Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
CWSA 35
Fragment ID: 8958
See letter itself (letter ID: 945)
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
February 6, 1943
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Concreteness of the Force [3]
Is the force you “put on me” concrete?
Concrete? what do you mean by “concrete”? It has its own concreteness; it can take a form (like a stream for instance) of which one is aware and can send it quite concretely in whatever “direction” or on whatever object one chooses.
In one of your letters to me you wrote: “A Yoga consciousness or spiritual consciousness which has no power or force in it, may not be dead or unreal but it is evidently something inert and without effect or consequence. Equally a man who sets out to be a Yogi or Guru and has no spiritual consciousness or no power in his spiritual consciousness – a Yoga force or spiritual force – is making a false claim and is either a charlatan or a self-deluded imbecile; still more is he so if having no spiritual force he claims to have made a path others can follow. If Yoga is a reality, if spirituality is anything better than a delusion, there must be such a thing as Yoga force or spiritual force.”
That is a general statement about the inherent power of spirituality. What I was speaking of was a willed use of subtle force (it may be spiritual or mental or vital) to secure a particular result at some point in the world. Just as there are waves of unseen physical forces (cosmic waves etc.) or currents of electricity, so there are mind waves, thought currents, waves of emotion, e.g. anger, sorrow etc. which go out and affect others without their knowing whence they come or that they come at all – they only feel the result. One who has the occult or inner senses awake can feel them coming and invading him; influences good or bad can propagate themselves in that way; that can happen without intention, automatically, but also a deliberate use can be made of them. There can also be a purposeful generation of force, spiritual or other. There can be too the use of the effective will or idea, which is not concrete in that sense, but is all the same effective.
6 February 1943
1 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 2 Ser.; CWSA, volume 29: This
2 SABCL, volume 22; Sri Aurobindo to Dilip.- Vol. 4; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 2 Ser.; CWSA, volume 29: statement
3 SABCL, volume 22; Sri Aurobindo to Dilip.- Vol. 4; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 2 Ser.; CWSA, volume 29: of fact about
4 SABCL, volume 22; Sri Aurobindo to Dilip.- Vol. 4; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 2 Ser.; CWSA, volume 29: power inherent
5 SABCL, volume 22; Sri Aurobindo to Dilip.- Vol. 4; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 2 Ser.; CWSA, volume 29: in spiritual consciousness
6 SABCL, volume 22; Sri Aurobindo to Dilip.- Vol. 4; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 2 Ser.: But there is also such a thing as
7 Sri Aurobindo to Dilip.- Vol. 4: willed
8 SABCL, volume 22; Sri Aurobindo to Dilip.- Vol. 4; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 2 Ser.; CWSA, volume 29: any subtle
9 Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 2 Ser.: mental
10 SABCL, volume 22; Sri Aurobindo to Dilip.- Vol. 4; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 2 Ser.: for example
11 SABCL, volume 22; Sri Aurobindo to Dilip.- Vol. 4; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 2 Ser.: and naturally
12 SABCL, volume 22; Sri Aurobindo to Dilip.- Vol. 4; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 2 Ser.; CWSA, volume 29: idea acting directly without the aid of any outward action, speech or other instrumentation which
Current publication:
Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Himself and the Ashram // CWSA.- Volume 35. (≈ 26 vol. of SABCL).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2011.- 658 p.
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