Sri Aurobindo: If you insist on going, the Mother cannot say no, as it is only with your own will that we can keep you here. Your difﬁculty only comes because you cannot recognise that whatever the Mother arranges for you is out of desire for your good and in love for you. This is because you have your own ideas and preferences and if she does something contrary to that you think she does not love you. The Mother’s love is always there, but it is through conﬁdence and surrender that you can feel it. You need to recover your health and strength and we wanted you to do the necessary things for that for a sufﬁciently long time — food, rest, treatment with the Mother’s force behind all that to make it successful.


Sri Aurobindo: But a full conﬁdence in the Mother and acceptance of her decisions and her guidance is necessary; if you have and keep that, then you can recover your strength and capacity for work and progress in Yoga.   The Mother cannot tell you to go because there is no true cause why you should go and it would be very bad for you to do so as well as bad for the work and everything else. The reasons for your not giving up the work are just the same as before and not in the least changed by anything that has happened. Jealousy is no doubt a great defect of the nature, but many here have it; almost everyone has some serious defect in his nature which stands in his way and gives trouble. But it is not a remedy for this to give up work and sadhana and abandon the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: You have to go on working and doing the sadhana with the Mother’s aid behind you until this and all other obstacles are got rid of.  We have told you already that these things cannot be got rid of in a day, but if you persevere and rely on the Mother they will yet disappear. Do not allow an adverse Force to mislead you; reject all depression and go straight forward till you reach the goal.    Mother has no wish to abandon you and it has never been her will that you should go away from her.


Sri Aurobindo: You must put yourself in harmony with her will and then all will go right. Her love will guide you and her protection will be effective.  Rest until you are well. Do not be in a hurry to go to work before you have recovered your strength.


Sri Aurobindo: What you have seen is quite correct. When the psychic being has been once fully awake as it was all these days in you, then it is not possible for the sadhak to revolt and go away; for if he does, he leaves his soul behind him with the Mother and it is only the outer being that lives for a while elsewhere. But that is too painful a condition; one has either to come back or life becomes hardly worth living. But there is no danger of that for you, now you have understood and have the true feeling.  Moreover these attacks that now come are not like those that came before when the psychic was still not fully awake.


Sri Aurobindo: Then each time they came, they increased their force of attack; now they are only spending what force is left to them and losing it. Besides once the psychic being is awake, it is bound to recover control and conﬁrm the mind in the truth so that the true consciousness in the being becomes each time stronger.  All is well. The Mother’s child will always grow more in you and the Mother’s little star burn brighter and brighter.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a question between the continuity of your concentrated spiritual life and the call of old demands belonging to the consciousness that you have left behind you. The Mother, as you well know, does not favour even a brief return to the old atmosphere once one is in the spiritual life. For one who has not yet really begun or is living as yet only a tepid half-formed surface sadhana, it might be different. The old life always pulls to have the sadhak back, to renew its ties, to get a fresh lease of control over his vital. If one yields it will redouble its importunities, bring new occasions for calling again; the sadhana here gets broken and has to be picked up again with effort.


Sri Aurobindo: All the same if people insist on going or have a strong desire to go, they are allowed sometimes to do so at their own risk, but the Mother never sends anybody — unless there is her work to do. That is the position.    As for going out, the Asram has seen go out twice and return with full permission, it has recently seen and go with the Mother’s permission, both with the full intention of returning — to say nothing of others. As for you yourself were entirely against her going.


Sri Aurobindo: herself always took the position that she ought not to go and asked for help against the other tendency in her. If she had decided to go and told us so, nobody would have stood in her way, although we would not have been lost in admiration at the spiritual wisdom of her choice. Our view is that once the full separate spiritual life is chosen, to cling and turn back to the ordinary one is an error. But if there are circumstances that make the (temporary) departure either harmless or psychologically or otherwise inevitable then we give permission.  If the sadhak goes in a spirit of revolt and deﬁance or goes back to the ordinary life out of egoistic ambition as and others did then of course Mother does not wish them to come back (so long as that remains) and refuses to allow it.


Sri Aurobindo: Also if there is treachery, as in’s case — a fact which you yourself asserted and I don’t see that it can be denied — unless he atoned or changed, there was no reason why he should return, especially as he said his sadhana was going on admirably there. Mother knew his return with an uncorrected spirit would not be good for him and events showed that she was perfectly right. But I have always noticed that whatever untoward thing happens to a sadhak, many consider that it is we whose bad qualities are to blame for it. And yet they go on accepting us as Gurus and addressing us as Divine! That is truly bafﬂing to the reason.


Sri Aurobindo: Perhaps it shows that there is something really supramental here!!  In your case I have given the reasons why we accept your going out. There is no ground therefore why we should not support you in your music and other undertakings there. In these respects at least you allow that you have been supported and the support has been effective — there is no reason why that shall not continue — the more so if you keep us informed as others at a distance do when they want some help in any endeavour.   You have been able to make progress because you had a certain freedom from demand and repining, an equability and conﬁdence in turning towards the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: This is your main strength and you must not allow it to be disturbed or taken away from you. The attitude described in the birthday poem is the right one for you. It is because you have opened and are on the way that the opposite forces are trying to put in suggestions of dissatisfaction or the impulse to go away. They want to create the same “habit of depression and trouble” that there has been in and many others so as to use it as a lever against you; but there is no reason why you should allow it. The idea that we are driving away and will drive many by the pressure of our Yoga force is a silly notion among the many silly notions current in the Asram invented by the too idly active brains of the sadhaks.


Sri Aurobindo: We do not press on anybody to go away — our action has been the opposite. It is a contrary undivine Force which presses on sadhaks to go away from here so that they may lose their chances of sadhana. If their vital is very unquiet, they accept the suggestions of this Force and begin to long to go away; if they long too much, we may have to let them go, for it is not possible to force the Divine on those who do not want him or are not willing to follow the path to the end or decide that sex, fame, pleasure or other things of the kind are preferable.   The Mother certainly would not give you money for going away, for she could not approve of or sanction such a step which has no real ground and for which the only reasons you allege are a quite unreasonable despondency and a pique () which is also without true cause. The Mother has not in the least changed towards you — she has neither withdrawn her affection nor felt nor expressed any disappointment about your sadhana; her support has not been withdrawn either from your singing.


Sri Aurobindo: The only thing we can make out in this connection is that the impression was created in your vital by her having discouraged a movement of ego in you, pressed on the removal of some defects which you yourself had admitted and wished to overcome, put aside some suggestions with regard to one occasion for your music which did not seem to her suitable. But these things she has done before and you used to be very much pleased at her pointing out or letting you understand where you had to change. You yourself wanted to get rid of ego and change the resistant part and had taken steps towards it; it would not have been helpful for your purpose that the Mother should support or indulge any movements coming from there. I can only gather from your recent letters that the resisting part has revolted against the pressure you yourself had put on it and thrown up the impression that it could not change, that the demand on it was more than it could face and it would rather go and that in your depression you have identiﬁed yourself with its feeling and misinterpreted the Mother’s motives and her attitude — a thing that in your clearer consciousness you would either not have done or else soon corrected the mistake. I hope that this clearer part of you which is the larger part will quickly reassert itself and give you back your former right vision and attitude.


Sri Aurobindo: I shall do and do always what I can to help towards that and towards the psychic victory in you and your spiritual progress.  Your departure and renunciation of the sadhana is a thing which nothing in us accepts for a moment.  What your vital being seems to have kept all along is the “bargain” or the “mess” attitude in these matters. One gives some kind of commodity which he calls devotion or surrender and in return the Mother is under obligation to supply satisfaction for all demands and desires spiritual, mental, vital and physical, and, if she falls short in her task, she has broken her contract.  The Asram is a sort of communal hotel or mess, the Mother is the hotel-keeper or mess-manager.


Sri Aurobindo: One gives what one can or chooses to give, or it may be nothing at all except the aforesaid commodity; in return the palate, the stomach and all the physical demands have to be satisﬁed to the full; if not, one has every right to keep one’s money and to abuse the defaulting hotel-keeper or mess-manager. This attitude has nothing whatever to do with sadhana or Yoga and I absolutely repudiate the right of anyone to impose it as a basis for my work or for the life of the Asram.  There are only two possible foundations for the material life here. One is that one is a member of an Asram founded on the principle of self-giving and surrender. One belongs to the Divine and all one has belongs to the Divine; in giving one gives not what is one’s own but what already belongs to the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no question of payment or return, no bargain, no room for demand and desire. The Mother is in sole charge and arranges things as best they can be arranged within the means at her disposal and the capacities of her instruments. She is under no obligation to act according to the mental standards or vital desires and claims of the sadhaks; she is not obliged to use a democratic equality in her dealings with them. She is free to deal with each according to what she sees to be his true need or what is best for him in his spiritual progress. No one can be her judge or impose on her his own rule and standard; she alone can make rules, and she can depart from them too if she thinks ﬁt, but no one can demand that she shall do so.


Sri Aurobindo: Personal demands and desires cannot be imposed on her. If anyone has what he ﬁnds to be a real need or a suggestion to make which is within the province assigned to him, he can do so; but if she gives no sanction, he must remain satisﬁed and drop the matter.  This is the spiritual discipline of which the one who represents or embodies the Divine Truth is the centre. Either she is that and all this is the plain common sense of the matter; or she is not and then no one need stay here. Each can go his own way and there is no Asram and no Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: If on the other hand one is not ready to be a member of the Asram or bear the discipline and is still admitted to some place in the Yoga, he remains apart and meets his own expenses.  There is no discipline for him on the material plane, except the rules necessary for the safety of the work; there is no material responsibility for the Mother.    The Mother is not bound to give reasons for any change she makes unless she herself thinks ﬁt to do so. In such cases the sadhak is supposed to accept the change without question in the conﬁdence that the Mother has her reasons and if she does not tell them to me it is because I do not need to know.


