Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

SABCL 26

Fragment ID: 8004

Q: People of sattwic temperament in ordinary life behave practically in the same manner as the sadhaks who realise spiritual peace as a result of Yoga. Can it be said that in the sattwic people the peace descends but in a hidden manner, or is it due to their past lives that they have the sattwic temperament?

A: Of course they have gained their power to live in the mind by a past evolution. But the spiritual peace is something other and infinitely more than the mental peace and its results are different, not merely clear thinking or some control or balance or a sattwic state. But its greater results can only be fully and permanently manifest when it lasts long enough in the system or when one feels spread out in it above the head and on every side stretching towards infinity as well as penetrated by it down to the very cells. Then it carries with it the deep and vast and solid tranquillity that nothing can shake – even if on the surface there is storm and battle. I was myself of the sattwic type you describe in my youth, but when the peace from above came down, that was quite different. Sattvaguṇa disappeared into nirguṇa and negative nirguṇa into positive traiguṇyātīta.

22-7-1935