Advanced Sadhaks
No child of mine can be a zero; in fact, each one of my children has his or her place and special mission to fulfil. I love them all equally and do for each one what is truly needed for his or her welfare and progress, without any preference or partiality. — The Mother
The Mother: The only thing that is important is your seeking and realising the Divine — all the rest is zero.
The Mother: It is not a fact that all I write is meant equally for everybody. That assumes that everybody is alike and there is no difference between sadhak and sadhak. If it were so everybody would advance alike and have the same experiences and take the same time to progress by the same steps and stages. It is not so at all. In this case the general rules were laid down for one who had made no progress — but everything depends on how the Yoga comes to each person.
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> 26 July 1934
Sri Aurobindo:
An eye has opened upon timelessness,
Infinity takes back the forms it gave,
And through God’s darkness or his naked light
His million rays return into the Sun.
There is a zero sign of the Supreme;
Nature left nude and still uncovers God.
But in her grandiose nothingness all is there:
When her strong garbs are torn away from us,
The soul’s ignorance is slain but not the soul:
The zero covers an immortal face.
A high and blank negation is not all,
A huge extinction is not God’s last word,
Life’s ultimate sense, the close of being’s course,
The meaning of this great mysterious world. (Savitri)
Q. X is an advanced sadhak?
Sri Aurobindo: This word “advanced” has no sense, it merely feeds the egoism of those who apply it to themselves.
Whenever they used it in their letters to me, I have thrown ridicule on the phrase and said I have no knowledge of there being two classes in the Asram, one of advanced sadhaks and the other of nonadvanced sadhaks. So the question about X does not arise.
CWSA Vol. 35
(Letters on Himself and the Ashram)
The Practice of Yoga in the Ashram and Outside
“Advanced Sadhaks”
3 Feb 1932
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The Mother never speaks of advanced sadhaks — it is the sadhaks themselves who have invented the phrase. Whenever they used it in their letters to me, I have thrown ridicule on the phrase and said I have no knowledge of there being two classes in the Asram, one of advanced sadhaks and the other of non-advanced sadhaks. So the question about X does not arise. If a sadhak, whoever he may be, speaks or acts out of anger, rajasic violence or any other unYogic impulse, his speech or action is contrary to the spirit of the sadhana.
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Sri Aurobindo: Yes, you should learn not to be perturbed by talk of this kind from whomsoever it proceeds; I think I have already tried to put you on your guard against listening to “advanced sadhaks” or taking these pronouncements of theirs as authoritative statements of the aims and conditions of the Yoga. Why this claim to be an advanced sadhak and what is the sense of it? it resolves itself into an egoistic assertion of superiority over others which is not justified so long as there is the egoism and the need of assertion — accompanied, as it always is, by a weakness and turbid imperfection which belie the claim of living in a superior consciousness to the “unadvanced” sadhaks. It is time these crudities disappeared from the Asram atmosphere.
- 3 February 1932
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13 May 1935
Q. Wouldn’t it be best if people did not think of themselves as being more advanced than others? It is enough to know that we are on the right path.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, the talk about advanced sadhaks is a thing I have always discouraged — but people go on because that appeals to the vital ego.
13 May 1935 Letters on Himself
Q. I understand your protesting against “great” or “big” sadhaks, but why against “advanced” sadhaks? Is it not a fact that some are more advanced than others?
Is it not a fact that some are more advanced than others? If we speak of X as an advanced sadhak, we don’t mean anything else.
Sri Aurobindo: Advanced indeed! Pshaw! Because one is 3 inches ahead of another, you must make classes of advanced and nonadvanced?
Advanced has the same puffing egoistic resonance as “great” or “big”.
It leads to all sorts of stupidities — rajasic self-appreciating egoism in some, tamasic self-depreciating egoism in others, round-eyed wonderings why X, an advanced sadhak, one 3 inches ahead of Y, should stumble, tumble or fumble while Y, 3 inches behind X, still plods heavily and steadily on, etc. etc. Why, sir, the very idea in X that he is an advanced sadhak (like the Pharisee, “I thank thee, O Lord, that I am not as other unadvanced disciples”,) would be enough to make him fumble, stumble and tumble. So no more of that, sir, no more of that.
25 September, 1935
Sri Aurobindo: I would have been surprised to hear that I regard (in agreement with an advanced sadhak) Ramakrishna as a spiritual pigmy, if I had not become past astonishment in these matters.
I shall not be surprised or perturbed if one day I am reported to have declared, on the authority of advanced or even unadvanced sadhaks, that Buddha was a poseur or Shakespeare an overrated poetaster or Newton a thirdrate college Don without any genius.
What then about Ramakrishna? Do you mean to say that the majority of the sadhaks here who have not learned logic and are ignorant of philosophy will never get Knowledge?
Letters on Himself
Sri Aurobindo:
I could point to some who are considered among the most “advanced” sadhaks and yet are not free yet altogether from the family instinct.
If the presence and persistence of vital difficulties were to prove that a sadhak is “unfit” and has no chance, then only one or two in the Asram — and perhaps not even they — would survive the test.
The feeling of dryness and not being “able to aspire” is also no proof. Every sadhak gets periods and even long periods of such emptiness.
When the whole nature is opened and the peace and equality are brought down into the vital and physical and settled there, then there is no inner disturbance, but the struggle continues until there is the beginning of the supramental transformation.
20 July 1933
Q. How is it that many sadhaks who had a strong spiritual tendency before coming to the Asram have got stuck in vital difficulties after many years of sadhana?