Sri Aurobindo:   If anyone questions the right of the Mother to control the Asram or to control his own conduct, his place is outside; there he can exercise his full civic or other rights and do what he pleases.  Whoever is dissatisﬁed, has the right to leave the Asram just as the Mother has the right not to maintain in it anyone whose conduct or attitude she ﬁnds unsatisfactory. There is no right civic or legal or republican or constitutional or any other entitling anyone to do whatever he likes in the house of another or debars that other from objecting or enforcing his objection. There is a discipline of obedience and of abstention from forbidden acts in this Asram and whoever refuses to recognise it has no “right” to remain here.


Sri Aurobindo: There are certain phrases in your recent letters that might be taken as an intention of refusing control and doing what you had been told you must not do so long as you are here and a suggestion that you do not mind leaving the Asram on that account. The phrases you used were indeed vague and general, but if anything of that kind was intended it will be better if you make it clear and precise.  I wish it could be so arranged; but it seems difﬁcult.    It is not because your French is full of mistakes that Mother does not correct it, but because I will not allow her to take more work on herself so far as I can help it.


Sri Aurobindo: Already she has no time to rest sufﬁciently at night and most of the night is working at the books and reports and letters that pour on her in masses.  Even so she cannot ﬁnish in time in the morning. If she has to correct all the letters of the people who have just begun writing in French as well as the others, it means another hour or two of work — she will be able to ﬁnish only at 9 in the morning and come down at 10.30. I am therefore trying to stop it.


Sri Aurobindo: Mother prefers that when she walks on the terrace people should not be looking at her because it is the only time when she can concentrate a little on herself — apart from the necessity of taking some fresh air and movement for the health of the body. If she has to attend to the pull of so many people, that cannot be done. The interview she gives you is a different matter; she has so arranged it herself and it is part of her work, so there is no need to change. What was said was only for the walk on the terrace.   Mother never avoids opening letters or any other work because of absence of time: she deals with all the work that comes to her even if she is ill or if she has no time for rest.


Sri Aurobindo:   You know that I have had to stop correspondence. Mother cannot take it up or write regular letters as she is already engaged in one activity or another from morning to night, 18 hours out of the 24.  The Mother had arranged for the good order of the distribution of dishes and their return.


Sri Aurobindo: was to arrange for all necessary facilities demanded by, was to be responsible for the good order of the work, and for that he was to have full control; for if he has not full control, he cannot be held responsible and good order becomes impossible. All who are concerned with this work ought to report everything that is necessary to report to and help him to control this work; but it seems that no one is willing to do according to the Mother’s arrangement and orders  and each wants to be a law to himself. In that case there is no use in making complaints about insufﬁcient dishes or anything else of the kind to the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: We refuse to issue more dishes under the present conditions. Already in a single year more than 250 items belonging to the dining-room have been broken, lost, stolen, taken away without authorisation by the sadhaks for their private use or have otherwise vanished. Indiscipline, carelessness, regard for one’s own convenience only, disobedience to rules, utter disregard for economy or proper use or safeguarding of the property of the Asram are responsible for this result. It is no use any farther protecting the sadhaks against the results of their own wilful disorders or providing them with means of life which they show no will or ﬁtness to use rightly. They must go on as best they can with what is there, sufﬁcient or insufﬁcient, so long as it lasts.


Sri Aurobindo: I do not know what you mean by these phrases about jumping into disorder or all being the Mother’s children. The Mother gives no sanction to disorder, and it is idle for the sadhaks to sentimentalise about being children of the Mother and at the same time constantly to disregard and disobey her.    It is very true that physical things have a consciousness within them which feels and responds to care and is sensitive to careless touch and rough handling. To know or feel that and learn to be careful of them is a great progress in consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: It is so always that the Mother has felt and dealt with physical things and they remain with her much longer and in a better condition than with others and give their full use.    I did not consider it necessary to say anything about the question of waste beyond assuring you that the undertaking of useless and unnecessary work only in order to keep the men employed was no part of the Mother’s principle of action. The Mother did not know to what pipe you referred and had no time or inclination to make enquiries about it. It is quite true that, so long at least as the sadhaks are not siddha Yogis, self-control is the law; they have to learn to refrain from indulgence of excess in any direction — the provision made for them being ample for a sadhak and much more than is allowed elsewhere — and from negligence, greed or the pursuit of individual fancy.


Sri Aurobindo: When they do these things, the Mother does not intervene at every moment to check them; a standard has been set, they have been warned against waste, a framework has been created, for the rest they are expected to learn and grow out of their weaknesses by their own consciousness and will with the Mother’s inner force to aid them.  In the organisation of work there was formerly a formidable waste due to the workers and sadhaks following their own fancy almost entirely without respect for the Mother’s will; that was largely checked by reorganisation. But waste to a certain extent continues and is almost inevitable so long as the sadhaks and workers are imperfect in their will and consciousness, do not follow in spirit or detail the Mother’s recommendations or think themselves wiser than herself and make undue room for their “independent” ideas. Here too the Mother does not always insist, she watches and observes, intervenes outwardly more than in the individual lives of the sadhaks, but still leaves room for them to grow by consciousness and experience and the lesson of their own mistakes and often employs an inner in preference to an outer pressure. In these matters she must exercise her own judgment and vision and there is no use in anybody offering his approval or censure — for she works from a different centre of vision than theirs and they have not a superior light by which they can judge or guide her.


Sri Aurobindo: As regards waste, I must point out that in our view free expenditure is not always waste, to have a higher standard than is current in this very tamasic and backward place is not necessarily waste. In matters of building and maintenance of buildings as in others of the same order the Mother has from the beginning set up a standard which is not that current here — the usual system being to use the cheapest possible materials, the cheapest labour and to disregard appearance, allowing things to go shabby or making only patchwork to keep them up. I suppose “thrifty” minds would consider the local principle to be sound and a higher standard to be waste. If the higher standard has been kept, it is not for the glory of anyone, the Asram or the Mother — the principle of glory being foreign to Yoga, but from another point of view which is not mental and can only be fully appreciated when the consciousness is capable of understanding the vision of things with which the Mother started her work. I do not consider it useful to write about that now, — the general misunderstanding in these subjects can only disappear when the sadhaks have got rid of the ordinary mind and vital and are able to look at things from the same vision level as that from which the conception of the Yoga and the work took its rise.


Sri Aurobindo: As to doubts and argumentative answer to them I have long given up the practice as I found it perfectly useless. Yoga is not a ﬁeld for intellectual argument or dissertation. It is not by the exercise of the logical or the debating mind that one can arrive at a true understanding of Yoga or follow it. A doubting spirit, “honest doubt” and the claim that the intellect shall be satisﬁed and be made the judge on every point is all very well in the ﬁeld of mental action outside. But Yoga is not a mental ﬁeld, the consciousness which has to be established is not a mental, logical or debating consciousness — it is even laid down by Yoga that unless and until the mind is stilled including the intellectual or logical mind and opens itself in quietude or silence to a higher and deeper consciousness, vision and knowledge, sadhana cannot reach its goal.


Sri Aurobindo: For the same reason an unquestioning openness to the Guru is demanded in the Indian spiritual tradition; as for blame, criticism and attack on the Guru, it was considered reprehensible and the surest possible obstacle to sadhana.  If the spirit of doubt could be overcome by meeting it with arguments, there might be something in the demand for its removal by satisfaction through logic. But the spirit of doubt doubts for its own sake, for the sake of doubt; it simply uses the mind as its instrument for its particular dharma and this not the least when that mind thinks it is seeking sincerely for a solution of its honest and irrepressible doubts. Mental positions always differ, moreover, and it is well known that people can argue for ever without one convincing the other. To go on perpetually answering persistent and always recurring doubts such as for long have ﬁlled this Asram and obstructed the sadhana, is merely to frustrate the aim of the Yoga and go against its central principle with no spiritual or other gain whatever.


Sri Aurobindo: If anybody gets over his fundamental doubts, it is by the growth of the psychic in him or by an enlargement of his consciousness, not otherwise. Questions which arise from the spirit of enquiry, not aggressive or self-assertive, but as a part of a hunger for knowledge can be answered, but the “spirit of doubt” is insatiable and unappeasable.  For the same reason I refuse to answer criticisms, attacks and questionings directed against the Mother. Whether in work or in Yoga, the Mother acts not from the mind or from the level of consciousness from which these criticisms arise but from quite another vision and consciousness. It is perfectly useless therefore and it is inconsistent with the position she ought to occupy to accept the ordinary mind and consciousness as judge and tribunal and allow her to appear before it and defend her.


Sri Aurobindo: Such a procedure is itself illogical and inconsequent and can lead nowhere; it can only create or prolong a false atmosphere wholly inimical to success in the sadhana. For that reason if these doubts are raised, I no longer answer them or answer in such a way as to discourage a repetition of any such challenge.  If people want to understand why the Mother does things, let them get into the same inner consciousness from which she sees and acts. As to what she is, that also can only be seen either with the eye of faith or of a deeper vision. That too is the reason why we keep here people who have not yet acquired the necessary faith or vision; we leave them to acquire it from within as they will do if their will of sadhana is sincere.


