Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

12. Experiences of the Inner and the Cosmic Consciousness

Fragment ID: 2185

1. All these thoughts and influences come really from outside, from universal Nature – they create formations in us or get habitual responses from the individual being. When they are rejected, they go back into the external universal Nature and if one becomes conscious, one can feel them coming from outside and trying to get a lodging inside again or reawaken the habitual response. One has to reject them persistently till no possibility of response remains any longer. This is hastened much if a certain inner calm, purity and silence can be established from which these things fall away without being able to touch it.

2. It is a common obstacle with all who practice yoga at the beginning. The sleep disappears gradually in two ways: (a) by the intensifying of the fire of concentration, (b) by the sleep itself becoming a kind of svapna-samādhi in which one is conscious of inner experiences that are not dreams (i.e. the waking consciousness is lost for the time but it is replaced not by sleep but by an inward conscious state in which one moves in the supraphysical or the mental or vital being).

3. About unconsciousness coming in in sleep: This is quite usual. Consciousness in sleep can only be gradually established with the growth of the true consciousness in the waking state.

4. The cardiac centre and the heart centre are the same.

5. A concrete imagery, such as you use, can help to bring about the descent.