Records of Yoga were actually never meant to be read by anyone. They are Sri Aurobindo’s personal notes and neither the Mother nor Sri Aurobindo wanted them published. That is why they were not part of SABCL. It contains the rarest of rare experiences and realisations of Sri Aurobindo, the Path he took to arrive at them as a pioneer of the New Creation. What we need to practice has been given in all other several books.
Nevertheless, the book is now available and hence it is being read though, as you rightly say, these terms are experiential and hence cannot be fully grasped by the human mind. In fact, they are likely to be misunderstood, much as an ignorant man may think that the pleasure derived by drinking alcohol is only another kind of Ananda! Thus Kamananda is not the pleasure that one derives through the satisfaction of desires (kama) but the same intense pleasure transmuted into Ananda and without any external object. It is objectless ecstasy, so to say. Similarly, there is another term, Maithunananda, which is sexual pleasure transmuted into the Ananda of union of Spirit and Matter, of the Lord and His Nature, Ishwara and His Shakti, Purusha and Prakriti, of which the sexual act is a crude distortion.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
(Follow-up Question:)
Thank you, Sir, for your enlightening information. But these books are now included in CWSA Volume 10 and 11. As I am a beginner of the reading of Sri Aurobindo, I came across the Books.
With profound regards.
I know and I perfectly understand that. Now that they are available, any person interested in Sri Aurobindo’s teachings will be naturally drawn to the books. Yet they should be read with care and caution, as the human mind is not equipped to understand these experiences in the true sense or assign a true value to them.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
