Sri Aurobindo: It seems to me that, not being yourself a Satyagrahi, you are not bound to give this help or run this risk. Nothing prevents you from receiving a friend who is a Congressman under other circumstances.  The questions you put about ﬁnancial help to Khaddar and Prohibition and to the National school, must be decided by yourself, I think. I will only ask you to note what I have written in the ﬁrst paragraph of the letter.


Sri Aurobindo:   Not any! What is called politics is too rajasic, mixed and muddied with all sorts of egoistic motives. Our way is the pressure of the spirit upon the earth consciousness to change.


Sri Aurobindo:   But surely politics is not the only activity possible for the vital — there are hundreds of others. Whenever there is something to be produced, created, organised, achieved, conquered, it is the vital that is indispensable.


Sri Aurobindo: No, it is not given as a work to anybody. People go on with that because it is a mental interest or habit they do not like giving up, it is like the vital habit of tea-drinking or anything else of the kind. Politics is not only not given as a work but the discussion of politics is discouraged as much as possible.


Sri Aurobindo: A member of the Asram cannot belong to a political body or do political work. He is also not supposed to do any social propaganda. Educational work like the Gurukula is different; it can be done with the Mother’s permission.    I don’t understand how and others who are there are continuing to make proposals like these when I have clearly forbidden any publicity of the kind.


Sri Aurobindo: You must make it perfectly and ﬁnally clear to them that the Asram is a non-political institution as well as non-sectarian and that therefore there can be no public commitment by its members and they cannot take any ofﬁcial position in institutions like this nor can their names be signed to any document involving a breach of this principle. Their proposals therefore cannot be accepted by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Whatever sympathy, support and guidance they receive from you or from anybody here must be personal and given behind the scenes. Sri Aurobindo has sometimes made public utterances or taken publicly a political position, but that was on his own personal account and his action did not involve the Asram. His name also must not be published in this connection.


Sri Aurobindo: They must be satisﬁed with the knowledge that his sympathy is entirely with your objects and that his spiritual force will be behind your work, but this must not be made public.  I do not know why you said all you did to Miss Maitland about the British police. We do not care in the least about the matter, and we have no intention of making any move to get rid of them.


Sri Aurobindo: Farther, you must try to remember that this Asram is not concerned with politics and the members are expected not to talk politics with people from outside like Miss Maitland. She came here from an interest in Yoga and is not in the least interested in politics. If you begin to talk to her about the freedom of India and the misdeeds of the British Government, she will inevitably think in the end that the Consul was right and the Asram is full of revolutionaries under the garb of Yoga. It is surprising that the members of this Asram seem always unable to use discretion in their speech or measure its consequences or understand how easily false impressions are created.  Finally, those who see Miss Maitland are expected not to quarrel or dispute with her about her views or mental impressions about India.


Sri Aurobindo: She is returning soon to England and they can surely have patience for this short time and maintain harmony and good feeling in their relations with her.   It is an express rule of the Asram not to give inner information of the Asram life to people outside. If the correspondent is a seeker after Yoga (which does not seem to be the case here) he can be told general things about the Yoga (not anything personal to the sadhaks or to Sri Aurobindo or the Mother).


Sri Aurobindo: It is not very advisable to discuss either myself or the Asram or spiritual things with hostile minds or unbelievers. These discussions usually bring on the sadhak a stress of the opposing atmosphere and cannot be helpful to his progress. Reserve is the best attitude; one need not be concerned to dispel their bad will or their ignorance.   Your mistake was to say something which implied a reﬂection on a fellow-sadhak to a visitor. That should not be done when it is unnecessary, especially if the Mother’s name is brought in.


Sri Aurobindo: If some sadhak of the Asram says things to a visitor against us or the Asram or the Yoga, for instance, and the visitor comes to you with a report of it, it is necessary to set right the wrong impression made or any perplexity he may feel, or other reasons may arise. But here there was no necessity. Your explanation of ’s goings out from the Asram was in fact not correct, for he had wired refusal to go and had no wish to go and it was not out of a desire to attend a relative’s marriage that he went; but even if it had been correct, the statement should not have been made. The internal affairs of the Asram and the sadhaks should not be spoken of — unless it cannot be avoided — to visitors or persons from outside.  There is no reason why you should stop receiving visits; you have the Mother’s approval and it is helpful.


Sri Aurobindo: But we would wish you to avoid anything which might be interpreted as reﬂections or personal judgments on other sadhaks or anything which can be interpreted as that; you see for yourself what reactions and bad currents any indiscretion of that kind can create.  It is not necessary to answer everything that appears in the newspapers. Nor is it advisable to take the outside public into conﬁdence as to what is or is not going on in the Asram. It is only in exceptional cases that an answer is called for.


Sri Aurobindo: I have glanced over your monster. He will have to be beheaded and his tail cut off. Beheaded because Mother has put a prohibition on publication of her name and what she has written.  The are for private circulation, the only for disciples and those who are actively interested in spiritual experience. This rule has been hammered into and others; you also must ﬁx it in your cerebellum for the future.


Sri Aurobindo: The tail will have to be docked for a reason regarding myself. Your reason for including it shows a harrowing incomprehension of the purpose of these things. The object of such special issues is not to exhibit me to the public and show them all sides of me, i.e. to make me go through all my possible performances on a public stage. The object is to make the reading public better acquainted with the nature of this Yoga and the principle of what is being done in the Asram. The private matters of the Asram itself are for the public — at most only so much as the public can see.


Sri Aurobindo: anything personal and private about me is also taboo. I come in only so far as it is necessary for the public to know my thought and what I stand for. You will notice that my life itself is so written as to give only the grey precise surface facts, nothing more. All propensity to make me ﬁgure in the big Barnum circus of journalistic “features” along with or in competition with Joe Louis the prize-ﬁghter, Douglas Fairbanks, H. G. Wells, King George and Queen Mary, Haile Selassie, Hobbs, Hitler, Jack the Ripper (or any modern substitute of his) and Mussolini should be strictly banished from the mentality for evermore and the day after.


Sri Aurobindo: Up to now it has not. It has only brought useless letters and people wanting to “join” the Asram to “study” here. There is no speciﬁc utility in the publications, but only a sort of counteraction to false ideas and rumours about the Asram and a vague general effect on the public mind. I allow it not because it has any central value for the work, but there is in the play of forces a tendency to


Sri Aurobindo: wards pressure for a more favourable attitude towards the Asram in Pondicherry and elsewhere and some measure of respect in Europe also and this is helpful to a certain extent. Especially it relieves me from the necessity of putting out forces constantly to combat the possibility of hostile attacks from outside threatening the security of the work. The result is therefore rather defensive up till now than something positive — but I cannot say it is of no use at all.


Sri Aurobindo: I shall see your article and decide. I fear the ﬁrst part of it is not admissible. The Mother always insists on great reserve in writing publicly about the Asram, especially if it is done by inmates or sadhaks.


Sri Aurobindo: I think I had better make it clear once for all that I do not approve of the publication of articles on controversial political subjects by members of the Asram. It involves the Asram and can prejudice the work of the Mother by raising quite uselessly unnecessary opposition and prejudice of which there is already more than enough. From a deeper point of view it pulls down the work to a lower region of mental and vital forces and the methods current on that lower plane. The work we have to do does belong to that plane and cannot be done by current methods. It can only be done by rising to a higher spiritual plane and working silently from there on the forces in action so as to prepare a favourable ﬁeld for the growth of the true consciousness and the true life-action.


Sri Aurobindo: So long as that is not done, to engage in any activity which means opposition and struggle on the lower plane or to resort to its methods can only put it at a disadvantage and imperil its future. It is from the higher levels that things have to be worked out before the lower can be ready.  Your article is not at all conclusive except to people who are already disposed to be of the same way of thinking. It has besides the appearance of preaching a sort of spiritualised individualism and capitalism, but that is no more the object of our work than the “spiritual communism” which Motilal put into it. To allow that to pass as the economic gospel of this Yoga would not do at all.


Sri Aurobindo: In the Gita I only explain the spiritual sense of the ; I do not put that forward as my own economic or social teaching. Our aim is to rise to a higher spiritual consciousness and to create from there — to drag in mental forms from the present or past society could only spoil or hamper the purity and freedom of the future spiritual working.    Well, what I am considering is just this, whether it would not be wiser, as far as concerns England or America, to start impersonally with the philosophical side and the side of the Yoga, and leave the person a little behind the scene for the present, until people there are ready as individuals for the personal touch; that is the course we have been following up to now. In India it is different, for here there is another kind of general mentality and there is the tradition of the Guru and the Shishya.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a rule of the Asram that resident sadhaks shall not engage in any kind of public or propagandist activity political, social or religious; it is only our special permission which could dispense any member of the Asram from conformity to this rule. The Asram exists solely for Yoga and for a purely spiritual purpose; it is not a political or social or religious institution and it abstains from all these activities, this abstention is necessary for its existence. If any member engages in them, it involves the Asram itself and gives it the appearance of entering into activities which are not proper to it, and if any such impression of that kind is created, it may have serious consequences.  It appears that you have been engaging without our permission or authorisation in public activities of various kinds for some time past. This must cease.


Sri Aurobindo: If you intend to carry them on any farther, you must leave the Asram and go outside; you cannot be allowed to continue them from the Asram and as a member.   You must not write to all these people encouraging them in the idea of coming here. It is only selected people who can come here. If anybody is encouraged, there would before long be 10,000 instead of 120 — and it would no longer be an Asram.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is no necessity for a society for the translation of the books. I have given my books outside always so that the Asram should not be entangled in these things and there should be no appearance of a propaganda inspired by me.    No, not at all.


