Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1933-34

Fragment ID: 16430

1934

When I try to keep the being silent and blank the whole thing appears empty and without interest to the vital.

Certainly, the vital cannot take an interest in a blank condition. If you depend on your vital you cannot prolong it. It is the spirit that feels a release in the silence empty of all mental or other activities, for in that silence it becomes self-aware. For the blankness to be real one must have got into the Purusha or Witness Consciousness. If you are looking at it with your mind or vital, then there is not blankness, for even if there are not distinct thoughts then there must be a mental attitude or mental vibrations – e.g. the not feeling interest.