{"id":1675,"date":"2013-07-13T01:36:27","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1675"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:36:27","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:36:27","slug":"23-early-experiences-vol-35-letters-on-himself-and-the-ashram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/35-letters-on-himself-and-the-ashram\/23-early-experiences-vol-35-letters-on-himself-and-the-ashram","title":{"rendered":"-23_Early Experiences.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n\t
\n\tEarly Experiences <\/font><\/b> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\t 
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nAn Experience in England
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tSomeone told me that it is written somewhere that you had a realisation in 1890 when you were 18. Is this true?
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n 
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tA realisation in 1890? It does not seem possible. There was something, though I was not doing Yoga and knew nothing
\nabout it in the year of my departure from England; I don’t remember which it was but probably 1892 \u00ad 3 which would make
\n20 years, not 18. I don’t remember anything special in 1890. Where did he see this written?
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\n22 August 1936 <\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t 
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nFirst Experience of the Self
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n 
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tFor, as to this “Grace”, we describe it in that way because we feel in the infinite Spirit or Self of existence a Presence or a
\nBeing, a Consciousness that determines \u2014  that is what we speak of as the Divine,
\n\u2014  not a separate Person, but the one Being of
\nwhom our individual self is a portion or a vessel. But it is not necessary for everybody to regard it in that way. Supposing it is
\nthe impersonal Self of all only, yet the Upanishad says of the Self and its realisation, “This understanding is not to be gained by
\nreasoning nor by tapasya nor by much learning, but whom this Self chooses, to him it reveals its own body.” Well, that is the
\nsame thing as what we call the Divine Grace, \u2014  it is an action from above or from within independent of mental causes which
\ndecides its own movement. We can call it the Divine Grace; we can call it the Self within choosing its own hour and way to
\nmanifest to the mental instrument on the surface; we can call it the flowering of the inner being or inner nature into self
\nrealisation and self-knowledge. As something in us approaches it or as it presents itself to us, so the mind sees it. But in reality,
\n   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 <\/font>231<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nit is the same thing and the same process of the being in the Nature.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nI could illustrate my meaning more concretely from my own first experience of the Self, long before I knew even what Yoga
\nwas or that there was such a thing, at a time when I had no religious feeling, no wish for spiritual knowledge, no aspiration
\nbeyond the mind, only a contented agnosticism and the impulse towards poetry and politics. But it would be too long a story, so
\nI do not tell it here. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\n29 October 1935
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t*<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t  <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tI have seen your letter to X <\/i>[the letter of 29 October 1935<\/i>
\npublished immediately above<\/i>]. When I finished reading it, I let out a sigh and exclaimed “How cruel!”
\n\u2014  after raising our
\nhopes you mercilessly cut them off because the letter would be too long! Nothing is too long for us, especially such personal
\nexamples which are more valuable for the likes of us than any promises and possibilities.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n 
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tGood Lord! I never said it was too long for you to read, I meant it was too long for me to write now. And I can’t write such
\nthings by themselves as an autobiographical essay \u2014  it is only if they turn up in the course of something that I can do so. Last
\nnight I had no blessed time to illustrate. I thought of writing it because it seemed very appropriate, but when I couldn’t, I just
\nmentioned it in order to hint that what I had written was not mere theory, but provable by solid experience. No fell intention
\nto tantalise. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\n30 October 1935
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t*<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t  <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tBut it is unthinkable and almost unbelievable to have any
\nexperience of the Self in the circumstances you have described [in the letter of 29 October 1935<\/i>].
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n 
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tI can’t help that. It happened. The mind’s canons of the rational and the possible do not govern spiritual life and experience.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tBut can you not tell us what the experience was like? Was it by any chance like the one you speak of in your Uttarpara
\n  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 <\/font>232<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n

\nSpeech \u2014  Vasudeva everywhere? <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t 
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tGreat Jumble-Mumble! What has Vasudeva to do with it? Vasudeva is a name of Krishna, and in the Uttarpara Speech I was speaking of Krishna, if you please.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tBut how can that be? Didn’t you begin Yoga later on in Gujarat?
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n 
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tYes. But this began in London, sprouted the moment I set foot on Apollo Bunder, touching Indian soil, flowered one day in
\nthe first year of my stay in Baroda, at the moment when there threatened to be an accident to my carriage. Precise enough?
