Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
What I meant about the experiences was simply this that you have erected your own ideas about what you want from the Yoga and have always been measuring what began to 
come by that standard and because it was not according to expectation or up to standard telling yourself after a moment, “It is nothing, it is nothing”. That dissatisfaction laid you open at every step to a reaction or a recoil which prevented any continuous development. The yogin who has experience knows that the small beginnings are of the greatest importance and have to be cherished and allowed with great patience to develop. He knows for instance that the neutral quiet so dissatisfying to the vital eagerness of the sadhak is the first step towards the peace that passeth all understanding, the small current or thrill of inner delight the first trickling in of the ocean of Ananda, the play of lights or colours the key of the doors of the inner vision and experience, the descent that stiffens the body into a concentrated stillness the first touch of something at the end of which is the presence of the Divine. He is not impatient, he is rather careful not to disturb the evolution that is beginning. Certainly, some sadhaks have strong and decisive experiences at the beginning, but these are followed by long labour in which there are many empty periods and many periods of struggle. You speak of Barin1, but Barin’s experiences were like all he did brilliant but unsound in method and only bright beginnings without any conclusion and it was all on the surface, mental and vital fireworks. There was never any receding of the ego, any fundamental bases of ultimate realisation, any transformation of the nature. There he is a little hunting and experimenting in the vague.