Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

His Life and Attempts to Write about It
On His Published Prose Writings

Passages from Yogic Sadhan [6]

It is written in Yogic Sadhan: “Adharma is often necessary as a passage or preparation for passing from an undeveloped to a developed, a lower to a higher Dharma” [p. 1387]. How is this?

I don’t remember the context; but I suppose he means that when one has to escape from the lower Dharma, one has often to break it so as to arrive at a larger one. E.g. social duties, paying debts, looking after family, helping to serve your country, etc. etc. The man who turns to the spiritual life, has to leave all that behind him often and he is reproached by lots of people for his Adharma. But if he does not do this Adharma, he is bound for ever to the lower life — for there is always some duty there to be done — and cannot take up the spiritual dharma or can do it only when he is old and his faculties impaired. That is a point in instance.

14 September 1933