Letters to a Young Disciple

Today I felt as if someone other than myself was carrying out my actions. Of course I was there, but in the background. Was it not the Mother’s Force?

What you say amounts only to some glimpse of the cosmic Force behind all the actions.

Without the emptiness there can be no fullness.

How is it possible to have fullness and emptiness at the same time?

I meant that in the higher consciousness that simultaneous experience was quite natural. It is the same with complete rest and full activity, — experience of infinite impersonality and of the true person. All these (and many other things also) are to the mind incompatible, but in the higher consciousness they go together.

Since this morning there is a warm intoxication fringed with cooler peace. What is this simultaneous experience of the two contraries?

It is the Agni and the peace together.

Why do I have a station in the forehead centre instead of in the heart?

The station in the heart centre is for the psychic opening. What you are at present doing is the upward opening to the Self and for that the inner mind centre is the proper station.

Since the day before yesterday there is a feeling of a strong Force existing not only within me but around me up to a foot’s distance. The form of the force is very dense.

That is good — it must be the beginning of being conscious beyond the body.

Is it always necessary for us to understand what the Mother’s Force is doing in us for the progress of our Yoga?

Plenty of people progress rapidly without understanding what the Force is doing — they simply observe and describe and say “I leave all to the Mother”. Eventually knowledge and understanding come.

What is the meaning behind the Mother’s giving us flowers — I mean, what does she try to do to us?

Simply to put the power indicated upon you if you are willing to receive it. It is a progress suggested and offered.

What do you express through your poetry?

I am expressing spiritual truth or spiritual experience. It ought to be possible to read with the inner consciousness looking on and, as it were, seeing the act of reading. In the condition of absolute inner silence I was making speeches and conducting a newspaper, but all that got itself done without any thought entering my mind or the silence being in the least disturbed or diminished.

When you give us the red lotus which is the symbol of Sri Aurobindo, we receive from you the consciousness of the Supreme, don’t we?

I cannot give the consciousness of the Supreme, for who would be capable of receiving it? — When I give the red lotus I establish simply a relation between the sadhaks and Sri Aurobindo — or rather I renew this relation.

... when an impulse — desire for food or sex-urge or anything else — arises, should not one let it spread in full in oneself so that one might offer all of it to the Mother and aspire for its transmutation?

If you do that, the impulse may spread so far as to take hold of you and master you. If a wrong impulse comes, you must reject it as soon as you become aware of it.