Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume III - Part 1

Fragment ID: 12016

Usually they [persons without mental knowledge of the Self] feel first through the psychic centre by union with the Mother and do not call it the Self – or else they simply feel a wideness and peace in the head or in the heart. Previous mental knowledge is not indispensable. I have seen in more cases than one sadhaks getting the Brahman realisation and asking “what is this?” – describing it with great vividness and exactness but without any of the known terms.

Just after writing this I read a letter from a sadhika in which she writes, “I see that my head is becoming very quiet, pure, luminous, universal, viśvamaya.” Well, that is the beginning of the realisation of the universal Brahman-Self in the mind, but if I put it to her in that language she would understand nothing.