Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Sadhana in the Ashram

Conversion, Realisation and Transformation

Today the Mother spoke to me of “conversion of consciousness” as distinct from “transformation of physical nature”. Pointing to me she said, as for “the conversion of consciousness, it is there”. Did she mean, by implication, that all those who have gathered round Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have this “conversion of consciousness” — perhaps in varying degrees?

No. Those who come here have an aspiration and a possibility; something in their psychic being pushes and if they follow it, they will arrive; but that is not conversion. Conversion is a definite turning of the being away from lower things towards the Divine.

Can it be further explained in terms of the psychic being and its relation to the instrumental (nature) being?

It is certainly the psychic being turning the nature definitively Godwards, but the transformation has still to be worked out in the nature.

Or can it be said that whoever has some aspiration for the Light or Truth or God vaguely, has some sort of conversion of consciousness, for the reason that he has come to the Ashram and lives here?

No. Aspiration can lead hereafter to conversion; but aspiration is not conversion.

Mother spoke of three different things: conversion, the turning of the soul decisively towards the Divine,— inner realisation of the Divine,— transformation of the nature. The first two can happen swiftly and suddenly and once for all, the third always takes time and cannot be done at one stroke, in a moment. One may become aware of a rapid change in this or that detail of the transformation, but even this is a rapid result of a long working.

3 September 1937