Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Help and Guidance

Help through Writing and through Other Means [4]

Sometimes I think it would be better not to ask you questions about my difficulties, but simply to state them. But I find that if I can’t put things in the form of questions, I hardly write anything.

Out of one thousand mental questions and answers there are only one or two here and there that are really of any dynamic assistance — while a single inner response or a little growth of consciousness will do what those thousand questions and answers could not do. The Yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence. To state your condition, experiences etc. and open to the help is far more important than question-asking — especially the questions about why and how which your physical mind so persistently puts.

I have realised that if we surrender ourselves to you once and open inwardly, you pour into us as much knowledge as we can hold.

What I write usually helps only the mind and that too very little, for people do not really understand what I write — they put their own constructions on it. The inner help is quite different and there can be no comparison with it, for it recreates the substance of the consciousness, not the mind only.

4 June 1936