Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Yoga
3. Religion, Morality, Idealism and Yoga
Fragment ID: 192
See largest or earliest found fragment here
Sri Aurobindo — Unknown addressee
June 6, 1935
Everything depends upon the aim you put before you. If, for the realisation of one’s spiritual aim, it is necessary to give up the ordinary life of the Ignorance (saṃsāra), it must be done; the claim of the ordinary life cannot stand against that of the spirit.
If a yoga of works alone is chosen as the path, then one may remain in the saṃsāra, but it will be freely, as a field of action and not from any sense of obligation; for the yogin must be free inwardly from all ties and attachments. On the other hand, there is no necessity to live the family life – one can leave it and take any kind of works as a field of action.
In the yoga practised here the aim is to rise to a higher consciousness and to live out of the higher consciousness alone, not with the ordinary motives. This means a change of life as well as a change of consciousness. But all are not so circumstanced that they can cut loose from the ordinary life; they accept it therefore as a field of experience and self-training in the earlier stages of the sadhana. But they must take care to look at it as a field of experience only and to get free from the ordinary desires, attachments and ideas which usually go with it; otherwise, it becomes a drag and hindrance on their sadhana. When one is not compelled by circumstances there is no necessity to continue the ordinary life.
One becomes tamasic by leaving the ordinary actions and life, only if the vital is so accustomed to draw its motives of energy from the ordinary consciousness and its desires and activities that if it loses them, it loses all joy and charm and energy of existence. But if one has a spiritual aim and an inner life and the vital part accepts them, then it draws its energies from within and there is no danger of one’s being tamasic.
Current publication:
Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Yoga // SABCL.- Volume 22. (≈ 28 vol. of CWSA).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1971.- 502 p.
Other publications: