Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

3. The Mother and the Practice of the Integral Yoga

Fragment ID: 19556

One who can have faith without visions and voices is much farther on the true inner path than one who needs them to have faith.

Visions and voices are not meant for creating faith; they are effective only if one has faith already.

Visions and voices are often indulged in unnecessarily by people. Sometimes they interpret them wrongly or give them too much value. Thus they nourish their egos. But this capacity is by no means a sign of progress.

What do you mean by progress? The Mother spent many years entering the occult worlds and learning all that was to be learnt there. All that time she was making no progress? She sees things always when she goes into trance. Her capacity is a thing of no value? Because a great number of people don’t know how to use these faculties or misuse them or give them excessive value or nourish their ego by them, does it follow that the faculties themselves have no Yogic use or value?

8 July 1936