Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Correspondence (1933-1967)

Letter ID: 37

Sri Aurobindo — Nahar, Prithwi Singh

November 10, 1935

Mother,

I should like to know what truth is there in spiritualistic séances and automatic writings. According to Morosoff whom Ouspensky quotes, «In spite of the strange phenomena that undoubtedly occur at spiritualistic séances, “spirits” take no part in them.» Automatic writing, he considers a result of thought-reading rather than «as is supposed a proof of the cooperation of intelligent forces of another world.»...

There are others of course who say otherwise. But if spirits appear they really seem to be very unreliable and the information they give quite commonplace. And they can tell very little of the future or even current problems... Now, are these spirits that are supposed to come of the lower vital plane which may account for their tricky behaviour or do the gods also come? Mother, I should like to know the answer from you which alone is unerring amidst the conflicting mass of perplexing scientific theories and observations.

With deep devotion

Prithwisingh

Automatic writings and spiritualistic séances are a very mixed affair. Part comes from the subconscious mind of the medium and part from that of the sitters. But it is not true that all can be accounted for by a dramatising imagination and memory. Sometimes there are things none present could know or remember; sometimes even, though that is rare, glimpses of the future. But usually these séances etc. put one into rapport with a very low world of vital beings and forces, themselves obscure, incoherent or tricky and it is dangerous to associate with them or to undergo any influence. Ouspensky and others must have gone through these experiments with too «mathematical» a mind, which was no doubt their safeguard but prevented them from coming to anything more than a surface intellectual view of their significance.

Sri Aurobindo