Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
Mother,
This afternoon towards the end of meditation of about two hours the silence in me deepened and a curious feeling I had. My body became numb as usual but I had all the time a sort of divided consciousness. It is very difficult to describe it but you will understand even from my baffled attempt. I will try.
I felt going deep and at a certain stage as though the consciousness changed suddenly. A relaxation set in and I took your name with an ease and rhythm which was delectable. No effort was needed. And yet I was conscious I could move my limbs at will even though they had become more numb than usual – so much so that even when I got up, they had a trace of the numbness. Is it because the force came down more or what? However, what I felt was very pleasurable. It was as I said as if my japa of your name got a sort of rhythmic flow with my breath. I had read about such an experience but had never yet felt it. Usually I take your name with effort – after every five minutes or so my mind wants to run off at a mad tangent – I fly after it and bring it back a prisoner. But as my meditation deepened I suddenly found your name had become sort of woven into my breathing which became very deep as the breath of a man under an anaesthetic. Of course all this happened spontaneously.
I think that what happened was simply this – that, just as before your inner vital and inner mental came to the front in the inward-going consciousness, so this time it was the inner (subtle) physical being that manifested itself. The outer body was numb, the inner body able to move; the breathing with the name flowing in it was the breathing of this inner physical being. Mark that all three (inner mental, inner vital, inner physical) immediately they appear, show themselves to be those of a born Yogin. For breathing with the name flowing in it is usually the result of a long practice of combined pranayama and japa: but to your inner physical being it comes spontaneously and at once, as if it were to the manner born.
N.B. I shall answer your morning’s letter in due course. But you have misunderstood my aśraddhā which was not used in the popular (Bengali) sense [disrespectful distrust] but in its technical (Sanskrit) sense. I shall explain at length.