Sri Aurobindo: Well-known or unknown has absolutely no importance from the spiritual point of view. It is simply the propagandist spirit; they think and say “O if Kalelkar comes, the whole of Gujarat will be ours” — as if we were a party or a church or religion seeking adherents or proselytes. One man who earnestly pursues the Yoga is of more value than a thousand well-known men.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no value at all in these things — people read and forget.  As for propaganda I have seen that it is perfectly useless for us — if there is any effect, it is a very triﬂing and paltry effect not worth the trouble. If the Truth has to spread itself, it will do it of its own motion; these things are unnecessary.    It may be said generally that to be overanxious to pull people, especially very young people, into the sadhana is not wise.


Sri Aurobindo: The sadhak who comes to this Yoga must have a real call, and even with the real call the way is often difﬁcult enough. But when one pulls people in in a spirit of enthusiastic propagandism, the danger is of lighting an imitative and unreal ﬁre, not the true Agni, or else a short-lived ﬁre which cannot last and is submerged by the uprush of the vital waves. This is especially so with young people who are plastic and easily caught hold of by ideas and communicated feelings not their own — afterwards the vital rises with its unsatisﬁed demands and they are swung between two contrary forces or rapidly yield to the strong pull of the ordinary life and action and satisfaction of desire which is the natural bent of adolescence. Or else the unﬁt tends to suffer under the stress of a call for which it was not ready, or at least not yet ready. When one has the real thing in oneself, one goes through and ﬁnally takes the full way of sadhana, but it is only a minority that does so.


Sri Aurobindo: It is better to receive only people who come of themselves and of these only those in whom the call is genuinely their own and persistent.     It is true that there is in most people here this running after those who come from outside especially if they are well-known or distinguished. It is a common weakness of human nature and, like other weaknesses of human nature, the sadhaks seem not inclined to get rid of it.


Sri Aurobindo: It is because they do not live sufﬁciently within, so the vital gets excited or attracted when something important or somebody important (or considered so) comes in from outside.     No, should not write to his friends to come here. That would not only be propaganda which we must avoid but done like that it would create a conﬂict and turmoil — and conﬂict and turmoil are the wrong atmosphere for the Truth to grow in.


Sri Aurobindo: It has been the great mistake of schools and religions to ﬁght for the possession of men’s minds — that we must not do. We can protect ourselves by spiritual means from attacks from outside, but not enter into mental or outward conﬂict with others. If his friends are meant to come here, it must happen otherwise.


Sri Aurobindo: What Tagore or others think or say does not matter very much after all as we do not depend on them for our work but on the Divine Will only. So many have said and thought all sorts of things (people outside) about and against us, that has never affected either us or our work in the least; it is of a very minor importance.     Queer idea all you fellows seem to have of the “prestige” of the Asram.


Sri Aurobindo: The prestige of an institution claiming to be a centre of spirituality lies in its spirituality, not in newspaper columns or famous people. Is it because of this mundane view of life and of the Asram held by the sadhaks that this Asram is not yet the centre of spirituality it set out to be?  Lord, man, it’s not for changing or moulding character that this Asram exists. It is for moulding spirituality and transforming the. You may say it doesn’t seem to be successful enough on that line, but that is its object.


Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord, no! I should be very much embarrassed if all the outside ﬁsh insisted on coming inside.  What big operation? There is no operation; I am not trying to hale in as a big ﬁsh. I am not trying to catch him or bring him in.


Sri Aurobindo: If he comes into the true spiritual life it will be a big thing for him, no doubt, but to the work it means only a ripple more or less in the atmosphere. Kindly consider how many people big in their own eyes have come and gone (,, to speak of no others) and has the work stopped by their departure or the Asram ceased to grow? Do you really think that the success or failure of the work we have undertaken depends on the presence or absence of? or on my hauling him in or letting him go? It is of importance only for the soul of — nothing else.  Your image of the Fishery is quite out of place; I ﬁsh for no one; people are not hauled or called here, they come of themselves by the psychic instinct.


Sri Aurobindo: Especially, I don’t ﬁsh for big and famous and successful men. Such fellows may be mentally or vitally big, but they are usually quite contented with that kind of bigness and do not want spiritual things, or, if they do, their bigness stands in their way rather than helps them. The ﬁshing for them is’s idea — he wanted to catch hold of Subhas Bose, Sarat Chatterji, now Lila Desai etc. etc., but they would have been exceedingly troublesome sadhaks, if they ever really dreamed of anything of the kind. All these are ordinary ignorant ideas; the Spirit cares not a damn for fame, success or bigness in those who come to it. People have a strange idea that Mother and myself are eager to get people as disciples and if anyone goes away, especially a “big” balloon with all its gas in it, it is a great blow, — a terrible defeat, — a dreadful catastrophe and cataclysm for us.


Sri Aurobindo: Many even think that their being here is a great favour done to us for which we are not sufﬁciently grateful. All that is rubbish.     If the praise and blame of ignorant people is to be our standard, then we may say good-bye to the spiritual consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: If the Mother and I had cared for praise or blame, we would have been crushed long ago. It is only recently that the Asram has got “prestige” — before it was the target for an almost universal criticism, not to speak of the ﬁlthiest attacks.  I have no time to read books usually. I seldom had and none at all now. I have had no inspirations from the sadhana of Bejoy Goswami, though a good deal at one time from Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.


Sri Aurobindo: My remarks simply meant that I regard the spiritual history of mankind and especially of India as a constant development of a divine purpose, not a book that is closed, the lines of which have to be constantly repeated. Even the Upanishads and the Gita were not ﬁnal though everything may be there in seed. In this development the recent spiritual history of India is a very important stage and the names I mentioned had a special prominence in my thought at the time — they seemed to me to indicate the lines from which the future spiritual development had most directly to proceed, not staying but passing on. I do not know that I would put my meaning exactly in the language you suggest. I may say that it is far from my purpose to propagate any religion new or old for humanity in the future.


Sri Aurobindo: A way to be opened that is still blocked, not a religion to be founded, is my conception of the matter.  As to what you say about Islamic ideals, you should remember that whatever is necessary to keep from the past as materials for the future, will and be taken into the new creation when things are ready and the full Light and Power at work. It is not necessary for anybody to represent or stand for Islamic ideals or for Hindu or Christian ideals; if anybody here thinks he must stand for one or other of these things, he is making a mistake and is likely to create unnecessary narrowness, clash and opposition. There is no opposition or clash between them in spiritual experience; it is only the external human mind that mistakenly puts them against each other. What we are here to make is a new creation in which there is a larger reconciling Truth than anything that went before in the past; but what will reconcile and create anew is the Power, the Light, the Knowledge that comes from above.


Sri Aurobindo: The important thing therefore is to prepare yourself for that Power, Light and Knowledge; it is only when that descends that all will be done rightly. Nothing can be done rightly by the individual working without the Light and the Knowledge.    It is to be hoped that in time the present mentality will pass away and both communities learn to live as children of the same Mother. If they ﬁght, neither are likely to gain but both to lose, even perhaps giving an opening to a third party as has happened before in their history.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no place for rigid orthodoxy, whether Hindu, Mahomedan or Christian in the future. Those who cling to it, lose hold on life and go under — as has been shown by the fate of the Hindus in India and of the orthodox Mahomedan countries all over the world. It is only where there has been an opening to new light and inevitable change that strength is returning as in Turkey and Persia. In the supramental creation fundamental truth will always ﬁnd a place; but orthodoxy means a clinging to narrow limitations, and limitations of that kind cannot exist in the supramental creation.


Sri Aurobindo: All that is permanently true will be taken up into the creation of the future.    These things that rise in you are certainly desires of the physical vital or else ideas of the physical mind giving a mental shape to desires. The sadhak has to see them when they rise and note them for what they are, but not allow them to move him to action.  If one is meant to be an intermediary between the Yogic Truth that is descending here and some part of the outside world, e.g. the Mahomedan world, it is necessary ﬁrst that he should get a calm and complete balance, a full foundation in the higher consciousness and the permanent Light in his being, — otherwise he will not be able to do his work.


Sri Aurobindo: If he tries before he is ready, he will fail — therefore let there be nothing done that is premature.    Of course it can — the orthodox Hindu world is quite separate, all the outside world is separate, until the Light that is growing here makes the connection.  If there is anybody in this Asram who is a Hindu sectarian hating Mahomedans and not opening to the Light in which all can overcome their limitations and in which all can be fulﬁlled (each religion or way of approaching the Divine contributing its own element of the truth, but all fused together and surpassed), then that Hindu sectarian is not a completely surrendered disciple of Sri Aurobindo. By his narrowness and hatred of others he is bringing an element of falsehood into the work that is being done here.


Sri Aurobindo: When I spoke of the outside world, I meant all outside, including the Hindus and Christians and everyone else, all who have not yet accepted the greater Light that is coming. If this Asram were here only to serve Hinduism I would not be in it and the Mother who was never a Hindu would not be in it.  What is being done here is the preparation of a Truth which includes all other Truth but is limited to no single religion or creed, and this preparation has to be done apart and in silence until things are ready. It is in that sense that I speak of the rest of the world and all its component parts as being the outside world — not that there was nothing to be done or no connection to be made; but these things are to be done in their own proper time.  Do you tell me that all the people here show the spirit you speak of against the Mahomedans or are you generalising from particular cases?


