Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

SABCL 26

Fragment ID: 7640

Q: I have read what you wrote to X the other day about the way in which you had the experience of the Self; that such a thing could have happened seems to me almost unthinkable!

A: I can’t help that. It happened. The mind’s canons of the rational and the possible do not give spiritual life and experience.

Q: But can you not tell us what the experience was like? Was it by any chance like the one you speak of in your Uttarpara Speech – the Vasudeva experience?

A: Great jumble-Mumble! What has Vasudeva to do with it? Vasudeva is the name of Krishna, and in the Uttarpara I was speaking of Krishna, if you please.

Q: By the Self, I suppose, you mean the individual Self!

A: Good Lord, no. I mean the Self, sir, the Self, the Adwaita, Vedantic, Shankar Self. Atman, Atman! A thing I knew nothing about, never bargained for, didn’t understand either.

Q: But didn’t you begin Yoga later on in Gujerat?

A: Yes. But this began in London, sprouted the moment I set foot on Apollo Bunder, touching Indian soil, flowered one day in the first year of my stay in Baroda, at the moment when there threatened to be an accident to my carriage. Precise enough?

31-10-1935