SITE OF SRI AUROBINDO & THE MOTHER
      
Home Page | Works | Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Letters

Fragment ID: 22116

See largest or earliest found fragment here

Sri Aurobindo — Unknown addressee

1934 (circa)

  Hide link-numbers of differed places

A&R.–  1977, April, pp. 61-64

I find nothing either to add or to object to in Professor Sorley’s comment on the still bright and clear mind; 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. But one thing perhaps needs to be kept in view – that this pure stillness of the mind is indeed 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, to quiet its own characteristic vibrations, to resist the obscuring fumes of a physical inertia which brings about a sleep or a torpor of the mind instead of its wakeful silence, that the thing can be done. This is indeed an ordinary process of the Yogic path of knowledge; but the same end can be brought about or automatically happen by other processes – for instance, by the descent from above of a great spiritual stillness imposing silence on the mind and heart, on the life stimuli, on 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 a mental process of one kind or another for the purpose which would normally mean a long labour and yet may pull down or be seized midway, or even at the outset, by an overmind influx, a rapid intervention or manifestation of the higher Silence, with an effect sudden, instantaneous, 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, by a response from That to which one aspires or by 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 the actual experience.

There is another question of some importance – what is the exact nature of this brightness, clearness, stillness, of what is it constituted, more precisely, is it merely a psychological condition or something more? Professor Sorley says these epithets are after all metaphors and he wants to express and succeeds in expressing – though not without the use of metaphor – 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 gone through the same experience, not only a more vivid, but a more realistic and accurate description of this inner state than any abstract language could give. It is true that metaphors, symbols, images are constant auxiliaries summoned by the mystic for the expression of his vision or his experience. It 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 subtly concrete, this supersensuously sensible reality of the phenomena of the spiritual – or the occult – 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 paucity, looseness or vagueness of language inadequate to the intensity of his experience. Apart from that, all new phenomenon, new discovery, new creation calls for the aid of metaphor and image. 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 limited flowing movement of light or of sound as well as of water.

But still when I speak of the mind’s brightness, clearness, stillness, I have no idea of calling metaphor to my aid; it is meant to be a description quite precise and positive – as precise, as 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 impalpable activity of the consciousness; it is rather an experience of a substance – an extended subtle substance in which there can be and are waves, currents, vibrations not physically material but still as definite, as perceptible, as tangible and 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 this mind-substance. That repose, vacancy of movement, is for many a sufficient mental silence. But, even in this repose of all thought movements and all movements of feeling, one sees, when one looks more closely at it, that the mind-substance is still in a constant state of very subtle formless but potentially formative 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 formed thought movement or emotional movement; for these vibrations are 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 then one in which these subtler disturbances too are no longer there. As they fall quiet one can feel an increasing stillness which is not the lesser quietude of repose and also a resultant clearness as palpable as the stillness and clearness of a physical atmosphere.

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. That inner Light of which the mystics speak 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 a reflection of this Light that comes even before the Light itself manifests – and, 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 of penetrability to the Truth it has to receive and harbour. I have emphasised this point 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 same word in their mouths may denote the products of two different grades of consciousness. 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 gulf of difference.

 

1 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. to object

Back

2 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. for it

Back

3 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. One

Back

4 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. this

Back

5 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. always

Back

6 CWSA, volumes 28, 35: for bringing

Back

7 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. or of

Back

8 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. or of

Back

9 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. the

Back

10 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. torpor

Back

11 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. for this is only the

Back

12 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. It can happen also by

Back

13 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. a

Back

14 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. and

Back

15 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. and

Back

16 SABCL, volumes 22, 26: a process

Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. process

Back

17 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. be seized

Back

18 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. by a rapid

Back

19 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. Silence

Back

20 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. effect out of

Back

21 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. above, from

Back

22 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. an

Back

23 SABCL, volumes 22, 26; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. its

Back

24 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. point

Back

25 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. the

Back

26 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. it is

Back

27 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. whether

Back

28 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. it is

Back

29 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. words

Back

30 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. expressing the same

Back

31 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. had half the

Back

32 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. accurate

Back

33 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. more abstract

Back

34 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. his experiences

Back

35 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. that

Back

36 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. subtle

Back

37 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. supersensuously

Back

38 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. that consciousness

Back

39 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. a force of expression

Back

40 This sentence is absent in SABCL, volume 22 and Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser.

Back

41 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. constant

Back

42 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. when

Back

43 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. was

Back

44 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. as

Back

45 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. as if

Back

46 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. a falling off or of some unseizable element

Back

47 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. an

Back

48 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. of an extended

Back

49 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. material

Back

50 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. perceptible, controllable

Back

51 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. the

Back

52 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. and that for many is a

Back

53 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. or

Back

54 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. feelings

Back

55 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. when one looks

Back

56 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. one sees that

Back

57 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. this

Back

58 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. is in

Back

59 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. vibration

Back

60 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. more formed

Back

61 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. movement

Back

62 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. it is

Back

63 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. one

Back

64 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. disturbances

Back

65 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. are

Back

66 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. the

Back

67 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. stillness and

Back

68 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. as one can perceive the

Back

69 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. What I describe as the brightness – there is another element – is resolved into a phenomenon of Light common in mystic experience.

Back

70 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. Light

Back

71 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. also a

Back

72 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. positive reflection

Back

73 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. Light before

Back

74 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. this reflection of the Light is a very necessary condition for a growing capacity

Back

75 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. by the Truth one

Back

76 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. part of the subject

Back

77 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. the products

Back

78 SABCL, volume 22; Letters of Sri Aurobindo. 4 Ser. and even in their agreement there is often a certain

Back

Current publication:

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

Other publications:

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

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

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

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

[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.