Sri Aurobindo: If it is as you say, I am quite ready to intervene to put a stop to it. For such a spirit would be entirely opposed to the Truth I am here to manifest.  No, certainly not; it is a sheer misinterpretation of my views.  I have written clearly that the coming of so many religions to India was part of her spiritual destiny and a great advantage for the work to be done.   It is news to me that I have excluded Mahomedans from the Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: I have not done it any more than I have excluded Europeans or Christians. As for giving up one’s past, if that means giving up the outer forms of the old religions, it is done as much by the Hindus here as by the Mahomedans. Every Hindu here — even those who were once orthodox Brahmins and have grown old in it, — give up all observance of caste, take food from Pariahs and are served by them, associate and eat with Mahomedans, Christians, Europeans, cease to practise temple worship or Sandhya (daily prayer and mantras), accept a nonHindu from Europe as their spiritual director. These are things people who have Hinduism as their aim and object would not do — they do it because they are obliged here to look to a higher ideal in which these things have no value. What is kept of Hinduism is Vedanta and Yoga, in which Hinduism is one with Suﬁsm of Islam and with the Christian mystics.


Sri Aurobindo: But even here it is not Vedanta and Yoga in their traditional limits (their past), but widened and rid of many ideas that are peculiar to the Hindus. If I have used Sanskrit terms and ﬁgures, it is because I know them and do not know Persian and Arabic. I have not the slightest objection to anyone here drawing inspiration from Islamic sources if they agree with the Truth as Suﬁsm agrees with it. On the other hand I have not the slightest objection to Hinduism being broken to pieces and disappearing from the face of the earth, if that is the Divine Will. I have no attachment to past forms; what is Truth will always remain; the Truth alone matters.


Sri Aurobindo:   The Asram has nothing to do with Hindu religion or culture or any religion or nationality. The Truth of the Divine which is the spiritual reality behind all religions and the descent of the supramental which is not known to any religion are the sole things which will be the foundation of the work of the future.  I am rather at a loss from which side to tackle the affair. Conceptually and propositionally is it possible to give Dhurjati something about the essential feature of Hinduism which he does not know already?


Sri Aurobindo: I can say what to my view is the truth behind Hinduism, a truth contained in the very nature (not superﬁcially seen of course) of human existence, something which is not the monopoly of Hinduism but of which Hindu spirituality was the richest expression. Perhaps I can try to bring out something on that line. I will see.


Sri Aurobindo: I fear that to accede to your request for a page and a half on the mystic soul of India is physically impossible now and psychologically a little difﬁcult. I have once more the full ﬂood of correspondence, in spite of the rules of time which have proved an insufﬁcient dam. Each night is a race to get things done in time which I generally lose and that means an increasing mass of arrears which have to be dealt with whenever I get some exceptional leisure. On Sunday a mass of outside letters waiting for disposal because I have no time on other days and not enough on Sunday either. In these circumstances to produce a page on such a subject would be a feat of acrobacy not easily performable.


Sri Aurobindo: As for the subject, well in the days of the or of the I could have served you freely.  Now I feel as if I have said all I could say on these things — they have gone back into the far recess of my mind and to pull them out for expression is not easy. That is a second obstacle.  I do not take the same view of the Hindu religion as Jawaharlal. Religion is always imperfect because it is a mixture of man’s spirituality with the errors that come in trying to sublimate ignorantly his lower nature.


Sri Aurobindo: Hindu religion appears to me as a cathedral temple half in ruins, noble in the mass, often fantastic in detail, but always fantastic with a signiﬁcance — crumbled and overgrown in many places, but a cathedral temple in which service is still done to the Unseen and its real presence can be felt by those who enter with the right spirit. The outer social structure which it built for its approach is another matter.  You must not get upset like this over these things. After all when one comes to an Asram to do Yoga, one leaves social rules, caste, ceremonial purity etc. behind one. Also one tries to practise  [] to all people and all things, because the Divine is everywhere.


Sri Aurobindo: Why not take that attitude instead of the old one?  It seems that even when visitors are there, people come into the Reception Room and prostrate before the photograph. I thought the rule had been made that when visitors were there, no one was to go? This rule must be strictly enforced — inform the gatekeepers and let everybody know that if these things continue, the Reception Room will have to be closed and opened only when visitors come.


Sri Aurobindo: The reception hall is for visitors. It is only when there are no visitors that Sadhaks can go there — for a short meditation if they want. It should not be made a place of public worship.  The Mother’s prohibition is only against sadhaks being there and prostrating when visitors are in the Reception Room. This room was originally meant for the reception of people from outside and the photo was put there to be shown to visitors who could not see me.


Sri Aurobindo: The permission was at ﬁrst given to one sadhak or another to sit and meditate there and afterwards it has become a common practice to go and make pranam, but it was understood that the sadhaks should not be there when there were visits. This rule has not been observed and people have used it as a place of public worship. It was this that was disapproved of by the Mother.  There is no restriction in this Yoga to inward worship and meditation only. As it is a Yoga for the whole being, not for the inner being only, no such restriction could be intended.


Sri Aurobindo: Old forms of the different religions may fall away, but absence of all forms is not a rule of the sadhana.     That is what I meant.  I was thinking not of Pranam etc. which have a living value, but of old forms which persist although they have no longer any value — e.g. Sraddha for the dead.


Sri Aurobindo: Also here forms which have no relation to this Yoga — for instance Christians who cling to the Christian forms or Mahomedans to the Namaz or Hindus to the Sandhyavandana in the old way might soon ﬁnd them either falling off or else an obstacle to the free development of their sadhana.  The sadhaks of this Asram are not perfect — they have plenty of weaknesses and wrong movements. It is blindness not to be able to see that; only it should not lead to a criticising or condemnatory attitude on persons — it should be regarded as the play of forces which have to be overcome.   To be turned wholly to the Mother and have nothing but friendly relations with the sadhaks, the same for all, is a counsel of perfection; but not many can carry it out, hardly one here and there. Yet to have that tendency is to have the real turn towards the one-pointedness of sadhana; but people take time to arrive at it.


Sri Aurobindo:  The Mother has not laid stress on human fellowship of the ordinary kind between the inmates (though good feeling, consideration and courtesy should always be there), because that is not the aim; it is a unity in a new consciousness that is the aim,  and the ﬁrst thing is for each to do his sadhana to arrive at that new consciousness and realise oneness there.     I don’t think it is much use writing about personal relations in the true spiritual life (which does not yet exist here).


Sri Aurobindo: None would understand it except as a form of words. Only three points —  ( 1 )


Sri Aurobindo: Its very base would have to be spiritual and psychic and  vital. The vital would be there but as an instrument only.  (2) It would be a relation ﬂowing from the higher Truth, not continued from the lower Ignorance.  (3) It would not be impersonal in the sense of being colourless, but whatever colours were there would not be the egoistic and muddy colours of the present relations.


Sri Aurobindo: What you say is right. Those one lives with have always some ways and manners that do not agree with one’s own and may grate on the mind. To observe quietly and not resent is part of the discipline of life, — not to be moved or affected at all but to see with equanimity the play of one Nature in all is the discipline of sadhana.  The best way to help is to assist her by your own example and atmosphere to get the right attitude. Instead of the sense that she is very ill, she should be encouraged to have a bright and conﬁdent feeling, open to receive strength and health from us, contributing by her own faith to a speedy recovery.


Sri Aurobindo: These ideas that they do not see the Mother, are outside the atmosphere, at a distance, are just the wrong notions and most likely to come in the way and block your sisters’ receptivity; it is surprising that you should accept or echo them and not react against them at once. They are here in the Asram (a little nearer or farther makes no difference), in the Mother’s presence and atmosphere, meeting her every day at the Pranam where everyone who is open can receive as much of her touch and her help as they can hold, — that is what they should feel and make the most of their opportunity and not waste it by a negative attitude.  For yourself, what you must have with other sadhaks (including your sisters) is a harmonious relation free from any mere vital attachment (indifference is not asked from you) and free from any indulgence in wrong vital movements of the opposite kind (such as dislike, jealousy or ill-will). It is through the psychic consciousness that you have found it possible to be in a true constant relation with the Mother and your aim is to make that the basis of all your life, action and feelings; all in you, all you feel, say and do should be consistent with that basis. If all proceeds from that psychic union of your consciousness with the Mother’s, dedicating everything to her, then you will develop the right relations with others.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is a relative and partial help, of course, but it is sometimes useful. A radical help can only come from within through the action of the Divine Force and the assent of the being. It must be said of course that it is not everyone that thinks he is helping who is really doing it; also if the help is accompanied with the exercising of an “inﬂuence”, that inﬂuence may be of a mixed character and harm as well as help if the instrument is not pure.


Sri Aurobindo:   A fully developed sadhak can be an instrument of the Mother for helping others, but a fully developed sadhak means one who is free from ego and he would never claim the work as his own.  In this Asram all helping has recoiled on the helper by either making him egoistic or by his getting affected with the very things one is helping the other to get rid of.


