Sri Aurobindo
Autobiographical Notes
and Other Writings of Historical Interest
Part Two. Letters of Historical Interest
2.Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life
1911–1928
To Barindra Kumar Ghose and Others, 1922–1928
To Barindra Kumar Ghose [4]1
30th December
1922
Arya Office
Pondicherry
Dear Barin,
First about Krishnashashi. I do not think you are quite
right about him at least in the idea that he is responsible for the recent
undesirable manifestations at your place. He is evidently what is called a
psychic sensitive and one of a very high, though 
not perhaps the first order. It is not his fault, I think, that things went
wrong recently. These sensitives require a constant protection and guidance from
someone who has both power on the psychic and vital plane and knowledge of the
science of these planes. There is none such among you. Especially when he is in
certain psychic conditions such as those into which he has recently entered, he
needs absolutely this protection. He cannot then possibly protect himself
because the very nature of these conditions is an absolute passivity and
openness to the psychic and psycho-vital influences. It is useless to ask him at
that time to exercise his judgment or his power of rejection. For that would
immediately make the condition itself impossible. If the psychic and
psycho-vital influences are of the right kind, all is well and very remarkable
results can be obtained. If they are bad the condition becomes dangerous. The
only way to secure the exclusion of the bad influences is for someone else with
psychic power to keep a wall of protection round him at the time. The sort of
trance in which the breath diminishes, the tongue goes in, the body is curved
upward and psycho-physical movements begin in the body is one which I know
perfectly well and there is nothing essentially wrong about it. It may be
brought about by a very high influence and equally by a bad one, or being
brought about by the former, it can be misused or attacked by the latter. If
there had been a protection about him exercised by one who had knowledge and
confidence in his own psychic and vital force, the untoward influence evidenced
by the cries, grimaces, etc. would not have come in to spoil this stage. Let me
add that these are not forces of our lower universal but an intervention from a
foreign and hostile vital world.
In the present circumstances the proper line for
Krishnashashi is to postpone this kind of psychic development, I mean the later
ones – especially those of a physical character. He must understand the
character of his higher psychic experiences. These, including the voice, are not
direct from the supra-mental but psychic and intuitive on the whole mental plane
from the higher mind downwards. That is no reason to belittle them. 
Only in the transcription in his mind there is a mixture of his own
mental and other suggestions which is almost inevitable at the beginning. He
should now without interrupting his higher psychic development give more
attention to a self-controlled meditation and mental enlargement. In one letter
he speaks of interrupting the reading of “Arya” from the fear of growing too
intellectual. This was an erroneous suggestion of his own mind. Let him by all
means read and study these things. Of course in this kind of mental enlargement
and self-controlled meditation there are dangers and likelihood of mistakes as
in all the rest of Yoga. But I think it is what he needs at the present stage.
The progress would be slow but it is likely to be more safe, and he can resume
the full psychic development when the necessary conditions can be provided. He
should also turn his will towards mental and vital purification. There is often
much misunderstanding about passivity and self-surrender. It does not mean that
there should not remain in the earlier stages any kind of choice, self-control
or will towards certain things which are seen to be needed rather than others.
Only they must be subject to a confidence and free openness to a higher
guidance, which will respond to this choice and will in us if the choice and
will are right and sincere.
Next with regard to the hostile manifestations which I
observe to be of a very low vital and physico-vital character. I may observe
that although there is a real force behind them many of them are not of a real
character, that is to say, the faces seen and touches felt were not, in all
cases, of real vital beings but only forms suggested and created out of the
stuff of your own surrounding vital atmosphere and can easily be dismissed by
refusing to accept their reality or to admit their formation. It may be that
some particular person in your group opened the way for them but they need not
necessarily have had such a personal cause. The real cause may have been the
coming together in meditation of so many yet undeveloped people carrying with
them a very mixed atmosphere. When that happens or even when there is a general
meditation, a chakra, hostile forces are attracted and try to break in.
