Chapter 3Extracts from Letters to the Mother and Paul Richard, 1911–c. 1922 · Draft of a Letter

These periods of stagnation always conceal work below the surface which produces some advance afterwards.

16 September 1915

[5]

Reflection, where there is no directing voice, thought or impulse, does not carry one any farther. It only makes the mind travel continuously the round of [uncertain]1 possibilities.

These things really depend on ourselves much more than on outside factors. If we do not raise difficulties by our thoughts and mental constructions or do not confirm them if they rise, if we have the calm and peace within and there is not that in us which excites the enemy to throw himself on us, then outward possibilities, usually, will not concretise themselves.

Our business at present is to gather spiritual force, calm knowledge and joy regardless of the adverse powers and hap-penings around us so that when our work really begins we shall be able to impose ourselves on the material world in which our work lies. (This [I] am slowly doing: you, I think, more rapidly.)

I am always of the opinion that the internal must precede the external, otherwise whatever work we attempt beyond our internal powers and knowledge is likely to fail or be broken.

This is precisely my present struggle to get outside the circle of forces and possibilities into the light of the Truth, the vijnana.

Abdul Baha’s prevision is possibly correct, but at present it seems to me to be put into too rigid a form. A centre of light, not necessarily translated into the terms of a physical grouping, but in which a few can stand, an increasing circle of luminosity into which more & more can enter, and outside the twilight world 1 MS (copy) certain struggling with the light, this seems to be the inevitable course.

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We live still more in the reflection of the light than in the light itself, and until we get nearer to the centre we cannot know.

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The Scheme that was sent me seems to me to be a mental construction formed largely under the influence of the environment. I do not think it could be put into practice; for the world is not ready and if any such thing were attempted it would not be loyally initiated or loyally executed. . . . A change in the heart of mankind, a new heart, would be necessary before any such scheme could at all serve the great ends we contemplate. I would prefer a general breaking up to any premature formation, however harmful this dissolution might be.

18 November 1915

[6]

The experience you have described is Vedic in the real sense,2 though not one which would easily be recognised by the modern systems of Yoga which call themselves [Vedic]3. It is the union of the “Earth” of the Veda and Purana with the divine Principle, an earth which is said to be above our earth, that is to say, the physical being and consciousness of which this world and the body are only images. But the modern Yogas hardly recognise the possibility of a material union with the Divine.

31 December 1915

[7]

The difficulties you find in the spiritual progress are common to us all. In this Yoga the progress is always attended with these relapses into the ordinary mentality until the whole being is so remoulded that it can no longer be affected either by any 2 See The Mother, Prayers and Meditations (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2003), pp. 311–12; entry of 26 November 1915. 3 MS (copy) Yogic