Sri Aurobindo: It is indeed not possible for one human being to do another’s sadhana for him, that each must do himself. The help that can be given is to lead or impel him by inﬂuence, example, speech, encouragement towards the point where he can directly open to the Divine, also to impart to him strength, comfort, right suggestion in his moments of difﬁculty and weakness. You had very serious difﬁculties at the time and therefore we entrusted  with this work and he did all he could to carry it out and in fact his help was effective. For he stood successfully against the forces that tried to carry you away from here and brought you through to the point at which you could feel the direct inner contact. This was what we meant by bringing you to the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: If in doing it human weakness brought in a personal attachment between you which had its vital element, it was without his or your intending it. Now you are free from this element and wish to be entirely turned within to the Mother alone, and that is quite right. For who behind an exterior of curt speech and strong dominating will has a heart of strong feelings and warm emotions, it may take a little more time to be entirely free of this element. We shall try to liberate him from what is left of it as soon as possible. Meanwhile what you have to do is to be his comrade in work, but reserve yourself within entirely for the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: If you keep to this attitude, as you have resolved, then it is bound to have its effect and he must before long come himself entirely to the same attitude.  What you say of sadhana is true. Sadhana is necessary and the Divine Force cannot do things in the void but must lead each one according to his nature to the point at which he can feel the Mother working within and doing all for him. Till then the sadhak’s aspiration, self-consecration, assent and support to the Mother’s workings, his rejection of all that comes in the way is very necessary — indispensable.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not really surprising that people should be able to draw help from you and feel themselves helped and this can happen even though you yourself may not consciously have the idea or the feeling of extending any help to them. You have a very strong vital with a great communicative and creative power which is not shut up in itself but expansive and naturally ﬂows out on those around it. Even ordinarily in the world people easily turn to such a strong and expansive vital and draw upon it for strength and assistance. In your case this is enhanced by your psychic being having the habit of using your vital force for communication to the outside world as it has been habitually doing in your creative activities, poetry and other forms of writing or speech, song and music: apart from artistic qualities and appeal these have an appeal and inﬂuence which comes from that inner power which has breathed itself into them and formed their substance.  It has again been greatly increased by the practice of Yoga and the feeling of bhakti which comes out of you when you write your songs and sing them.


Sri Aurobindo: In your work for us you have the knowledge that our force stands behind you; it is always there and can increase your power to help others, not only when you are doing the work but at other times or whenever they turn towards you with the idea or faith that the help they need can come from you.  Write to him that these things are the creations of the mind and have no value. If the girl has a true call to Yoga, she can herself follow it; but it creates no special connection between her and him any more than with any sadhaka. To indulge imaginations of this kind will be dangerous for his sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo:   All that you have written in this letter is quite correct. It is useless to go through the old kind of reconciliation with — it will only bring back the same futile circle — for he will act in the same way always (until he changes spiritually in the vital and that means a turning away from all vital relations) and you would be ﬂung back into the same reactions. To cut away is the only thing — the best for him, the best for you. As for the feelings excited in him — more hurt self-esteem than anything else — they will fade out of themselves.


Sri Aurobindo: The ﬁrst necessity of both is to free yourselves from the old relations and that cannot, it is very clear, be done by going back to any remnant of the old interchange.  For the rest keep to your resolution. Do not discuss him with anybody, do not interest yourself in what he does or does not do; let it be his own concern and the Divine’s, not yours.  Expect nothing personally from him — you may be sure that your expectations will only be disappointed. His nature is not yours and his mental view of what should or should not be done


Sri Aurobindo: is quite different — incompatible with yours. By retaining anything of the old feeling you will only invite pain and farther disillusionment — you gain nothing and pay a heavy price for that nothing. It is only by becoming one-minded in the sadhana that you can escape from this painful circle.  I hope that you will recover tomorrow the capacity for food and shake off the remnants of the physical depression which have been left behind by the attack. Let the physical consciousness as well as the rest of the nature turn wholly to the Light and the Divine and seek only the one true source of happiness and Ananda.


Sri Aurobindo:   There is no sin in attachment. All human beings are full of attachments. But if one wants to do Yoga and reach the Divine, one must give up all earthly attachments. It is not easy to do so, even for a sadhak, but it must be attempted sincerely and, if it is sincerely attempted, then it can be done.


Sri Aurobindo: Attachment means that you desire or need or depend on a thing or a person so much that you cannot do without it or him, and are always trying to keep the thing or be with the person or somehow in touch with him. says you are attached to him and that it is proved by your always seeking to ﬁnd an excuse for your being with him; you want to learn from him and not from another, to read our answers with him and not with any other, to do the dispensary work and so be near him every day. He says also you told him if he did not satisfy you in these matters, you would go away to Gujarat or do worse, because you could not bear his disappointing you always. He thinks this proves that you came here for him and not for Yoga. If you want to show him that it is not so, the only way is not to insist on these things that bring you near to him and not say anything that he can understand in this sense.


Sri Aurobindo: You have come here for Yoga and not for — you depend on the Mother and myself alone and not on. We are quite ready to accept that, for that is what should be. But then you have no need to be upset by what may say to you or how he may act with you or by his refusal to accede to your requests.  You can freely and calmly stand away from him and turn to the Divine alone.


Sri Aurobindo: The whole difﬁculty comes from the fact that you and had a special relation to each other which was of the character of a mutual vital demand and dependence on each other and what is called in Yoga an attachment. (There is no question here of a sexual physical relation but of a vital attachment.) This was coming in the way of your making any progress in Yoga and it was coming in the way of also. When realised this and wanted to reduce the connection between you to a minimum, you were unwilling, you wanted to do all sorts of things that would keep you near him and keep him busy with you. himself was not free from attachment and therefore in reacting against your pressure and his own remains of weakness, he became rude and violent — that was what he meant by cutting the connection altogether.


Sri Aurobindo: But he is not yet free and that is why he still reacts violently whenever there is any talk of your going to him as he has done in his last letter. On your side you also are not free — if you were, it would not happen that every time there is any question of you immediately lose the good condition you were getting and all the old thoughts occupy your mind and you fall back into the weeping and not eating etc. etc. It is the reason why the Mother does not care for you and to meet so long as these old reactions are there either in him or in you. That is the plain fact of the matter. What other people think or say about it, is of no importance.


Sri Aurobindo: What matters is the sadhana and besides it nothing else matters. Show that you are free, that what  does or does not do does not disturb or occupy your mind in the least and get into the true way of the sadhana as you were preparing to do — then it will be easier for us to deal with and his defects and difﬁculties. This Asram is not intended to be a society like that of the outside world, and when or or anyone else talk and advise you from that standpoint, they are speaking things which have nothing to do with the work we are trying to do here — and if you listen to such advice, you will only get out of the right way of looking at it. You will get into the right way only when you cease to think of these things and look at things from the point of view of sadhana only.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not necessary to have special friendships, — to be in good relations is enough. For the rest, to be turned entirely to us is the best condition for spiritual progress.  In an Asram or other religious institution men and women are not usually allowed to live together. Where they do, as among the Vaishnavas, these difﬁculties invariably arise. The difﬁculty lies in the enormous place given to sex in the lower Nature.


Sri Aurobindo: But there is no reason if one ﬁxes oneself ﬁrmly in the spiritual consciousness why one should not speak and act between men and women without the least reference to sex.    What about the true (not the pretended) psychic and spiritual — forgetting sex? The relation has to be limited as it is because sex immediately trots into the front. You are invited to live above the vital and deeper than the vital — then only you can use the vital aright.


Sri Aurobindo: Buddha was for Nirvana and what is the use of having relations with anybody if you are bound for Nirvana?  Ramakrishna insisted on isolation during the period when a man is spiritually raw — he did not object to it when he became ripe and no longer a slave of sex.    Do not receive. That may disturb the atmosphere of the Asram.


Sri Aurobindo: What was meant when we said you need not avoid her or cut all relations was that if you meet in the ordinary way in the Asram, you need not avoid speaking to her if occasion demands it or if she speaks to you avoid replying etc. Any relations kept should be natural, but not.  In view of your last letter and of the disturbances in you which you hint there, we consider and you must yourself realise that it is better for you to return to your family life and not to stay here too long. The conquest of sexual desire can only be done if one is truly ready and has the spiritual call and is prepared, however difﬁcult it may be, to give up for it everything else. There is no place for the sexual impulse and its desires in spiritual life and any sadhaka indulging it, either physically or vitally, is going against the law of the Asram life and injuring gravely his or her sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: The sexual desire must be either satisﬁed in the ordinary family life or it must be thrown aside. But you are not now able to conquer it. To remain here with the unsatisﬁed desire will only confuse your mind, bring wrong ideas, create a struggle in you and injure the basis of such sadhana as you can do. Make up your mind therefore to return to your family and do what you can there. It is always better to do what you can than to attempt prematurely something for which you are not ready.


Sri Aurobindo:  Your daughter has now been here for a fairly long time and we think it due to you to let you know what we consider best for her. It appears from our observation of her that she is not at all ready for Asram life or for intensive sadhana; she has too much of the ordinary movements and the instinct of sexual desire is too strong in her and unsatisﬁed and this indicates the need of the social and family life, not a life of Yoga. The family life accompanied with whatever religious worship or practice of bhakti she can manage is her proper ﬁeld at present. For one with these unsatisﬁed instincts to live in the Asram would on one side be bad for her, — it would raise up a vital struggle and a confusion of ideas adverse to spiritual progress — for she has not yet the necessary inner force or intensity of the spiritual call that would help her to overcome. On the other side it would be likely to create movements that would be disturbing to the Asram atmosphere.


