Chapter 41Early Spiritual Development · Meeting with Vishnu Bhaskar Lele

This is a little too strong. It was rather that it did not seem anything like a supreme aim or worth being pursued for its own sake; a solitary salvation leaving the world to its fate was felt as almost distasteful.

* Sri Aurobindo had acquired a measure of intellectual pre-eminence as a result of his stay in England; but that was not enough, and he was certainly not happy. His deeper perplex-ities remained; he did not know what exactly he should do to make himself useful to his countrymen or how he should set about doing it. He turned to yoga so that he might be enabled to clarify his own floating ideas and impulses and also, if possible, perfect the hidden instrument within.

There was no unhappiness. “Perplexities” also is too strong: Sri Aurobindo’s habit in action was not to devise beforehand and plan, but to keep a fixed purpose, watch events, prepare forces and act when he felt it to be the right moment. His first organ-ised work in politics (grouping people who accepted the idea of independence and were prepared to take up an appropriate action) was undertaken at an early age, but took a regular shape in or about 1902; two years later he began his practice of Yoga — not to clarify his ideas, but to find the spiritual strength which would support him and enlighten his way.

* Thus it may be said that Aravind Babu started taking interest in Yoga from 1898–99.

No. I did not start Yoga till about 1904.

* Such guidance as he received from his earliest gurus and such partial realisation as he was then able to achieve only reinforced his faith in yoga as the sole cure for his own “rooted sorrow” and for the manifold ills of humanity.

[Sri Aurobindo put a question mark against the word “gurus”, and wrote:] There was no resort to Yoga as a cure for sorrow;