Chapter 22Draft Letters, 1926–1928 · To and about Marie Potel

chosen vessel was a condition for its perfect manifestation on the earth plane.

When you came here the Mother perceived that you must at first be left alone to your own movement and the discipline imposed on other sadhakas was not laid upon you. All she did was to bring down supramental light and power in you and to open to them the different centres. This was rapidly and on the whole successfully done.

But to open the centres is only a beginning, for then comes one of the most difficult periods for the disciple. The consciousness opens not only to the true Light and Power, but to all kinds of experiences and all sorts of influences from all the planes and from all sources and quarters. There is a period of intense and overpowering internal activity of formation, vision and movements of new consciousness and new power. If then the disciple is carried away [

]6 by the brilliance and splendour and delight of his experiences, he can easily wander far from the highest way. But the Forces and Beings that are behind them are sometimes adverse Forces, sometimes the lesser Gods of the mental and vital planes. In either case they try to occupy and use the instrument, but for their own purpose, for the play of the Ideas and Forces they represent, not the highest Truth. There are only three safeguards for the disciple. One is to call down first the eternal peace, calm and silence of the Divine into the mind and the vital and physical being. In that peace and silence there is a true possibility that the mental and vital formations will fall to rest and the supramental creation can have free space. The second safeguard is to remain entirely detached even from the most absorbing experiences and observe them without being carried away by their brilliance. The power of discernment and discrimination will slowly form from above and he will be able to distinguish between the higher truth and the lower truth as between truth and falsehood. The third safeguard is to follow implicitly the instructions of the spiritual guides who have already trod the path and to follow their guidance.

6 MS during these experiences

This is the ordeal into which you have entered; but unhappily you seem to have departed from the guidance of the Mother in the crucial point. You seem to have deliberately rejected the peace and silence of the vital being in the fear that it would bring stagnation. As a result the strong habit [of] vital formation came into play and you began to call down lights and powers and build things in [yourself]7 in your own way. In this condition, when the disciple is not accustomed to complete trust in his masters the one thing that can be done is to stand aside and let the disciple take his own way, for to insist is likely to raise in him doubt and revolt and decide him in the opposite way. According to whatever may be the supreme decision in his case, he will feel the need of guidance and return to the straight way or he will depart on his own path wherever his inner destiny calls him.

If you have not an entire confidence in us, are not prepared to submit absolutely to our guidance, if the supramental Truth is not your one aim, if you are not prepared to go through the slow, difficult and often painful process of self-emptying new creation by which alone it can form in you, putting away all pride, self-will and excessive self-confidence, or if you think that with you is the Truth and not with us, then obviously you can draw no benefit from staying here. It is for you to choose.

One thing I would say in ending is that you seem to have formed very erroneous ideas about the work I have undertaken, as for instance when you imagine that I am working by spiritual means to bring about a worldwide conflagration and war between the white and the coloured races. This is a sheer error. violent external means for a spiritual work. As for the division of the human race according to their colour, it is in my view the play of an obscure ignorance and I would never dream of admitting it as a basis for my action. If any such world catastrophe happened it would be the result of Karmic forces and far from helping would be a serious hindrance to my work. My work is one of 7 MS yourselves spiritual creation not of physical destruction. If anything has to disappear or change, it will do so by the turning on it of the supramental light and Force and what has to change must be decided by that omniscient Light and omnipotent Force and not by the human mind and its narrow ideas and false desires.

[5]

[13 October 1927]

Mr.s. Sloane wrote to me from America asking if she could come here to stay and practise Yoga. She was recommended by Mr.. Ralph [deBit]8, her spiritual guide, the head of a movement in America called the School of Sacred Science, who had written one or two letters to me in connection with his work and my books. I wrote giving her permission to come.

She delayed her coming because she had quarrelled with Mr.. [deBit]9 and was busy trying to destroy his work and publishing charges against him which on enquiry evidently were not sub-stantiated as the proceedings against him came to nothing. This is the same manoeuvre that she has repeated here.

When she arrived, I had already decided to retire into seclusion and could not see her. She has seen me only once on August 15th and has never had any talk with me. She was not at any time admitted as a member of the Asram, is acquainted only with visits to Madame Potel and knows nothing personally about the Asram. Throughout she has been kept apart on probation. But it was found that she was a woman who took her desires and imaginations and the forms she gave to them for truth and fact and finally she developed such violent delusions that it became necessary to give her up for good. When she realised by my silence that she had been rejected, she entered into an almost insane fury and sent word that she was staying here in order to crush me and destroy my work, that with the help of the 8 MS De Bit 9 MS De Bit British consul she would get me sent to prison etc. Her present campaign is her way of realising this programme.

