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 [5]

“In this Yoga... there can be no place for vital relations or interchanges with others.... Still worse would it be if this interchange took the form of a sexual relation...” [p. 70]. The first of these sentences seems to refer to relations between men and men or women and women. But didn’t you once say that ordinary interchanges between people are almost unavoidable? Moreover, almost everyone here [in the Ashram] has friends. Do friendships fall in the category of “vital relations”?

I suppose I must have been referring to the interchanges which are the result of vital relations. The involuntary vital or other involuntary interchange which takes place by the mere fact of meeting, talking or being together are those which are practically unavoidable. That is to say, they are avoidable only when one has become entirely conscious and is able to put a wall of Force around oneself which nothing can penetrate except the things which one wills to accept. But the reference in the passage cannot be to these, but to the interchange due to vital attachments, passions, vital love or hate etc.

Friendships can be vital relations if there is strong attachment or desire but the friendship which is the nature of comradeship or mental affinity or of a psychic character need not be a vital relation.

4 January 1937