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

To Barindra Kumar Ghose and Others, 1922–1928

Draft Letter to Kumud Bandhu Bagchi [2]¹

When the psychic being awakens you grow conscious of your own soul; you know your Self. And you no longer commit the mistake of identifying yourself with the mental or with the vital being. You do not mistake them for the soul.

When awakened, the psychic being gives true Bhakti for God or for the Guru. That Bhakti is quite different from mental or vital Bhakti.

In the mind one may have a strong admiration or appreciation for the intellectual or spiritual greatness of the Guru,– follow him and mentally accept his dictates. But if it is merely mental, that does not carry you very far. Of course, there is no harm in having that also. But by itself it does not open the whole of the inner being; it only establishes a mental contact.

The vital Bhakti demands and demands. It imposes its own conditions. It surrenders itself to God, but conditionally. It says to God, “You are so great,” “I worship you,” – “and now you must satisfy this desire of mine or that ambition”; “make me great; make me a great sadhaka, a great yogin” etc.

The unillumined mind also surrenders to the Truth, but makes its own conditions. It says to the Truth, “Satisfy my judgment, and my opinion”; it demands the Truth to cast itself in the mind’s own forms.

The vital being also insists on the Truth throwing itself into its own vital movement of force. The vital being pulls at the Higher Power and pulls and pulls at the vital being of the Guru.

Both of them (the mental and the vital) have got an arrière pensée (mental reservation) in their surrender.

Psychic Bhakti is not like that. Because it is in communication with the Divinity behind, it is capable of true Bhakti. Psychic Bhakti does not make any demand, it makes no reservations. It is satisfied with its own existence. The psychic being knows how to obey the Truth in the right way. It gives itself up truly to God or the Guru, and because it can give itself up truly, therefore it can also receive truly.

When the psychic being comes to the surface it feels sad if it sees that the mental or the vital being is making a fool of itself. That sadness is purity offended.

When the mind is playing its own game, or when the vital being is carried away by its impulses, it is the psychic being which says, “I don’t want these things.” “What am I here for after all?” “I am here for the Truth; I am not here for these things.”

The psychic sadness is a quite different thing from mental dissatisfaction or vital sadness or physical depression.

If the psychic being is strong, it makes itself felt on the mental or the vital being, and forces them to change. But if it is weak, the other parts take advantage of it and use the psychic for their own advantage.

In some cases it comes up to the surface and upsets the mental and the vital being and throws all their settled arrangements and habits into disorder, pressing for a new and divine order. But if the mind or the vital being is stronger than the psychic then it casts only an occasional influence and gradually retires behind. All its cry is in the wilderness; and the mental or the vital being goes on in its own round.

Lastly, the psychic being refuses to be deceived by appearances. It is not carried away by falsehood. It refuses to be oppressed by falsehood – nor does it exaggerate the Truth. For example, even if everything around says, “There is no God”, the psychic being refuses to believe in it. It says,– “I know” and “I know because I feel.”

And because it knows the thing behind, it is not deceived by appearances. It immediately feels the force.

Also, when the psychic being is awakened, it throws out all the dross from the emotional being and makes it free from sentimentalism or the lower play of emotionalism.

But it does not carry in it the dryness of the mind or the exaggeration of the vital feelings. It gives the just touch to each emotion.

23 March 1926

¹ Born in 1901, Kumud Bandhu Bagchi was the head of the Bhawanipore centre from 1923, when Barin Ghose settled in Pondicherry, till it was closed in 1925. A note on the psychic being, dictated by Sri Aurobindo and revised by him before being sent.

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