Her other allegations, mostly sheer inventions or grotesque distortions mixed with her own fancies, hardly need an answer. As to the charge that I am carrying on politics under the cover of Yoga, it seems to be the development of certain visions and imaginations of the future in which she began to indulge some time ago — visions of a world war and troops entraining at Baghdad, prophecies of a war between England and the Islamic peoples, etc; she had even fixed the date for next year. She had been told at the beginning that my work had no connection with politics and that I did not approve of the catastrophic and childish violences to which her mind seemed very ready to turn when it meddled with politics and the future of peoples. At first therefore she took these visions on her own account and did not mix me with them; but after the Mother had ceased to receive her, she suddenly wrote among her other experiences (e.g. of having a God glowing and tingling inside her) that she had seen that I was an incarnation of Shiva and discovered by intuition that I was working by my spiritual forces to bring about a war between the white and the coloured races next spring. This is all the foundation she has for her statement.

There is no connection between my spiritual work and politics. Not only so but those like Anilbaran Ray who were political workers or leaders outside, had to give up politics before they were taken into the Asram. There is not a single fact or act of mine, that can support any statement to the contrary. If Sloane or anyone else wants any evidence better than her intuitions to establish her charge, they will first have to invent it.

Sri Aurobindo Ghose Now you have seen practically all that needed to be seen with an entire sincerity and a true unsparing vision. The root was there in the lower vital; it was that one among your formations of personality on the vital level which brought in a persistent element of insincerity and vitiated precisely in the way you have described your nature and, consequently, your aspiration and sadhana.

This part of the work has been well done. Now it only remains for you to cast out this thing finally with all its effects from your mind and life and physical being so that there may be clear room for the true Person to descend and occupy all the place. Do your part and the full Power and Grace will be upon you.

[1]

Your experiences in themselves are good and free from the old mixture; but the workings of your mind upon them are not yet correct or clear. In the last page you have tried to generalise and to philosophise your experience; immediately your old mind has come between the truth and you and the thought and expression are wrong and confused and quite full of errors. It is better to wait, to gather inner experience, to allow the sense of the truth to grow in you — in that way, the time will sooner come when a true supramental revelation (and not the mental attempt at the thing) can find its exact thought and word. When you try now, the old mind begins to play and blunder.

Why “pourtant”? The “essence” is always more easily seized by the heart and the internal sense than by the mind — for the heart is in touch with the psychic and the internal sense is the essential action of mind as opposed to its external and formal action. Both of these are nearer to a knowledge by identity or by direct communion than the active mind, and the “essence” can only be seized by identity or by direct communion. The active mind cannot do it except by falling silent and leaning on the psychic and on the internal sense.

The universal Mental is not the “stuff and body of the Father-Mother”. No doubt what you mean is that the universal mental like the universal vital and physical is one form of the expressive substance of the Divine, but behind is another and a spiritual substance which is the true essence. If you want an image, it would be nearer the truth to say that this spiritual substance is the very stuff and body of the Divine and mind, life and matter are lesser sheaths, coverings or outer folds.

To describe the “essence” as “l’immaterielle mati`ere” is neither very clear nor very helpful. If you mean by matter substance, in one sense or in one line of experience all is substance — spirit, being, consciousness, ananda are substance; mind, life and matter are substance. Not only so, but all are one substance in its different powers and various degrees. All these except Matter can be described as immaterial substance.

Do you mean that this essence or spiritual substance is the true Material from which all is constituted? It is substance of the Self and Brahman; it is within everything, above everything and when it descends upon one as true being, as consciousness, as Ananda, it enables the soul to separate itself from mind, life and matter, to face them instead of being involved in them and to act upon them and change them. If this is what you have felt and seen, it is true; but your language does not make it clear.

But mark that much depends on the power on which it is manifested. If it is only the spiritual substance within the universal Mental, it can raise the mental to its own highest powers, but it cannot do more. Only if it manifests as the spiritual substance in its supramental power, can the consciousness, power, Ananda it brings effect the transformation which is the object of our Yoga.

Afterwards you mix up many different aspects of the Divine and make a great confusion. No doubt all are the One and all are the Mother, but to mix them up confuses rather than clarifies the oneness. In any case the “essence” is not the Mother uniting the Father to the human sons! It is through the spiritual substance that the Jiva feels his oneness with the Ishwara and with the Mother from whom he came and it is the Mother who shows is more than the essence; Self and spirit manifest the Supreme, manifest the Mother, are their first embodying substance if you like; but they are more than self and spirit.

Then what is it that is spirit of spirit and substance of substance? [Is it the “essence”?]1 But all this seems rather too much to say of any however exalted “essence”! Either you are extending your experience beyond its proper limits or you are deforming it in your language.

It is the one and dual Supreme who is Spirit of the spirit — the supreme Spirit, supreme Brahman, supreme Ishwara, supreme Shakti, supreme Purusha with supreme Prakriti. The Supreme is the one Being; it would be absurd to describe him as an essence within the universal Mental. The clumsy abstract language of the dry intellect soon gets out of place when you are trying to go beyond a spiritualised mental experience of these things. You must find a more intimate and living language.