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nBy the Self, I suppose, you mean the individual Self! <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t 
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tGood Lord, no. I mean the Self, sir, the Self, the Adwaita, Vedantic, Shankara self. Atman, Atman! A thing I knew nothing about, never bargained for, didn’t understand either.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\n31 October 1935 <\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t 
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThis-Worldliness and Other-Worldliness
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n 
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tOne thing I feel I must say in connection with your remark about the soul of India and
\nX<\/i>‘s observation about “this stress
\non this-worldliness to the exclusion of other-worldliness”. I do not quite understand in what connection his remark was made
\nor what he meant by this-worldliness, but I feel it necessary to state my own position in the matter. My own life and my Yoga
\nhave always been, since my coming to India, both this-worldly and other-worldly without any exclusiveness on either side. All
\nhuman interests are, I suppose, this-worldly and most of them have entered into my mental field and some, like politics, into
\nmy life, but at the same time, since I set foot on Indian soil on the Apollo Bunder in Bombay, I began to have spiritual experiences,
\nbut these were not divorced from this world but had an inner and intimate bearing on it, such as a feeling of the Infinite pervading
\nmaterial space and the Immanent inhabiting material objects and bodies. At the same time I found myself entering supraphysical
\n   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 <\/font>233<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nworlds and planes with influences and an effect from them upon the material plane, so I could make no sharp divorce or irreconcilable opposition between what I have called the two ends of existence and all that lies between them. For me all is the Brahman and I find the Divine everywhere. Everyone has the right to throw away this-worldliness and choose other-worldliness
\nonly and if he finds peace by that choice he is greatly blessed. I, personally, have not found it necessary to do this in order to
\nhave peace. In my Yoga also I found myself moved to include both worlds in my purview, the spiritual and the material, and to
\ntry to establish the divine Consciousness and the divine Power in men’s hearts and in earthly life, not for personal salvation only
\nbut for a life divine here. This seems to me as spiritual an aim as any and the fact of this life taking up earthly pursuits and earthly
\nthings into its scope cannot, I believe, tarnish its spirituality or alter its Indian character. This at least has always been my view
\nand experience of the reality and nature of the world and things and the Divine: it seemed to me as nearly as possible the integral
\ntruth about them and I have therefore spoken of the pursuit of it as the integral Yoga. Everyone is, of course, free to reject and
\ndisbelieve in this kind of integrality or to believe in the spiritual necessity of an entire other-worldliness excluding any kind of
\nthis-worldliness altogether, but that would make the exercise of my Yoga impossible. My Yoga can include indeed a full experience of the other worlds, the plane of the supreme Spirit and the other planes in between and their possible effects upon our
\nlife and material world; but it will be quite possible to insist only on the realisation of the supreme Being or Ishwara even in
\none aspect, Shiva, Krishna as Lord of the world and Master of ourselves and our works or else the universal Sachchidananda,
\nand attain to the essential results of this Yoga and afterwards to proceed from them to the integral results if one accepted the ideal
\nof the divine life and this material world conquered by the Spirit. It is this view and experience of things and of the truth of existence that enabled me to write The Life Divine <\/i>and Savitri<\/i>. The realisation of the Supreme, the Ishwara, is certainly the essential
\nthing; but to approach him with love and devotion and bhakti,  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 <\/font>234<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n\tto serve him with one’s works and to know him, not necessarily by the intellectual cognition, but in a spiritual experience, is also
\nessential in the path of the integral Yoga. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\n28 April 1949
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n 
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nAn Experience in Kashmir
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tKashmir is a magnificent place, its rivers unforgettable and on
\none of its mountains with a shrine of Shankaracharya on it I got my second realisation of the Infinite (long before I started
\nYoga). <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nJune 1934
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n 
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nSigns of Yogic Opening
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tYour bells etc. mentioned by you as recent experiences were
\nalready enumerated as long ago as the time of the Upanishads as signs accompanying the opening to the larger consciousness, brahman<\/font>yabhivyaktikarā<\/font>n<\/font>i yoge<\/i>. If I remember right your
\n sparks come in the same list. The fact has been recorded again
\nand again in yogic literature. I had the same experience hundreds of times in the earlier part of my sadhana. So you see you are in
\nvery honourable company in this matter and need not trouble yourself about the objections of physical science.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\n13 March 1931 <\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t*<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t  <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tI remember, when I first began to see inwardly (and outwardly also with the open eye), a scientific friend of mine began to talk
\nof after-images \u2014  “these are only after-images!” I asked him whether after-images remained before the eye for two minutes
\nat a time \u2014  he said, “no”, to his knowledge only for a few seconds; I also asked him whether one could get after-images of
\nthings not around one or even not existing upon this earth since they had other shapes, another character, other hues, contours
\nand a very different dynamism, life-movements and values \u2014  he could not reply in the affirmative. That is how these so-called
\nscientific explanations break down as soon as you pull them out of their cloudland of mental theory and face them with the
\n   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 <\/font>235<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nactual phenomena they pretend to decipher. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\n19 February 1932
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t*<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t 
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tIt is only at the beginning that concentration is necessary to
\nsee these colours, afterwards it comes of itself. There was a long time when I used to see colours spontaneously or wherever I cast
\nmy eyes, just as you do now, and at every time of concentrated meditation they used to fill the room. Many, indeed, begin to
\nsee them spontaneously without any concentration at all, first with closed eyes, afterwards with the eyes open. Seeing them
\nwith the eyes closed happens often enough to people who have never practised or even heard of Yoga; but in such cases it proves
\nthat there is some kind of occult vision there very near to the surface.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\n25 February 1932 <\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t*<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t  <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tIf seeing the Divine depended on the developed occult faculty, how do you explain people’s seeing Ram, Krishna, Shiva, etc.
