Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

3. The Mother and the Practice of the Integral Yoga

Fragment ID: 19330

If the term “pressure” is a wrong one to describe the Mother’s recent dealings with me,¹ what is the sense in which it is used in The Mother – she “puts on them the required pressure” [p. 18] and “the vehemence of her pressure”? [p. 20]

I was speaking of your case only – it was not my intention to say that the Mother never uses pressure. But pressure also can be of various kinds. There is the pressure of the Force when it is entering the mind or vital or body – a pressure to go faster, a pressure to build or form, a pressure to break and many more. In your case if there is any pressure it is that of help or support or removal of an attack, but it does not seem to me that that can properly be called pressure.

In the same book you say “her hands are outstretched to strike and to succour”. [p. 19] What do you mean by “strike” here?

It expresses her general action in the world. She strikes at the Asuras, she strikes also at everything that has to be got rid of or destroyed, at the obstacles to the sadhana etc. I may say that the Mother never uses the Mahakali power in your case nor the Mahakali pressure.

5 June 1936

¹ See letter of 5 June 1936 on pages 118 – 19. – Ed.

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