Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 3. 1936-37

Fragment ID: 18576

1936-37

I can understand that the psychic development and the conquest of ego would have been easier if I had lived in the inner being rather than in the higher. But how would the widening of the consciousness have been easier? Is not the higher being wide and infinite in itself?

Do you realise it as wide and infinite? When you are there do you feel spread through infinity? Do you feel all the universe within you, yourself one with the self of all beings? Do you feel the one cosmic Force acting everywhere? Do you feel your mind one with the cosmic mind? your life one with the cosmic life? your matter one with the cosmic Matter? separative ego unreal? the body no longer a limitation? What is the use of merely arguing that the higher being is wide and infinite? Do these realisations come when you are in the higher being and if not why not? The inner being easily opens to all these realisations, the outer does not. So unless your inner being becomes conscious of itself, the mere ascent gives only height or some vague sense of other planes, not these concrete realisations.