Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Remarks on the Current State of the Sadhana, 1931 – 1947

1934 [12]

What did you imply when you wrote to me that I was in the physical consciousness? Did you mean that I am living like an animal or vegetating like a plant and did you suggest that I should come out of the physical consciousness and live on the mental level?

I am myself living in the physical consciousness and have been for several years. At first it was a plunge into the physical — into all its obscurity and inertia, afterwards it was a station in the physical open to a higher and higher consciousness and slowly having fought out in it the struggle of transformation of the physical consciousness with a view to prepare it for the supramental change.

It is possible to go back to the mental level where one receives all the mental realisations readily enough if the mind is open and bright. But it is not the course that the sadhana usually follows.

29 December 1934