Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 3. 1936-37

Fragment ID: 18176

1936-37

You wrote, “If it was an impersonal experience how does the ego come in? Self (Atman) is one thing, the ego another.” Certainly the ego did not come with the experience. It was only when the experience was over that the foolishness of my mind brought it in as an idea. Why? Because I had heard that X’s ego became aggrandised after his experiences of the Self.

The ego cannot come into the experience as an experience. What the ego can do however is to get proud of having the experience and think “What a great one am I.” Or it may think “I am the Self, the Divine, so let me go and do what I will, for it is the Divine who wills in me.” It is only if the experience of Self imposes silence on the other parts and frees the psychic, that the ego disappears. Even then not ego itself, but numerous fragments and survivals of ego-habit can remain and have to be eliminated.