Sri Aurobindo: If one develops the occult faculty and the occult experience and knowledge, these things can be of great use, therefore practical. In themselves they are a proof of opening of the inner consciousness and also help to open it farther — though they are not indispensable for that.  I don’t suppose she would — the supposition is rather gratuitous and assumes that she is false and insincere. Every sadhak has a good amount of defects and imperfections and the majority of them seem as unable to get rid of them as.  Not to be disturbed, to remain quiet and conﬁdent is the right attitude, but it is necessary also to receive the help of the Mother and not to shrink back for any reason from her solicitude.


Sri Aurobindo: One ought not to indulge ideas of incapacity, inability to respond, dwelling too much on defects and failures and allowing the mind to be in pain and shame on their account; for these ideas and feelings become in the end weakening things. If there are difﬁculties, stumblings or failures, one has to look at them quietly and call in tranquilly and persistently the divine help for their removal, but not to allow oneself to be upset or pained or discouraged. Yoga is not an easy path and the total change of the nature cannot be done in a day.    Throw aside this weakness.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother’s help is there — keep yourself quiet and calm and face the difﬁculties with the courage a sadhak must have when seeking the Divine.     Once one has entered the path of Yoga, there is only one thing to do, to ﬁx oneself in the resolution to go to the end whatever happens, whatever difﬁculties arise. None really gets the fulﬁlment in Yoga by his own capacity — it is by the greater Force that stands over you that it will come — and it is the call, persistent through all vicissitudes, to that Force, by which the fulﬁlment will come.


Sri Aurobindo: Even when you cannot aspire actively, keep yourself turned to the Mother for the help to come — that is the one thing to do always.     Mother never thinks of future difﬁculties, falls or dangers. Her concentration is always on help and uplift, not on difﬁculty and downfall.


Sri Aurobindo:  All the Mother’s love and help will remain with you unchanged as before. The whole difﬁculty comes from a vital movement which wants to possess in the wrong way, by comparison with others, instead of living fully in the close relation of your heart and soul with the Mother. It is the same in your relation with . But this is a defect common in human nature and many here have it. It is not a thing that cannot be removed from the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: Indeed since your heart and soul want to be free from it, it cannot but go. Do not be discouraged therefore when it returns owing to old habit. With the Mother’s love and help what your heart and soul desire will surely come and the wrong obscuring element disappear.


Sri Aurobindo: It is true, unless they are so surrendered to the Mother, so psychic, plastic, free from ego that the difﬁculties are spared to them.   You must not yield to impatience and let it bring thoughts of the old kind that cannot possibly help the working but must impede it. These thoughts that come are not true. Those who left, left because they mingled their own ego with the sadhana — ambition, vanity and other wrong movements — and wanted to use the force that sadhana gave them for these things, — or they had to go because the pull of the old life, family, home, action in the world outside was too strong for them. Also the idea that Mother is leading all others happily along and they are becoming perfect and only you are left out, is the usual delusion that comes when one allows despondency to rise.


Sri Aurobindo: Almost all have these difﬁculties to overcome and these difﬁculties rise again and again till the inner being is sufﬁciently developed to make them impossible. There is therefore no reason to suppose that others will be able and you will not be able.  The change of the old habitual movements of the nature cannot be done in a single stroke; the inner consciousness has to grow in such a way that ﬁnally it occupies the outer being also and renders these things impossible. What I have written to you about these things and the attitude to be taken is the knowledge that we have and the truth of the human nature and of sadhana conﬁrmed by our and by all spiritual experience. It is your outer being that has these reactions and not your inner nature.


Sri Aurobindo: You have only to trust in the Mother and follow what I say and these difﬁculties will be worked out of the outer being and return no more; but patience is necessary because it takes time, not in you alone, but in all. Do not allow such thoughts as the idea “what is the use of spiritual experiences, since my nature is not changed” etc., for these are thoughts of the mind’s ignorance. Recover the attitude and the resolution that you had taken and were developing. Keep the will and the faith and in quietude and patience let the Mother work all out in you.


Sri Aurobindo:   Be sure that the Mother will be always with you to carry you upon the path. Difﬁculties come and difﬁculties go, but, she being with you, the victory is sure.  Equality, rejection, calling in of the Mother’s force.


Sri Aurobindo:   When difﬁculties arise, remain quiet within and call down the Mother’s Force to remove them.    It was by your personal efforts without guidance that you got into difﬁculties and into a heated condition in which you could not meditate etc. I asked you to drop the effort and remain quiet and you did so.


Sri Aurobindo: My intention was that by your remaining quiet, it would be possible for the Mother’s Force to work in you and establish a better starting-point and a course of initial experiences. It was what was beginning to come; but if your mind again becomes active and tries to arrange the sadhana for itself, then disturbances are likely to come. The Divine Guidance works best when the psychic is open and in front (yours was beginning to open), but it can also work even when the sadhak is either not conscious of it or else knows it only by its results.   All this is of no utility — complainings, questionings etc. of this kind should be put aside. You have to go on quietly, without depression or trouble, receiving the Mother’s forces, allowing them to work, rejecting all that stands in their way, but not troubled by difﬁculty or defects in yourself or by any delay or slowness in the working.


Sri Aurobindo:   This kind of grief and despondency are the worst obstacles one can raise up in the sadhana — they ought not to be indulged in. What one cannot do oneself one can get done by calling the Mother’s force. To receive that and let it work in you is the true means of success in the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo:   Do not brood over your difﬁculties. Leave them to the Mother and let her Force work them out of you.


Sri Aurobindo: In such conditions try to remain as quiet as possible within and, if you cannot call the Mother, think of her and expect the help of the Force.  These attacks are always on the outer part of the consciousness covering up the inner being. One should always try to detach (separate) the inner being and look at the attack as a movement of the surface.    We will send you help, so that you may get rid of the obstruction.


Sri Aurobindo: Never allow this idea “I am not able” or “I am not doing enough” to come and vex you; it is a tamasic suggestion and brings depression and depression opens the way to the attacks of the wrong forces. Your position should be, “Let me do what I can; the Mother’s Force is there, the Divine is there to see that in due time all will be done.”     There has been no letter from you for three nights.


Sri Aurobindo: Whatever difﬁculty has come across, keep your faith and reliance on the Mother and lay open whatever opposes from outside or within to the working of the Mother’s Force.     These come from a certain restlessness in the vital. Most people put a control of the will on these things and try to get rid of them in that way.


Sri Aurobindo: But they disappear fully only when the inner being is awakened and a new Force (the Mother’s) begins fully to work on the nature.    Do not admit these suggestions of despair or impatience. Give time for the Mother’s force to act.