Sri Aurobindo: I have written at length on this question once for all; I do not propose to repeat it. People no longer expect it from me; even those who did expect it formerly have ceased to do so. On other questions, so far as they are not connected or mixed up with these things, I may answer hereafter as I ﬁnd time.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother does not provide the sadhaks with comforts because she thinks that their desires, fancies, likings, preferences should be satisﬁed — in Yoga people have to overcome these things. In any other Asram they would not get one tenth of what they get here, they would have to put up with all possible discomforts, privations, hard and rigorous austerities, and if they complained, they would be told they were not ﬁt for Yoga. If there is a different rule here, it is not because the desires have to be indulged, but because they have to be overcome in the presence of the objects of desire and not in their absence. The ﬁrst rule of Yoga is that the sadhak must be content with what comes to him, much or little; if things are there, he must be able to use them without attachment or desire; if they are not he must be indifferent to their absence.


Sri Aurobindo:   Once you have made the offering in your mind and regard all you have as belonging to the Mother and given to you by her, this outward act is not necessary. If you feel that you must do it, you can give them to Nolini and Mother will give them back to you for your use.  It is now one month since you wrote your letter announcing the new favourable turn in your sadhana. You will have had time to see whether the turn was decisive and how far it has moved towards completeness.


Sri Aurobindo: The test will be whether it gets rid fundamentally of the Asuric turn in your external being. All ambition, pride and vanity must disappear from the thoughts and the feelings. There must be no seeking now or in the future for place, position or prestige, no stipulation for a high seat among the elect, no demand for a special closeness to the Mother, no claim or assertion of right, no attempt to thrust yourself between her and others, no endeavour to intercept what she is giving to them or to share in it, no imposing of yourself on her or on other sadhaks. All falsehood must be rejected from the speech, thought and action and all ostentation, arrogance and insolence. A simple, quiet and unpretending aspiration to the Truth and reception of it for its own sake and not for any proﬁt it may bring you, a straightforward acceptance of the Mother’s will whatever it may be, a complete casting away of all pretensions and pretences, a readiness to obey completely and without reserve and to accept any position and any discipline given are the only conditions on which a divine change can be effected in you.


Sri Aurobindo: It is for this that you must strive.  On our side we await a certain conquest on the material plane which is not yet accomplished, before we can tell you to return. As you yourself saw once, till this is done your stay here would not be helpful to you. When you are ready in your inner condition and things are ready here, then the Mother will call you.


Sri Aurobindo: If the mind and the heart have a settled devotion and are full of the Mother’s presence or in constant contact with her Light and Force, then the difﬁculties of the vital and physical consciousness in you can be met and conquered. It is that you must get ﬁrst. To try to deal with the difﬁculties of the vital without this contact or presence, is premature and cannot succeed.    The vital will always ﬁnd excuses for leaving the straight path and indulging its own propensities — and it is for you, since you have a consciousness and a will, not to listen to what you know to be a lower movement.


Sri Aurobindo: When you want to be guided externally, you have to put your difﬁculty clearly and precisely without concealing anything before the Mother. But we cannot at every moment replace your own choice and will — we give you the necessary consciousness and light, it is for you to walk by that.   I am glad to see that the right consciousness is returning and the attack is over. As it is past, I need not say anything about what you wrote in the interval since you can with the sight of the true consciousness see for yourself what is the right answer.  Only one thing I must note that no wrong idea may linger in your understanding.


Sri Aurobindo: You seem to say in one passage of a letter that the Mother had said to you that jealousy is inevitable in true love (in ordinary life) and if it is not there when one sees the other loving elsewhere, then they don’t love each other! You must have strangely misheard and misunderstood the Mother. It is just the opposite of what the Mother has always said and thought and the very contrary of all her knowledge and experience. It is the idea of the ordinary mind about jealousy and love, not hers. She remembers very well having told you just the opposite that, even in ordinary life, one is jealous if one has the true love.


Sri Aurobindo: Jealousy is the common movement of the human egoistic lower vital with its grasping possessive instinct and it cannot be anything else. I thought it better to make this clear so that there might be no misleading impression that such movements of the lower vital nature have any sanction or support in the truth of the soul; they belong to the vital Ignorance, they are fruits of the vital ego.    That is the desire of the palate which the sadhak has to conquer.  Another vital desire.


Sri Aurobindo: These things are good for people in the ordinary life, but such desires must be overcome in Yoga.  This is the reaction of disappointed desire in the vital. It is a movement that should be rejected completely whenever it comes.  They are brought by the ordinary human nature as obstacles to the sadhana.  You must reject them when they come and try to replace them by a complete faith and surrender to the will of the Mother and a quiet and very patient aspiration for opening and inner union with her.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the same part of you, the vital, that is afraid of her.  It is the physical consciousness which has no longer the mind’s sanction to the old push of vital activity and vital desire and so feels the absence of the rajasic vital strength in which men live.  In Yoga that strength must be replaced by the Divine Force that comes from the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: We are very glad to hear that you are better and that has helped you out of the crisis. Surely this jealousy must go and no trace of it remain. Do not doubt that the Mother’s love is and will be always with you. Trust in her grace and all this will go out of you and leave you the true child of the Mother which in your mind and heart you always are.   This jealousy (which is a very common afﬂiction of the vital) will go like the rest.


Sri Aurobindo: If you have the aspiration to get rid of it, it can only come by force of habit, and with the psychic growing in you and the Mother’s force acting the power of the habit is sure to diminish and fade away. Do not be discouraged by its occasional return, but reject it so that it may be unable to stay long and will be obliged to retire. Very soon then it will cease to come at all.    You allowed yourself to be surprised by the old movement of unreasoning jealousy and it brought back the old unreasoned thoughts and feelings — for you are no more than others here as a mere worker, you are here as the Mother’s child and the work is there only because it is a part of the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: Also this feeling of jealousy and other doubts and difﬁculties are not peculiar to you alone, they are common to human nature and most here have them or have had them and found it difﬁcult to be free.  So there is no reason to suppose because of their presence that you are unﬁt or will not be able to do the sadhana. The only danger is in these violent ﬁts of despondency and the movement to go away that comes with them; but that also others have had who have now got over them and some still have them.  There is no reason why you should not get over them as many others have done. The Mother’s love and the Mother’s grace are with you.


Sri Aurobindo: The only other thing needed is the growth of the psychic consciousness and the psychic movement within you.  That had begun and was fast increasing; it has only to reach a certain point, to occupy the mind and vital consciousness more strongly, then these things will no longer be able to return.  What difﬁculties remain will then be minor things; there will be nothing that will try to take you away from the Mother. Be patient therefore and persevere; recover your conﬁdence in the Mother and let your soul grow in you. Beyond these storms there is a haven of joy and love and happiness that are your true goal.


Sri Aurobindo: Persevere till you reach it.     All faults and errors are redeemed by repentance. Conﬁdence in the Mother, self-giving to the Mother, these if you increase them will bring the change in the nature.


Sri Aurobindo:   If you have difﬁculties, you should recognise that they come from your own vital and deal straightforwardly with your vital; it is only so that real ﬁtness in the nature (apart from the original psychic urge which can only realise itself through a change of the nature) can come. To have feelings against the Mother because of difﬁculties created by your own vital is simply one way out of many the vital has of rejecting its responsibility and so resisting the pressure to change.    The human vital everywhere, in the Asram also, is full of unruly and violent forces — anger, pride, jealousy, desire to dominate, selﬁshness, insistence on one’s own will, ideas, preferences, indiscipline — and it is these things that are the cause of the disorder and difﬁculty in the D. R. [] and elsewhere also in the Asram work.


Sri Aurobindo: The rule established in order to control or combat these tendencies is that the Mother’s will and the rule and discipline established by her shall be followed and not each worker be led by his own ego. But there are many who insist on their own ego and resent discipline. They are ready to follow the Mother’s will and rule and discipline only in name and so far as it agrees with their own ideas and preferences. There is no cure for this except by an inner change. In outside life discipline is enforced because refusal of discipline is visited by severe penalties or else results in so much discomfort of various kinds that the indisciplined man has either to submit or to go.


Sri Aurobindo: But here in the Asram it is not possible to enforce the rule in this way. An inner obedience has to be given as the source of the outer obedience.  The only remedy is the descent into the consciousness of that golden lotus which you saw in your vision. Everyone in whom it is established or even who feels its inﬂuence will become a centre of the true consciousness and true action which will change life in the Asram.


Sri Aurobindo:   They can hardly be called big movements. The real distinction is that they are rajasic movements, not tamasic.


Sri Aurobindo: They are not big — they are small movements of the vital ego — I mean the movements of vital dissatisfaction which cause people here to be depressed and revolt and despair. If the resultant depression or despair is strong, that simply means that the minds of the people here are seeing things out of all right measure and proportion, magnifying triﬂes into tremendous things, swelling little hurts to vanity, petty pride, small ambition, etc. They make a tempest in a tea-cup, a tragedy out of a triﬂe.  Because people are living here under the Mother’s shelter and saved from the great sufferings and tragedies of human life, they must needs spin despairs and tragedies out of nothing. The vital wants to indulge its sorrow sense and shout and groan and weep and if it can’t have a good or big reason for doing it, it will use a bad or small one.


