Page 11 - All India Magazine Sep-2026

on till that power has sufficiently impressed its vibrations on
the inner being to make it at a given moment suddenly open
to the Presence or the Touch. But if there is a struggling or
insistence for the result, then this effect which needs a quiet re-
ceptivity in the mind is impeded. That is why I insisted so much
on men-tal quietude and on not too much straining or effort —
to give time to allow the psychic and the mind to develop the
necessary condition of receptivity — a receptivity as natural as
when one receives an inspiration for poetry and music. It is also
why I do not want you to discontinue your poetry — it helps
and does not hinder the preparation because it is a means of
developing the right position of receptivity and bringing out
the bhakti which is there in the inner being. To spend all the
energy on japa or meditation is a strain which even those who
are accustomed to successful meditation find it difficult to do
— unless in periods when there is an uninterrupted flow of ex-
periences from above.
It is very good news that you got rid of the attack and it
was the japa that helped you to do it. This and past experience
also shows that if you can overcome the old association of the
japa with sterility and sorrow, it can do its natural function of
creating the right consciousness—for that is what the japa is
intended to do. It first changes the vibrations of the conscious-
ness, brings into it the right state and the right responses and
then brings in the power or the presence of the Deity. Several
times before you wrote to me that by doing japa you got rid
of the old impulse and recovered calm and the right turn of
the consciousness and now it has helped you to get rid of the
invasion of sorrow and despondency. Let us hope that this last
will also soon lose its strength like the impulse and calm and
serenity begin to establish itself in the whole nature.
CWSA 29: 328-29 Sri Aurobindo

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