt is the mind’s persistent assailant. All I say is, don’t allow the assailant to become a companion, don’t give him the open door and the fireside seat. Above all, don’t drive away the incoming Divine with that dispiriting wet blanket of sadness and despair!
To put it more soberly – accept once and for all that this thing has to be done, that it is the only thing left for yourself or the earth. Outside are earthquakes and Hitlers and a 
collapsing civilisation and, generally speaking, the ass and the flood. All the more reason to tend towards the one thing to be done, the thing you have been sent to aid in getting done. It is difficult and the way long and the encouragement given meagre? What then? Why should you expect so great a thing to be easy or that there must be either a swift success or none? The difficulties have to be faced and the more cheerfully they are faced, the sooner they will be overcome. The one thing to do is to keep the mantra of success, the determination of victory, the fixed resolve, “Have it I must and have it I will.” Impossible? There is no such thing as impossibility – there are difficulties and things of longue haleine, but no impossibles. What one is determined fixedly to do will get done now or later – it becomes possible. Drive out dark despair and go bravely on with your yoga. As the darkness disappears, the inner doors will open.