Sri Aurobindo:  When these things [] come you should always try to get back at once to the position you have taken of leaving all to the Mother, — your own difﬁculties, but also the stumbles of others, —’s rages (he behaves with everybody like that),’s moods and all.  It would not matter so much about occasional anger coming — these recurrences happen with everybody so long as the peace is not settled permanently in the consciousness. What matters is the suggestions that come, about death and going away and the rest of it. These you must throw away at once. They have no reason for existence when the inner working has begun and the Mother’s Force is sure to carry you through.


Sri Aurobindo: Remain ﬁrm within and recover your quietude.     I do not know why you suppose that the Mother was displeased with you for your letter. I think my answer was quite kind and without any touch of displeasure in it.


Sri Aurobindo: I was silent about most of what you had written, because when there are letters of this kind I take it as an unburdening of the mind and always either remain silent in so far as it concerns others or else I say that we must rely on the growth of inner consciousness to get rid of the faults and deﬁciencies and mistakes of the sadhaks. Silence does not imply that these defects and mistakes do not exist. But all have defects in various forms and make mistakes and the best sadhaks are not exempt. The human way is to get angry and rebuke and condemn and, if the Mother does not do the same or is not severe, to think she is unjust or partial or unseeing or wilfully blind to the defects of her favourites. But the Mother is not blind; she knows very well the nature of all the sadhaks, their faults as well as their merits; she knows too what human nature is and how these things come and that the human way of dealing with them is not the true way and changes nothing.


Sri Aurobindo: It is why she has patience and love and charity for all, not for some alone, who are sincere in their work or their sadhana.  It is strange also that you should conclude that she puts no value on you. From the ﬁrst the Mother has had a special kindness for you; she has appreciated and supported you so steadily that people have accused her of blind partiality towards you just as they accuse her with regard to. When you were in trouble and difﬁculty with suggestions and revolts, she was love and patience itself and helped and supported you through all.  Afterwards since your sadhana opened, we have been watching solicitously over it, — I have been spending time daily writing answers, giving you knowledge of what you should know, trying to lead you forward with love and care.


Sri Aurobindo: Why should all this have been done, if we put no value on you?  You know these things but your physical mind has become too active and clouded your perception for a time. You must get back from it into your inner self.


Sri Aurobindo: It is the usual thing — you allowed a desire to get hold of you and because it was crossed by’s action and the Mother didn’t subscribe to it, you got upset ﬁrst in the vital and then by reﬂex action in the body. All this questioning on the basis of an unsatisﬁed desire is out of place. You must get rid of this idea that you can turn a desire into a demand and then expect as a right its satisfaction and consider it a wrong done to you if it is not satisﬁed. That is precisely the kind of attitude of the vital which prevents the inner progress and drags back the consciousness from the psychic to the lower vital level. Full trust with humility and devotion, that is the psychic poise and for nothing should it be lost.


Sri Aurobindo: No satisfaction of vital desire can replace it.     ’s letter is all right and I accept it as the apology I demanded from her. But things cannot be quite as before; she must make reparation for her fault not only in words but in her conduct; that must change and change altogether.


Sri Aurobindo: That she can change it if she wishes to do so, was shown when she began taking my darshan and her behaviour for some weeks was quite satisfactory. Afterwards she called back into her the bad forces which I had thrown out of her and the recent outbreak was the result.  That must not happen once more. It is not possible any more that the Mother should show the same indulgence and leniency under great provocation as she did before or that I should remain silent and let such things pass. Our attitude towards her and treatment of her must depend on her attitude towards the Mother and her behaviour.


Sri Aurobindo: In the recent outbreak she practically took the position that she refused to change anything wrong in her nature — rather she regarded what is bad and wrong in her as something noble, great and admirable. If that remains her position, she cannot expect that we should accept it, nor would there be any reason for my giving her darshan. People are here to change what is wrong in their nature so that they may do an effective sadhana.  If they refuse to do that or even to try, they are not real sadhaks or disciples and can expect nothing from myself or from the Mother.  What was worse, she seemed prepared to be the instrument of an alien Force, acting against the Mother, claiming victories against her, trying to lower her in the eyes of the sadhaks, asserting itself and its ways, traducing the Asram and impairing the respect due to the Mother and spoiling my work as much as possible.


Sri Aurobindo: It cannot really succeed in this, but it can give trouble, and I do not see why I should tolerate it. If she was not conscious of what she was doing or the evil Force that used her, the sooner she becomes conscious the better.  Arrogance, violence and self-assertion have always been the bane of’s character. But in her relations with the Mother these things must go. She must learn not to force her will on the Mother but to accept the Mother’s will in everything without opposition or murmur.


Sri Aurobindo: That is the main point. If she does not take this resolve, she will always go on as she has done and relapse into revolts and that will bring no good to her. In short, however difﬁcult it may be to her nature, she must learn selfsurrender to the Divine. A “bhakti” which claims everything from the Divine and does not give itself is not real bhakti.  I point out some details — There should be no more clamouring and shouting and violent insistence when something happens which she does not like.


Sri Aurobindo: There should be no disrespect, aggressiveness or constant contradiction when she speaks to the Mother. If she has anything to represent she can do it quietly and without violence. And she must accept the Mother’s decision in all matters.  She should respect the Mother’s time and the heavy work she has to do. She has been allowed to see the Mother very often in the day but she must not abuse the privilege by wasting unnecessarily the Mother’s time.


Sri Aurobindo: There is a heavy strain on the Mother allowing her no time to rest and she must not increase the strain.  In her upstairs work she should try to be in harmony with others and not a cause of disturbance or inconvenience. She should not push herself everywhere and take up a position not authorised by the Mother. I am referring especially to her interference above the stairs when the Mother is giving pranam to the sadhaks. To intervene, speak to people and give them instructions is not in her province and only disturbs the Mother’s work.


Sri Aurobindo: In her talk with sadhaks and visitors, she should refrain from gossip of a bad kind or drawing a black picture of the Asram which makes a bad impression on those who have joined recently and have had no personal experience of how things are, and on people from outside. There should be no attacks on the Mother or accusations against her. All that is harmful to my work and I want it to change.  That is enough for the present; but it is a wholesale change in her attitude and conduct that I demand of her. If she is prepared to make a ﬁrm resolution to get rid of these habits and keeps the resolution, all will be well.


Sri Aurobindo: If she is not prepared, then why is she here and what is the meaning of her professed bhakti for myself or for the Mother?  P. S. Explain all this carefully to. It may be best to make a translation of this letter and give it to her to keep with her.


Sri Aurobindo:  You cannot progress or reach the Mother if you indulge in such fancies as not eating. Obedience to the rules of life laid down by the Mother is the ﬁrst necessity.   To be turned to the Mother is all right and call to her — but more is needed; for that is only the ﬁrst thing needed. There must also be a complete self-giving and surrender. For instance to follow your own fancies is not the right thing — e.g. this idea that to stop eating is the proper way to get rid of desires — it is absurd for one may fast and yet be full of desires.


Sri Aurobindo: You know that the Mother and I disapprove of this kind of self-starvation and yet at the least excuse you bring it up and want to follow it. These and other insistences are your own fancies you must learn to give up. As for the desires, the proper way is to have a sincere aspiration and call on the Mother’s force to work in you. When the Mother’s light and force are working in you they will show you all that has to be changed in you and will change it provided you give your sincere and full consent.   It is not at all the Mother’s wish or will that you or anyone should remain in grief and despair; what she likes is that you should conﬁde in her and be happy and cheerful.


Sri Aurobindo: That is what the Mother wants, that you should remain near her always in an inner gladness of heart and outer happiness of the life.     It is rather surprising that you should so entirely mistake the intention of my letter. I did not regard what you wrote as a complaint against and there is nothing written from that point of view in my answer.


Sri Aurobindo: You wrote that what had happened to had entirely upset you, raised your doubts, been a constant source of harassment to your mind, that it was one of the chief sources of your difﬁculties and a contributing reason to your wish to go away. I gave what was the only true answer, that this was all wrong from the spiritual point of view — that you should not allow another’s difﬁculties to add themselves to your own and upset you and drive you out of the straight spiritual path — and I gave the reason because each sadhak has his own way and his struggles and difﬁculties and they concern only himself and the Mother. That is a principle we have always insisted upon and we have written it to many. I do not see why my writing it to you should make you feel abhiman and turn away from the Mother.  If it is the family sense that is your chief stumbling block, all the more reason why you should push it resolutely away from you — not either cling to it or allow it to cling to you.


Sri Aurobindo: When I said there was no reason for being troubled by’s difﬁculties, I meant no spiritual reason — vital emotional reasons, attachments have no value in the Yoga. Attachments may be difﬁcult to get rid of, but it must be done; otherwise they will harass you and not allow you to progress.  If it had been possible Mother would have removed you from the house. But all the same, physical distance, not being in the same place or the same house, is not sufﬁcient to destroy an attachment. It is an inward tie and it is only inward means that can get rid of it.


Sri Aurobindo: If you do not want the others in the house to make claims on you from the family point of view, it should not be impossible to make them understand it. It is what others in similar circumstances have done.  I wrote to you what I did in order to point out to you what attitude a sadhak must take in the difﬁculty about which you wrote to me. It does not mean that our help and support are not with you in your difﬁculties. Everybody’s difﬁculties, yours quite as much as anyone else’s, are the concern of the Mother and it is an error to suppose that she is unconcerned and indifferent about them.


