Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

Letter ID: 144

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

August 7, 1931

It is not your sister and brother-in-law who are responsible but the wave of old life consciousness which came in their wake that has thrown up old associations and stirred these reactions from their subconscient quiescence.

I do not at all accept Tagore’s dictum – neither the Mother nor myself would have accepted you here if you had not capacity for Yoga as great as for art – and greater. And the experiences you have had – however intermittent – would not have come at all in an unfit ādhār [vehicle, vessel].

The facts or arguments you put forward to support your diffidence or depression cannot stand in the light of the Yoga experience of others – if they were enough to justify discouragement, how many would have had to turn back from the way who are now far on towards the goal? I cannot now deal into them in detail, but they do not any of them, justify your inference.

Also, your psychic being does not deserve the censure you have bestowed upon it. What prevents it from coming out in its full power is the crust of past habits formations, active vibrations of the mind-stuff and vital-stuff which come from a mind and life which have been more creative and outgoing and expansive than indrawn and introspective. In many who are like this – active men, intellectuals – the first stage of Yoga is long and difficult with slow development and sparse experiences, most of the work being done in the subliminal behind the veil – until things are ready.

When the time comes for the definite opening and removal of the purdah between the inner and the outer being, I think I can promise you that you will find your power of Yoga and yogic experience at least as unexpectedly complete as you, and others, have found your power for poetry – though necessarily its working out will take time because it is not a detail but the whole life and the whole nature in which there must be the divine victory.