Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Yoga

4. Reason, Science and Yoga

Fragment ID: 255

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

January 21, 1936

The fact that you don’t feel a force does not prove that it is not there. The steam-engine does not feel a force moving it, but the force is there. A man is not a steam-engine? He is very little better, for he is conscious only of some bubbling on the surface which he calls “himself” and is absolutely unconscious of all the subconscient, subliminal, superconscient forces moving him. (This is a fact which is being more and more established by modern psychology, though it has got hold only of the lower force and not the higher,– so you must not turn up your rational nose at it.) He twitters intellectually, foolishly about the surface results and attributes them all to his “noble self”, ignoring the fact that his noble self is hidden far away from his own view behind the veil of his dimly sparkling intellect and the reeking fog of his vital feelings, emotions, impulses, sensations and impressions. So your argument is utterly absurd and futile. Our aim is to bring the secret forces out and unwalled into the open, so that instead of getting some shadows or lightnings of themselves out through the veil or being wholly obstructed, they may pour down and flow in rivers. But to expect that all at once is a presumptuous demand which shows an impatient ignorance and inexperience. If they begin to trickle at first, that is enough to justify the faith in a future downpour. You admit that you once or twice felt a force coming down; it proves that the force was and is there and at work and it is only your sweating Herculean labour that prevents you feeling it. Also, it is the trickle that gives the assurance of the possibility of the downpour. One has only to go on and by one’s patience deserve the downpour or else, without deserving, slide on until one gets it. In yoga the experience itself is a promise and foretaste but gets shut off till the nature is ready for the fulfilment. This is a phenomenon familiar to every yogi when he looks back on his past experience. Such were the brief visitations of Ananda you had sometimes before. It does not matter if you have not a leech-like tenacity – leeches are not the only type of yogis. If you can stick anyhow or get stuck, that is sufficient.

¹ Nirodbaran. Correspondence.- Volume 1; CWSA, volumes 27, 29: forces

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² Nirodbaran. Correspondence.- Volume 1; CWSA, volumes 27, 29: need

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³ Nirodbaran. Correspondence.- Volume 1; CWSA, volumes 27, 29: vision

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⁴ Nirodbaran. Correspondence.- Volume 1; CWSA, volumes 27, 29: sufficient

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⁵ Nirodbaran. Correspondence.- Volume 1; CWSA, volumes 27, 29: down and delivering a poem out of me” (your opinion about its worth or worthlessness is not worth a cent, that is for others to pronounce). That is sufficient to blow the rest of your Jeremiad into smithereens; it proves

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⁶ Nirodbaran. Correspondence.- Volume 1; CWSA, volumes 27, 29: assurance

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⁷ Nirodbaran. Correspondence.- Volume 1; CWSA, volumes 27, 29: stick

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⁸ Nirodbaran. Correspondence.- Volume 1; CWSA, volumes 27, 29: till

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⁹ Nirodbaran. Correspondence.- Volume 1; CWSA, volumes 27, 29: Yoga itself

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¹⁰ Nirodbaran. Correspondence.- Volume 1; CWSA, volumes 27, 29: that

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¹¹ Nirodbaran. Correspondence.- Volume 1; CWSA, volumes 27, 29: fulfilment is