Sri Aurobindo: Her help is there for you and you must not turn away from her in misunderstanding and abhiman or reject it.  If your struggle is hard for you, all the more reason why you should cling to our hands for help to get out of them and not for any reason let go.  The psychic clarity would have told you that Mother was not likely to tell a lie and that if she says she did not tell you to go and that there was nothing in her mind except to give you help and strength since she saw you were disturbed, she must be telling you the truth and that it was your own observation or the inference you made from it that was mistaken — since the mind and the coloration given to things by the senses, are not infallible — especially when there is a disturbance in the vital. I do not know what you mean by Mother’s reaction in the quarrel with  since I can testify that when she heard of the affair (before you wrote anything at all about it) she blamed and had no feeling at all of severity or displeasure against you.


Sri Aurobindo:   I must say what I have often written to people, that it is impossible for us to take sides in a clash between sadhaks or assume the role of judge and arbiter or of defender of one party against another. Formerly the Mother used to try to intervene or to reconcile, but we found that this only kept discord alive and fed the ego of the sadhaks. In most cases we pass over all quarrels and clashes in silence and almost all sadhaks have ceased to write about their conﬂicts because they get no answer. I have written to once or twice, avoiding any discussion of the merits of a dispute, only to inﬂuence him to regard things from a general and impersonal standpoint so as to prepare him to give up that of the person and ego.


Sri Aurobindo: I passed no personal opinion or judgment for or against this or that person. You must not expect me to take any other attitude. This is a place meant for Yoga and sadhana; personal relations of the vital kind with their attractions and repulsions, quarrels and explanations and reconciliations belong to the ordinary life and nature.  All these clashes which arise whenever you mix with come from his weakness and yours. I have not imposed on you any rule of not meeting with him; but I have advised you not to give any ﬁeld for the weakness which you yourself have admitted and which is evidently there in you.


Sri Aurobindo: Both you and are to me disciples and I have to deal with each in the way best for him or her. I have not pressed on your weaknesses and defects, I have given you time to ﬁnd them out yourself and overcome them, for that is the best way. I have pointed out his to when he was ready to recognise them. It is a pity that you should clash whenever you meet together a little, but you know yourself why it is so. So long as any vital weakness remains it cannot be otherwise.


Sri Aurobindo: Certainly it cannot be remedied by “submitting to his demands and his ego”.    I am rather surprised at your description of the people who show contempt towards you. Leaving aside who is not in question, there is nobody working with you who is far advanced in sadhana or is regarded by the Mother as more specially her own than are others. You are certainly as much her own as anybody else in the kitchen; she has always owned you as her child and little star and what can anybody be more than that?


Sri Aurobindo: I see no reason therefore why you should care so much if anybody is not behaving well with you. I have told you already that people in the Asram — it is true even of those who have inner experiences and some opening — are not yet free in their outer selves from ego and wrong ideas and wrong movements. It is no use getting distressed or depressed by that. What you must do is to be turned only to the Mother and relying on her go forward quietly with your work and sadhana until the time when the sadhaks are sufﬁciently awakened and changed to feel the need of greater harmony and union with each other. Let only your spiritual change and progress matter for you and for that trust wholly in the Mother’s force and her grace which is with you — do not let things or people disturb you, — for compared with the truth within and the journey to the full Light of the Mother’s Consciousness these things have no importance.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is not possible for Mother to intervene personally in these matters. Formerly she used to try to intervene and arrange matters, but the only result was that she got reproaches and abuse from both sides and accusations of partiality and injustice and the quarrels increased tenfold. For a long time that has been given up. If we began again intervening in clashes between housemates or coworkers, all the time would have to be passed in that and the Asram would become a seething cauldron of feuds and collisions.


Sri Aurobindo: These things can only disappear if the sadhaks become fully sadhaks in their consciousness and temperament, learn how to keep equality in all circumstances and consider each other. Only a long silent spiritual pressure can help towards that — nothing else is of any use.   You must remember what I wrote to you before that the Mother wants you to remain quiet and do your work as well as you can under the circumstances without allowing yourself to be upset by these things. Any improvement in the conditions of life or work in the Asram depends on each one trying to progress and open within to the true consciousness, growing spiritually within and not minding about the faults or conduct of others. No change can come by outer means; for this reason the Mother has long ceased to intervene outwardly in the clashes and disagreements between sadhaks.


Sri Aurobindo: Let each progress inwardly and then only the outer difﬁculties will disappear or become negligible.    Each one has his own way of doing sadhana and his own approach to the Divine and need not trouble himself about how the others do it; their success or unsuccess, their difﬁculties, their delusions, their egoism and vanity are in her care; she has an inﬁnite patience, but that does not mean that she approves of their defects or supports them in all they say or do. The Mother takes no sides in any quarrel or antagonism or dispute, but her silence does not mean that she approves what they may say or do when it is improper. The Asram or the spiritual life is not a stage in which some are to be prominent or take a leading part or a ﬁeld of competition in which one has a claim or can rightly consider himself superior to others.


Sri Aurobindo: These things are the inventions of the ordinary human attitude to the world and the tendency is to carry it over into the life of sadhana, but that is not the spiritual truth of things. The Mother tolerates all; she does not forbid any criticism of the sadhaks by each other nor does she give these criticisms any value. It is only when the sadhaks see the futility of all these things from the spiritual level that there can be any hope that they will cease.  In all these things there is nothing that ought to drive a man from the spiritual life or make him go away from his Guru. It seems to me that it is only the Guru who can decide whether one is ﬁt or not; to accept the adverse opinion of someone else on that point seems to me absurd and to act on it an offence against one’s own soul; to judge oneself unﬁt and act on that is most perilous, for this judgment may be merely a ﬁt of depression or a vital disturbance raising the self-depreciation of the tamasic ego.


Sri Aurobindo: If I did not see that you could progress in the sadhana or had not seen any progress, I would not have persistently asked you to continue nor would I be now writing to you letter after letter (I write to no one else) to meet your difﬁculties.  How can such a rule stand? Supposing someone comes and offers you meat or wine, can you accept it? Obviously not. A hundred other instances could be given where the rule would not stand.


Sri Aurobindo: What the Mother gives or allows you, you can take.  If you do that, the impulse may spread so far as to take hold of you and master you. If a wrong impulse comes, you must reject it as soon as you become aware of it.


Sri Aurobindo: It is you who have to get rid of them. If the Mother does not satisfy them and the sadhak keeps them, they will only get stronger by suppression from outside. Each one has to deal with them from within.


Sri Aurobindo: But what you want from the Mother does not come through a pull in the vital — it can come only by the faith and surrender — the psychic purifying the mind and the vital of all wrong desire.    The only thing to do for it is to throw the desire away. It is absurd to allow small animal greeds like this to come up and obscure the whole consciousness. You have not come here to eat nice things and Mother is under no obligation to give them.


Sri Aurobindo: In fact, if you have such desires as that, it is a very good reason for not giving them to you, as it would only feed the desire. Get rid of these movements once for all. Let the true consciousness grow and reject these things.  It is not automatically true — it is only possible — but on condition he gets fully into the inﬂuence of the Mother, is not too open to the atmosphere of other sadhaks who have it, does not get upset at the critical age and also does not upset himself by reading erotic literature etc. There is no one who has been able to do all that yet.


Sri Aurobindo:   That is good. The Mother is pressing for the sex trouble to go out of the sadhaks — as it is a great obstacle. So it must go.


Sri Aurobindo:  It matters a good deal to the Mother, even if it does not matter to you. It is part of what she asks from all so that her work may be done.  There would be many things left better than excitement.  It is for excitement then that you want to live, not for the Mother?


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother has already told you the truth about this idea. The idea that by fully indulging the sex hunger it will be ﬁnished and disappear for ever is a deceptive pretence held out by the vital to the mind in order to get a sanction for its desire — it has no other raison d’ˆetre or truth or justiﬁcation. If an occasional indulgence keeps the sex desire simmering, a full indulgence would only sink you in its mire. This hunger like other hungers does not cease by temporary satiation; it renews itself after a temporary abeyance and wants again indulgence. Neither sops nor gorgings are the right treatment for it.


Sri Aurobindo: It can only go by a radical psychic rejection or a full spiritual opening with the increasing descent of a consciousness that does not want it and has a truer Ananda.   Because the physical action breaks a law without which the Asram cannot stand and the work cannot be done. It is not a personal matter, but a blow aimed at the very soul of the Mother’s work.  Outside sadhaks indulge and get a child, e.g. and others.  Mother disapproves and the man who does it has no longer the same grace as before, but he is not in the Asram and his lapse hurts only himself and his wife.


Sri Aurobindo: Observe carefully the people with whom you have an uneasy feeling and tell the Mother. The uneasiness and the pleasure can go together, because they are two different movements in different parts of you. Mother is not asking you for mental judgment about people, but simply with whom you this uneasiness.  It is not without reason that the Mother gives directions such as that — about not going home after nine without a sadhak to accompany you.


Sri Aurobindo: It is because there are many people of bad character who are about at that time, and if any women go about unprotected by men at that time, they are supposed to be women of bad character, so anything may happen. Even before nine, after nightfall it is much safer not to go about alone.  There would be less difﬁculties if the sadhaks learned to act according to the Mother’s directions and not according to their own ideas or sense of convenience.


Sri Aurobindo: Mother was giving you eight rupees, three rupees for pocket money and ﬁve rupees for any expenses you might have for the cooking or in connection with it or for washing, since you were not giving to the Dhobi. As you said you did not want pocket money, she suppressed the three rupees and gave you the Rs. 5 which was not pocket money, but standing allowance for other purposes. I do not see why this should upset you so much. If you did not understand or did not wish this distinction to be kept up, you could have told Mother so and sent back the ﬁve rupees or else asked her why she wanted you to have the Rs. 5 with you.  These violent ﬁts of despair or revolt because of trivial difﬁculties like this are not the right way of meeting them.


