Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

Fragment ID: 20817

I have always told you that you ought not to stop your poetry and similar activities. It is a mistake to do so out of asceticism or with the idea of tapasya. One can stop these things when they drop of themselves, because one is full of experience and so interested in one’s inner life that one has no energy to spare for the rest. Even then, there is no rule for giving up; for there is no reason why poetry etc. should not be part of sadhana. The love of applause, the desire for fame, the ego reaction have to be given up, but that can be done without giving up the activity itself. Your vital needs some activity – most vitals do – and to deprive it of its outlet, an outlet that can be helpful and not harmful, makes it sulking, indifferent and desponding or else inclined to revolt at any moment and throw up the sponge. Without the assent of the vital it is difficult to do sadhana – it non-co-operates, or it watches with a grim, even if silent dissatisfaction ready to express at any moment doubt and denial; or it makes a furious effort and then falls back saying, “I have got nothing.” The mind by itself cannot do much, it must have support from the vital and for that the vital must be in a cheerful and acquiescent state. It has the joy of creation and there is nothing spiritually wrong in creative action. Why deny your vital this joy of outflow?

I had already hinted to you that to be able to wait for the Divine Grace (not in a tamasic spirit but with a sattwic reliance) was the best course for you. Prayer, yes – but not prayer insisting on immediate fulfilment – but prayer that is itself a communion of the mind and heart with the Divine and can have the joy and satisfaction of itself, trusting for fulfilment by the Divine in his own time. Meditation? Yes, but your meditation has got into a wrong asana, that of an eager and vehement wrestling followed by a bitter despair. It is no use getting on with it like that: it is better to drop it till you get a new asana. (I am referring to the old Rishis who established an asana, a place and a fixed position, where they would sit still till they got siddhi – but if the asana got successfully disturbed by wrong forces like asuras, apsaras, etc., they left it and sought for a new one.) Moreover, your meditation is lacking in quietude: you meditate with a striving mind, but it is in the quiet mind that the experience comes, as all Yogis agree – the still water that reflects rightly the sun, the cup made empty before the soma-rasa of the spirit may be poured in it. Prepare the mind and heart till things begin to flow into them in a spontaneous current when all is ready.