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Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Forth Series

Fragment ID: 21189

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Sri Aurobindo — Unknown addressee

1934 (circa)

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I find nothing to object to in Prof. Sorley’s comment on the still, bright and clear mind, for it adequately indicates the process by which the mind makes itself ready for the reflection of the higher Truth in its undisturbed surface or substance. One thing perhaps needs to be kept in view – this pure stillness of the mind is always the required condition, the desideratum, but to bring it about there are more ways than one. It is not, for instance, only by an effort of the mind itself to get clear of all intrusive emotion or passion or of its own characteristic vibrations or of the obscuring fumes of a physical inertia which brings about the sleep or torpor of the mind instead of its wakeful silence that the thing can be done – for this is only the ordinary process of the Yogic path of knowledge. It can happen also by a descent from above of a great spiritual stillness imposing silence on the mind and heart and the life stimuli and the physical reflexes. A sudden descent of this kind or a series of descents accumulative in force and efficacy is a well-known phenomenon of spiritual experience. Or again one may start process of one kind or another for the purpose which would normally mean a long labour and be seized, even at the outset, by a rapid intervention or manifestation of the Silence with an effect out of all proportion to the means used at the beginning. One commences with a method, but the work is taken up by a Grace from above, from That to which one aspires or an irruption of the infinitudes of the Spirit. It was in this last way that I myself came by the mind’s absolute silence, unimaginable to me before I had its actual experience.

There is another point of some importance – the exact nature of this brightness, clearness, stillness,– of what it is constituted, whether it is merely a psychological condition or something more. Professor Sorley says these words are after all metaphors and he wants to express and succeeds in expressing the same thing in a more abstract language. But I was not conscious of using metaphors when I wrote the phrase, though I am aware that the words could to others have that appearance. I think even that they would seem to one who had half the same experience not only a more vivid but a more accurate description of this inner state than any more abstract language could give. It is true that metaphors, symbols, images are constant auxiliaries summoned by the mystic for the expression of his experiences: that is inevitable because he has to express, in a language made or at least developed and manipulated by the mind, the phenomena of a consciousness other than the mental and at once more complex and more subtly concrete. It is this subtle concrete, supersensuously sensible reality of the phenomena of that consciousness to which the mystic arrives, that justifies the use of metaphor and image as a more living and accurate transcription than the abstract terms which intellectual reflection employs for its own characteristic process. If the images used are misleading or not descriptively accurate, it is because the writer has a force of expression inadequate to the intensity of his experience. The scientist speaks of light-waves or of sound-waves and in doing so he uses a metaphor, but one which corresponds to the physical fact and is perfectly applicable – for there is no reason why there should not be a wave, a constant flowing movement of light or of sound as well as of water. But when I speak of the mind’s brightness, clearness, stillness, I have no idea of calling metaphor to my aid. It was meant to be a description as precise and positive as if I were describing in the same way an expanse of air or a sheet of water. For the mystic’s experience of mind – especially when it falls still is not that of an abstract condition or a falling off or of some unseizable element of the consciousness, it is an experience of an extended subtle substance in which there can be and are waves, currents, vibrations not material but still as definite, perceptible, controllable by an inner sense as any movement of material energy or substance by the physical senses. The stillness of the mind means first the falling to rest of the habitual thought movements, thought formations, thought currents which agitate the mind-substance, and that for many is a sufficient mental silence. But even in this repose of all thought movements or movements of feelings, when one looks more closely at it, one sees that this mind-substance is in a constant state of very subtle vibration, not at first easily observable, but afterwards quite evident – and that state of constant vibration may be as harmful to the exact reflection or reception of the descending Truth as any more formed thought movement – for it is the source of a mentalisation which can diminish or distort the authenticity of the higher Truth or break it up into mental refractions. When I speak of a still mind, I mean one in which these disturbances are no longer there. As they fall quiet one can feel the increasing stillness and a resultant clearness as palpable as one can perceive the stillness and clearness of a physical atmosphere. What I describe as the brightness – there is another element – is resolved into a phenomenon of Light common in mystic experience. That Light is not a metaphor – as when Goethe called for more light in his last moments – it presents itself as a very positive illumination actually seen and felt by the inner sense. The brightness of the still and clear mind is also a positive reflection of this Light before the Light itself manifests – and this reflection of the Light is a very necessary condition for a growing capacity of penetrability by the Truth one has to receive and harbour. I have emphasised this part of the subject of the subject at a little length because it helps to bring out the difference between the abstract mental and the concrete mystic perception of supraphysical things which is the source of much misunderstanding between the spiritual seeker and the intellectual thinker. Even when they speak the same language it is a different order of perceptions to which the language refers the products of two different grades of consciousness and even in their agreement there is often a certain gulf of difference.