Sri Aurobindo: Whatever difﬁculties still remain, be sure that they will be surmounted. There is no need for the outer being to be nervous — the Mother’s Force and the devotion within you will be sufﬁcient to overcome all that stands in the way.  You must throw all that away. Such depression can only make you shut to what Mother is giving you. There is absolutely no good reason for such an attitude.


Sri Aurobindo: The existence of difﬁculties is a known thing in the Yoga. That is no reason for questioning the ﬁnal victory or the effectivity of the Divine Grace.    In that case everybody might say that all my difﬁculties must disappear at once, I must attain to perfection immediately and without difﬁculties, otherwise it proves that the Mother’s Grace is not with me.


Sri Aurobindo:   You should not yield to sorrow or despair — there is no reason why you should. The Mother’s grace has not been withdrawn from you for a moment. Do not allow the attacks of others to shake you like this — you know well the motives from which they act — and for the rest they are not going to pursue any farther the course which a ﬁt of passion dictated to them. The protection will be with you and you need not fear or sorrow any longer.


Sri Aurobindo: Put your trust in the Divine and shake off all this like a nightmare that has passed. Believe that our love and grace are with you.   It is the physical mind that feels too inert — but if some part of the being turns to the Mother, that is enough to bring the help.


Sri Aurobindo:   Remain ﬁrm and turned in the one direction — towards the Mother.  When the habit of these moods (depression or revolt) has been formed, they cannot be got rid of at once. There are three ways of doing it — (1) to strengthen your own will, so that nothing can come or stay as likes but only as like; (2) to think of something else, plunge the mind in some healthy activity; (3) to turn to the Mother and call in her force. One can do any of these or all, but even in doing them, it will take a little time to get rid of the habit.


Sri Aurobindo:  If meditation brings a headache, you should not meditate. It is a mistake to think that meditation is indispensable to the sadhana. There are so many who do not do it, but they are near to the Mother and progress as well as those who have long meditations.  The one thing necessary is to be turned to the Mother and that is all that is needed. Do not fear or be sad, but let the Mother do quietly her work in you and through you and all will be well.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother’s help is always there for those who are willing to receive it. But you must be conscious of your vital nature, and the vital nature must consent to change. It is no use merely observing that it is unwilling and that, when thwarted, it creates depression in you. Always the vital nature is not at ﬁrst willing and always when it is thwarted or asked to change, it creates this depression by its revolt or refusal of consent. You have to insist till it recognises the truth and is willing to be transformed and to accept the Mother’s help and grace.


Sri Aurobindo: If the mind is sincere and the psychic aspiration complete and true, the vital can always be made to change.     As for the feeling of people that there must be something bad in you, it does not arise merely from your relations with. The Mother and I do not speak of “good” and “bad” in this way; we look only at what helps or hinders the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: There is nothing in you that is not in many other sadhaks. What makes people hesitate to help you is your subjection to vital moods — all this weeping, self-starvation, uncertain temper; your unsteadiness — for today you accept help, tomorrow you reject it; your want of trust in others — which you have often expressed in your letters; your quickness to take offence, your readiness to suspect people’s motives, especially in their behaviour towards you. Others have these faults, but they try to control them. You, when a mood like these comes upon you, seem to yield to it and let it have free course.  If you want to get on in your sadhana and if you want people to feel comfortable with you and ready to help you


Sri Aurobindo: , you must get rid of these vital moods and defects — you must put a control on yourself and try to change. The Mother’s Force is there to help you, but there must be your active consent and cooperation, your own steady will and endeavour.     If Mother’s “doing” with the inertia were sufﬁcient, it would have been done long ago and also the supramental down in you.


Sri Aurobindo: The question is not what the Mother is going to do with it but what you are going to do with it.     These ideas are wrong suggestions that you must throw away.  There is no reason why you should be able to do nothing in this life or all should be postponed to another.


Sri Aurobindo: It is in this life that you have been called and are to reach the Divine. The Mother has not left you to yourself. But I think it is advisable that you should spend some time daily in concentration to keep the conscious connection and also write more often; if not every day, yet every second or third day.    It is not that I want you to do all by your own strength; the Mother’s force is there.


Sri Aurobindo: I should like you however to persist in meditation and the endeavour to be quiet within; even if at present there is no deﬁnite self-understanding or experience, this is the way to open the nature to them; we will try to do the rest for you.  There is nothing wrong in your experience or insincere in your expression of it; to write is helpful and it is our wish that you should go on doing it. An occasional sinking of the consciousness happens to everybody. The causes are various, some touch from outside, something not yet changed or not sufﬁciently changed in the vital, especially the lower vital, some inertia or obscurity rising up from the physical parts of nature. When it comes, remain quiet, open yourself to the Mother and call back the true condition, and aspire for a clear and undisturbed discrimination showing you from within yourself the cause or the thing that needs to be set right.


Sri Aurobindo:   However strong the attack may be and even if it overcomes for the time being, still it will rapidly pass away if you have formed the habit of opening to the Mother. The peace will come back, if you remain quiet and keep yourself open to it and to the Force.  Once something of the Truth has shown itself within you, it will always, even if for a time heavily clouded over with wrong movements, shine out again like the sun in heaven. Therefore persevere with conﬁdence and never lose courage.


Sri Aurobindo:  You should not allow yourself to get upset by these small things.  If when the movements you complain of come, you remain quiet and open to the Mother and call her, after a time you will ﬁnd a change beginning to come in you. Meditation is not enough; think of the Mother and offer your work and action to her, that will help you better.   The play of the mental and vital defects in the human nature which belongs to the Ignorance is allowed — as also the attacks and suggestions of the Asuric forces — so long as there is anything in the nature which responds to these things. If they rise in you in the presence of the Mother, it is because then a strong pressure is put on them so that they have either to go out or to put up a ﬁght for existence.


Sri Aurobindo: The remedy is to open to the Mother only and to reject entirely and at all times all other forces, and to reject them most when they become most active. Faith, sincerity, perseverance will do the rest.    Yes. The more one is open to the Mother’s action, the more easily difﬁculties get solved and the right thing is done.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother puts her protection round all the sadhakas, but if by their own act or attitude they go out of the circle of the protection there may be undesirable consequences.


Sri Aurobindo: It is precisely that — one immediately goes out of the protection.   The Mother has made an arrangement with a view to all the occult forces and the best possible conditions for the protection of the sadhaks from certain forces of death and disease etc.  It cannot work perfectly because the sadhaks themselves have not the right attitude towards food and kindred vital-physical things. But still there is a protection.


