Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 3. 1936-37

Fragment ID: 18375

1936-37

You wrote about “an effort in which also there is the spirit of surrender”. Kindly explain to me how to keep a spirit of surrender in my effort.

By calling on the Force to aid the personal effort, by not getting into despondency and the rest of it if the results do not come, by a never failing tranquil confidence in the final outcome of the sadhana. Headaches “produced by a pressure from above”, as you put it, are not due to the pressure or produced by it, but produced by a resistance. R’s headaches have nothing to do with Yoga or sadhana.

The pressure does not “bring” a resistance. “If there were no resistance there would be no headache” is the proper knowledge, not the reverse. So long as you think that it is the pressure that brings the resistance, the very idea will create the resistance. R’s case is not an example either of headache due to resistance or of headache due to pressure – it is due to ordinary physical and psychological causes.

Certainly, you cannot have reached the point of thinking always about the Mother alone or Yoga alone! If you had, there would not have been trouble of sex or depression. You were at the very least thinking of yourself also.