Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

3. The Mother and the Practice of the Integral Yoga

Fragment ID: 19367

There is in me a revolt of the vital against the Light resulting in much vital confusion. I hope that one day all my desires and ambition will go away and I will depend completely on the Mother. In the meantime, as these things too come from the Mother, there is nothing to do but wait.

What things? The vital confusion and desires? It is entirely false to say that these things come from the Mother. They come from the lower Nature and its darkness and ignorance. The Mother’s Force is not the lower Nature, it is the Power of the Divine Truth and Light working upon the lower Nature to drive out the confusion and falsehood and desire from it and to transform everything into the Truth and Light.

It is equally false to say “so there is nothing to do but wait”. There is something to do and I have repeatedly told you what it is – I have told you not to go down into the lower vital unless you can go there with the Mother’s Force and Light supporting you. If you are pushed or fall into the lower vital confusion, then to remain quiet (not discussing or consenting to whirl round in the lower vital chaos), to reject the vital suggestions and experiences and open yourself calling down the Mother’s Force to change this part of the being.

Instead of that you begin “experiencing” the chaos and trying to follow every jump and whirl in it and speculating about it with the result that you get falsehoods like these two – the falsehood that “these things too come from the Mother” and the falsehood that “there is nothing to do but wait” and you consent to them!

When will you learn to remember and follow the plain instructions I have given you instead of believing in the ignorant mind and the confused suggestions of this vital chaos?

10 June 1930