Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

5. On Three Works of the Mother

Fragment ID: 20233

“There are two paths of Yoga, one of tapasyā (discipline) and the other of surrender” [p. 4]. Once you interpreted a vision I had as Agni, the fire of purification and tapasya, producing the Sun of Truth. What path do I follow? What place has tapasya in the path of surrender? Can one do absolutely without tapasya in the path of surrender?

There is a tapasya that takes place automatically as the result of surrender and there is a discipline that one carries out by one’s own unaided effort – it is the latter that is meant in the “two paths of Yoga”. But Agni as the fire of tapasya can burn in either case.

4 January 1937