of expressing the same idea; the same line which you take in meditation will be expressed in your activities.”1Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
3. The Mother and the Practice of the Integral Yoga
Fragment ID: 19344
Ramana Maharshi says that if “you meditate for an hour or two every day, you can then carry on with your duties. If you meditate in the right manner... ”
A very important qualification.
“then the current of mind induced will continue to flow even in the midst of your work. It is as though there are two ways of expressing the same idea; the same line which you take in meditation will be expressed in your activities.”1
If the meditation brings poise, peace, a concentrated condition or even a pressure or influence, that can go on in the work, provided one does not throw it away by a relaxed or dispersed state of consciousness. That was why the Mother wanted people not only to be concentrated at pranam or meditation but to remain silent and absorb or assimilate afterwards and also to avoid things that relax or disperse or dissipate too much – precisely for this reason that so the effects of what she put on them might continue and the change of attitude the Maharshi speaks of will take place. But I am afraid most of the sadhaks have never understood or practised anything of the kind – they could not appreciate or understand her directions.
9 February 1936
1 Paul Brunton, “A Search in Secret India” (London: Rider & Company, [1934] 1943), p. 156. The quotation is a paraphrase of Ramana Maharshi’s words by Brunton. – Ed.