Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

05. Sadhana through Work

Fragment ID: 1249

Before things become pucca¹ in the consciousness, the doing of work does carry the consciousness outward unless one has made it a sadhana to feel the “Force greater than oneself” working through one. That I suppose is why the Shankarites considered work to be in its own nature an operation of the Ignorance and incompatible with a condition of realisation. But as a matter of fact there are three stages there: (I) in which the work brings you to a lower as well as outer consciousness so that you have afterwards to recover the realisation. (II) in which the work brings you out, but the realisation remains behind (or above), not felt while you work, but as soon as the work ceases you find it there just as it was. (III) in which the work makes no difference, for the realisation or spiritual condition remains through the work itself. You seem this time to have experienced No. (II).

¹ Pucca or pukka (spoken Hindi) and pakka ( Hindi), derived from Sanskrit pakva, “cooked”, “ready”, “ripe” then it used with meaning “define”, “confirmed”, “safe”, “stable” and even “first-class”.– Ed.

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