Page 7 - All India Magazine Dec-2025

Sri Aurobindo’s withdrawal
I don't quite understand. Didn't you have the experience of the
Supreme before Sri Aurobindo's departure?

Spiritually, you have that experience as soon as you come into
contact with the Divine within; mentally, you have the experi-
ence as soon as the mind is purified; vitally, you have it as soon
as you get out of the ego. But it's the consciousness of the
body — the consciousness of the cells — which had the experi-
ence at that moment. Everything else had had it long before
and was constantly aware of it, but the body.... It had been told
about it and believed in it, but it didn't have the experience
in such a concrete, total and absolute manner that it can't be
forgotten for a single second.
At that moment, the physical being and the individual, per-
sonal body had the experience once and for all.
The body always used to let itself be carried along. It was
one in consciousness with Sri Aurobindo's presence, and de-
pended on it without the least worry; it felt that its life de-
pended on it, its progress depended on it, its consciousness,
its action, its power all depended on it. And no questions — it
didn't question. For the body, it was absolutely impossible that
things could be otherwise. The very idea that Sri Aurobindo
might leave his body, that that particular way of being might
no longer exist for the body, was absolutely unthinkable. They
had to put him in a box and put the box in the Samadhi for the
body to be convinced that it had really happened.
And that's when it had that experience.
This body is very conscious, it was born conscious, and
throughout those years its consciousness went on growing,
perfecting itself, proliferating, as it were; this was its concern,
its joy. And with Sri Aurobindo, there was such peaceful certi-

All India Magazine, December 2025 7