 

1 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: either to add or to object

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2 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: it

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3 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: But one

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4 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: that this

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5 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: indeed always

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6 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: for bringing

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7 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: to quiet

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8 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: to resist

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9 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: a

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10 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: a torpor

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11 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: This is indeed an

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12 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: but the same end can be brought about or automatically happen by other processes – for instance, by

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13 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: the

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14 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: on

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15 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: on

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16 SABCL, volumes 22, 26: a process

CWSA, volumes 28, 35: a mental process

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17 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: yet may pull down or be seized midway, or

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18 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: by an overmind influx, a rapid

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19 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: higher Silence

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20 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: effect sudden, instantaneous, out of

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21 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: above, by a response from

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22 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: by an

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23 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: the

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24 CWSA, volume 28: question

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25 CWSA, volume 28: what is the

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26 CWSA, volume 28: is it

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27 CWSA, volume 28: more precisely

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28 CWSA, volume 28: is it

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29 CWSA, volume 28: epithets

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30 CWSA, volume 28: expressing – though not without the use of metaphor – the same

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31 CWSA, volume 28: had gone through the

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32 CWSA, volume 28: realistic and accurate

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33 CWSA, volume 28: abstract

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34 CWSA, volume 28: his vision or his experience

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35 CWSA, volume 28: It

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36 CWSA, volume 28: subtly

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37 CWSA, volume 28: this supersensuously

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38 CWSA, volume 28: the spiritual – or the occult – consciousness

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39 CWSA, volume 28: a paucity, looseness or vagueness of language

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40 In CWSA, volume 28 after this setnence there is this one:

Apart from that, all new phenomenon, new discovery, new creation calls for the aid of metaphor and image.

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41 CWSA, volume 28: limited

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42 CWSA, volume 28: still when

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43 CWSA, volume 28: is

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44 CWSA, volume 28: quite

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45 CWSA, volume 28: as precise, as positive as if

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46 CWSA, volume 28: impalpable activity

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47 CWSA, volume 28: rather an

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48 CWSA, volume 28: of a substance – an extended

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49 CWSA, volume 28: physically material

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50 CWSA, volume 28: as perceptible, as tangible and controllable

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51 CWSA, volume 28: this

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52 CWSA, volume 28: That repose, vacancy of movement, is for many a

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53 CWSA, volume 28: and all

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54 CWSA, volume 28: feeling

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55 CWSA, volume 28: one sees, when one looks

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56 CWSA, volume 28: that

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57 CWSA, volume 28: the

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58 CWSA, volume 28: is still in

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59 CWSA, volume 28: formless but potentially formative vibration

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60 CWSA, volume 28: formed

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61 CWSA, volume 28: movement or emotional movement

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62 CWSA, volume 28: these vibrations are

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63 CWSA, volume 28: then one

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64 CWSA, volume 28: subtler disturbances

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65 CWSA, volume 28: too are

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66 CWSA, volume 28: an

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67 CWSA, volume 28: stillness which is not the lesser quietude of repose and also

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68 CWSA, volume 28: as the

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69 CWSA, volume 28: This positiveness of experience is my justification for these epithets “still, clear”; but the other epithet, “bright”, links itself to a still more sensible phenomenon of the subtly concrete. For in the brightness I describe there is another additional element that is connected with the phenomenon of Light well known and common to mystic experience.

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70 CWSA, volume 28: inner Light of which the mystics speak

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71 CWSA, volume 28: a

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72 CWSA, volume 28: reflection

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73 CWSA, volume 28: Light that comes even before

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74 CWSA, volume 28: even without any actual manifestation of the Light, is sufficient for the mind’s openness to the greater consciousness beyond mind – just as we can see by the dawn-light before the sunrise; for it brings to the still mind, which might otherwise remain just still and at peace and nothing more, a capacity

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75 CWSA, volume 28: to the Truth it

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76 CWSA, volume 28: point

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77 CWSA, volume 28: The same word in their mouths may denote the products

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78 CWSA, volume 28: This ambiguity in the expression is a cause of much non-understanding and disagreement, while even a surface agreement may be a thin bridge or crust over a

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Current publication:

[Largest or earliest found passage: ]
 
Sri Aurobindo. Letters of Sri Aurobindo: In 4 Series.- Forth Series [On Yoga].- Bombay: Sri Aurobindo Sircle, 1951.- 652 p.

Other publications:

1. 226.
Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Yoga // SABCL.- Volume 22. (≈ 28 vol. of CWSA).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1971.- 502 p.

2. 7644.
Sri Aurobindo. On Himself // SABCL.- Volume 26. (≈ 35 vol. of CWSA)

3. 8581.
Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Himself and the Ashram // CWSA.- Volume 35. (≈ 26 vol. of SABCL).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2011.- 658 p.

4. 10439.
Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Yoga. I // CWSA.- Volume 28. (≈ 22 vol. of SABCL).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2012.- 590 p.

5. 22116.
þ // Sri Aurobindo: Archives & Research: a biannual journal (1977-1994).- Volume 1, No1 (1977, April).- 91 p.

6. 23119.
Sri Aurobindo. On Himself and on the Mother // Sri Aurobindo International University Centre Collection.– Volume 1.– First Edition.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1953.– 782 p.