Sri Aurobindo: It is better for her therefore to return home and do what she can there. I trust our decision will not in any way disturb or disappoint you; for it was not, I think, your intention in bringing her here that she should remain for a long time. It is in her own interest that she should not be pushed towards an effort that is premature.   That is what man thinks; it is his experience. Woman’s experience is that man is the dangerous animal and instrument of all her sufferings and downfalls.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not man or woman; it is the Sex-Force which is the dangerous tool in the hands of the Ignorance.     Why do you believe everything that people tell you? What I told  was that he had progressed greatly, he had afterwards allowed himself to yield to the bad habits that rose from his lower nature and fallen from the psychic contact and that until he got rid of these things which were the cause of all his sufferings he would not progress or recover his contact with the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: We never told him that he was making progress now or that his coarse indulgence was a sign of (no doubt, miraculous, godlike and amazing) progress. God in Heaven, what things people put in my mouth and the Mother’s!    You had better get rid of the inﬂuence. It won’t do not to be able to look at a woman or a picture of a woman without getting sexual sensations — you must get rid of that.


Sri Aurobindo:   I am afraid is not so forward in sadhana as you think. I suppose I had better tell you plainly that she is full of the sex difﬁculty — it is and it is so much in her nature that with all her struggles she is unable to escape from it. I am afraid she is throwing it upon you.


Sri Aurobindo: Of course it is her imagination that yields to it; she would never consent to the act.  As for it is different. She has no sex desires, but before she opened to the Yoga, there was a certain kind of vital passivity in her to men and this kind of passivity is very attractive to the masculine sex instinct. As the movements in you are not mental but in sensation, it is possible that your subconscient vital has somehow felt this in her subconscient temperament and got the attraction. These movements are not vitally willed or mental — they belong to that shadowy region of submerged vital physical instinct which the psychoanalysts try to deal with in their jargon of complexes etc.


Sri Aurobindo:  Yes — so long as it does not come inside, that can be done.     Coming inside means taking hold of you so that there is a push for satisfaction.


Sri Aurobindo: Pressure from outside however strongly felt is not coming inside.    The value of brahmacharya was fully understood in past times for Yogis; carefulness about food and cleanliness is also necessary as a minor matter for the body. The rest appertains to the social system (e.g. caste etc.) and does not concern spiritual living. The Sannyasi is not supposed to be bound by caste.


Sri Aurobindo: Some may be unable to shake off these things — the grihastha Yogi may continue them because they are part of the social life in which he is.  The idea of inner detachment is perfectly well known to the Yogis as the Janaka ideal — but it is considered too difﬁcult to practise for most men and therefore likely to be practised only in profession, not in fact.  Materialism is of course incompatible with the spiritual aim. The spiritual control of matter is a different thing, it has nothing to do with materialism.  If you expect to indulge it in the Divine Life, you will never get rid of it — it will remain clinging under that excuse.


Sri Aurobindo: Why concern yourself with the continuity of the race? There will be plenty of people to continue it. If the supermind has to intervene in the continuity, it will surely do it in its own way, but what that way will be will be found out if and when there is a necessity.  He stressed the danger of sex and greed of money for the spiritual life and insisted on a total abstinence, at any rate in the whole period of sadhana and I suppose he considered that impossible without keeping aloof from the things that most aroused these passions. Some of his disciples say however that he said  [], not  [].


Sri Aurobindo: Anyhow he probably imposed it for the raw period of the sadhana — once siddha, when the contact with women could no longer rouse the sex-impulse, he would not have considered it so imperative for all. But he himself could not touch money.   life, meaning marriage and rearing of a family, is a social institution based on ego. It can only be a stage in the evolution of a spiritual man.


Sri Aurobindo:   There may very well be, — though I don’t know that anyone here came into contact with Apsaras; it is generally less attractive females from the vital world who are after them, usually in the shape of sadhikas, relatives etc. The sadhaks here don’t seem to be so aesthetic as the ancient Rishis. It would be pretty dangerous, however, if they did contact it. Sex (occult) stands on a fair level of equality with ambition etc. from the point of view of danger, only its action is usually less ostensible i.e.


Sri Aurobindo: the Hostiles don’t put it forward so openly as a thing to be followed after in the spiritual life. They did that more in the beginning, e.g. and others.   In ordinary society people touch each other more or less freely according to the manners of the society. That is quite a different matter because there the sex impulse is allowed within certain more or less wide or narrow limits and even the secret indulgence is common, although people try to avoid discovery. In Bengal when there is purdah, touching between men and women is conﬁned to the family, in Europe there is not much restriction so long as there is no excessive familiarity or indecency; but in Europe sex is now practically free.


Sri Aurobindo: Here all sex indulgence inner or outer is considered undesirable as an obstacle to the sadhana — as it very evidently is. For that reason any excessive familiarity of touch between men and women has to be avoided, anything also in the nature of caressing, as it creates or tends to create sex tendency or even the strong sex impulse. Casual touching has to be avoided also if it actually creates the sex impulse. These are commonsense rules if the premiss is granted that sex has not to have any indulgence.


Sri Aurobindo:   Sex is your main difﬁculty — it is in fact the only very serious one and it is so because it is always behind and you have sometimes pushed it back, but never cut with it entirely. It is the physical vital that is weak and when the thing comes, becomes pliant to it in spite of the mental will’s resistance. But even so; if the mental will made itself real and strong, these crises would be met and overcome, or at least pass without leading to indulgence in one form or another. The other possibility is the settled descent of the higher consciousness into the physical being.


Sri Aurobindo: It is in these two ways that liberation from sex is possible.     There are people outside the Asram even who have got free from the sex without seclusion — even sleeping in the same bed with the wife. I know one at least who did it without any higher experience.


Sri Aurobindo: The work of these people is ordinary service or professional work, but that did not prevent their having the sex struggle nor did it help them to get rid of it. The thing came after a prolonged struggle because they were determined to be rid of it and at a certain stage they got a touch which made the determination absolutely effective. Possibly they were sattwic, but that did not prevent their having strong sex impulses and a hard and prolonged struggle.  I meant by cutting off a determined rejection of the inward as well as the outward movement whenever it comes. Something in the nature accepts and lets itself go helplessly and something in the mind allows it to do so.


Sri Aurobindo: The mind does not seem to believe in its power to say No deﬁnitely to inward movements as it would to an outer contact — and yet the Purusha is there and can put its deﬁnite No, maintaining it till the Prakriti has to submit — or else till the conﬁrming touch from above makes its determination perfectly effective.     Your diagnosis of the origin of the trouble in agrees with what we have seen of it. But here a question arises.


Sri Aurobindo: You say that one thing that has contributed is a suppressed sexuality which could not ﬁnd satisfaction. Now it is obviously impossible for him to have that in the Asram — for the rule of life is against it and it is impossible to give any even limited expression to it without at once hurting the sadhana while at the same time it does not satisfy because of the restriction and wrong conditions of mind which attend it. It is only by going outside that it can be done.  In there is the constant push to go away and this along with a vital restlessness is likely to be the cause. The question then is whether it is necessary for the cure of his neurasthenia that he should satisfy it and therefore leave the Asram so that he may be free to follow his vital impulse?


Sri Aurobindo:   Europe and America are full of free sex indulgence — they do not nowadays consider it a thing to be avoided but rather welcomed.  But this is an Asram and people are supposed to be doing a sadhana in which sex has to be surmounted. In the Asram there are many who mix freely with all the sadhikas — they are certainly not free from sex. Avoiding also is not a panacea; one can avoid and have sex imaginations and desires.


Sri Aurobindo: But it is absurd to say that avoiding is the cause of sex imaginations and impulses or that mixing is a panacea for it.    To get rid of the vital difﬁculties one very necessary thing is to keep yourself fully open to us. It was because you did that, that it was possible to throw out the sex obsession. If anything rises from the vital, keep yourself detached and observe it and reject; on no account allow yourself to be caught and swept away by it.


Sri Aurobindo:   About sex and Yoga — my teaching has been clearly written in the and everyone knows how strongly the Mother has discountenanced these things and considers purity from them a ﬁrst requisite for success in the path of sadhana. But there are very queer things that have for long been inculcated in the Asram to newcomers and to visitors — e.g. that truthfulness is a superstition and the more you lie the better sadhak you are.  That was the ﬁrst thing taught to a sadhak who ﬁrst came here many years ago and it is only recently that he has discovered it was not my view or the Mother’s.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not surprising that our work and the Yoga should make such slow progress when such perversities ﬁll the atmosphere. Whatever can be done to clear them out will be so much help to the work of the Mother.    Are you all becoming cracked in the head? How is it that after all this time such a question can be put?


Sri Aurobindo: Have you not read my letters and messages on the subject of sex? You have not gone through the where the subject of sex is treated through many pages and it is clearly insisted on that all sex impulse and sex relation must go. If any sadhak and sadhika want to establish this relation, they should immediately pack up their things and go — for it is forbidden here.  You have not read the rule that conjugal relations are forbidden here? You do not know that and and and had to leave because they followed this way?


Sri Aurobindo: Under no pretence or cloak whatever is sex to be indulged by anyone practising this sadhana.    There is with regard to sex no change whatever. Babies may be allowed in the Asram but the manufacture of babies there is an industry which has no sanction. Married people (that is not new) or families may be living here, but on the old condition of the complete cessation of marital activities.


Sri Aurobindo: The ban on sex here stands, unchanged by an iota.  Any suggestion about Tantric practices must certainly be a trick of the vital. The sex impulsions can be got rid of without them.  They persist only because something still wants to reserve a place for them. So the best answer to the question about the sadhana (What is the place of sex in our sadhana?) is “No place”.


Sri Aurobindo: One must give up the sex-satisfaction and be satisﬁed with the Divine Love and Ananda.    The idea you speak of is the Tantric idea and very dangerous. It must be so in the end, but it is difﬁcult to do that until one is strong enough in the settled spiritual consciousness. The avoidance is sometimes the only way until the higher consciousness is settled in the vital and vital-physical.


