Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Sadhana before Coming to Pondicherry in 1910
Early Experiences

Signs of Yogic Opening [4]

If seeing the Divine depended on the developed occult faculty, how do you explain people’s seeing Ram, Krishna, Shiva, etc. in you at Darshan? — I mean by people who have apparently no such faculty. We’ve heard about Krishna presenting himself before small boys, taking them to school, etc. — fables?

With many people the faculty of this kind of occult vision is the first to develop when they begin sadhana. With others it is there naturally or comes on occasions without any practice of Yoga. But with people who live mainly in the intellect (a few excepted) this faculty is not usually there by nature and most have much difficulty in developing it. It was so even with me.

What I understand of the matter is that if you intend that somebody should see the Divine in you — be it a blind man — he is able to see. No faculty is required.

It would be something of a miracle to see things without the faculty of seeing. We don’t deal much in miracles of that kind.

30 July 1935