Sri Aurobindo: If however the sadhaks go outside her formation, it must be on their own responsibility — the Mother does not and cannot sanction it. But this arrangement is for the Asram and not for those who are outside.    By desire, wrong thoughts, wrong actions, wrong feelings — by revolt, pride, ambition, lust or any other vital indulgence.


Sri Aurobindo:   It was a dream of the vital plane where all kinds of dangers occur until you get courage to face them. If there is no fear or if there is the protection of the Mother (which becomes manifest by remembering or calling her) then these dangers come to nothing.  It is the fear of madmen that brought the thing in the vital; such things as this fear have to be thrown out of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo:  There are very few who allow it. There is a general protection around all, but most go out of it by their attitude, thoughts or actions or open the way to other forces.     These things may try to come but they will not be able to enter or stay.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is better to let the Mother know when you go far out like that so that it may be with her protection that you go. The eating of plantains from the bazaar was indeed a mistake — Mother has several times warned against it and knows that. The body often becomes sensitive at a certain stage of the Yoga, but there should at the same time be the development of a higher Force which will protect and push back all attacks upon it.


Sri Aurobindo: These things that come to frighten you are merely impressions thrown on you by small vital forces which want to prevent you (by making you nervous) pushing on in sadhana. They can really do nothing to you, only you must reject all fear. Keep always this thought when these things come: “The Mother’s protection is with me, nothing bad can happen”; for when there is the psychic opening and one puts one’s faith in the Mother, that is sufﬁcient to ward these things off. Many sadhaks learn, when they have alarming dreams, to call the Mother’s name in the dream itself and then the things that menace them become helpless or cease.  You must therefore refuse to be intimidated and reject these impressions with contempt.


Sri Aurobindo: If there is anything frightening, call down the Mother’s protection.  The heat you felt was probably due to some difﬁculty in the force coming down below the centre between the eyes where it has been working up till now. When such sensations or the unease you once felt or similar things come, you must not be alarmed, but remain quiet and let the difﬁculty pass.  What you had before that, the moonlight in the forehead, was this working in the centre there between the eyebrows, the centre of the inner mind, will and vision. The moonlight you saw is the light of spirituality and it was this that was entering into your mind through the centre, with the effect of the widening in the heart like a sky ﬁlled with moonlight.


Sri Aurobindo: Afterwards came some endeavour to prepare the lower part of the mind whose centre is in the throat and join it with the inner mind and make it open; but there was some difﬁculty, as is very usually the case, which caused the heat. It was probably the ﬁre of tapas, Agni, trying to open the way to this centre.  The experience of being taken up into the sky is a very common one and it means an ascent of the consciousness into a higher world of light and peace.  The idea that you must go more and more within and turn wholly to the Mother is quite right. It is when there is no attachment to outward things for their own sake and all is only for the Mother and the life through the inner psychic being is centred in her that the best condition is created for the spiritual realisation.


Sri Aurobindo:   Fear in these experiences is a thing one must get rid of; if there is any danger, a call to the Mother is sufﬁcient, but in reality there is none — for the protection is there.     It was not possible to prevent the accident.


Sri Aurobindo: When the danger comes, a call to the Mother is the ﬁrst thing to be done, that makes the general protection at once effective. was in too externalised a state to do that and he did the very opposite thing to what should have been done — trying to get away in front of the car instead of behind it. But the true cause was something more internal — one of those choices made by the inner being (not necessarily known to the conscious mind) which bring these things as a response.   The experience you had of the power of the Name and the protection is that of everyone who has used it with the same faith and reliance. To those who call from the heart for the protection, it cannot fail.


Sri Aurobindo: Do not allow any outward circumstance to shake the faith in you; for nothing gives greater strength than this faith to go through and arrive at the goal. Knowledge and tapasya, whatever their force, have a less sustaining power — faith is the strongest staff for the journey.  The protection is there over you and the watchful love of the Mother. Rely upon it and let your being open more and more to it — then it will repel attacks and always uphold you.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not because the Mother has withdrawn her protection — she has not done that. It is more likely that it [] came because you have been going too much out of your inner being and externalising yourself. It is better to draw back within again and recover the inner calm and peace.  When in difﬁculties always remain as quiet within as possible and call the Mother.  Surely the Mother’s force is there to transform you and it will prevail.


Sri Aurobindo: You must progress to a point at which there is always something within which in spite of any surface disturbance is always quiet, unshaken, holding on to the Mother — then these things will no longer be able to cloud the inner consciousness as now.    Plenty of people have this condition (it is human nature) and there is naturally a way of coming out of it — having full faith in the Mother to quiet the inner mind (even if the outer continues to be troublesome) and call in it the Mother’s Peace and Force, which is always there above you, into the Adhar. Once that is there, consciously, to keep yourself open to it and let it go on working with a full adhesion, with a constant support of your consent, with a constant rejection of all that is not that, till all the inner being is tranquillised and ﬁlled with the Mother’s Force, Peace, Joy, Presence — then the outer nature will be obliged to follow suit in its turn.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is a symbol, — the expanse of water means the ordinary outward consciousness which is obscure and dull, the temple is the psychic centre behind it. By calling the Mother her white light comes upon the dark consciousness and begins to change the darkness into lustre.     You may have allowed your consciousness to go too much outward and get taken up by ordinary things.


Sri Aurobindo: It is usually when the outer physical consciousness covers up the inner being that this happens. The aspiration is not gone, but it no longer rises to the surface. If you remain very quiet inwardly and call to the Mother, it should come back.   What happened in your experience was that the vital being got free from the body through its desire to unite with the Mother (you met the Mother on the border between the vital and physical) and lived with its own life independent of the body. It entered into the vital world and, not being sheltered any longer in the body, felt helpless at ﬁrst, till it called the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: The appearance of there might possibly have been some part of the vital of himself, but was more probably a vital being in his shape, perhaps the very vital being who has been troubling him.  When you go into the vital world, you meet many such things, — the one sufﬁcient protection is to call the Mother.    It is the forces of the Ignorance that begin to lay siege and then make a mass attack. Every time such an attack can be defeated and cast out, there is a clearance in the Adhar, a new ﬁeld gained for the Mother in the mind, vital or physical or the adjacent parts of the being.


Sri Aurobindo: That the place in the vital occupied by the Mother is increasing is shown by the fact that you are now offering a strong resistance to these sieges that used formerly to overpower you altogether.  That is good. To be able to call the Mother’s presence or force at such times is the best way to meet the difﬁculty.  It is with the Mother who is always with you and in you that you converse. The only thing is to hear aright, so that no other voice can come in between.


Sri Aurobindo:   To call to the Mother always is the main thing and with that to aspire and assent to the Light when it comes, to reject and detach oneself from desire and any dark movement. But if one cannot do these other things successfully, then call and still call.  The Mother’s force is there with you even when you do not feel it; remain quiet and persevere.


