Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

SABCL 26

Fragment ID: 7923

The difficulty you feel or any sadhak feels about sadhana is not really a question of meditation versus bhakti versus works, it is a difficulty of the attitude to be taken, the approach or whatever you call it. Yours seems to be characterised on one side by a tremendous effort in the mind, on the other a gloomy certitude in the vital which seems to watch and mutter under its breath if not aloud, “Yes, yes, go ahead, my fine fellow, but”...and at the end of the meditation “What did I tell you?”... A vital so ready to despair that even after a “glorious” flood of poetry, it uses the occasion to preach the gospel of despair! I have passed through most of the difficulties of the sadhak, but I cannot recollect to have looked on delight of poetical creation or concentration in it as something undivine and a cause for despair. This seems to me excessive.

23-12-1934