Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 3
On that evening when I prayed for both Jawaharlal and the Princess, why did the latter have this vivid experience at that identical time (she writes from Bangalore) actually seeing me in meditation with Mother as I was and getting peace, etc., after which she was too eager to visit Pondi for a few days again, thanking me so profusely for so demonstrably helping her through my prayer; while Jawaharlal, I was all but sure, never felt it. Why, I asked, did some prayers act in this sort of vivid convincing way, while others were fruitful of no tangible results? Did it mean that Jawaharlal was not open while the Princess was? It was very curious though that that evening’s prayer of mine should have been so warm for both of them, how moved I was when I called to Sri Aurobindo and Mother’s yoga-shakti to give them light and guidance, though I knew full well that they would never know how it might work for their good, if it did work at all, that is.
But in the Princess’s case it bore tangible fruit, which was so refreshing, while in Jawaharlal’s case why didn’t it? – Well?
As for the Princess’s experience, it is quite natural, since you see from her own statement that she has always had a natural tendency to go beyond the physical into supraphysical experience. That is what she means by having imaginations. When one is living in the physical mind, the only way to escape from it is imagination (incidentally, that is why poetry 
and art, etc. have so strong a hold), but these imaginations are really shadows of supraphysical experience and once the barrier of the physical mind is broken or even swung a little open, there come the experiences themselves if the temperament is favourable. Hence visions, etc. – all [the manifestations] that are miscalled psychic phenomena. As for prayer, no hard and fast rule can be laid down. Some prayers are answered, all are not. An example? The eldest daughter of my maternal uncle, K.K. Mitra, Editor of Sanjivani, not by any means a romantic, occult, supraphysical or even imaginative person, was abandoned by the doctors after using every resource, all medicines stopped, as useless. The father said, “There is only God now, let us pray”. He did, and from that moment the girl began to recover, typhoid fever and all its symptoms fled, death also. I know any number of cases like that. Well you may ask, why should not then all prayers be answered? But why should they be? It is not a machinery: put a prayer in the slot and get your asking. Besides, considering all the contradictory things mankind is praying for at the same moment. God would be in a rather awkward hole if he had to grant all of them; it wouldn’t do. As for Jawaharlal, he has perhaps something in his temperament that might answer to the supraphysical, but by his intellect he has put it so much down that it is not likely to act in any overt manner.