Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

3. The Mother and the Practice of the Integral Yoga

Fragment ID: 19190

When I opened myself to the Mother in meditation, I saw her approaching me with an infant in her arms. As she came near, the golden Purusha frowned at her and she drew back behind you. I have seen this vision several times. What am I to do? You fill my whole being but, despite opening myself to the Mother, she is not allowed to approach me.

The infant in the Mother’s arms is the symbol of the psychic being. The soul in direct touch with the divine Truth is hidden in man by the mind, the vital being and the physical nature (manas, prāṇa, anna of the Taittiriya Upanishad); one may practise Yoga and get illuminations in the mind and the reason, power and all kinds of experiences in the vital, even physical siddhis, but if the true soul-power behind and the psychic nature do not come into the front, nothing genuine has been done. In this Yoga, the psychic being is that which opens the rest of the nature to the true supramental light and finally to the supreme Ananda. If the soul is awakened, if there is a new birth out of the mere mental, vital and physical into the psychic consciousness, then the Yoga can be done; otherwise (by the mere power of the mind or any other part) it is impossible. It is this new birth, this awakening of the psychic consciousness, that the Mother is offering in the vision. If the golden Purusha refuses it, it must be because he is bound by some kind of attachment, probably to mere “knowledge”. In that case, he is not very consistent; for it was he who demanded surrender to the Mother and now he rejects the very heart and meaning of the surrender. Probably this repeated experience is an indication of the principal difficulty in the sadhana. If there is refusal of the psychic new birth, a refusal to become the child new born from the Mother, owing to attachment to intellectual knowledge or mental ideas or to some vital desire, then there will be a failure in the sadhana. Only if it is accepted, can his coming and doing sadhana here be fruitful.

26 November 1929