Sri Aurobindo:   ’s reasonings are not very sound; yours are better if not altogether ﬂawless. The Mother is not limited by the physical mind, so even if she has “more important” work to do, that would not in the least stand in the way of her listening to a call from the wilderness or anywhere else. Also spiritual things do not go by seniority; so why should the clamour of “older cases” keep her?


Sri Aurobindo: She can be and is with all who need her. So your “Mother does not come? will not come?” is not quite to the point, but the rest of your answer is. Mother is there even now and working in you, it is only your inner vision and feeling that are not opened so that you cannot see or feel her.  What came down to the centre of the forehead was the answer, let us say the touch of the Mother’s presence, — her consciousness, her force working in you to open the centre of the inner vision.


Sri Aurobindo: For in the centre of the forehead between the eyebrows is the centre of the inner mind, inner will, the inner vision and when that opens one begins to see and know what is to the physical eye invisible and to the surface mind unknowable.   It is an obsession from the subconscient physical bringing back habitual thoughts, “I can’t call rightly — I have no real aspiration” etc.; the depression, the memory etc. are from the same source. It is no use indulging in these ideas. If you cannot call the Mother in what you think the right way, call her in any way — if you can’t call her, think of her with the will to be rid of these things. Don’t worry yourself with the idea whether you have true aspiration or not — the psychic being wants and that is sufﬁcient.


Sri Aurobindo: The rest is the Divine Grace, on which one must steadfastly rely — one’s own merit, virtue or capacity is not the thing that brings the realisation.  I shall put the force to rid you of this obsession in any case, but if you can abandon these habitual ideas, it will make the disappearance of the attack easier.    It is always best in these difﬁculties to tell the Mother and call for her help. It is probably something in the vital that needs somebody to protect and care for — but you must accustom yourself to the idea that it is not needed and the best thing is to give the person to the care of the Mother — offer the object of your affection to her.


Sri Aurobindo:   As to the experience, certainly’s call for help did reach the Mother, even though all the details she relates in her letter might not have been present to the Mother’s physical mind. Always calls of this kind are coming to the Mother, sometimes a hundred close upon each other and always the answer is given. The occasions are of all kinds, but whatever the need that occasions the call, the Force is there to answer it.


Sri Aurobindo: That is the principle of this action on the occult plane. It is not of the same kind as an ordinary human action and does not need a written or oral communication from the one who calls; an interchange of psychic communication is quite sufﬁcient to set the Force at work. At the same time it is not an impersonal Force and the suggestion of a divine energy that is there ready to answer and satisfy anybody who calls it is not at all relevant here. It is something personal to the Mother and if she had not this power and this kind of action she would not be able to do her work; but this is quite different from the outside practical working on the material plane where the methods must necessarily be different, although the occult working and the material working can and do join and the occult power give to the material working its utmost efﬁcacy. As for the one who is helped not feeling the force at work, his knowing might help very substantially the effective working, but it need not be indispensable; the effect can be there even if he does not know how the thing is done.


Sri Aurobindo: For instance, in your work in Calcutta and elsewhere my help has been always with you and I do not think it can be said that it was ineffective; but it was of the same occult nature and could have had the same effect even if you had not been conscious in some way that my help was with you.  All depends on whether the outer things are sought for one’s own convenience, pleasure, proﬁt etc., or as part of the spiritual life, necessary for the success of the work, the development and ﬁtness of the instruments etc. It is a question mainly of inner attitude. If for instance you pray for money for buying nice food to please the palate, that is not a proper prayer for a sadhak; if you pray for money to give to the Mother and help her work, then it is legitimate.  If your reading is part of the sadhana, that is all right.


Sri Aurobindo: These two are part of the sadhana.   If strength and health are requested as being necessary for the sadhana and the development of the perfection of the instrument it is all right.  A call for protection is always permissible. The removal of fear is part of the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: This is again part of the sadhana.   This also.  This also.  This also.


Sri Aurobindo: If it is as sadhana or for the development of the instrument, it is all right.  This also is part of the sadhana.  That can be done, if avoidance of waste of time is considered as part of the right regulation of the life of sadhana.  This is part of the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: This also.  This also.  It is not possible to make a ﬁxed rule covering all cases and circumstances; sometimes one has to remain quiet waiting for the Mother’s light and force to act, sometimes it is necessary to use an active tapasya. But one thing is always necessary, to refuse to accept the adverse forces and suggestions that try to disorganise and disturb the system; for the basis of the Yoga must be peace, quiet, clarity, self-possession and nothing should be allowed to invade and upset the basis and substitute confusion and disorder.   It might be charitable to warn not to listen to imbecile remarks [] of this kind, from whomsoever they may come, and, if he hears them, to do nothing to propagate them.


Sri Aurobindo: He had been progressing extremely well because he opened himself to the Mother; but if he allows stupidities like that to enter his mind, it may inﬂuence him, close him to the Mother and stop his progress.  As for, if he said and thought a thing like that, it explains why he has been suffering in health so much lately. If one makes oneself a mouthpiece of the hostile forces and lends oneself to their falsehoods, it is not surprising that something in him should get out of order.   The difﬁculty this time must have come from this very act of distrust and disobedience. For distrust and disobedience are like falsehood (they are themselves a falsity, based on false ideas and impulses), — they interfere in the action of the Power, prevent it from being felt or working fully and diminish the force of the Protection


Sri Aurobindo: . It was the same thing that made you lose touch for a while — for the adverse vital Formation always makes use of these wrong movements to cloud the consciousness. Not only in your inward concentration, but in your outward acts and movements you must take the right attitude. If you do that and put everything under the Mother’s guidance, you will ﬁnd that difﬁculties begin to diminish or are much more easily got over and things become steadily smoother.  Now that these things have happened you should learn from them and feel the necessity of being, as you say, conscious in your work.


