Chapter 31Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga · Inner Detachment Preferable to Outer Withdrawal

Inner withdrawal is always much better than physical withdrawal.

* I say that all that [no vital relations with anyone] is magnificent, if you can do it. But can’t you see that it is the inward change that is wanted — the inward plunge? These dramatic outward breaks lead only to new joinings. Neither you nor she can keep it up. If there comes a strong ingoing movement, then it is another matter. That of itself would make it possible to readjust the relations or to withdraw if necessary. But splashings about on the surface — will it lead to anything? It does not look like it.

* It is not a physical retirement that is needed, but an inner detachment from the mental formations and vital desires. To find the real self above and within and live in that, not in the mind’s conceptions or the vital’s reactions. These must be observed and looked at not as one’s own but as movements of a surface ignorant nature.