Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1935

Fragment ID: 16864

1935

When one’s inner peace and silence are not disturbed, then how does the inertia intrude into the physical and work so freely there?

It is not a question of the inner being, even of the inner physical. It is a question of the physical consciousness. The habit of tamas manifests itself in the very fact of the constant alternatives of experience and inertia. The principle of tamas is inertia, aprakasa and apravrtti shown here by its being unable to keep the prakasa of the higher consciousness or answer continuously to the activity of sadhana – also by the rising up when it comes of sex etc. in a mechanical repetition of old ideas and feelings. It may be from the subconscient, but if the physical had not that habit of responding, it would have no hold. You would not be affected or feel yourself invaded or the sadhana stopped.