Sri Aurobindo: In your work and acts you must do the same as in your concentration. Open to the Mother, put them under her guidance, call in the peace, the supporting Power, the protection and, in order that they may work, reject all wrong inﬂuences that might come in their way by creating wrong, careless or unconscious movements.   Follow this principle and your whole being will become one, under one rule, in the peace and sheltering Power and Light.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is the Force that attacks everyone in the Asram who can at all be attacked in this way — the form is merely an appearance which it took for the sake of having a more concrete effect. It is a vital violence which suggests always a catastrophic breaking of the personal sadhana or of my work. Such a Force is naturally met by the power of Mahakali. You felt it while passing’s room because it is always there with, and it is by that that he meets the suggestions of this Force when it comes.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother’s name called with faith is usually enough to meet it. It disappeared at once because it is a Falsehood which cannot stand once the light of the Truth touches it. It prevailed with because he welcomed its suggestions of pride, revolt, hostility to the Mother, even clung to them — otherwise it would have had no chance.    This Force is one that is there to break the Yoga if it can —


Sri Aurobindo: it is not only you it attacks but all who do the sadhana. It hates the Mother and myself because we bring the Light into the consciousness of the physical world and it wants to keep the physical world in darkness. It knows that the only way it can succeed in preventing the success of the sadhak in his sadhana is, ﬁrst, by turning him against the Mother, or, if it cannot do that, by persuading him that he is unﬁt and so disturbing him that he gets upset and loses faith and courage. What you have to do is always to remain calm and call in the Mother’s force and to refuse steadily all the suggestions whether against yourself or against the Mother. Preserve your calm always, keep an entire faith in the Mother and in your own spiritual destiny.


Sri Aurobindo: Reply always that whatever it may say, you are the Mother’s child and cannot fail in the sadhana.    These suggestions are what we call hostile suggestions — they come from a Force which is wandering about in the atmosphere trying to do harm to the sadhana. Its suggestions are always the same, to whomever they come — the suggestion of going away, the suggestion of unﬁtness and failure, this suggestion of madness, and a certain ﬁxed number of others with the same purpose. There is only one thing to do with them — never to listen to them; one must reply as you have done and dismiss them summarily from the consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: If one takes this simple stand, “I have come for the Yoga — I will allow nothing to divert me from my aim; I have the demand of the soul within and the help and protection of the Mother”, then these things can no longer approach or approach in vain.  I am glad you have the aspiration and the push awake; it is always bound to revive after every interval and to carry you farther. Keep it and progress.    It is obviously a wholly Asuric thing to do when it is turned to egoistic purposes or against fellow sadhaks.


Sri Aurobindo: It is certainly not a natural play of forces over which one has no control. Anybody doing that may get a serious back-blow, especially if it is done against people protected by the Mother — for, knocking against a wall of protection the force put out may automatically recoil on the sender.    It will not do to yield to these attacks which are without reason and obviously are only waves from outside. You should recognise them as such, things not your own but forced on you by a Force from outside and when they come remain still, reject and call the Mother’s force to liberate you.


Sri Aurobindo: Not at all. The method of the Divine Manifestation is through calm and harmony, not through a catastrophic upheaval. The latter is the sign of a struggle, generally of conﬂicting vital forces, but at any rate a struggle on the inferior plane.  You think too much of adverse forces.


Sri Aurobindo: That kind of preoccupation causes much unnecessary struggle. Fix your mind on the positive side — open to the Mother’s power, concentrate on her protection, call for light, calm and peace and purity and growth into the divine consciousness and knowledge.  This idea of tests also is not a healthy idea and ought not to be pushed too far. Tests are applied not by the Divine but by the forces of the lower planes — mental, vital, physical — and allowed by the Divine because that is part of the soul’s training and helps it to know itself, its powers and the limitations it has to outgrow. The Mother is not testing you at every moment, but rather helping you at every moment to rise beyond the necessity of tests and difﬁculties which belong to the inferior consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: To be always conscious of that help will be your best safeguard against all attacks whether of adverse powers or of your own lower nature.  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. 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 of 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.


Sri Aurobindo: For yourself what you must have with other sadhaks (including your sisters) is a harmonious relation free from any 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.    Quite right.


Sri Aurobindo: One can be a channel for the Mother’s help, but the idea of oneself helping others comes in the way and so long as it is there one cannot be a truly effective channel.    One can help another truly only when it is the Mother that helps through him and he is aware of it and does not think that it is he who is helping.


Sri Aurobindo: That is very interesting — for it agrees with the Mother’s constant insistence that to feel sympathy or any emotion of the weak philanthropic kind with those possessed by vital forces is most dangerous as it may bring an attack upon oneself which may take any form. One must do what is to be done but abstain from all such weakness.    Mother does not set much value on propaganda, but still work of that kind can be her work. Only it has to come from her impulsion, be done with quietude, with measure, in the way she wants it to be done.


Sri Aurobindo: It is from the inner being that it should be done in union with the Mother’s will, not from the vital mind’s eager impulse. To concentrate most on one’s own spiritual growth and experience is the ﬁrst necessity of the sadhak — to be eager to help others draws away from the inner work. To grow in the spirit is the greatest help one can give to others, for then something ﬂows out naturally to those around that helps them.  The Mother does not usually give speciﬁc advice such as you ask for in regard to the Insurance company. You must learn to get the true inspiration in the mind’s silence.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is not possible for the Mother to promise to give help in worldly matters. She intervenes only in special cases. There are some of course who by their openness and their faith get her help in any worldly difﬁculty or trouble but that is a different thing. They simply remember or call the Mother and in due time some result comes.


Sri Aurobindo: The sadhana is done by the Mother according to the truth and necessity of each nature and of each plane of Nature. It is not one ﬁxed process.     The Mother has never spoken of anything to be done in the next birth.


Sri Aurobindo: Naturally the vital has to be transformed if one is to succeed.    Experiencing what? She has her own experiences in bringing down the things that have to be brought down — but what the sadhaks experience she had long ago. The Divine does the sadhana ﬁrst for the world and then in others.


Sri Aurobindo:   Naturally, the Mother does sadhana in each sadhak — only it is conditioned by their need and their receptivity.  I have said that the Divine does the sadhana ﬁrst for the world and then gives what is brought down to others. There can be no sadhana without realisations and experiences.


Sri Aurobindo: Both myself and the Mother have done sadhana. The are a record of Mother’s experiences.     What you write is in itself unexceptionable — it is indeed what was offered to the sadhaks at the beginning — but the difﬁculty is precisely there, in the complete sincerity of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: Few have been able to rise to it and only a distant approximation (if the phrase can be accepted) has been attained by some. Apart from incomplete sincerity, there is the difﬁculty that the brain is clouded by egoism and desire and imagines it is doing the very thing when it is doing something else. That is why I spoke of the danger of the theory of all from the Mother. There are people who have taken it that all that comes from the ego or the vital, comes from the Mother, is her inspiration or what she has given them. There are others who have taken it as an excuse for going on in the old rut indeﬁnitely, saying that when the Mother wants she will change things!


Sri Aurobindo: There were even some who on this basis created a subjective Mother in themselves whose dictates, ﬂattering to their ego and desire, they pitted against the contrary dictates of the Mother here and came to think that this external Mother was after all not so much the real thing as the inner one or that she was putting them through an ordeal by contradicting the inner dictates and seeing what they would do!! The truth remains the truth, but this power of twisting by the mind and other parts of the nature has to be kept in sight also.   The Mother’s victory is, essentially, the victory of each sadhak over himself. It can only be then that any external form of work can come to harmonious perfection.


