To V. Chandrasekharam [3]1Sri 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
To People in India, 1914–1926
To V. Chandrasekharam [3]1
[21 July 1924]
It is not easy to get into the silence.2 That is only possible by throwing out the mental and vital activities. It is easier to let the silence get into you, i.e., to open yourself and let it descend. The way to do this and the way to call down the higher powers is the same. It is to remain quiet at the time of meditation, not fighting with the mind or making mental efforts to pull down the power of the Silence but keeping only a silent will and aspiration for them. If the mind is active, one has only to learn to look at it, drawn back and not giving any sanction from within, until its habitual or mechanical activities begin to fall quiet for want of support from within. If it is too persistent, a steady rejection without strain or struggle is the one thing to be done.
The mental attitude you are taking with regard to “the Lord is the Yogeswara” can be made a first step towards this quietude.
Silence does not mean absence of experiences. It is an inner silence and quietude in which all experiences happen without producing any disturbance. It would be a great mistake to interfere with the images rising in you. It does not matter whether they are mental or psychic. One must have experience not only of the true psychic but of the inner mental, inner vital and subtle physical worlds or planes of consciousness. The occurrence of the images is a sign that these are opening and to inhibit them would mean to inhibit the expansion of consciousness and experience without which this Yoga cannot be done.
All this is an answer to the points raised by your letter. It is not meant that you should change suddenly what you are doing. It is better to proceed from what you have attained which seems to be solid, if small, and proceed quietly in the direction indicated.
1 Veluri Chandrasekharam (1896–1964) took his B.A. from Madras University, standing first in his class in philosophy. He often visited Pondicherry during the early 1920s, reading the Veda and practising yoga under Sri Aurobindo’s guidance. In 1928 he returned to his village in Andhra Pradesh, where he passed the remainder of his life.
2 This letter and the next were written by K. Amrita at Sri Aurobindo’s dictation or following his oral instructions. – Ed.