Sri Aurobindo and Mother to Prithwi Singh

No Date

(Prithwi Singh's answer:)

You have rightly noted the distinction between the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the intellective philoso-phy of the West. Even the points of similarity between the Bergsonian and Freudian schools of thought are very superficial. For Sri Aurobindo's Yoga-philosophy holds the key to a knowledge that is other than the mind's, its expressions bear the impress of a global vision, a Yoga-drishti the range of which it is impossible for us to fathom.

The question you have put ought not to have arisen however. It is based, I am afraid, on an entire misunderstanding of his teachings. For the problem of monism vs. dualism which you write as "the old stumbling-block on which every system of philosophy has foundered" has been fully faced and answered by Sri Aurobindo. Indeed the solution he offers is the most satisfying to the modern mind and is of the greatest importance in visualising the logical structure of the supralogical vision of Truth which he reveals to us in his writings.

Your perplexity seems to me to arise from a con-fusion of ideas. For the surrender of our vital parts to the Divine which Sri Aurobindo demands as an indispensable condition of his Yoga is not synonymous with the elimination of our vital parts. Surrender and elimination are not identical terms.

What is meant is that we are to turn all our movements, not only vital activities.but physical and mental activities as well, completely towards the Divine, consecrating our smallest acts as well as our highest. Is it not rather a change of allegiance than elimination or annihilation? It is ego that perverts the truth bringing disharmony and discord in the dynamism of life,—that has to go, not the dynamism, so that the real person may emerge who is the eternal portion of the divine Many. And it is to be carefully noted that according to his teachings "ego" is only a formation of consciousness, not the true person so that its disappearance does not mean the disappearance of the personal "I".

The difficult aim of his Yoga is to universalise the individual who yet retains his individual centre of divine action. How this can be achieved is another question however to which the mind can give no answer, it is sufficient for us to know that an integral consecration of our selves, of our mental, vital and physical existences is an indispensable condition of this change—not their elimination or destruction.

I do not know if I have been able to give a sufficiently clear exposition that will satisfy you. However I am sending two extracts from the writings of my Master which I believe will be of help to you.

Prithwisingh