Sri Aurobindo: Mother had not the slightest intention of hurting you or keeping you aloof from her. Why can you not have more conﬁdence and credit her with a reasonable mind and kind intentions even if for the moment you fail to see her purpose in an action? This was a perfectly reasonable arrangement — if you did not want it, you had only to tell her so. Recover yourself and get back into the true attitude in which you can see things simply and naturally; do not allow yourself to be ﬂung off the track by suggestions of the old kind.


Sri Aurobindo: The only sure basis on which you can go is a quiet mind and conﬁdence in yourself and the Mother.    Of course you can do one little study work every day.  Mother is constantly putting you in relation with a world of true harmony and it is that that you feel trying to come down — but you must keep your mind very quiet to receive it.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes. Mother not only disapproves of sadhaks running into debt, but she does not like either their being responsible for or having to pay for the debts of others.


Sri Aurobindo: Mother does not disapprove of your writing the book — what she does not like is your being so lost in it that you can do nothing else. You must be master of what you do and not possessed by it. She quite agrees to your ﬁnishing and offering the book on your birthday if that can be done. But you must not be carried away — you must keep your full contact with higher things.


Sri Aurobindo: What the Mother meant was that this meditating on an easy chair which is so common in the Asram is a new thing to her and she ﬁnds it a rather tamasic habit. There can be no objection to a long sitting or resting when you need it.    Mother does not believe much in an easy chair sadhana.  In fact there is, I think, no easy chair.


Sri Aurobindo: But all the same you can ask. But he has some things that can be put on a bed so that you can sit there instead of lying.     Mother thinks that the shirshasan is not safe for your eyes.


Sri Aurobindo: While some of these asanas are simple and safe, others are not so; they require a training of the body or practice under the eye of an expert. It might not be prudent for you to take them up in an amateur fashion.  Who gets? How does get more than others inwardly? does not get more, he receives more — if others had an equal receptivity, they would get as much as he, and some do get plentifully.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother has never set up, or as great sadhaks and examples for others to follow — if people do it, it is their own error and their own responsibility. Even cannot be imitated in everything though he is certainly a very good sadhak. But his not going outside the central compound has been sanctioned by the Mother from early times because it was his spiritual need.  ’s one merit as a sadhak is that he is entirely passive to the Mother and receives without question all she gives him. As for his separate kitchen that is Mother’s arrangement for him, not his own.


Sri Aurobindo: The friends whom he receives there are people who have great devotion for the Mother or are seeking for light, the others do not come here though some still would. always expresses adoration for the Mother and myself — she has always known us since the Mother ﬁrst came to India. Even so this time also refused to have her in his house, so she was put in’s. It is not a bad progress for a man who has been here only a little over a year and had when he came a thousand ties with the world.  It is also something that a man already marked out by some of the greatest English writers of the day as an equal of Keats and Shelley should renounce all publication and all fame and write only for myself and the Mother and the sadhaks.


Sri Aurobindo: I know how impossible such a renunciation would be to most poets and writers and it seems to me it should be put to his credit as against any weaknesses he may still be unable to get over. For the matter of that who here has been able to become perfect in a year or two of sadhana? Not even the biggest saints or Yogis.  The whole idea of great sadhaks and imitation of them is in fact a mistake. Not to imitate others but to keep in mind the Mother’s will and try to follow it is what is asked from the sadhaks.


Sri Aurobindo: Certainly if any sadhak had to be imitated in outward action, it would be and, not or!! But why do they want to imitate? Obedience to the Mother is the rule of the sadhana, not imitation of or. As for the line in the Gita, it is a statement of what happens in the world, not a rule for Yoga  and the here is not the Yogin, but those who are socially ﬁrst, eminent and leaders.


Sri Aurobindo: If anybody in the Asram tries to establish a supremacy or dominating inﬂuence over others, he is in the wrong. For it is bound to be a wrong vital inﬂuence and come in the way of the Mother’s work. If you feel anything of the kind in anybody, you are quite right to resist it and throw off the inﬂuence; to accept it would be bad both for him and you.  But there should be no quarrel or ill-feeling or keeping up of resentment or anger; for that too is not good for either. . . .  You must remember that just as the Mother uses your capacities and gives them their ﬁeld, she must be able to do the same with the capacities of others.


Sri Aurobindo: If she gives charge of a department of work to one, that must not stand in the way of her consulting or using others. Thus and are in charge of the building work, but the Mother consults too because of his scientiﬁc knowledge as an engineer and he has the right to make suggestions or criticisms or indicate any possible improvements, although he is not in charge. So too the Doctor is not in charge of the dispensary, but he is associated with the medical work and the Mother makes use of his expert knowledge and experience, whenever necessary, or puts in his hands the treatment of a case of illness. It must be the same between you and.  It will be best if you ﬁx in your mind and keep to the true rules of the work; then you will have no difﬁculty or trouble.


Sri Aurobindo: All the work should be done under the Mother’s sole authority. All must be arranged according to her free decision. She must be free to use the capacities of each separately or together according to what is best for the work and best for the worker.  None should regard or treat another member of the Asram as his subordinate.


Sri Aurobindo: If he is in charge, he should regard the others as his associates and helpers in the work, and he should not try to dominate or impose on them his own ideas and personal fancies, but only see to the execution of the will of the Mother.  None should regard himself as a subordinate, even if he has to carry out instructions given through another or to execute under supervision the work he has to do.  All should try to work in harmony, thinking only of how best to make the work a success; personal feelings should not be allowed to interfere, for this is a most frequent cause of disturbance in the work, failure or disorder.  If you keep this truth of the work in mind and always abide by it, difﬁculties are likely to disappear; for others will be inﬂuenced by the rightness of your attitude and work smoothly with you. Or, if through any weakness or perversity in them, they create difﬁculties, the effects will fall back on them and you will feel no disturbance or trouble.


Sri Aurobindo:   Whose work is it if it is not the Mother’s work? All that you do, you have to do as the Mother’s work. All the work done in the Asram is the Mother’s.  All those works, meditation, reading studying English etc. are good.


Sri Aurobindo: You can do any of them dedicating them to the Mother.  Meditation means opening yourself to the Mother, concentrating on aspiration and calling in her force to work and transform you.


Sri Aurobindo: All work in the Asram is the Mother’s.   You can take as much rest as you need from the work. The pains are evidently of the nervous system and are probably due to some resistance or obscurity there to the working of the Forces.  What you write in the beginning of your letter seems to indicate an excessive attachment to a particular work, that of the D. R. []. All work is the Mother’s and there should be no attachment to this or that to which you are accustomed or to the things or circumstances or people related to it; for that would indicate a sense of possession or clinging in the vital.


Sri Aurobindo: The vital should be perfectly free and ready to work or not to work, to remain in one ﬁeld or to go to another, to do in one way or to do in another according to the will of the Mother.  I trust that you will indeed take the opportunity of this rest to make a deﬁnite turn in your sadhana. A complete surrender of the mind and the vital both in work and in sadhana is the turn that is needed. Not to be attached to one’s ideas, feelings or formations, not to substitute them for those which the Divine Truth ﬁnds necessary for its workings, not to indulge one’s sentiments, not to have personal preferences or, having them, to be ready to waive them at any moment and submit to the Mother’s Will which embodies the Divine Force, not to follow one’s own way but hers; this is the psychic submission that is most needed.  So long as it is not there, a full opening of the sadhana on the vital and the physical plane is hardly possible.


Sri Aurobindo: To carry on the sadhana in one’s way and according to the counsels of the individual mind and emotional being carries you only a little distance — it does not bring to the goal.     I must remind you that all the work in the Asram is the Mother’s work and no part of it is the personal property of any sadhak.  The Mother can do with it whatever she thinks right.


Sri Aurobindo: This is too easily forgotten by yourself and others.     All the work here is for the Mother and there is no difference between her personal work and the rest of the work for the Asram and all can be done with an equal joy. It is the mind that makes the distinction.


Sri Aurobindo: This does not mean that all work done in the world is the Mother’s work — only that which is consciously done for her.   There is no reason for your seeing the Mother nor is this the time for it. Nor is there any room for discussion in this matter.  There are two things that must be clearly understood. The work here is the Mother’s and she has the right to give her orders in whatever way she pleases and they must be obeyed.


Sri Aurobindo: No one can be allowed to ﬂout her orders, however conveyed, or insist on his own ideas, will or fancies. If you are prepared to respect and obey her orders without making conditions, you can be allowed to continue the work, otherwise you must discontinue.  Secondly, all violence must stop. If you want to remain in the Asram, this kind of conduct must cease.


Sri Aurobindo: You have promised that you would obey the orders of the Mother in the work. Mother has sent you herself the typed instructions for the work with her signature and statement that it was in accordance with her orders. You have returned them to  after cutting off the Mother’s statement and signature with a note saying that you do not want this literature. This is a direct act of deﬁance and disobedience to the Mother. You have either to respect or obey the orders of the Mother or you cannot be allowed to continue the work.


Sri Aurobindo:    ( 1


Sri Aurobindo: ) It is absurd to keep the certifying signature and reject with contumely the order it signs and certiﬁes. You said you had never received detailed instructions and you said you would obey orders and instructions signed by the Mother. This one was drafted under her instructions and typed after careful examination by her and certiﬁed and signed by her. When drafted under her directions and signed by her, the whole order is hers and must be so regarded and respected as well as obeyed.