There ought to 
be someone in the group who
during the meditation protects the circle. If the meditation is of a psychic
character the protection must be psychic on the vital plane. Mirra’s experience
is that the protection must take the form of a white light constantly kept round
the circle. But even this is not enough as the forces will attack constantly and
try to find a gap in the protection; there must therefore be round the white
light a covering of dense purple light sufficiently opaque for these beings not
to be able to see through it. It is not sufficient to have this light in the
mental or psychic levels. It must be brought down into the vital and fill it,
because it is in the vital that there is the attack. Further, nobody must go out
of his body during the meditation (I mean the vital being must not go out, the
mental can always do it) or psychically out of the circle. But there is one
thing that must be noticed. That if the manifestations occur in spite of all
there must be no fear in the minds of those who become aware of them. It is by
creating fear through terrible forms and menaces that the hostile beings prevent
the Sadhaka from crossing over the threshold between the physical and vital
world and it is also by creating fear and alarm that they are able to break in
on the vital being of the body. Courage and unalterable confidence are the first
necessity of the Sadhaka.
I observe that in your Calcutta centre the Sadhana
seems to have taken a different turn from that in the Krishnagore centre. It
seems to be marked by an immediate opening and rapid development of the
psychical consciousness and psychical phenomena. This turn has great
possibilities but also by itself great dangers. In the complete Sadhana there
are two powers necessary, the masculine, Purusha or Ishwara power
coming down in knowledge, light, calm, strength, wide consciousness from above
and the feminine, Nature or Ishwari power opening in receptivity,
passivity, psychic sensibility, the responsiveness on all the planes of the
being from below. The first by itself tends to be predominantly mental or
mentalised intuitive and afterwards mentalised supramental. It is slow in action
but sure and safe, only there is often a difficulty of opening up the separate
psychic, vital and physical being to the illumination and change. 
The second by itself is rapid, sensitive, full of extraordinary and
striking experiences but apt in the absence of psychic or occult powers to be
chaotic, uneven and open to many dangers. It is when both are present and act
upon each other in the being that the Sadhana is likely to be most perfect.
I think you should insist in your Calcutta centre on
attention being given to what I call the Purusha side, that is to say, a basis
of deep calm, strength, equality, wide consciousness and purity in the mental
being, and as the vital and physical open, also in the vital and physical being.
If that is attended to and successfully developed the play of the psychic, vital
and physical experiences will be more steady, ordered and safe.
As to the three photographs you have sent I give you
Mirra’s comments in inverted commas with my additions afterwards.
1. Kanai
“An extremely interesting head, highly psychic
personality but he must be careful about the physical as this type is likely to
burn up the body in the intensity of its psychic developments.”
The basis of calm, strength and purity brought down
into the physical consciousness without any hasty trepidations or unhealthy
vibrations will secure the physical safety and is here very indispensable.
2. Girin
“An intellectual and philosophic temperament but there
is something heavy below.”
I think that the heaviness is in the vital being and
the physical mind and may cause considerable obstruction but if these two can be
cleared and illuminated there may be behind a fund of conservative energy and
steadiness which will be useful.
3. Jagat Prasanna
“Very dull. I don’t know whether anything can be given
to him.”
I seem to find behind the eyes a psychic capacity of a
very low kind and in the bodily vitality something dark and impure which may be
a mediumistic element for the lower psycho-vital forces. If he sat in the circle
or meditated in the house that might explain the irruption of undesirable
phenomena. This is 
my impression about the man.
But I am not quite sure. If he is to do any Yoga it should rather be of the old
kind and especially a discipline of self-purification. Passivity of any kind in
his case would be dangerous.
One or two things I should add suggested by your
remarks on Krishnashashi. All should understand that the true direct supramental
does not come at the beginning but much later on in the Sadhana. First the
opening up and illumination of the mental, vital and physical beings; secondly,
the making intuitive of the mind, through will etc. and development of the
hidden soul consciousness progressively replacing the surface consciousness;
thirdly, the supramentalising of the changed mental, vital and physical beings
and finally the descent of the true supramental and the rising into the
supramental plane.
This is the natural order of the Yoga. These stages may
overlap and intermix, there may be many variations, but the last two can only
come in an advanced state of the progress. Of course the Supramental Divine
guides this Yoga throughout but it is first through many intermediary planes;
and it cannot easily be said of anything that comes in the earlier periods that
it is the direct or full supramental. To think so when it is not so may well be
a hindrance to progress.
As to what you say about an unhinged and unsound
element in Krishnashashi, this is a probable explanation. The nature of this
kind of psychic sensitives is complex and is full of many delicate springs
easily touched from behind the veil; hence the sensitiveness; but also easily
twisted owing to their very delicacy. Something may have been thus twisted in
his nature. In that case great care must be taken. It must be found out what it
is and the thing be put right without any too rough handling.
I shall write to you separately about Arun’s money and
Sarojini.
Aurobindo.