Sri Aurobindo: When they give up the ego.  When it is the Divine Force that works out all the Yoga and the actions by a direct action of which the sadhak is conscious.   Not until he is ready. He has ﬁrst to accept her and then to give up more and more his ego.


Sri Aurobindo: There are sadhaks who at every step revolt, oppose the Mother, contradict her will, criticise her decisions. How can she take them up fully in such conditions?  One can feel it.


Sri Aurobindo: Reply that the Mother is not able to write letters herself, and you are writing on her behalf. What is given by the Mother is not a development of supernatural force, but if someone is accepted to take up this path of Yoga he is led towards a deeper and higher consciousness in which he can attain union with the Divine Mother. This however is a path long and full of difﬁculties — Sri Aurobindo and the Mother do not admit anyone to it unless they are sure of his call and his capacity to follow it and the person himself is sure of his will to follow it until the goal is reached.  The basis of life here is wholly spiritual. An inner discipline is given, but it is on broad lines allowing each individual the necessary freedom for his nature and temperament to grow and change spontaneously.


Sri Aurobindo: Broadly, the sadhana consists of a progressive surrender of oneself — inward and based upon it the outward also — to the Guru, to the Divine; meditation, concentration, work, service — all these are means for a self-gathering in all one’s movements with the sole aim of delivering oneself into the hands of a Higher Power for being worked on and led towards the Goal. The Mother guides, helps each according to his nature and need, and, where necessary, herself intervenes with her Power enabling the sadhak to withstand the rigours and demands of the Path. She has placed herself — with all the Love, Peace, Knowledge and Consciousness that she is — at the disposal of every aspiring soul that looks for help.    The power of experience is not gone — but what is most important now is to develop the psychic condition of surrender, devotion, love and cheerful conﬁdence in the Mother, an unshaken faith and a constant inner closeness, and also to bring down from above the peace, wideness, purity etc. of the higher Self which is that of the Mother’s consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: It is these things that are the basis of the siddhi in this Yoga — other experiences are only a help, not the basis.  The idea of your friend that it is necessary to receive a mantra from here and for that he must come is altogether wrong. There is no mantra given in this Yoga. It is the opening of the consciousness to the Mother from within that is the true initiation and that can only come by aspiration and rejection of restlessness in the mind and vital. To come here is not the way to get it.


Sri Aurobindo: Many come and get nothing or get their difﬁculties raised or even fall away from the Yoga. It is no use coming before one is ready, and he does not seem to be ready. Strong desire is not a proof of readiness. When he is inwardly ready, then there will be no difﬁculty about his coming.


Sri Aurobindo:   The Mother cannot decide for you, she can only offer to you the Truth she has come here to bring to the world and, if you accept it, guide you towards it.     I can’t say on what plane the Maharshi is, but his method is that of Adwaita Knowledge and Moksha — so there is no necessity for him to recognise the arrival of the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: ’s Guru was a bhakta of the Divine Mother and believed in the dynamic side of existence, so it was quite natural for him to have the revelation of the coming of the Mother.    Why should Mother dislike Yoga of Knowledge? The realisation of self and of the cosmic being (without which the realisation of self is incomplete) are essential steps in our Yoga; it is the end of other Yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of ours, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.


Sri Aurobindo: The disappearance of a realisation when it is spoken of is an experience some people have, but it is not likely to be the case with you. To write only of the dark side would be to overemphasise it and not to give a chance to the other.  It is probable that the realisation comes only as a ﬁrst touch; it comes often like that and afterwards repeats itself until the consciousness is able to hold it as its normal state.  All things are the Divine because the Divine is there, but hidden not manifest; when the mind goes out to things, it is not with the sense of the Divine in them, but for the appearances only which conceal the Divine. It is necessary therefore for you as a sadhak to turn entirely to the Mother in whom the Divine is manifest and not run after the appearances, the desire of which or the interest in which prevents you from meeting the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: Once the being is consecrated, then it can see the Divine everywhere — and then it can include all things in the one consciousness without a separate interest or desire.     It is possible if you (1) can get free of vital demand, (2) regard the difﬁculties of the nature calmly and dispassionately as if some defects of a machine that has to be set right, the being that uses the machine remaining fully dedicated to the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo:   No, Mother was not serious or displeased with you at all. But why attach so much importance to what or do or say. They are still so full of darkness and ego.  The path you have now taken — to cleave to the Mother through all circumstances and let nothing shake you from that — will bring the true solution of difﬁculties for you.


Sri Aurobindo: For it means that the psychic being has started its work in you.  On what grounds do you come to this conclusion? I do not write anything that is not approved by the Mother.   Is it the opinion of your physical that the test of the right will in the Mother is that she must always support?


Sri Aurobindo: Does your physical think then that the infallible right will is necessarily in you — that it has descended in you ﬁrst before it descends in the Mother? Otherwise, what is the basis of such a strange idea, that to disagree with you or suggest something else shows that her will is in the wrong and in error?    I again repeat that what I write is what the Mother approves or decides; we have not two separate wills. This idea of division or opposition between us is a suggestion of the Ignorance.


Sri Aurobindo:   If he ﬁnds it difﬁcult to accept Mother, how is he a good devotee?  A devotee to whom? A brilliant student is another matter; one can be a brilliant student and yet quite incompetent in spiritual matters. If one is a devotee of Vishnu or some other godhead, then it is different — one may see only one’s object of worship and so not be able to accept anything else.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes, when that has been done, it is one of the biggest steps in the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother puts energy into all who can receive it; it depends on them whether they use it rightly or not — or waste it. Men are not machines, they have a will — and they can choose whether they accept the Divine or not — whether they do the Divine’s will or not.  Have conﬁdence in the Mother and be sure that the liberation from these things will surely come. What the soul feels is the sign of the spiritual destiny as of the spiritual need. What opposes is a remnant of the nature of the human ignorance.


Sri Aurobindo: Our help will be there with you fully to overcome it.  This struggle in you (between bhakti for Sri Krishna and the sense of the divinity of the Mother) is quite unnecessary; for the two things are one and go perfectly together. It is he who has brought you to the Mother and it is by adoration of her that you will realise him. He is here in the Asram and it is his work that is being done here.


Sri Aurobindo:   It was only that you felt the Divinity with her which is always there.     There are people who start at once, others take time.


