Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

Letter ID: 414

The Mother — Roy, Dilip Kumar

November 25, 1933

[...] Mr. Moore asked me whether after doing Yoga life and things appeared to me to be instinct with a significance they had not had before, whether I reacted to the world of senses in a more vivid way. I had to say no to his question, and I feel depressed I had to say it. For I realised once more as I answered thus that Yoga had not made any fundamental change inside me which I could pronounce desirable or enviable as for instance the change that Moore implied must be adjudged. I see of course that life disgusts me far more than it ever did before – which we call vairāgya, but vairāgya of itself is not a “consummation devoutly to be wished,” unless and until it leads to a positive realisation, let us say, of the kind Moore suggested. For without a higher compensation the falling off of the capacity for comparatively sublunary joys must be reckoned a dead loss, must it not? So I begin to distrust myself again alas! I also doubt whether I have progressed in bhakti....

Why do you believe everything that people tell you? What I told Puranmull was that he had once progressed greatly, he had afterwards allowed himself to yield to the bad habits that rose from his lower nature and fallen from the psychic contact and that until he got rid of these things which were the cause of all his sufferings he would not progress or recover his contact with the Mother. We never told him that he was making progress now or that his coarse indulgence was a sign of (no doubt, miraculous, godlike and amazing) progress. God in Heaven, what things people put in my mouth and the Mother’s!

I see that Moore has put you out of condition, the only thing to be done is to shake off the Moorish touch and get back into the condition of preparation for opening of the consciousness which was forming and had already begun. I need not, I think, deal specifically with the forms your self-distrust has taken. They crop up whenever you allow these forces of depression to come in – forces of mental and vital tamas of which self-distrust and self-depreciation (which is different from spiritual humility) are the most recognised forms. When you are in the right condition, you do not complain of absence of bhakti or general deterioration and retrogression and a black gulf of unprogress. You recognise where you have progressed and where the preparation is still deficient – this doubt about your soul is of course the chief stumbling block in your way, but it has to be faced and got rid of or reduced to a minimum like the others.

The view of the world of which Moore possibly spoke (he may have meant something more superficial and trivial) cannot come from the mind, still less from the vital expecting something from life as it is. Life as it is has nothing to give except to those who are satisfied with surface pleasure. The inner view can only come from a change of consciousness which sees the deeper inner life behind appearances – and it is that change of consciousness which was preparing in you because you were drawing back from the vital view of things – the vairāgya was only an outward and negative sign of that withdrawal. It is not a time to fall back into the clutches – of this harpy of self-distrust. Get back into the light of the coming dawn which was upon you – above your head still, but there!