Why “pourtant”?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
Draft Letters, 1926–1928
To Marie Potel [1]1
Your experiences in themselves are good and free from the old mixture; but the workings of your mind upon them are not yet correct or clear. In the last page you have tried to generalise and to philosophise your experience; immediately your old mind has come between the truth and you and the thought and expression are wrong and confused and quite full of errors. It is better to wait, to gather inner experience, to allow the sense of the truth to grow in you – in that way, the time will sooner come when a true supramental revelation (and not the mental attempt at the thing) can find its exact thought and word. When you try now, the old mind begins to play and blunder.
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Why “pourtant”?
The “essence” is always more easily seized by the heart and the internal sense than by the mind – for the heart is in touch with the psychic and the internal sense is the essential action of mind as opposed to its external and formal action. Both of these are nearer to a knowledge by identity or by direct communion than the active mind, and the “essence” can only be seized by identity or by direct communion. The active mind cannot do it except by falling silent and leaning on the psychic and on the internal sense.
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The universal Mental is not the “stuff and body of the Father-Mother”. No doubt what you mean is that the universal mental like the universal vital and physical is one form of the expressive substance of the Divine, but behind is another and a spiritual substance which is the true essence. If you want an image, it would be nearer the truth to say that this spiritual substance is the very stuff and body of the Divine and mind, life and matter are lesser sheaths, coverings or outer folds.
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To describe the “essence” as “l’immaterielle matière” is neither very clear nor very helpful. If you mean by matter substance, in one sense or in one line of experience all is substance – spirit, being, consciousness, ananda are substance; mind, life and matter are substance. Not only so, but all are one substance in its different powers and various degrees. All these except Matter can be described as immaterial substance.
Do you mean that this essence or spiritual substance is the true Material from which all is constituted? It is substance of the Self and Brahman; it is within everything, above everything and when it descends upon one as true being, as consciousness, as Ananda, it enables the soul to separate itself from mind, life and matter, to face them instead of being involved in them and to act upon them and change them. If this is what you have felt and seen, it is true; but your language does not make it clear.
But mark that much depends on the power on which it is
manifested. If it is only the spiritual substance within the universal Mental, it can raise the mental to its own highest powers,
but it cannot do more. Only if it manifests as the spiritual substance in its
supramental power, can the consciousness, power, Ananda it brings effect the
transformation which is the object of our Yoga.
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Afterwards you mix up many different aspects of the Divine and make a great confusion. No doubt all are the One and all are the Mother, but to mix them up confuses rather than clarifies the oneness. In any case the “essence” is not the Mother uniting the Father to the human sons! It is through the spiritual substance that the Jiva feels his oneness with the Ishwara and with the Mother from whom he came and it is the Mother who shows him the oneness; but that is quite another matter. The Mother is more than the essence; Self and spirit manifest the Supreme, manifest the Mother, are their first embodying substance if you like; but they are more than self and spirit.
Then what is it that is spirit of spirit and substance of substance? [Is it the “essence”?]2 But all this seems rather too much to say of any however exalted “essence”! Either you are extending your experience beyond its proper limits or you are deforming it in your language.
It is the one and dual Supreme who is Spirit of the spirit – the supreme Spirit, supreme Brahman, supreme Ishwara, supreme Shakti, supreme Purusha with supreme Prakriti. The Supreme is the one Being; it would be absurd to describe him as an essence within the universal Mental. The clumsy abstract language of the dry intellect soon gets out of place when you are trying to go beyond a spiritualised mental experience of these things. You must find a more intimate and living language.
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Again who is the Father here and who the Mother and what are the human sons doing in the affair?
The one and dual Supreme manifests as the Supreme
Shakti. She is the transcendent Mother who stands above and behind 
all the creation and supports it and stands too above and behind each
plane of the creation. She is contained in the Supreme and supported in all she
does and creates by the Supreme; but she carries too the Supreme within her.
Here in the creation she manifests the dual Supreme
whom she carries within her as the Ishwara and the Mahashakti and also as the
dual power of Purusha-Prakriti. The Mahashakti comes out of the Ishwara and does
the work of the creation, supported by the Ishwara.3
Man, the ignorant embodied mental being, begins to get free from his ignorance when he draws back from half-conscious substance of mind to conscious substance of Spirit. This is an overwhelming and absorbing experience to him and he cannot get beyond it. He speaks of it as his Self and gets in it some experience of his oneness with That which is beyond him, the Supreme. Yet what the Supreme is he does not really know and, so long as he is man, he cannot know. He tries to describe it or its aspects by abstract mental terms. He regards this experience of Self or Spirit as if it were the ultimate experience. Most absurdly, he tries to get through self to the Supreme by denying or getting rid of the Mother. Or else he regards her only as a convenience for getting united to the “Father”, ie an exclusive Purusha side of the supreme. All this is reflected in your language which is a confused repetition of the language of the more ignorant schools of Vedanta.
The Supreme is not exclusively the Purusha. One has to go through both aspects in union to reach him. The Mother herself is not merely Prakriti; she is the supreme and universal Shakti and contains in herself Purusha as well as Prakriti. And, secondly, the self or “essence” as experienced by man, that is to say, by the spiritualised mind, is not the ultimate experience. As that which uses the body is more than the body, so more than the Self is That of which the self is the spiritual substance.
Universal Mind is not
“the stuff and body” of the Father-Mother. At most it is like life and matter,
one form of expressive substance, a sheath or covering. It is rather the
spiritual substance that could be imaged as the stuff and body of the
Divine.4
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I presume that by your “essence” you mean the self or spiritual substance of things. But why do you call it immaterial Matter? Life and mind could as well be described in that language – they can be felt or seen as immaterial substances.
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Again what is this “own being” of yours to which you are united by your heart-centre and which unites you to the universal Mind? Is it the mental or the psychic being or what is it? All this is confused and vague in the last degree. “Thy own being” is an expression which would usually mean the Jiva who is soul and spirit and has no more special connection with the universal Mental than with universal life or Matter.
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If the “essence” is the spiritual substance in which the Divine manifests and which is the true substance of all things, the one substance of which mind, life and body are lesser degrees, then no doubt that when it pours down as true being, as consciousness, as Ananda enables not only to face the universal mental as also the universal vital and physical but to work upon them and transform them. But is this what you have seen or is it something else?
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In any case the “essence” cannot be the Mother uniting the Divine Father to the human sons. It is through the spiritual substance that the unity with the Father and Mother is felt, because out of her spiritual substance the Mother has manifested her children. But the Divine and the Mother are surely something more than a spiritual substance.
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1 Marie Léon Potel (1874 – c. 1962) met the Mother in France in 1911 or 1912. She was perhaps the first person to regard the Mother as her master and spiritual Mother. Potel came to the Ashram in March 1926 and remained until March 1928.{{1}}Draft of a letter found among Sri Aurobindo’s manuscripts of 1926–27
2 Sentence cancelled without substitution in MS. – Ed.
3 Sri Aurobindo struck through this and the two preceding paragraphs. Later he took up the ideas and some of the language of the second paragraph in Part 6 of The Mother. – Ed.
4 This paragraph and the four that follow are reworkings of earlier paragraphs of this draft letter. – Ed.