Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1935

Fragment ID: 17623

1935

One day I wrote two essays for my English class. My teacher criticised them in such a way that I sought Sri Aurobindo’s opinion on the matter. He made some comments on the essays. These comments and the two essays are both given here.

1. On Peace

Spiritual peace has not the same meaning as peace in our worldly parlance. In the ordinary life, when one is less depressed, disturbed or despondent than people generally are, one thinks oneself at peace.

Our normal consciousness (viz. our mental, vital and physical) – inner and outer – whirls constantly in restless actions. It is always pushed to activity; to pass five minutes without some kind of movement would be intolerable to it. That is perhaps the reason why even those who have a philosophical bent are often afraid of silence in the preliminary stage of their practice of Yoga. They take it, or feel it, to be something terrible, blank, fearful. We shall soon see that true silence is never like that. They feel it as such only because they are too mentally oriented.

In the absence of sadhana one can have quietness at the most. Even that can be attained only when one is above pain and suffering, strife and quarrel, gloom and despair, at least for the time being. But then, too, there is no true peace or quietude. These are the fruition of spiritual experience and a yogic practice is necessary for their attainment.

Worldly quietude or peace is very fragile, momentary, variable. Solid, lasting, self-existent, firm are the attributes of a higher peace. One who has that peace can stand against any turbulence or disturbance, shock or attack from the world, and yet hold his inner peace unmoved.

The ordinary peace is confined to the mind, whereas the yogic peace can descend into the vital and the body also. With many it takes up the mind first and then comes down into the other parts. But even if it has settled only in the mind, it casts its influence on the vital, and therefore we feel a kind of rest down to the very physical, as the physical is usually directed and pushed by the vital.