\nin you at Darshan? \u2014  I mean by people who have apparently no such faculty. We’ve heard about Krishna presenting himself
\nbefore small boys, taking them to school, etc. \u2014  fables? <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t 
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tWith many people the faculty of this kind of occult vision is the
\nfirst to develop when they begin sadhana. With others it is there naturally or comes on occasions without any practice of Yoga.
\nBut with people who live mainly in the intellect (a few excepted) this faculty is not usually there by nature and most have much
\ndifficulty in developing it. It was so even with me.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tWhat I understand of the matter is that if you intend that
\nsomebody should see the Divine in you \u2014  be it a blind man \u2014 he is able to see. No faculty is required.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n 
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tIt would be something of a miracle to see things without the faculty of seeing. We don’t deal much in miracles of that kind.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\n30 July 1935
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 <\/font>236<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nPractice of Pranayama
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tYou yourself had to concentrate for 4 or 5 hours a day for so many years, after which everything flowed in a river . . .
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n 
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tBy the way what is this story about my four or five hours’ concentration a day for several years before anything came down? Such
\na thing never happened, if by concentration you mean laborious meditation. What I did was four or five hours a day pranayam
\n\u2014  which is quite another matter. And what flow do you speak of? The flow of poetry came down while I was doing pranayam,
\nnot some years afterwards. If it is the flow of experiences, that did come after some years, but after I had stopped the pranayam
\nfor a long time and was doing nothing and did not know what to do or where to turn once all my efforts had failed. And it
\ncame as a result not of years of pranayam or concentration, but in a ridiculously easy way, by the grace either of a temporary
\nguru (but it wasn’t that, for he was himself bewildered by it) or by the grace of the eternal Brahman and afterwards by the
\ngrace of Mahakali and Krishna. So don’t try to turn me into an argument against the Divine; that attempt will be perfectly
\nineffective. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\n20 January 1936
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t*<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t  <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tYou have often inveighed against my using you as an argument
\nagainst the Divine. But what is the history of your sadhana in your own words
\n\u2014  a Herculean practice of Pranayam, concentration and what not and then after years and years of waiting the Grace of Brahman.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n 
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tWhat a wooden head! What is the use of saying things if you deliberately misinterpret what I write? I said clearly that the
\npranayam brought me nothing of any kind of spiritual realisation. I had stopped it long before. The Brahman experience
\ncame when I was groping for some way, doing no sadhana at all, making no effort because I didn’t know what effort to make,
\nall having failed. Then in three days I got an experience which most Yogis get only at the end of a long Yoga, got it without
\nwanting or trying for it, got it to the surprise of Lele who was   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 <\/font>237<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\ntrying to get me something quite different. But I don’t suppose you are able to understand
\n\u2014  so I say no more. I can only look
\nmournfully at your ununderstanding pate. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\n24 January 1936
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n 
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nBeginning of the Practice of Yoga
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tI wonder if any interesting incident took place in the Mother’s
\nor Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga or life in the year 1905. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t 
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tI think it was the year in which I began my Yoga
\n\u2014  that is, the
\npractice of Yoga \u2014  for I had had experiences before without knowing what they were.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\n17 January 1934 <\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t*<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t  <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tHow did your intellect become so powerful even before you started Yoga?
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n 
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tIt was not any such thing before I started the Yoga. I started the Yoga in 1904 and all my work except some poetry was done
\nafterwards. Moreover my intelligence was inborn and so far as it grew before the Yoga it was not by training but by a wide
\nhaphazard activity developing ideas from all things read, seen or experienced. That is not training, it is natural growth.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\n13 November 1936  
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n 
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 <\/font>238<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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