chosen vessel was a condition for its perfect manifestation on the earth plane.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 People in America, 1926–1927
To and about Anna Bogenholm Sloane [4]1
[August – September 1927]
When you wrote to me from America some of the
experiences you narrated in your letter [
]2
indicated a very clear call to the new supramental life. And we understood also
that a Power from the higher planes that had a place in our work was trying to
manifest through your personality. But a call is only the beginning; it is after
many ordeals that it matures into a definite and irrevocable choice. Moreover
whenever a Power of this kind tries to manifest, always in the exterior human
personality the opposite movements have a strong place. It is as if for each
divine power the conquest of its opposite in its own
chosen vessel was a condition for its perfect manifestation on the earth plane.
When you came here the Mother perceived that you must at first be left alone to your own movement and the discipline imposed on other sadhakas was not laid upon you. All she did was to bring down supramental light and power in you and to open to them the different centres. This was rapidly and on the whole successfully done.
But to open the centres is only a beginning, for then comes one of the most difficult periods for the disciple. The consciousness opens not only to the true Light and Power, but to all kinds of experiences and all sorts of influences from all the planes and from all sources and quarters. There is a period of intense and overpowering internal activity of formation, vision and movements of new consciousness and new power. If then the disciple is carried away [ ]3 by the brilliance and splendour and delight of his experiences, he can easily wander far from the highest way. But the Forces and Beings that are behind them are sometimes adverse Forces, sometimes the lesser Gods of the mental and vital planes. In either case they try to occupy and use the instrument, but for their own purpose, for the play of the Ideas and Forces they represent, not the highest Truth. There are only three safeguards for the disciple. One is to call down first the eternal peace, calm and silence of the Divine into the mind and the vital and physical being. In that peace and silence there is a true possibility that the mental and vital formations will fall to rest and the supramental creation can have free space. The second safeguard is to remain entirely detached even from the most absorbing experiences and observe them without being carried away by their brilliance. The power of discernment and discrimination will slowly form from above and he will be able to distinguish between the higher truth and the lower truth as between truth and falsehood. The third safeguard is to follow implicitly the instructions of the spiritual guides who have already trod the path and to follow their guidance.
This is the ordeal into
which you have entered; but unhappily you seem to have departed from the
guidance of the Mother in the crucial point. You seem to have deliberately
rejected the peace and silence of the vital being in the fear that it would
bring stagnation. As a result the strong habit [of] vital formation came into
play and you began to call down lights and powers and build things in
[yourself]4 in your own way. In this condition, when
the disciple is not accustomed to complete trust in his masters the one thing
that can be done is to stand aside and let the disciple take his own way, for to
insist is likely to raise in him doubt and revolt and decide him in the opposite
way. According to whatever may be the supreme decision in his case, he will feel
the need of guidance and return to the straight way or he will depart on his own
path wherever his inner destiny calls him.
If you have not an entire confidence in us, are not prepared to submit absolutely to our guidance, if the supramental Truth is not your one aim, if you are not prepared to go through the slow, difficult and often painful process of self-emptying new creation by which alone it can form in you, putting away all pride, self-will and excessive self-confidence, or if you think that with you is the Truth and not with us, then obviously you can draw no benefit from staying here. It is for you to choose.
One thing I would say in ending is that you seem to
have formed very erroneous ideas about the work I have undertaken, as for
instance when you imagine that I am working by spiritual means to bring about a
worldwide conflagration and war between the white and the coloured races. This
is a sheer error. The Mother has indeed told you that I do not believe in crude
and violent external means for a spiritual work. As for the division of the
human race according to their colour, it is in my view the play of an obscure
ignorance and I would never dream of admitting it as a basis for my action. If
any such world catastrophe happened it would be the result of Karmic forces and
far from helping would be a serious hindrance to my work. My work is one of 
spiritual creation not of physical destruction. If anything has to
disappear or change, it will do so by the turning on it of the supramental light
and Force and what has to change must be decided by that omniscient Light and
omnipotent Force and not by the human mind and its narrow ideas and false
desires.
1 Undated draft, written in reply to a letter from Sloane in which she asked Sri Aurobindo if he was “the Krishna, the Supreme God of the Planet Earth”, and expressed doubts about the ability of the Mother to guide her. She asked to be guided by Sri Aurobindo instead. There is some evidence that Sri Aurobindo never sent a fair copy of this draft to Sloane. This draft-letter is from Sri Aurobindo’s notebooks. – Ed.
2 MS from America
3 MS during these experiences
4 MS yourselves