Sri Aurobindo: recognised the Mother as divine at ﬁrst sight and has been happy ever afterwards; others who rank among Mother’s devotees took years to discover or admit it, but they arrived all the same. There are people who had nothing but difﬁculties and revolts for the ﬁrst ﬁve, six, seven or more years of the sadhana, yet the psychic ended by awaking. The time taken is a secondary matter: the one thing needful is — soon or late, easily or with difﬁculty — to get there.    What top rung and what Parliament?


Sri Aurobindo: There is no such thing as a heavenly parliament. progressed smoothly and rapidly from the beginning in Yoga, ﬁrst, because he was in dead earnest; secondly, because he had a clear and solid mind and a strong and tenacious will in complete control of the nerves; thirdly, because his vital being was calm, strong and solid; ﬁnally, and chieﬂy, because he had a complete faith and devotion to the Mother. As for seeing the Divine in the Mother at ﬁrst sight, he is not the only one to do that. Plenty of people have done that who had no chance of any portfolios, e.g.’s cousin, a Musulman girl, who as soon as she met her declared “This is not a woman, she is a goddess” and has been having signiﬁcant dreams of her ever since and whenever she is in trouble, thinks of her and gets helped out of the trouble. It is not so damnably difﬁcult to see the Divine in the Mother as you make it out to be.


Sri Aurobindo:   Not at all, it was a direct sense of the Godhead in her — for I suppose you mean by intuition a sort of idea that comes suddenly? That is what people usually understand by intuition. It was not that in her case nor in’s.  I don’t believe or anybody would have that at ﬁrst view.


Sri Aurobindo: That can only come if one has already developed the faculty of vision in the occult planes. What is of more importance is the clear perception or intimate inner feeling or direct sense “This is She.” I think you are inclined to be too romantic and poetic and too little spiritually realistic in these things.   I suppose you do not expect me to answer in detail this list of old grievances or try to justify the Mother or explain what you consider to be her indefensible conduct. I do not intend to do these things.


Sri Aurobindo: It is for each sadhak to discover for himself whether he can take the Mother as divine or accept her government and guidance, or regards her as one like himself or inferior to himself, whose conduct he can see rightly, weigh, condemn and judge. It is not for the Mother to explain or justify herself, nor indeed was it ever the rule for the Guru to stand at the bar for the judgment of the disciple. Each has to see for himself whether he can give that obedience and self-opening to one who has or lives in the Divine Consciousness or has realised the Divine Truth, by which alone he can receive what is to be given.


Sri Aurobindo: It is only if you see the divinity of the Mother that there can be a settled conviction — that is a question of the inner consciousness and vision.     It is the physical mind in its most external action that sees physical things as only physical.   It is by opening up the psychic and letting it rule the mind and vital that it can be done — because the psychic knows and can see what the mind cannot.


Sri Aurobindo:   If something forms for the enjoyment of doubt and if that something is in you, then that part must surely be a doubting part. Or if these formations (which are always busily going about in the atmosphere) present themselves to you and something in you responds, it means that there is a part in you which is still open to the suggestions of doubt.  There is, I suppose, something in your vital and exterior mind which is still prone to the idea that the Mother cannot be divine because she does not satisfy their desires or act according to their ideas.


Sri Aurobindo: In your letter to the Mother I note that you profess to be writing a confession, but the tone of it is rather a justiﬁcation of your faultless self accompanied by an accusation against the Mother of favouritism, bad temper, and injustice. I observe also that your statement of facts is incorrect and as far as it concerns the Mother, grotesque. You lay stress too on a point in which you can justify yourself, and you ignore all the rest in which you were in fault. I will assume, however, that all this was unintentional and that, in writing such a letter, you were unconscious of the movements of your vital being which inspired its spirit and tone.  I would suggest that in your relations with others, — which seem always to have been full of disharmony, — when incidents occur, it would be much better for you not to take the standpoint that you are all in the right and they are all in the wrong.


Sri Aurobindo: It would be wiser to be fair and just in reﬂection, seeing where you have gone astray, and even laying stress on your own fault and not on theirs. This would probably lead to more harmony in your relations with others; at any rate, it would be more conducive to your inner progress, which is more important than to be the top-dog in a quarrel. Neither is it well to cherish a spirit of selfjustiﬁcation and self-righteousness and a wish to conceal either from yourself or from the Mother your faults or your errors.  As for your doubts about the Mother, they are not likely to disappear so long as you think you can read the Mother’s mind by the light of your own and pass your mental judgments on her and her action from those erroneous data. Nor can they easily disappear if your faith breaks down every time that she does something which your limited intelligence cannot understand or which is displeasing to the feelings and demands of your vital nature.


Sri Aurobindo: If you do not believe that she has a consciousness greater and wider than yours and not measurable by ordinary standards and judgments, at the very least a Yogic consciousness, I do not see on what ground you are practising Yoga here under her guidance. Those who constantly doubt and criticise and blame or attribute her actions to the most common and vulgar human feelings and motives and yet pretend to accept her or to accept myself and my Yoga, are guilty of a stupid and irrational inconsequence. As for understanding, that is another matter. I would suggest that you must grow out of the ordinary mind and become conscious with the true consciousness before you can hope to do it. And for that faith and surrender and ﬁdelity and openness are conditions of some importance.


Sri Aurobindo:  There are plenty who do not realise it — they expect the Mother to act according to their ideas and wishes, not according to a higher consciousness.    It was simply a statement of fact, not a reproach, and it was not you but your ego that got discontented because it felt scratched by the facts.  Very well, I take the promise. But the rising of discontent is surely a sufﬁcient indication that the consciousness is going wrong.


Sri Aurobindo: As soon as you feel it you should immediately draw back and say, “O ego, you are up again against the Mother! Stop that or I will take you by the scruff of the neck and throw you out of the window.” I hope indeed to see that “thrown out” actually happen one day.    I have no intention of entering into an explanation, defence or apology for the Mother’s action.


Sri Aurobindo: I have long ago decided that I would not allow the Mother’s rightful position here to be lowered by the sadhaks putting her as an accused before the tribunal of their ignorant mind or vital ego and demanding that she or I for her should plead her case. The Mother acts from her own knowledge and consciousness which is not that of the sadhaks; their ideas of what she ought to do or ought not to do have no place. Rather they are here to discard such ideas and accept her guidance by which they can themselves enter into a higher consciousness where these mental and vital errors have no right of existence.  I have already pointed out to you that your action was entirely mistaken. You had no right to ask for a letter placed there for the Mother’s perusal.


Sri Aurobindo: You had no right to demand that the Mother should give you the letter. You had no special claim to mend the envelope for. It is not a question of bad or good desire. The pretension of doing good can contain as much ego and desire as any other personal claim, and that it was egoistic is proved by the violent reaction against the Mother that her not satisfying it raised in you. If it had been pure of ego, you would have had no reaction but quietly accepted the Mother’s action as right because it was the Mother’s.


