Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

Fragment ID: 20608

The soul is the witness, upholder, master, experiencer, but it is master only in theory, in fact it is not master so long as it consents to the Ignorance. For that is a general consent which implies that the Prakriti gambols about with the Purusha and does pretty well what she likes with him. When he wants to get back his mastery, make the theoretical practical, he needs a lot of tapasya to do it,...

The psychic has always been veiled, consenting to the play of the mind, vital and physical, experiencing everything through them in the ignorant vital, mental and physical way. How then can it be that they are bound to change at once when it just takes the trouble to whisper or say, “Let there be Light”? They have a tremendous negating power and can refuse and do refuse point-blank. The mind resists with an obstinate persistency in argument and a constant confusion of ideas, the vital with a fury of bad will aided by the mind’s obliging reasonings on its side, the physical resists with an obstinate inertia and crass fidelity to old habit, and when they have done, the general Nature comes in and says, “What, you are going to get free from me so early? Not, if I know it,” and it besieges and throws back the old nature on you again and again as long as it can. Yet you say it is the soul that wants all this ‘fun’ and goes off laughing and prancing to get some more!....