Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 3. 1936-37

Fragment ID: 17973

1936-37

You wrote, “It must be that it is easier for the nature to open the psychic from above than directly.” Is it not a defect in the nature not to be able to open the psychic directly? There are people who simply concentrate on the heart centre and get a psychic opening!

In using the expression “opening of the psychic” I was thinking not of an ordinary psychic opening producing some amount of psychic (as opposed to vital) love and bhakti, but of what is called the coming in front of the psychic. When that happens one is aware of the psychic being with its simple spontaneous self-giving and feels its increasing direct control (not merely a veiled or half-veiled influence) over mind, vital and physical. Especially that is the psychic discernment which at once lights up the thoughts, emotional movements, vital pushes, physical habits and leaves nothing there obscure, substituting the right movements for the wrong ones. It is this that is difficult and rare. More often the discernment is mental and it is the mind that tries to put all in order. In that case it is the descent of the higher consciousness through the mind that opens the psychic, instead of the psychic opening directly.