Sri Aurobindo

Autobiographical Notes

and Other Writings of Historical Interest

Part Two. Letters of Historical Interest

2.Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life 1911–1928

Extracts from Letters to the Mother and Paul Richard, 1911 – c. 1922

To the Mother and Paul Richard [4]

I have begun in the issue of the Arya which is just out a number of articles on the Ideal of Human Unity. I intend to proceed very cautiously and not go very deep at first, but as if I were leading the intelligence of the reader gradually towards the deeper meaning of unity,– especially to discourage the idea that mistakes uniformity and mechanical association for unity.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Nothing seems able to disturb the immobility of things and all that is active outside our own selves is a sort of welter of dark and sombre confusion from which nothing formed or luminous can emerge. It is a singular condition of the world, the very definition of chaos with the superficial form of the old world resting apparently intact on the surface. But a chaos of long disintegration or of some early new birth? It is the thing that is being fought out from day to day, but as yet without any approach to a decision.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

These periods of stagnation always conceal work below the surface which produces some advance afterwards.

16 September 1915