Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
The image of the cow is a very good one. The ship is going to the harbour, he should go with the ship – why take exploratory promenades in other directions which may leave him tired out and far away or lost on a reef? To keep to the ship is his last chance. Poetry by itself does not bring to the goal, but it can help as a means to express and deepen one’s aspiration while it gives the vital an activity which can keep it from rusting and maintains its energy. Otherwise it may droop or go dry or sulk or non-cooperate. What will bring towards the goal is the growth of the psychic being, the increase in bhakti, psychic clarity of vision, with regard to one’s inner movements and the will to get rid of the vital ego, increase in pure self-giving. Meditation and the rest can bring only partial results or often no results until there has 
been a sufficient psychic preparation. Even with those who begin with a flood of experiences because of some mental or vital preparation or past lives whose results happen to be near the surface, these lead to nothing definite till the psychic preparation is made; they often have all their struggle still to go through and some sink with their bag of experiences on the head and a magnified ego on their back. It was this psychic growth that suddenly began in you. Don’t let it stop; for through that lies your way. Once that is done, you can meditate and do everything else that may be needful.
Excuse my being so brief. I am busy with the mud of subconscient earth – dredging, dredging, dredging. And as everything depends on my getting through – well!