Sri Aurobindo: Even a proposal drawn up by someone else becomes her order as soon as it is accepted, approved and signed by her and must be so regarded.  As a matter of fact even if not signed by her, departmental orders should be regarded as hers and obeyed, because they pass through her scrutiny and approval or are made under her general sanction.  (2) You have done good work which has been appreciated by the Mother, but that does not authorise you to claim an independent action in your work free from control. There is and must be a departmental control over all sections of the work and that control, through whomever exercised, is the Mother’s. No one in immediate charge of a section of the work has the right to choose which order he shall or shall not obey, or to say that he will not obey orders at all unless they come direct from the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: (3) All arrangements for the work made by the Mother must be accepted by the workers. The Mother has informed you that the arrangement for Golconde in Raymond’s absence, agreed on between him and the Mother, is that shall carry on control and supervision and direction of all the work for the Mother under her sanction or orders. Nobody has a right to question this arrangement or act so as to make its execution difﬁcult or impossible.  As for the pressure you complain of, it is you yourself who have made it necessary by recent refusals to obey orders and the increasing violence of your reactions.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother has the responsibility and supreme and total control of all the work and she cannot allow it to be made impossible or ineffective on the plea that her orders are not hers because they are not given directly by her.    What is good work and what is bad or less good work? All is the Mother’s work and equal in the Mother’s eyes.  You have allowed yourself to accept the old wrong suggestions — for a mere triﬂe — and so got into the wrong condition once more.


Sri Aurobindo: You were doing the work for the Mother I suppose, not for yourself — to satisfy her, not to satisfy yourself? Then if the Mother was satisﬁed, why should you be dissatisﬁed? You should also have understood by this time that the Mother’s ideas of what is good or not, what will do or not do, are more correct than the ideas of your mind about it, — for your mind is always worrying and tormenting itself for nothing.   Drive all this away.


Sri Aurobindo: You know by experience that it is a false road and leads to no progress but only to confusion and trouble. Open yourself again to the Force and Peace and Light — it is that alone that can make you understand and change you.    I can only repeat what I have already written whenever these circumstances and feelings come to you. To leave your work is not a solution — it is through work that one can detect and progressively get rid of the feelings and movements that are contrary to the Yogic ideal, — those of the ego.


Sri Aurobindo: Work should be done for the Mother and not for oneself, — that is how one encourages the growth of the psychic being and overcomes the ego. The test is to do the work given by the Mother without abhiman or insistence on personal choice or prestige, — not getting hurt by anything that touches the pride, amour-propre or personal preference.  It is a high and great ideal that is put before the sadhak through work and it is not possible to realise it suddenly, but to grow steadily into it is possible, if one keeps the aim always before one — to be a selﬂess and perfectly tempered instrument for the work of the Divine Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: It is very satisfying to have closed so well the work you undertook for the Mother, overcoming all difﬁculties and ending in such a satisfactory result. But your work for the Mother is always sure to be the same, thorough, conscientious and skilful and inspired by a ﬁrm faith and openness to her force; where these things are, success is always sure.   If you leave it to the Mother entirely, then what the Mother would want you to do is to go on with the work as best you can without allowing yourself to be disturbed or troubled by these things which you enumerate in your letters, without insisting on your own ideas or vital feelings. That is indeed the rule that all ought to follow, to do their work here as the Mother’s work, not their own; the worker must not insist on the work being done according to his own ideas; for that is to treat it as his own work not the Mother’s. If there are inconveniences, troubles, things done not as he would like them to be, still he should go on doing his work as best he can under the circumstances.


Sri Aurobindo: That is a rule of the sadhana, to remain unconcerned by outward circumstances and quietly do what one has to do, what one can do, leaving the rest to the Mother. It is not possible to have everything perfect at present, even supposing that what one thinks to be right is the best. There is much in the Asram and the work that is not as perfect as the Mother would like it to be, but she knows that the perfection she would like is not yet possible because of circumstances and the imperfection of her instruments ; she arranges all for the best according to what is now possible.  The worker should do his work in this spirit according to the Mother’s arrangements and he should use his work as a means for growing spiritually in devotion, obedience, self-offering to the Mother, not insisting on himself, his ideas, his feelings and preferences.


Sri Aurobindo: To be able to do that makes the consciousness ready for inner experience and progress in sadhana.  I have tried to explain what the Mother wants and why she wants it. She wants you to do her work quietly, taking all inconveniences, defects or difﬁculties quietly, and doing your best; what does or arranges should not disturb you — if he makes mistakes he is responsible for it to the Mother and it is for the Mother to see what is to be done. That is what she wants from you — if you can do it, then things will go more smoothly and she will be able more easily to lead things in the direction she wants. It is also, as I have tried to explain to you, the best thing for your own sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo:   Is it beneath your dignity to do work for the sadhaks? It is an entirely egoistic attitude and improper for a sadhak. All the people in the D. R., in the Building Service, in the Stores, in the carpentry department, in the Atelier and Smithy, are all the time doing work for the sadhaks, the Mother herself is doing work for the sadhaks all day; in writing this answer I am spending my time doing work for a sadhak.


Sri Aurobindo: Would you think it proper for the D. R. and Kitchen workers to say, “We are not going to cook for sadhaks or serve them; it is beneath our dignity. We will consent only to cook food for the Mother alone.” Do you want me to stop writing answers to your letters on the ground that I am doing work for a sadhak and I will write only letters to the Mother and nobody else?  What was doing in the kitchen so many years if not preparing the food of the sadhaks? And what was doing in the granary if not work for the sadhaks?


Sri Aurobindo: All these ideas are perfectly idiotic. All work given by the Mother is work for the Mother.    If you say “I will not eat” or “I will eat only once until you do what I say,” that is not or, that is putting compulsion on the Mother to do what you want.  I do not know what you mean by giving you your service.


Sri Aurobindo: If it is the old work, that is not possible any longer. Other work will have to be found. But you should remember that the true service and the true Yoga is to do what the Mother wants and not what you want. It is by making one’s will one with hers and submitted to hers that one can advance and feel unity with her and her constant presence.


Sri Aurobindo:    What you write is no doubt correct. There are very wrong ideas in the minds of the workers and not at all the right attitude. But we have not to do the work for the satisfaction of the sadhaks, but rather because it is the Mother’s work, the divine work and it has to be done well and in the right way.


Sri Aurobindo: If the workers or others are not satisﬁed, it has still to be done well and in the right way.   When their nature changes and they see their mistake, then they will recognise the truth and change their attitude. Some have good will and have only to learn to see more clearly and get free from their mental misjudgments. Others are more obscure and egoistic and will take more time to get the right poise.


Sri Aurobindo: Till that happens, we must go on with a quiet ﬁrmness and resolution and a great patience.   If the sadhak has a strong insistence or a strong desire, the Mother may say “Yes” or “Do as you wish” or give her sanction to the thing requested or demanded. That does not make it a , but simply a thing which the sadhak can do.  Again if a thing is indifferent or unobjectionable and the Mother is asked by somebody if he can do it, that does not exalt it into a.


Sri Aurobindo:   I was asked [] whether everything done that had the Mother’s permission was not a.  People ask for permission to a host of things dictated by various reasons — it does not follow that the Mother’s permission to all these things are her dictates. What work is given by the Mother is her work — also whatever work is done with sincerity as an offering to the Mother is her work also — that goes without saying.


Sri Aurobindo: But Karma covers all kinds of actions and not work only.  You need not be so much concerned as to what others in the Asram may think about you or say to you. It is only what the Mother says to you or thinks about you that has any importance.  All you need to be concerned with is your own work and sadhana, whether you do it well and sincerely and with the right spirit. As to that the Mother alone can judge; you should not be troubled or moved by the praise or blame of others.


Sri Aurobindo:   How can you do like the Mother or do the work she alone can do? That is the ambition and vanity coming in.


Sri Aurobindo:   If you are working you have to see your work, so it is no use closing the eyes; but one can always do the work in a concentration in which the inner being is turned towards the Mother while the outer does the Mother’s work.    When things become confused outside, you must put on your mind at once the rule of not judging by appearances — refer all to the Mother’s Light within with the conﬁdence that all will be clear.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is a pity if you have to give up the work as your work had been of great help and was very much appreciated, especially by  — but if it comes in the way of the joy and cheerfulness which is necessary for the smooth inner progress, Mother cannot ask you to continue. The necessity of the sadhana is the ﬁrst thing to consider.    The spirit and attitude you express in your letter are the right spirit and attitude, but you must keep to it always.


Sri Aurobindo: Work done for the Mother without claim or desire alone has a spiritual value — you must not bring your ego into it.  If work is given that you think ought not to be given or have any other grievance, you have to say it or write to and ask him to remedy it or take the orders of the Mother. But to complain to others and create the idea that you are ill-used so that it spreads through the Asram is to create disturbance and a current of forces against the Mother and her work which may have a serious consequence.  I do not wish to insist on this any more. Everybody makes mistakes and one has only to learn from them and avoid them in future.


Sri Aurobindo: I am sure you will try to live up to the ideal you have expressed in your letter.    Yes, that is the most important thing — to get over ego, anger, personal dislikes, self-regarding sensitiveness, etc. Work is not only for work’s sake, but as a ﬁeld of sadhana, for getting rid of the lower personality and its reactions and acquiring a full surrender to the Divine. As for the work itself, it must be done according to the organisation arranged or sanctioned by the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: You must always remember that it is her work and not personally yours.   The Mother’s express sanction should remove any feeling of uneasiness due to the idea that it ought not to be done. As for lowering of consciousness, that is quite another thing — the sanction will not remove that. Also naturally one would have to read with one eye ready to be on the work at need, which might not be agreeable.