Sri Aurobindo:  If the sadhak is a left-hand Tantrik or a Vaishnava of the Bengal school, then his theories may have some validity but they have none in this Asram.  The only relation permissible here is the same as between a sadhak and sadhak or between a sadhika and sadhika — a friendly relation as between followers of the same path of Yoga and children of the Mother.    This is not accepted in Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga. Any such “sublimated” sex relation becomes a subtle but powerful bar to the full realisation and transformation and can derail the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: There is an Ananda behind all things, otherwise they would not exist; but it does not follow that all things must be accepted in their delight-form as a part of the higher life.  I have not your letter with me as I write but there were two questions which you put to us, as far as I can remember.  The ﬁrst was about a complementary soul and marriage. The answer is easy to give; the way of the spiritual life lies for you in one direction and marriage lies in quite another and opposite.  All talk about a complementary soul is a camouﬂage with which the mind tries to cover the sentimental, sensational and physical wants of the lower vital nature.


Sri Aurobindo: It is that vital nature in you which puts the question and would like an answer reconciling its desires and demands with the call of the true soul in you.  But it must not expect a sanction for any such incongruous reconciliation from here. The way of the supramental Yoga is clear; it lies not through any concession to these things, — not, in your case, through the satisfaction, under a spiritual cover if possible, of its craving for the comforts and gratiﬁcations of a domestic and conjugal life and the enjoyment of the ordinary emotional desires and physical passions, but through the puriﬁcation and transformation of the forces which these movements pervert and misuse. Not these human and animal demands, but the divine Ananda which is above and beyond them and which the indulgence of these degraded forms would prevent from descending, is the great thing that the aspiration of the vital being must demand in the sadhaka.  The other question was about your difﬁculty in getting rid of the aboriginal in your nature.


Sri Aurobindo: That difﬁculty will remain so long as you try to change your vital nature by the sole power of your mind and mental will, calling in at most an indeﬁnite and impersonal divine Power to aid you. It is an old difﬁculty which has never been truly solved because it has never been met in the true way. In the former ways of Yoga it did not supremely matter because the aim was withdrawal from life. Either the vital was kept down by a mental and moral compulsion, or it was stilled and kept lying in a kind of sleep and quiescence, or it was allowed to run and exhaust itself if it could while its possessor professed to be untouched and unconcerned by it. When none of these solutions could be attained, the sadhaka simply led a double inner life, divided between his spiritual experiences and his vital weaknesses to the end.


Sri Aurobindo: If you want a true mastery and transformation of the vital movements, it can be done only on condition you allow your psychic being, the soul in you, to awake fully, to establish its rule and open to the permanent touch of the divine Shakti and impose its way of devout aspiration and complete surrender on the mind and heart and vital nature. There is no other way and it is no use hankering after a more comfortable path.    The Mother said “maid”, not “mate”. You spoke of having wished to marry again because you needed someone to nurse you when ill, etc. etc.


Sri Aurobindo: These are good reasons for keeping a servant, not for marrying.    If she has the true call to the Yoga and not only an impulse due to the inﬂuence of others, the necessary conditions will be created. Even if the circumstances seem adverse, it will be only a test or ordeal and she will come through in the end. On the other hand, if she is not yet truly called or if her nature is not yet ripe, the marriage may take place and she may have to go through the ordinary life before she can return to the spiritual.


Sri Aurobindo: There was never any suggestion from here that the girl should come to Pondicherry; how is it that it has been raised over there?    No member of the Asram can while he is a member contract a marriage whether it is spiritual or sexual or bring in a woman to be his life-companion or establish such a relation with anyone outside. This is no part of the Asram life. He can do it outside by leaving the Asram, for then he is no longer a member and can order his life as he pleases; he is then responsible to himself alone for his action and its spiritual or other consequences concern only himself and that other person.


Sri Aurobindo: In the cases you cite there is no tie of spiritual marriage between the persons concerned: the sexual connection has been renounced, but no new inner tie has been formed — there is therefore no similarity with the action you propose. As special cases they are allowed to live in the same house for certain outward conveniences, but it is clearly understood that the old dependence of husband and wife on each other has to cease; they have to accustom themselves to be only sadhaks having no inner dependence on each other, but separately depending on the Mother alone, receiving spiritual help from her alone, offering to her alone the obedience of the disciple to the Master.  For your case to assimilate to theirs you would have to marry legally and socially with the consent of the father, live for twenty years or more together outside and then come for admission to the Asram with the resolution to develop an inner life independent from each other and turned to the Divine alone.  What you propose as described in your letter is something quite different — it might stand in a Vaishnava sadhana or in some form of Karma Yoga, but it has no place here. An old relation is one thing, — its root being cut, time may be given in special cases at the Mother’s discretion to get free from some of its outer results and habits which are not of the ﬁrst importance; to bring in a new marriage relation with the full intention of giving it free play and making it a part of the sadhana is a very different thing.


Sri Aurobindo: I do not know what you mean by “true sadhana”. Each path of sadhana has its own way and procedure which may be quite different from that of other paths. For this path the Mother and I can alone determine what is necessary or not necessary, what is admissible or not admissible. If one has some other way of life which he ﬁnds necessary and considers part of the true sadhana, he is free to practise it elsewhere, but he has no claim to do it here and make it a part of this sadhana or of the life of the Asram if it is not sanctioned and approved by the Mother and myself.   There is only one answer to’s question — marriage and Yoga are two different movements going opposite ways; if he follows one, he will be moving away from the other.


Sri Aurobindo: So if he marries, either of two things will happen — he will sink into the ordinary life and go far away from us in spirit or he will ﬁnd married life unsatisfactory, renounce his wife and return to the path that leads towards the Divine. Marriage with the ﬁrst result would be only a stupidity; marriage for the second result would be an irrational inconsequence. So in either way — A letter from you dated July 25th of this year duly reached Sri Aurobindo, but at the time he was not in a position to give any deﬁnite answer. Latterly, he has read your letter again and instructs me to write the following reply.  First, as regards your question about your married life


Sri Aurobindo: .  The sound principle in these matters is that so long as you feel the sense of duty, it is better to follow it out until you are liberated; you must not carry a scruple or a remorse or any kind of backward pull or attraction into the spiritual life. Equally, if you have any strong attraction towards the usual human active life, towards earning, bright prospects, the use of your capacities for the ordinary motives or on the ordinary plane of human consciousness, you ought not to leave everything behind you for what may after all be only a mental attraction towards spiritual ideals and Yoga. The spiritual consciousness and spiritual life are exceedingly difﬁcult to attain; it needs a deep and strong call and the turning of all the energies towards the one object to arrive at any kind of full success (siddhi).  Even those who have cut off all other ties, ﬁnd it difﬁcult not to live in a double consciousness, one inward and turned towards the spiritual change and the other which is still chained to the ordinary movements and pulls them down from their spiritual experience into the persistent and unchanged course of the lower nature.


Sri Aurobindo: If you have not the entire and undivided call, it is better not to take the plunge, unless you are prepared for very bitter inner struggles, great difﬁculties and relapses and a hampered and doubtful progress. It is better in that case to prepare yourself by meditation and concentration while still living in the family and the usual human life, until the spiritual attraction is strong enough to overshadow and destroy all others.  Next, you speak of leading a higher life in order to ﬁt yourself for service to others. But leading a higher life is a vague mental phrase and the object of Yoga is not service to others. The object of Yoga is to enter into an entirely new consciousness in which you live no longer in the mind and the ego but in the divine consciousness and grow into the true inmost truth of your being above mind and life and body.


Sri Aurobindo: The aim in most ways of Yoga is to draw back altogether from life into this greater existence. In Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga, the aim is to transform mind, life and body into an expression of this divine Truth and to make the outward as well as the inward life embody it — a much more difﬁcult endeavour. To act out of this greater consciousness becomes the only rule of life, abandoning all other dharmas. Not to serve either one’s own ego or others, but to serve the Divine Shakti and be the instrument of her works is the law of this life.


Sri Aurobindo: Your other question, — about the Asrama, arises only when you have found your call and your true way, — if that leads you here. In all cases Sri Aurobindo prefers to be assured of the call and the capacity before he admits anyone to his Asrama. The ﬁrst of these two questions however, you have to decide mostly for yourself; the second can be settled only if, supposing you decide in this sense, you are called here and personally tested with a view for the Yoga.  I hope you have not given any reason to your relatives to understand that it is by my that you do not correspond with them or return to family life! You have remained here and taken to the spiritual life by your own choice and it was at your prayer that your temporary stay was changed into a permanent one.


Sri Aurobindo: When you make a choice, you must have the courage to take your stand upon it on your own responsibility before your family and the world. Otherwise each one here is at liberty to remain on the path or leave it as he chooses. I think you had better make that clearly understood by your people.    I return the letter, but I leave the necessity of reply or otherwise to your own discretion.


