Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
2. The Mother, Sri Aurobindo and the Integral Yoga
X wishes to know what you and the Mother decide in reply to her last letter. She asked me to write to her. Shall I ask Mother tomorrow or would you prefer to write what I am to communicate to her?
I think I had better write it and you can communicate to her. It was an experience in a conscious dream in which she was becoming as if unconscious and her body was benumbed and then felt my hand on her forehead, the weight felt not only there but as if something was crushing her whole body, particularly a distinct pressure on the 3rd or 4th rib on the right side. The numbness was still there when she opened her eyes. She thinks it was my hand because of the weight, the strength of it. She wants to know also about our presence, how it comes, whether we are conscious of the call or it is only our Force that is working which is everywhere without the necessity of our personal knowledge. This is the answer.
“As to the dream, it was not a dream but an experience of the inner being in a conscious dream state, svapna-samādhi. The numbness and the feeling of being about to lose consciousness are always due to the pressure or descent of a Force to 
which the body is not accustomed, but feels strongly. Here it was not the physical body that was being directly pressed, but the subtle body, the sūkṣma śarīra in which the inner being more intimately dwells and in which it goes out in sleep or trance or in the moment of death. But the physical body in these vivid experiences feels as if it were itself that was having the experience; the numbness was the effect on it of the pressure. The pressure on the whole body would mean a pressure on the whole inner consciousness, perhaps for some modification or change which would make it more ready for knowledge or experience; the 3rd or 4th rib would indicate a region which belongs to the vital nature, the domain of the life-force, some pressure for a change there.
The strength of the hand, the weight would not necessarily indicate that it was mine – for it was an experience not of the physical hand or in the physical body, but in the subtle realms of the being and there the Mother’s touch and pressure might well be stronger and heavier than mine. The Mother does not remember the date, but one night about that period she was thinking strongly about her and putting a pressure for the removal of some obstacle to a spiritual opening. It is possible that this was what produced the experience. If it was myself, it must have been at a time when I was concentrating and sending the force to different people, but I remember nothing precise. I have often thought of her of course and sent a Force to help her.
It is not necessary for us always to be physically conscious of the action, for it is often carried out when the mind is occupied with outward things or when we sleep. The Mother’s sleep is not sleep but an inner consciousness, in which she is in communication with people or working everywhere. At the time she is aware, but she does not carry all that always into her waking consciousness or in her memory. A call would come in the occupied waking mind as the thought of the person coming – in a more free or in a concentrated state as a communication from the person in question; in concentration or in sleep or trance she would see the person coming and speaking to her or herself going there. Besides that wherever the Force is working, the Presence is there.”
27 September 1936