Sri Aurobindo: I am glad of your resolution. The greater the difﬁculties that rise in the work the more one can proﬁt by them in deepening the equality, if one takes it in the right spirit. You must also keep yourself open to receive the help towards that, for the help will always be coming from the Mother for the change of the nature.    What you say is perfectly correct.


Sri Aurobindo: There is a stupid spirit of competition and claim, as if by being here and working one were doing a favour to the Mother, as if her permission to be here were not a grace and her giving work also were not a grace.  If the sadhaks could get rid of this wrong attitude, they would go much faster in their spiritual progress and the atmosphere of the Asram would be clearer and purer.  This [] is the thing that used to happen daily to the physical workers in the Asram. Working with immense energy and enthusiasm, with a passion for the work they might after a time feel tired — then they would call the Mother and a sense of rest came into them and with or after it a ﬂood of energy so that twice the amount of work could be done without the least fatigue or reaction. In many there was a spontaneous call of the vital for the Force, so that they felt the ﬂood of energy as soon as they began the work and it continued so long as the work had to be done.


Sri Aurobindo:   Don’t be afraid of vital energy in work. Vital energy is an invaluable gift of God without which nothing can be done, — as the Mother has always insisted from the beginning; it is given that His work may be done.  I am very glad it has come back and cheerfulness and optimism with it.


Sri Aurobindo: That is as it should be.  There are certain things that must ﬁx in his mind and feel and act in their spirit, if he is to get rid of his depression and unrest and feel happy and at home. You will explain clearly to him what I write here.  (1) He is not here as’s nephew, but as a child of the Mother.  (2) He is not here under the care, guardianship and control of, but under the Mother’s control and care and he owes allegiance to her alone.


Sri Aurobindo: (3) The work given to him in the stores is the Mother’s work and not’s; he must do it with that idea, as the Mother’s work, and no other.  (4) is at the head of the stores, garden, granary and receives his directions from the Mother or reports his arrangements to her for approval — just as in the B. D. [ ]


Sri Aurobindo: or in the Dining Room or or in their departments. Others in these departments are supposed to receive their directions from the head and act in accordance. But this is because it is necessary for the discipline and good order of the work; it does not mean that the work is’s or the building work is’s or the dining room work is’s — all is the Mother’s work and must be done by each, by the head as by the others, for her. It would not be possible to get the work done if each and every worker insisted on being independent and directly responsible to her or on doing things in his own way; there is too much of this spirit and it is the cause of much confusion and disorder. The Mother cannot see to the whole work herself physically and give orders direct to each worker; therefore the arrangement made is indispensable.


Sri Aurobindo: On the other hand, the head of a department is also supposed to act according to the Mother’s directions — or in their spirit where he is left free — and not otherwise; if he does according to his mere fancy or obeys his own personal likes and dislikes or misuses his trust for his personal satisfaction or convenience, he is answerable for any failure in the work that may result or wrong spirit or clash or confusion or false atmosphere.  (5) Any work done personally for or another (not for the Asram) is not part of the Mother’s work and the Mother has nothing to do with that; if such work is asked, may do it if he likes or not do it if he thinks it is improper.  (6) has been given one work at least by the Mother direct — that is the cleaning of the kitchen vessels. Let him do it according to the Mother’s directions and with scrupulousness and perfection; it will be an opportunity for him to show what he can do and the rest can be seen to hereafter.  (7) He is not bound to accept food from and or presents etc.; if he does not like it, why does he receive these things?


Sri Aurobindo: He is perfectly free to refuse. His staying here and everything else does not depend on, but on the Mother alone — so he has no reason to fear.  (8) Finally, he should clear his vital of restlessness and desires — for that in him as in everybody is the root cause of depression, and, if he were elsewhere and under other circumstances, the depression would still come because the root cause would still be there. Here if he turns entirely to the Mother, opens to her and works and lives turning towards her, he will get release and happiness and grow into light and peace and become in all his being a child of the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo:   A small signature does not mean lack of interest — usually it means more concentration than a large one.    It is quite impossible for the Mother to see to every detail of the organisation of the Asram in person.


Sri Aurobindo: Even as it is she has no time free at all. It is understood that you can have the copies sent to you, but it is with those who have charge that you must insist on the execution of any arrangement.     Yes, that is correct.


Sri Aurobindo: Mother does not care for the food for itself; but she allows to do it as an offering. So with the work — although the work has its own importance. and are not given physical or practical external work because their energy cannot run in that direction and they cannot do it — not because training in physical and practical work is not good for all. In ideal circumstances a many-sided activity of the being would be the best — but as yet it is not always practicable.   Such ideas are rather a mental way of emphasising the desirability of something — here, of such persons existing, or of such a consummation being reached even in one person — than true in the form in which it is put.


Sri Aurobindo: What can be said as true behind the statement is that each person arriving to a certain perfection of the Yogic state becomes a force for the expansion of the same Yogic force, a for it to work. How far that working through him can go depends on the person and on the receptivity of those with whom he comes into inner contact. Men like, or for instance who have the push and communicating faculty do have an effect on others, even as it is, though it cannot be said that they have reached anything near perfect perfection in obedience and peace and light, only an approach towards it.  Naturally, the persons they affect are those who are capable of the contact.   It is impossible for the Mother to arrange the work according to personal considerations as then all work would become impossible.


Sri Aurobindo:   I don’t know why people always assume that it is or someone else who has inﬂuenced Mother and otherwise she would concede everything they ask. Especially in an aesthetic consideration! On an engineering question, it might be different.    has written a very ﬁne letter — it shows that he is very open to the Mother for he proposes at all points what she herself suggested to me today.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother accepts’s willingness to remove his shoes if he has to go to the Dispensary, but there is this to consider. It is not only a clash between two sadhaks, but has throughout been seized, as he himself admits, by a Power or Impulse that puts false ideas into his head and impelled him to offer an obstinate resistance to the Mother’s orders and to use every device — even the most childish and, to say the least, strange — to defeat her intentions. He does not reject or dismiss this action but justiﬁes it and proposes to continue it unless the Mother yields to him altogether in this matter. The Power that got hold of him will consider itself as victorious and almost inevitably ﬁnd other ideas or excuses to push him again to a similar action. Where that will lead, the example of the others has already shown any number of times.


Sri Aurobindo: If that happens, then the Mother will have to come back again to the steps she had contemplated and commenced this time. It is quite impossible that an important department of the Asram should remain in the hands of one who goes on making it a sacred duty to disobey in favour of his own ideas the clear orders of the Mother.     Is it the atmosphere of the Dispensary that raises these things?


Sri Aurobindo: Your letter marks the beginning of the same attitude towards as’s was before it became acute, the idea that you alone are medically great and competent (which was his), a big “I” sprawling egoistically all over the pages, the sense of being in charge = a masterful possession of the Dispensary, the disposition to arrange and command everything imperiously and imperially in that kingdom. Please stop all that before it grows. The work is the Mother’s and has to be carried out in harmony and the big “I” has to draw in its horns and become small, even if it cannot disappear altogether.  The Mother has given charge of the Dispensary not to you, but to you and together (she does not want to renew a one man rule there, after what has happened). She accepted the arrangement suggested by both of you, because you were working in harmony and it seemed the one possible arrangement.


Sri Aurobindo: She expects you to continue working in harmony — otherwise the running of the Dispensary will become impossible.   The Mother has her own reasons for her decisions; she has to look at the work as a whole without regard to one department or branch alone and with a view to the necessities of the work and the management. Whatever work is done here, one has always to learn to subordinate or put aside one’s own ideas and preferences about things concerning it and work for the best under the conditions and decisions laid down by her. This is one of the main difﬁculties throughout the Asram, as each worker wants to do according to his own ideas, on his own lines according to what he thinks to be the right or convenient thing and expects that to be sanctioned. It is one of the principal reasons of difﬁculty, clash or disorder in the work, creating conﬂict between the workers themselves, conﬂict between the workers and the heads of departments, conﬂict between the idea of the sadhaks and the will of the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: Harmony can only exist if all accept the will of the Mother without grudge and personal reaction.  Independent work does not exist in the Asram. All is organised and interrelated, neither the heads of departments nor the workers are independent. To learn subordination and cooperation is necessary for all collective work; without it there will be chaos.


Sri Aurobindo:   You are disturbed because of your vital ego. It is evident that your faith and attitude cannot be perfect, if because Mother makes other arrangements for her work, you at once regard her as unjust, false and tricky. Every sadhak ought to realise that the work given him is not his property — it is not his work but hers; she must be perfectly free to make an arrangement and to change it whenever she thinks right to do so. To challenge her action and demand an explanation from her or claim the work as personal property is an entirely mistaken and egoistic attitude.


Sri Aurobindo:  What I meant in my letter was that the Mother does not usually think about these things herself, take the initiative and direct each one in each instance what they shall do or how, unless there is some special occasion for doing so. This she does not do, in fact, in any department of work. She keeps her eye generally on the work, sanctions or corrects or refuses sanction, intervenes when she thinks necessary. It is only a few matters in which she takes the initiative, plans and designs, gives special and detailed orders. In the line of embroidery, refers to her anything necessary or any of the workers undertakes something and informs the Mother that she would like to do something for her, handkerchief, apron, cover or sari.