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 Bases of Yoga [1]

I do not remember the context of the sentence {{0}}quoted,[[“Also to merge the personal consciousness is not the first aim of the Yoga....” Bases of Yoga, p. 1.]] without which it is not possible to say what was meant by its not being the first aim of the Yoga. That may mean it is not the one to be pursued at the beginning, for first there should be the union in the heart of the personal being with the Divine. Or it may mean that it does not take priority or importance over all others. For both personality and impersonality have their claims and join together in the final realisation of what transcends and unites them both in one.

What has to disappear is the personal separative ego — the dualities of course also. The quickest though not the final way to extinguish ego is to make it disappear in impersonality. When all is one, universal or infinite then there is no place for the sense of ego — the dualities also begin to disappear. But the difficulty is that usually this realisation is confined to the mind or the above-mind while in the vital the stamp of ego remains and is felt in the life and its actions and reactions. Even if full impersonality comes in the vital and physical also, there remains the impossibility, all being impersonal, of having any relation with the Divine. What has therefore to be done is to lose the small personality in impersonality, but also by that loss to discover the true personality which is a portion of the Divine. This person is not separative and limited but is a universal individual, has the sense of uniting with all, but also the power of love and worship for the Divine. That is why I say that to merge the personal consciousness is not the first (or the whole) aim of the Yoga.

November 1935