Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1935

Fragment ID: 17398

1935

I need a certain enlightenment from you. What is really the cause of the vital resistance? Which higher descents does it want to prevent? In the absence of any clear knowledge my mind needs something like a short review of the present state of the sadhana.

I cannot say more than what I have said already. In its descent the peace and silence met with a resistance in the lower vital (probably mostly the vital-physical) and the physical combined which instead of receiving the peace and silence and the release and joy it brings replied with inertia. This inertia gave an opportunity for the old vital suggestions from outside to act in you – because that is the ordinary release from inertia to begin a vital activity good or bad. This would not have mattered, for the vital itself would have rejected it – but somewhere there was a sort of response, an acceptance of the inertia and through that a response to the vital suggestions, listening to them, giving them importance, not seeing the entire inanity of them. At the same time the inertia communicated itself to the mind, preventing the will from acting. Hence the difficulty.