Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Inner Vicissitudes and Difficulties

Stoppage of Sadhana [4]

No joy, no energy. Don’t like to read or write — as if a dead man were walking about. Do you understand the position? Any personal experience?

I quite understand; often had it myself devastatingly. That’s why I always advise people who have it to cheer up and buck up.

Since one has to pass the time somehow, what is one to do? To bear the Cross gloomily, hoping for a resurrection?

To cheer up, buck up and the rest if you can, saying “Rome was not built in a day” — if you can’t, gloom it through till the sun rises and the little birds chirp and all is well.

Looks however as if you were going through a training in vairagya. Don’t much care for vairagya myself — always avoided the beastly thing, but had to go through it partly, till I hit on samata as a better trick. But samata is difficult, vairagya is easy, only damnably gloomy and uncomfortable.

3 June 1936