Sri Aurobindo: To keep any attachment is obviously inconsistent with the Yogic attitude, as also any of the kind you express; if she is to enter the spiritual life some day it should be as her own independent destiny and her being your wife is not relevant to it. Detachment is the main thing; if you have that, to write or not to write is a secondary matter.   Write to her that permission cannot be given this time. You will also explain to her that she cannot come here (permanently) merely because she is the wife of a sadhak staying here. All relations of that kind are to cease when one becomes a member of the Asram.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only if one makes progress in the sadhana and is considered ﬁt for stay in the Asram that permission can be given.    Neither the Mother nor Sri Aurobindo are in the habit of holding any correspondence except with the sadhaks and on matters proper to the sadhana. Sri Aurobindo sees no one except at the three Darshans and speaks with no one. The Mother except at the Darshan times sees only the sadhaks and receives them only or else, but rarely, people who come with a desire for sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: chose the Asram life because after several attempts he found that trying to do the sadhana at home was a failure and he only multiplied ties and obstacles while here he progressed swiftly and was able to live the spiritual life. It is impossible for us to order him to go back permanently or temporarily or to live here in circumstances and conditions which he feels disturbing to his sadhana so long as he himself does not wish it or decide from his own inner determination to go. The sadhana here is not a mere matter of pranam or darshan; it is a life that has to be lived so that one may always be conscious in the Divine.  As for his wife and children they could only have lived here in a separate house and had the expenses met by the family, but this is no longer possible. The difﬁculty of doing anything more arises from the rules and the nature of the Asram life.


Sri Aurobindo: (1) It is a strict rule that husband and wife living in the Asram cannot keep up the old conjugal relations and conjugal life. They either live separately or, if together, which is sometimes but not often allowed, as sadhak and sadhika only, each turned wholly to the Divine.   (2) Children of a tender age, under 10, are not allowed to live in the Asram, they are even not allowed as a rule to enter the Asram precincts. Even in houses not belonging to the Asram but still in some way connected with it (like the private house of  where is temporarily staying) they are allowed only in very exceptional cases when we are sure that they can accommodate themselves to the Asram life and atmosphere.


Sri Aurobindo: (3) Children of low age are not admitted ﬁrst because there is no proper arrangement for them — either for their food or their upbringing or their education or medical treatment. All is arranged with an eye to the life of grown-up sadhaks with limited requirements and no special provision can be made for anyone.  The Asram is not in a position to undertake the responsibility for the maintenance or upbringing of children.  (4) Children are not admitted for another reason, because it was found when exceptions were made that they could not keep their health here and, after one death occurred, the prohibition was made absolute. They are too young and delicate to bear the atmosphere which is full of a tension of strong forces and, in most cases, their consciousness is too undeveloped for them to receive and proﬁt easily by the supporting and protecting force received here from the Mother by the sadhaks.


Sri Aurobindo: Faith and responsiveness are needed and such things cannot be expected from little children unless they have a very exceptional mind and character.  The ill-health of the children and the dangerous illness of the second among them seem to be a clear warning that these children cannot prosper here.  The Mother consented with much reluctance to and her children remaining in a separate house but it was under conditions that have not been fulﬁlled. It was never contemplated that  would live with them or earn his living. That is impossible unless he ceased to be a member of the Asram and this he does not wish to do.


Sri Aurobindo: The family were very kindly allowed by Mr. to put up in his house, but this was supposed to be only for a short time. If they were to stay here, the Mother does not know where to put them or how to keep them. Even if this difﬁculty were solved in some way, they would be living in conditions quite unsuitable which they would probably not be able to bear.  If were alone, it would be possible to put her up, but with the children we do not see any way. If she will be persuaded to return until at least they have the proper age, that would be the most advisable course.


Sri Aurobindo: To separate from them and live here as the other sadhakas of the Asram would be the other alternative, but that, we understand, she is quite unwilling to do.  It is not possible for the Asram to modify its rules and character and way of life so as to suit the ideas and ways of living and demands and needs of the ordinary life. The Asram has its own reason of existence which is the spiritual life alone and it could not do that without losing its object and true character.  These considerations are placed before you so that you may know the position and keep them in view in advising. For she does not seem to understand them and it is this that has created difﬁculties with; he feels that he is being pressed to abandon the spiritual life and that is why he is not at ease in going there.


Sri Aurobindo:  As for your friend, it is not possible to say that she can come here; for that depends on many things which are not clearly present here. First, one must enter this Path or it must be seen that one is called to it; afterwards there is the question whether one is meant for the Asram life here. The question about the family duties can be answered in this way — the family duties exist so long as one is in the ordinary consciousness of the grihastha; if the call to a spiritual life comes, whether one keeps to them or not depends partly upon the way of Yoga one follows, partly on one’s own spiritual necessity. There are many who pursue inwardly the spiritual life and keep the family duties, not as social duties but as a ﬁeld for the practice of karmayoga, others abandon everything to follow the spiritual call alone and they are justiﬁed if that is necessary for the Yoga they practise or if that is the imperative demand of the soul within them.


Sri Aurobindo: That is the reason why it is better to drop these things. People who go on corresponding with their people do not feel it as you do, but nevertheless it is a fact that they maintain and enforce vibrations which keep the old forces active in the vital and maintain their impressions in the subconscient.     That is why we are not in favour of correspondence with relatives etc. outside.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no point of contact unless one comes out or down to their own level which is obviously undesirable from the point of view of Yoga. I don’t think much inspiration can go through letters because their consciousness is not at all prepared. Words can at most touch only the surface of their minds; what is important is something behind the words, but to that they are not open. If there is already an interest in spiritual things, that is different. Even then it is often better to let people follow their own groove than pull them into this path.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother cannot give the advice you call on her to give to . It is your mother’s free choice alone and sense of inner need that should guide her. No one has a right to interfere with her spiritual progress or pull her back in order to satisfy their own selﬁsh demands. Her children are not infants needing the care of a mother and ought to be able to face by themselves the difﬁculties of life — it is rather now their duty to put her need ﬁrst and not theirs; for at her age, it is she and not themselves who should be their ﬁrst consideration in their dealings with her. She has need of rest to restore her broken health and an atmosphere of peace for her soul’s progress.


Sri Aurobindo:   I do not think it at all necessary for you to stay any longer with your son. He is now becoming old enough to trace his own path in life — the more he is independent, the better. You certainly did no wrong in coming here at this time; the opinion of society about it has no true basis whatever.


Sri Aurobindo: As for the attitude taken by your husband, it should rather be a help to you to make your choice decisively and once for all.  You can write to him that since he presses, you will not delay long to make your decision and you will speak to him about it when you return — unless you feel it will put you more at ease to write now a deﬁnite answer.    The need of solitude, of going inward, of getting out of the ordinary atmosphere of human life is one of the most natural movements of spiritual life. One who cannot appreciate that movement, knows nothing about spirituality or Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo: Your husband’s letters are like the reasonings of the scientists and men of the world who know nothing about Yoga or spiritual experience; they only pass mental opinions and judgments on it from outside. It is not even worth while replying to such things — they are so far from the realities of the spirit.   Keep over there your separateness and for all that surrounds you there remain inwardly aloof and untouched — dealing with it as something external to you which you will soon leave.


Sri Aurobindo: I return your husband’s letters. I do not think we can build much on his desire to know about Yoga. He wishes for reasons of a mixed nature to dissuade you from leaving the domestic life and that is the main thing behind both the criticising and the conciliatory elements in his letters. Your own position is clear and it is what I suppose you have expressed already — you are sure of your own feeling and purpose and conﬁdence in my leading, but you see no good in subjecting it to intellectual discussion. Yoga and spirituality rest on the soul’s intuition and the need of the inner nature, not on the reasoning of the surface intelligence.


Sri Aurobindo:   Women are not naturally weaker than men, but in society they have not been trained and educated like men to have a strong will and control over themselves, so when these things [ ] come on them, they do not understand or react so easily against them. But there are men as helpless in these struggles who are subject to the same reactions. Once one is open to the Divine, women are no less able than men to become strong with the Divine Force and luminous and wise with the Divine Light and Knowledge.


Sri Aurobindo:   The tendency you speak of, to leave the family and social life for the spiritual life, has been traditional in India for the last 2000 years and more — chieﬂy among men, it touches only a very small number of women. It must be remembered that Indian social life has subordinated almost entirely the individual to the family. Men and women do not marry according to their free will; their marriages are mostly arranged for them while they are still children. Not only so, but the mould of society has been long of an almost iron ﬁxity putting each individual in his place and expecting him to conform to it.


Sri Aurobindo: You speak of issues and a courageous solution, but in this life there are no problems and issues and no call for a solution — a courageous solution is only possible where there is freedom of the personal will; but where the only solution (if one remains in this life) is submission to the family will , there can be nothing of that kind. It is a secure life and can be happy if one accommodates oneself to it and has no unusual aspirations beyond it or is fortunate in one’s environment; but it has no remedy for or escape from incompatibilities or any kind of individual frustration; it leaves little room for initiative or free movement or any individualism. The only outlet for the individual is his inner spiritual or religious life and the recognised escape is the abandonment of the, the family life, by some kind of Sannyasa. The Sannyasi, the Vaishnava Vairagi or the Brahmachari are free; they are dead to the family and can live according to the dictates of the inner spirit.


Sri Aurobindo: Only if they enter into an order or asram, they have to abide by the rules of the order, but that is their own choice, not a responsibility which has been laid on them without their choice. Society recognised this door of escape from itself; religion sanctioned the idea that distaste for the social or worldly life was a legitimate ground for taking up that of the recluse or religious wanderer. But this was mainly for men; women, except in old times among the Buddhists who had their convents and in later times among the Vaishnavas, had little chance of such an escape unless a very strong spiritual impulse drove them which would take no denial. As for the wife and children left behind by the Sannyasi, there was little difﬁculty, for the joint family was there to take up or rather to continue their maintenance.  At present what has happened is that the old framework remains, but modern ideas have brought a condition of inadaptation, of unrest, the old family system is breaking up and women are seeking in more numbers the same freedom of escape as men have always had in the past.


