Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Sadhana before Coming to Pondicherry in 1910

Practice of Pranayama [2]

You have often inveighed against my using you as an argument against the Divine. But what is the history of your sadhana in your own words — a Herculean practice of Pranayam, concentration and what not and then after years and years of waiting the Grace of Brahman.

What a wooden head! What is the use of saying things if you deliberately misinterpret what I write? I said clearly that the pranayam brought me nothing of any kind of spiritual realisation. I had stopped it long before. The Brahman experience came when I was groping for some way, doing no sadhana at all, making no effort because I didn’t know what effort to make, all having failed. Then in three days I got an experience which most Yogis get only at the end of a long Yoga, got it without wanting or trying for it, got it to the surprise of Lele who was trying to get me something quite different. But I don’t suppose you are able to understand — so I say no more. I can only look mournfully at your ununderstanding pate.

24 January 1936