Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume III - Part 4

Fragment ID: 13025

The facts or arguments you put forward to support your diffidence or depression cannot stand in the light of the Yoga experience of others – if they were enough to justify discouragement, how many would have had to turn back from the way who are now far on towards the goal? I cannot now deal with them in detail, but they do not, any of them, justify your inference [of unfitness for Yoga].

Also, your psychic being does not deserve the censure you have bestowed upon it. What prevents it from coming out in its full power is the crust of past habits, formations, active vibrations of the mind-stuff and vital stuff which come from a mind and life which have been more creative and outgoing and expansive than indrawn and introspective. In many who are like this – active men and intellectuals – the first stage of Yoga is long and difficult with slow development and sparse experiences, most of the work being done in the subliminal behind the veil – until things are ready.

When the time comes for the definite opening and removal of the purdah between the inner and the outer man, I think I can promise you that you will find your power of Yoga and Yogic experience at least as unexpectedly complete as you, and others, have found your power for poetry – though necessarily its working out will take time, because it is not a detail but the whole life and the whole nature in which there must be the divine victory.