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 [6]1
The experience you have described is Vedic in the real sense,2 though not one which would easily be recognised by the modern systems of Yoga which call themselves [Vedic]3. It is the union of the “Earth” of the Veda and Purana with the divine Principle, an earth which is said to be above our earth, that is to say, the physical being and consciousness of which this world and the body are only images. But the modern Yogas hardly recognise the possibility of a material union with the Divine.
31 December 1915
1 This letter deals with an experience of the Mother’s which is recorded in her Prayers and Meditations under the date 26 November 1915.
2 See The Mother, Prayers and Meditations (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2003), pp. 311–12; entry of 26 November 1915.
3 MS (copy) Yogic