Sri Aurobindo: That would account for the cases you have come across — but I don’t think the number of such cases can be as yet at all considerable, it is quite a new phenomenon; the admission of women to Asrams is itself a novelty.  The extreme unhappiness of a mental and vital growth which does not ﬁt in with the surroundings, of marriages imposed that are unsuitable and where there is no meeting-point between husband and wife, of an environment hostile and intolerant of one’s inner life and on the other hand the innate tendency of the Indian mind to seek a refuge in the spiritual or religious escape will sufﬁciently account for the new development. If society wants to prevent it, it must itself change. As to individuals, each case must be judged on its own merits; there is too much complexity in the problem and too much variation of nature, position, motives for a general rule.  I have spoken of the social problem in general terms only.


Sri Aurobindo: In the conduct of the Asram, we have had many applications obviously dictated by an unwillingness to face the difﬁculties and responsibilities of life — naturally ignored or refused by us, but these have been mostly from men; there have been recently only one or two cases of women. Otherwise women have not applied usually on the ground of an unhappy marriage or difﬁcult environment. Most often married sadhikas have followed or accompanied their husbands on the ground of having already begun to practise Yoga; others have come after fulﬁlling sufﬁciently the responsibilities of married life; in two or three cases there has been a separation from the husband but that was long before their coming here. In some cases there have been no children, in others the children have been left with the family. These cases do not really fall in the category of those you mention.


Sri Aurobindo: Some of the sadhaks have left wife and family behind, but I do not think in any case the difﬁculties of life were the motive of their departure. It was rather the idea that they had felt the call and must leave all to follow it.  In answer to your question about and her children, I may say that it is best for the children to return, as they are too young and undeveloped to remain here for a very long time. For herself, what she needs for the sadhana is to learn to live more inwardly, and we think it is better for her to return home with her children at present. If over there she goes inward, feels her relation with us and the need of the inner life becomes imperative, then no obstacles will be able to prevent her coming here again.


Sri Aurobindo: The difﬁculty you have spoken of in the way of her returning is precisely one of those outer considerations which are not of the ﬁrst importance. When the thing has to be done, there will always be a way to do it. In so deciding, we are looking entirely at what we consider best for her spiritual future.    As to the children you must remember what the Mother told you that they are yet too young for the Power to act directly upon them, it must be through you.


Sri Aurobindo: That is the reason why you must always remain quiet and open so that the Mother may work through you, not for you only, but for them also.   You will reply to him that for himself and and permission can always be given whenever they want to come — but the children are too young. It is a rule of the Asram departed from only in rare cases, where there is something exceptional, that they cannot be admitted inside the Asram before they are 10 years old — for before that they are too young to bear or assimilate the forces of the atmosphere — at least under present conditions. When people on bring children and stay in a house outside the Asram then the Mother allows it, but she takes no responsibility for them and they are not allowed to come for Darshan or Pranam or even inside the Asram.


Sri Aurobindo: If he comes alone we can accommodate him in the Asram but with his wife and children it will not be possible. The Mother also does not think it advisable to bring very young children here — usually the pressure of the forces in the Asram is too strong for them and there is a danger of their being ill. It is only after the age of 10 that they are allowed (except in very exceptional cases) to enter the Asram at all.    The child cannot be brought to the Darshan.


Sri Aurobindo: Children below 10 years of age are not allowed at the Darshan or in the Asram — very rare exceptions are made but not for anyone below 5. So permission can only be given for the adult members. You might write explaining this to your nephew.


Sri Aurobindo: It is usually unsafe for children to undergo spiritual pressure when their minds are not yet ripe — it often overstimulates certain centres before the Adhar is ripe and there is often a disturbance or lesion somewhere as the result.    But it is an unnecessary ignorance not to know elementary mathematics. To be able to explain and is very good, but I don’t see why it should exclude the other. If one has a realisation like Ramakrishna, that is another matter altogether.


Sri Aurobindo: These people who came too young to the Asram like and refused because they are not forced as children are at home and in school to learn anything at all except what it pleases them to learn. I consider the result deplorable, the more so because they have a more than ordinary personality and intelligence and ought to learn more, not less than other children.    I do not think we can accept your friend’s proposal; the conditions would have to be very different before his object could be fulﬁlled by sending his son here. We are not satisﬁed with the effect of the Asram life on children.


Sri Aurobindo: They do not get the society of other children which they need, they associate with their elders and contract the habits of older people which is not to their beneﬁt. Also they are exposed to ideas and inﬂuences which are beyond their age and grow old in mind too quickly, while at the same time they do not get the discipline, education, preliminary formation of the lower nature which is necessary in the early period of life. The life of the Asram has not been formed with a view to these things. If there had been a number of children with regular arrangements for their education it might have been different, but, as it is, we do not wish to admit children except in some exceptional case.  To give oneself to an outsider is to go out from the atmosphere of sadhana and give oneself to the outer world forces.


Sri Aurobindo: One can have a psychic feeling of love for someone, a universal love for all creatures, but one has to give oneself only to the Divine.     Outside there are just the same things. The Asram is an epitome of the human nature that has to be changed — but outside people


Sri Aurobindo: put as much as possible a mask of social manners and other pretences over the rottenness — what Christ called in the case of the Pharisees the “whited sepulchre”. Moreover there one can pick and choose the people one will associate with while in the narrow limits of the Asram it is not so possible — contacts are inevitable. Wherever humans are obliged to associate closely, what I saw described the other day as “the astonishing meannesses and caddishnesses inherent in human nature” come quickly out. I have seen that in Asrams, in political work, in social attempts at united living, everywhere in fact where it gets a chance. But when one tries to do Yoga, one cannot fail to see that in oneself and not only, as most people do, see it in others, and once seen, then?


Sri Aurobindo: Is it to be got rid of or to be kept? Most people here seem to want to keep it. Or they say it is too strong for them, they can’t help it!  It is because people live in the surface mind and are identiﬁed with it. When one lives more inwardly, it is only the surface consciousness that is occupied and one stands behind it in another which is silent and self-offered.


Sri Aurobindo:   One starts by a mental effort — afterwards it is an inner consciousness that is formed which need not be always of the Mother because it is always conscious of her.    We cannot approve of your idea — there are already enough intellectuals in the Asram and the room-keeping intellectual is not a type whose undue propagation we are disposed to encourage.  Outside work is just what is necessary to keep the equilibrium of the nature and you certainly need it for that purpose.


Sri Aurobindo: Also your presence in the D.R. [] is indispensable. For the rest instead of getting vexed with or you should seek the cause of these things in yourself — that is always the true rule for a sadhak. You are sometimes at your best and then things go on very well; but sometimes you are not at all at your best and then these misunderstandings arise. The remedy therefore is to be at your best always — not to be in your room always, but to be in your best and therefore your true self always.


Sri Aurobindo:   Meditation is one means of the approach to the Divine and a great way, but it cannot be called a short cut — for most it is a long and difﬁcult though very high ascent. It can by no means be short unless it brings a descent and even then it is only a foundation that is quickly laid — afterwards meditation has to build laboriously a big superstructure on that foundation. It is very indispensable, but there is nothing of the short cut about it.  Karma is a much simpler road — provided one’s mind is not ﬁxed on the karma to the exclusion of the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: The aim must be the Divine and the work can only be a means. The use of poetry etc. is to keep one in contact with one’s inner being and that helps to prepare for the direct contact with the inmost, but one must not stop with that, one must go on to the real thing. If one thinks of being a “literary man”, a poet, a painter as things worth while for their own sake, then it is no longer the Yogic spirit. That is why I have sometimes to say that our business is to be Yogis, not merely poets, painters etc.


Sri Aurobindo: Love, bhakti, surrender, the psychic opening are the only short cut to the Divine — or can be; for if the love and bhakti are too vital, then there is likely to be a seesaw between ecstatic expectation and,, despair, which will make it not a short cut but a long one, a zigzag, not a straight ﬂight, a whirling round one’s own ego instead of a running towards the Divine.      [


Sri Aurobindo: ] Lord God! when did I make this stupendous statement which destroys at one fell swoop the two volumes of the and all the seven volumes of the?  Work by itself is only a preparation, so is meditation by itself, but work done in the increasing Yogic consciousness is a means of realisation as much as meditation is.


Sri Aurobindo: I have not said, I hope, that work prepares. Meditation also prepares for the direct contact. If we are to do work only as a preparation and then become motionless meditative ascetics, then all my spiritual teaching is false and there is no use for supramental realisation or anything else that has not been done in the past.  I see. When the time for preparation is over, one will sit immobile for ever after and never do any work — for, as you say, work and realisation cannot go together.


Sri Aurobindo: Hurrah for the Himalayas!   Well, but why not then the old Yoga? If work is so contrary to realisation! That is Shankara’s teaching.


Sri Aurobindo: In that case I am entirely wrong in preaching a dynamic Yoga — Let us go back to the cave and the forest.  For me, correspondence alone. I have no time left for other “works etc”.  Concentration and meditation are not the same thing.


Sri Aurobindo: One can be concentrated in work or bhakti as well as in meditation.  For God’s sake be careful about your vocabulary, or else you will tumble into many errors and loosenesses of thinking.  If I devoted 9/10 of my time to concentration and none to work — the result would be equally unsatisfactory. My concentration is for a particular work — it is not for meditation divorced from life. When I concentrate I work upon others, upon the world, upon the play of forces.


Sri Aurobindo: What I say is that to spend all the time reading and writing letters is not sufﬁcient for the purpose. I am not asking to become a meditative Sannyasi.  I am not aware that I did so. But my biographers probably know more about it than I do.