Again who is the Father here and who the Mother and what are the human sons doing in the affair?

The one and dual Supreme manifests as the Supreme Shakti. She is the transcendent Mother who stands above and behind 1 Sentence cancelled without substitution in MS. — Ed.

all the creation and supports it and stands too above and behind each plane of the creation. She is contained in the Supreme and supported in all she does and creates by the Supreme; but she carries too the Supreme within her.

Here in the creation she manifests the dual Supreme whom she carries within her as the Ishwara and the Mahashakti and also as the dual power of Purusha-Prakriti. The Mahashakti comes out of the Ishwara and does the work of the creation, supported by the Ishwara.2

Man, the ignorant embodied mental being, begins to get free from his ignorance when he draws back from half-conscious substance of mind to conscious substance of Spirit. This is an overwhelming and absorbing experience to him and he cannot get beyond it. He speaks of it as his Self and gets in it some experience of his oneness with That which is beyond him, the Supreme. Yet what the Supreme is he does not really know and, so long as he is man, he cannot know. He tries to describe it or its aspects by abstract mental terms. He regards this experience of Self or Spirit as if it were the ultimate experience. Most absurdly, he tries to get through self to the Supreme by denying or getting rid of the Mother. Or else he regards her only as a convenience for getting united to the “Father”, ie an exclusive Purusha side of the supreme. All this is reflected in your language which is a confused repetition of the language of the more ignorant schools of Vedanta.

The Supreme is not exclusively the Purusha. One has to herself is not merely Prakriti; she is the supreme and universal Shakti and contains in herself Purusha as well as Prakriti. And, secondly, the self or “essence” as experienced by man, that is to say, by the spiritualised mind, is not the ultimate experience. As that which uses the body is more than the body, so more than the Self is That of which the self is the spiritual substance.

2 Sri Aurobindo struck through this and the two preceding paragraphs. Later he took up the ideas and some of the language of the second paragraph in Part 6 of The Mother. — Ed.

Universal Mind is not “the stuff and body” of the Father- Mother. At most it is like life and matter, one form of expressive substance, a sheath or covering. It is rather the spiritual substance that could be imaged as the stuff and body of the Divine.3

I presume that by your “essence” you mean the self or spiritual substance of things. But why do you call it immaterial Matter? Life and mind could as well be described in that language — they can be felt or seen as immaterial substances.

Again what is this “own being” of yours to which you are united by your heart-centre and which unites you to the universal Mind? Is it the mental or the psychic being or what is it? All this is confused and vague in the last degree. “Thy own being” is an expression which would usually mean the Jiva who is soul and spirit and has no more special connection with the universal Mental than with universal life or Matter.

If the “essence” is the spiritual substance in which the Divine manifests and which is the true substance of all things, the one substance of which mind, life and body are lesser degrees, then no doubt that when it pours down as true being, as consciousness, as Ananda enables not only to face the universal mental as also the universal vital and physical but to work upon them and transform them. But is this what you have seen or is it something else?

In any case the “essence” cannot be the Mother uniting the Divine Father to the human sons. It is through the spiritual substance that the unity with the Father and Mother is felt, because out of her spiritual substance the Mother has manifested her children. But the Divine and the Mother are surely something more than a spiritual substance.

3 This paragraph and the four that follow are reworkings of earlier paragraphs of this draft letter. — Ed.

[2]

Mira has shown me your letter. You seem to yield periodically to an attack of suggestions from an adverse force always of the same kind; yet each time, instead of seeing the source of the suggestions and rejecting them, you accept and are chiefly busy in justifying your wrong movements, always with the same morbid ideas and language about “m´efiance” and being “misunderstood” etc. When will you discover finally that these movements and expressions of this kind are not and cannot be part of the true consciousness, that they are and can only be the expression of something small, morbid, vitally weak and petty and obscure that was in your past nature, still clings and is used by the adverse Powers to pull you back from your progress?

There can be no question of “confidence” or want of confidence in these matters. We have only to see for ourselves what progress you make and where you stumble and deal with your Yoga according to the truth of what we see. You surely do not expect us to accept without examination your own estimate of yourself and of where you are.

The questions you asked Mira had no true connection with the vital-physical weakness of which you complain, nor can that kind of practice help you to transmit to the physical the exact light of Truth from the higher consciousness. It was the ignorant Mind in you which was attaching an undue importance to this “practical occultism” and it is the same mind which tries to connect two unconnected things. This mind in you makes the most fanciful mistakes and likes to cling to them even when they are pointed out to you. Thus it erected a sheer imagination about an “interior circle” from which you were excluded in the arrangement of places, took it as a true and “profound” impression and seems to want still to cling to its own falsehood after the plain and simple practical reason of the arrangement had been clearly told to you. It is because of this continued false activity of the mind that you were told to silence the mentality and keep yourself open to the Light alone. What is the use of answering