Sri Aurobindo: That is one reason, but by itself it would not have mattered so much, the difficulties would have appeared but they could have been conquered without so much trouble. But here owing to the wrong attitude of many sadhaks, their indulgence of the vital opposition and revolt, an atmosphere of extreme vital difficulty has been created and when one comes to stay here all that atmosphere throws itself upon him and it is only by a great and prolonged struggle that he can get back to the spiritual simplicity and straightforward aspiration or the psychic poise.
18 July 1934
I do not see why your having difficulties or the external consciousness denying the inner truth should prevent you from calling our help.
There are lots of things like that which one must have the power to distinguish very carefully and exactly; until one knows one’s own consciousness and its operations well, one cannot know the operations of the consciousness of others. But it is possible to develop a certain direct sight or a certain direct feeling or contact by which one can know, but only after much time and much careful, scrupulous and vigilant observation and self-training. Till then one can’t go about saying that this is an advanced sadhak or that one is not advanced and that other is no good at all. Even if one knows, it is not necessary always to air one’s knowledge.
Sri Aurobindo:
The Mother “manifesting” in you is an ambiguous expression — it is the Mother’s consciousness, the higher consciousness with the light, strength that has to come down in each sadhak, with the Mother’s presence always there. Along with this experience there must have been an attempt at surrender or an initial answer in the lower vital, but as a reaction the nervous disturbance came back — the old lower vital nature not being ready to give up possession reasserted its disturbances which were about to abate.
6 November 1934
Sometimes when I sit in meditation, I find that instead of myself, the Mother is sitting.
If what she says is correct, she must be a very advanced sadhika. How much truth do you find in her experiences and visions?
That is common enough. It does not indicate an “advanced” sadhana, whatever that phrase may mean, but only a special faculty.
My body, mind and heart were satisfied. I felt a sense of fearlessness. A sadhak’s life is like the life of a warrior. However long the struggle, whatever the obstacles, we will ascend to the Supreme Truth.
These things are extremely common among those who practise Yoga everywhere. In the Asram the sadhaks are too intelligent, sceptical and matter of fact to have much of that kind of experience.
The Mother: X has reported Mother’s observation correctly but he does not seem to have understood it. The Mother never meant that by merely willing one could know at once what was in someone else or that all one’s impressions about him would be spontaneously and infallibly correct. What she meant was that there is a faculty or power (an occult or Yogic faculty) by which one can get the right perceptions and impressions and if one has the will to do so, one can develop it. Not at once, not by an easy method — tra la la and there you are: it may take years and one has to be careful and scrupulous about it. For these are intuitive perceptions and intuition is a thing that can easily be imitated by many other movements of consciousness that are much more fallible. Your impressions may be mental or vital and a mental or vital impression may have something to justify it or may not — but even in the first case there is no certainty at all that it will be correct; even if there is that something, it may be incorrectly caught or caught with much mixture of error, twisted into falsehood, put in the wrong way etc. etc. And there may be no justification at all; it may be a mere wrong formation of your own mind or vital or else somebody else’s wrong impression conveyed to you and accepted by you as your own. Your impression may be the result of a want of affinity between you and the other person, so that if he impresses you as null and neutral, it is because you cannot feel what is in him, it does not come home to you — or, again, if you feel that he is in a wrong condition, it may be only because his vital vibrations rub yours the wrong way. There are lots of things like that which one must have the power to distinguish very carefully and exactly; until one knows one’s own consciousness and its operations well, one cannot know the operations of the consciousness of others. But it is possible to develop a certain direct sight or a certain direct feeling or contact by which one can know, but only after much time and much careful, scrupulous and vigilant observation and self-training. Till then one can’t go about saying that this is an advanced sadhak or that one is not advanced and that other is no good at all. Even if one knows, it is not necessary always to air one’s knowledge.
Sri Aurobindo: I would have been surprised to hear that I regard (in agreement with an advanced sadhak) Ramakrishna as a spiritual pigmy, if I had not become past astonishment in these matters. I have said, it seems, so many things that were never in my mind and done too not a few that I have never dreamed of doing! I shall not be surprised or perturbed if one day I am reported to have declared, on the authority of advanced or even unadvanced sadhaks, that Buddha was a poseur or Shakespeare an overrated poetaster or Newton a third-rate college Don without any genius. In this world all is possible. Is it necessary for me to say that I have never thought and cannot have said anything of the kind, since I have at least some faint sense of spiritual values? The passage you have quoted is my considered estimate of Ramakrishna. 3 Feb 1932
Q. I have heard that if one learns logic or philosophy it can be a great help in the yoga, because it makes the mind wider to spiritual experiences so that once the mind gets beyond the intellect and reaches the intuitive, it is able to bring down or express knowledge which an unintellectual mind could not do.
Sri Aurobindo: An unintellectual mind cannot bring down the Knowledge? What then about Ramakrishna? Do you mean to say that the majority of the sadhaks here who have not learned logic and are ignorant of philosophy will never get Knowledge? 4 Nov. 1936
Sadhak’s Tendency to be a Guru
Sign of True Teacher — Not Guruhood
Sri Aurobindo: "And it shall also be a sign of the teacher of the integral Yoga that he does not arrogate to himself Guruhood in a humanly vain and self-exalting spirit. His work, if he has one, is a trust from above, he himself a channel, a vessel or a representative.
He is a man helping his brothers, a child leading children, a Light kindling other lights, an awakened Soul awakening souls, at highest a Power or Presence of the Divine calling to him other powers of the Divine."
Synthesis of Yoga
pg 67-8
Violent Objection to Gurugiri
A Reluctant Guru:
Sri Aurobindo: ....I had the same kind of violent objection to Gurugiri, but you see I was obliged by the irony of things or rather by the inexorable truth behind them to become a Guru and preach the Guruvada. Such is Fate.
16 January 1936
Source: CWSA: Letters on Himself and The Ashram
Chapter: The Guru
