Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

5. On Three Works of the Mother

Fragment ID: 20221

In her prayer of 8 October 1914, the Mother says: “La joie contenue dans l’activité est compensée et equilibrée par la joie plus grande peut-être encore contenue dans le retrait de toute activité” [p. 286]. This state of “greater joy” (“la joie plus grande”), Mother explains, is that of Sachchidananda. Does this not suggest that there is a joy in non-activity superseding that of activity? If such be the case, one would naturally aspire for this greater joy, since an ever greater joy is the aim of our sadhana. Is it not so?

Do you think the Mother has a rigid mind like you people and was laying down a hard and fast rule for all time and all people and all conditions? It refers to a certain stage when the consciousness is sometimes in activity and when not in activity is withdrawn in itself. Afterwards comes a stage when the Sachchidananda condition is there in work also. There is a still farther stage when both are as it were one, but that is the supramental. The two states are the silent Brahman and the active Brahman and they can alternate (1st stage), coexist (2d stage), fuse (3d stage). If you reach even the first stage then you can think of applying Mother’s dictum, but why misapply it now?

My question is this: can this state of greater joy, Sachchidananda, be realised while one is actually doing work?

Certainly it is realisable in work. Good Lord! how could the integral Yoga exist if it were not?

22 December 1934