Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
SABCL 26
Fragment ID: 7685
Concentration and meditation are not the same thing. One can be concentrated in work or bhakti as well as in meditation.... If I devoted 9/10 of my time to concentration and none to work, the result would be equally unsatisfactory. My concentration is for a particular work – it is not for meditation divorced from life. When I concentrate, I work upon others, upon the world, upon the play of forces. What I say is that to spend all the time reading and writing letters is not sufficient for the purpose. I am not asking to become a meditative Sannyasi.
....It does not mean that I lose the higher consciousness while doing the work of correspondence. If I did that, I would not only not be supramental, but would be very far even from the full Yogic consciousness....
If I have to help somebody to repel an attack, I can’t do it by only writing a note, I have to send him some Force or else concentrate and do the work for him. Also I can’t bring down the Supramental by merely writing neatly to people about it. I am not asking for leisure to meditate at ease in a blissful indolence. I said distinctly I wanted it for concentration in other more important work than correspondence.
The ignorance underlying this attitude is in the assumption that one must necessarily do only work or only meditation. Either work is the means or meditation is the means, but both cannot be! I have never said, so far as I know, that meditation should not be done. To set up an open competition or a closed one between work and meditation is a trick of the dividing mind and belongs to the old Yoga. Please remember that I have been declaring all along1 an integral Yoga in which Knowledge, Bhakti, Works – light of consciousness, Ananda and love, will and power in works – meditation, adoration, service of the Divine have all their place. Have I written seven volumes of the Arya all in vain? Meditation is not greater than Yoga of works nor works greater than Yoga by knowledge – both are equal.
Another thing – it is a mistake to argue from one’s own very limited experience, ignoring that of others and build on it large generalisations about Yoga. This is what many do, but the method has obvious demerits. You have no experience of major realisations2 and you conclude that such realisations are impossible. But what of the many who have had them – elsewhere and here too in the Ashram? That has no value? You hint to me that I have failed to get anything by works? How do you know? I have not written the history of my sadhana – if I had, you would have seen that if I had not made action and work one of my chief means of realisation – well, there would have been no sadhana and no realisation except that, perhaps, of Nirvana.
I shall perhaps add something hereafter as to what works can do, but no time to-night.
Don’t conclude, however, that I am exalting works as the sole means of realisation. I am only giving it its due place.
You will excuse the vein of irony or satire in all this – but really when I am told that my own case disproves my whole3 spiritual philosophy and accumulated knowledge and experience, a little liveliness in answer is permissible.
19-12-1934
1 have all along been declaring (later edition)
2 realisations through works, (later edition)
3 own (later edition)