(Dilip had received a letter from Krishnaprem which we include here. Sri Aurobindo’s reply comes after.)Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
Letter ID: 617
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
September 10, 1935
(Dilip had received a letter from Krishnaprem which we include here. Sri Aurobindo’s reply comes after.)
My dear Dilip,
At last I must sit down and write a reply to your letter. And first let me thank you for the prasadi petals from your Gurudev and for the interesting copy of the Sunday Times.
Now what is the “faith and experience” business? I can’t remember any remarks on the subject today. In fact the only thing I ever remember saying on the subject of faith was contained in a letter to you in which, as far as I remember, I said that faith was the light of the higher self penetrating the lower or some words to that effect.
Casting about in my memory I do seem to recollect some vague talk with M.B. [Moni Bagchi]1 but the remarks were no doubt ad hoc and probably were directed against the orthodox religious demand for a blind acceptance of dogmatic belief. Such belief or pseudo-belief (for it seldom, if ever, is real belief) has nothing to do with what I meant by faith in writing to you. The latter is not an intellectual assent to intellectualised propositions for which one has insufficient evidence but an attitude of the soul which is based on a dim perception in the personality of something more clearly known at higher levels. That, at any rate, is what I meant by “true faith” and I should have thought your Gurudev would have more or less agreed with it. But at any rate that is my position at present; I fancy that Moni Bagchi must have garbled what I said2.
Certainly experiences are not the goal but experience (in a way, at least) is, for by experience I mean living knowledge manifesting in one’s being and if that is not present something is wrong or at least something has not started yet.
Of course faith precedes experience on this level but it does so only because it is itself the Light from experience already present higher up.
Do you know what is immortal or what is mortal? And do you know which of these you are?
Answer these questions and you will understand what I mean by faith. Incidentally you will also know what I mean by bhakti, the āhuti3 of the mortal in this flame of the immortal.
I say again (“I said it loud; I said it clear; I went and shouted in his ear”) that I am not in any way against emotion. That would be quite absurd. But I do criticise the current practice of weltering in emotion for its own sake and for the sake of the pleasure attaching to it. That is like a man weltering in a hot bath.
Know Krishna, love Krishna and work for Krishna. Then you can leave all the “blisses” to take care of themselves. You will certainly not find any shortage of them. Of course there is bliss experienced in self-offering but do not offer yourself in order to get the bliss but offer yourself because He is Krishna and your being can only fulfil itself by being united with His being.
About bhakti – the word is ambiguously used. Some people mean by it an emotional rapture as such. (Don’t ignore these two small words.) In that case bhakti is not the highest thing. Others, including myself, mean by it self-giving to Krishna which is of course accompanied by emotional rapture but is not performed for the sake of the rapture. In that case it is the “highest” or something like highest. Loud applause from you at this point I suppose but be sure you don’t misunderstand me. Before you can offer the “ghee” in the fire you have to know where the fire is and Krishna is in the Light, in the Light, in the Light!
Of course I have left out all sorts of qualifications. There is such a thing as preliminary offering, or, say, wish to offer, and much more but I am writing a letter not a book.
Disregard the Light at your peril for He is the Light and 
a Light must mingle with a Light. Fail to know the light and you will helplessly tread the dark path of the “dakṣiṇāyana”4, whirling helplessly, the sport but not the master of Karma.
Everybody should strive to find out so that at death he may echo the cry of the Orphic initiate: “From the pure I go to the Pure”. All I can say is that the Light in which Krishna dwells is a Light which sees, not a light which is seen and the voice of Krishna is a voice which speaks not a voice which is heard.
I really can’t go over those old letters of mine that you have typed out. Make what you can of them and throw away the rest. As regards the point you query with red pencil, no “not” is required. The point is simply that symbols which are known as symbols are sometimes less dangerous than symbols which are not recognised as such and it is impossible, however “abstract” and “Vedantic” one may be, to escape from symbols as all words are symbols.
I have, however, added a “ṭippaṇī”5 to your comments. I find that the letter is largely a repetition of the previous ones. Evidently I am running dry so had better shut up.
I do not know that I can answer your question about what Krishnaprem means by Krishna’s light. It is certainly not what people ordinarily mean by knowledge. He may mean the Light of the Divine Consciousness or, if you like, the light that is the Divine Consciousness or the light that comes from it or he may mean the luminous being of Krishna in which all things are in their supreme truth – the truth of Knowledge, the truth of Bhakti, the truth of ecstasy and Ananda, everything is there.
There is also a manifestation of Light – the Upanishads speak of jyotir brahma, the Light that is Brahman. Very often the sadhak feels a flow of Light upon him or around him or 
a flow of Light invading his centres or even his whole being and body, penetrating and illumining every cell and in that Light there grows the spiritual consciousness and one becomes open to all or many of its workings and realisations. Appositely, I have a review of a book of Ramdas (of the “Vision”) before me in which is described such an experience got by the repetition of the Rama mantra, but, if I understand rightly, after a long and rigorous self-discipline. “The mantra having stopped automatically, he beheld a small circular light before his mental vision. This yielded him thrills of delight. This experience having continued for some days, he felt a dazzling light like lightning flashing his eyes, which ultimately permeated and absorbed him. Now an inexpressible transport of bliss filled every pore of his physical frame.” It does not always come like that – very often it comes by stages or at long intervals, at first, working on the consciousness till it is ready.
We speak here also of Krishna’s light – Krishna’s light in the mind, Krishna’s light in the vital; but it is a special light – in the mind it brings clarity, freedom from obscurity, mental error and perversion; in the vital it clears out all perilous stuff and where it is there is a pure and divine happiness and gladness.
There are some however who seem to regard this invasion of Light not merely as a thing without value but a thing of evil or, possibly, one that can be such and so to be distrusted: for I have before me a letter describing an experience very similar to Ramdas’s, but it was condemned by the writer’s Guru as an attempt at possession by a devil to be dispelled by uttering the name of Ramakrishna!
That is as much as I can write about it just now. The usual arrest by time is there. But why limit oneself, insist on one thing alone and shut out every other? Whether it be by Bhakti or by Light or by Ananda or by Peace or by any other means whatsoever that one gets the initial realisation of the Divine, to get it is the thing and all means are good that bring it.
If it is Bhakti that one insists on, it is by the Bhakti that 
Bhakti comes and Bhakti in its fullness is nothing but an entire self-giving, as Krishnaprem very rightly indicates. Then all meditation, all tapasya, all means of prayer or mantra must have that as its end and it is when one has progressed sufficiently in that that the Divine Grace descends and the realisation comes and develops till it is complete. But the moment of its advent is chosen by the wisdom of the Divine alone and one must have the strength to go on till it arrives; for when all is truly ready it cannot fail to come.
I shall try to write more tomorrow.
1 Moni Bagchi (1905-1983) was a journalist and was very skilled in writing biographies. He was awarded the honour of National Biographer by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. His best known biography is Bhagini Nivedita [Sister Nivedita].
2 Re the sentence: “... I should have thought your Gurudev would have more or less agreed with it”, Sri Aurobindo wrote commenting on the margin: “Not more or less but entirely”.
3 Āhuti: oblation.
4 dakṣiṇāyana: southern or the winter solstice. The early Vedantic thought attributes the “psycho-physical symbolism” of dark path to this period of the year in contrast to Uttarāyaṇa, the northern or the summer solstice (cf. Bhagavad Gita, VIII, 24, 25 & 26).
5 ṭippaṇī: a comment or an explanation.