Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

3. The Mother and the Practice of the Integral Yoga

Fragment ID: 19546

X told me that she was in constant touch with the Divine Mother long before she came to Pondicherry. She saw her not only in meditation or vision but before her wide-awake eyes, in a concrete form. She often conversed with her; especially when some difficulty arose, the Mother would come and tell her what to do. If what she says is correct, she must be a very advanced sadhika. How much truth do you find in her experiences and visions?

She has not related them to us. But there is nothing improbable in it. It means simply that she externalised her inner vision and experience so as to see through the physical eyes also, but it was the inner vision that saw and the inner hearing that heard, not the physical sight or hearing. That is common enough. It does not indicate an “advanced” sadhana, whatever that phrase may mean, but only a special faculty.

I have heard that there are people here who feel the Mother’s presence or open directly to her inner knowledge. But this is not the same as seeing her with the physical eyes or having conversations with her.

These things are extremely common among those who practise Yoga everywhere. In the Asram the sadhaks are too intelligent, sceptical and matter of fact to have much of that kind of experience. Even those who might develop it are repressed by the outward-mindedness and physical-mindedness that dominates the atmosphere.

2 July 1936