Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Yoga

4. Reason, Science and Yoga

Fragment ID: 254

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

February 6, 1943

Concrete? What do you mean by concrete? Spiritual force has its own concreteness; it can take a form (like a stream, for instance) of which one is aware and can send it quite concretely on whatever object one chooses.

This is a statement of fact about the power inherent in spiritual consciousness. But there is also such a thing as a willed use of any subtle force – it may be spiritual, mental or vital – to secure a particular result at some point in the world. Just as there are waves of unseen physical forces (cosmic waves etc.) or currents of electricity, so there are mind-waves, thought-currents, waves of emotion,– for example, anger, sorrow, etc.,– which go out and affect others without their knowing whence they come or that they come at all, they only feel the result. One who has the occult or inner senses awake can feel them coming and invading him. Influences good or bad can propagate themselves in that way; that can happen without intention and naturally, but also a deliberate use can be made of them. There can also be a purposeful generation of force, spiritual or other. There can be too the use of the effective will or idea acting directly without the aid of any outward action, speech or other instrumentation which is not concrete in that sense, but is all the same effective. These things are not imaginations or delusions or humbug, but true phenomena.

¹ Sri Aurobindo to Dilip.- Vol. 4; CWSA, volumes 29, 35: It