Sri Aurobindo: If you want to get rid of the painful inner and physical reactions, you must get rid of their cause in you, the ego of selfesteem, demand and desire. It is only by a complete surrender of yourself, your mind, vital and everything else to the Divine that this ego can go. Your reaction and accusation of injustice against the Mother shows that you are still clinging to it in some part of you and you should welcome rather than resent anything that gives you a chance of rejecting it still more from your nature.


Sri Aurobindo: The difﬁculty about meeting your demand that the Mother should plan out and ﬁx a routine for you in everything which you must follow is that this is quite contrary to the Mother’s way of working in most matters. In the most physical things you have to ﬁx a programme in order to deal with time, otherwise all becomes a sea of confusion and haphazard. Fixed rules have also to be made for the management of material things so long as people are not sufﬁciently developed to deal with them in the right way without rules. But these things of which you write are different; they are concerned with your inner development, your sadhana. In fact, even in outward things the Mother does not plan with her mind and make a mental map and rule of what is to be done; she sees what is to be done in each case and organises and develops it according to the nature of each case.


Sri Aurobindo: In matters of the inner development and the sadhana, it is still more impossible to map out a plan ﬁxed in every detail and say, “Every time you shall step here, there, in this way, on that line and no other.” Things would become so tied up and rigid that nothing could be done; there could be no true and effective movement.  If the Mother asked you to tell her everything, it was not in order that she might give you directions in every detail which you must obey. It was in order, ﬁrst, that there might grow up the complete intimacy in which you would be entirely open to her, so that she might pour more and more and continuously and at every point the Divine Force into you which would increase the Light in you, perfect your action, deliver and develop your nature. It is this that was important; all else is secondary, important only so far as it helps this or hinders.


Sri Aurobindo: In addition it would help her to give wherever needed the necessary touch, the necessary direction, the necessary help or warning, not always by words, more often by a silent intervention and pressure. This is her way of dealing with those who are open to her; it is not necessary to give express orders at every moment and in every detail.  Especially if the psychic consciousness is open and one lives fully in that, it gets the intimation at once and sees things clearly and receives the help, the intervention, the necessary direction or warning. That was what was happening to a great extent when your psychic consciousness was very active, but there was a vital part in which you were not open and which was coming up repeatedly, and it is this that has created the confusion and the trouble.  Everything depends on the inner condition and the outward action is only useful as a means and a help for expressing or conﬁrming the inner condition and making it dynamic and effective.


Sri Aurobindo: If you do or say a thing with the psychic uppermost or with the right inner touch, it will be effective; if you do or say the same thing out of the mind or the vital or with a wrong or mixed atmosphere, it may be quite ineffective. To do the right thing, in the right way in each case and at each moment one must be in the right consciousness — it can’t be done by following a ﬁxed mental rule which under some circumstances might ﬁt in and under others might not ﬁt in at all. A general principle can be laid down if it is in consonance with the Truth, but its application must be determined by the inner consciousness seeing at each step what is to be done or not done. If the psychic is uppermost, if the being is entirely turned towards the Mother and follows the psychic, this can be increasingly done.  All depends therefore not on a mental rule to follow in practice, but on getting the psychic consciousness back and putting its light into this vital part, and making that part turn wholly to the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not that the question of your going too much to your sisters is of no importance, — it is of considerable importance — but to limit the contact is effective only as a means of helping your vital part to withdraw from this servitude to old movements. It is the same everywhere.  The kind of outward obedience you lay stress on, asking for a direction in every detail, is not the essence of surrender, although obedience is the natural fruit and outward body of surrender. Surrender is from within, opening and giving mind, vital, physical, all to the Mother for her to take them as her own and recreate them in their true being which is a portion of the Divine; all the rest follows as a consequence. It would not then be necessary to ask her word and order outwardly in every detail; the being would feel and act according to her will; her sanction would be sought but as the seal of that inner unity, receptiveness of her will and obedience.


Sri Aurobindo:   Your letter of the morning came entirely from the disturbed and wounded vital; that was why I was in no hurry to answer. I do not know why you are so ready to believe that myself or the Mother act from ordinary movements of anger, vexation or displeasure; there was nothing of the kind in what I wrote. You had been repeatedly falling from your attained level of a higher consciousness and, in spite of our suggestions to you to see what was pulling you down, your only reply was that you could see nothing. We knew perfectly well that it was part of the vital which did not want to change and, not wanting to change, was hiding itself from the mind and the mind itself did not seem very willing to see, — so we thought it necessary when you gave us a chance by what you wrote to indicate plainly and strongly the nature of the obstacle — on one side your old sentiment persisting in the form of anger, resentment and wounded feeling, on the other the vital’s habit of self-esteem, censorious judgment of others, a sense of superiority in sadhana or in other respects, a wish to appear well before others and before yourself also.


Sri Aurobindo: This especially has a blinding inﬂuence and prevents the clear examination of oneself and the perception of the obstacles that are interfering with the spiritual progress. Even if the mind aspires to know and change, a habit of that kind acting concealed in the vital is quite enough to stand in the way and prevent both the knowledge and the change. I was therefore careful to speak plainly of vanity and self-righteousness — so that this part of the vital might not try not to see. The Mother speaks or writes much more pointedly and sharply to those whom she wishes to push rapidly on the way because they are capable of it and they do not resent or suffer but are glad of the pressure and the plainness, because they know by experience that it helps them to see their obstacles and change. If you wish to progress rapidly, you must get rid of this vital reaction of, suffering, wounded feeling, seeking for arguments of self-justiﬁcation, outcry against the touch that is intended to liberate, — for so long as you have these, it is difﬁcult for us to deal openly and ﬁrmly with the obstacles created by the vital nature.


Sri Aurobindo: In regard to the difference between you and, the Mother’s warning to you against the undesirability of too much talk, loose chat and gossip, social self-dispersion was entirely meant and stands; when you indulge in these things, you throw yourself out into a very small and ignorant consciousness in which your vital defects get free play and this is likely to bring you out of what you have developed in your inner consciousness. That was why we said that if you felt a reaction against these things when you went to’s, it was a sign of (psychic) sensitiveness coming into you — into your vital and nervous being — and we meant that it was all for the good. But in dealing with others, in withdrawing from these things you should not allow any sense of superiority to creep in or force on them by your manner or spirit a sense of disapproval or condemnation or pressure on them to change. It is for your personal inward need that you draw back from these things, that is all. As for them what they do in these matters, right or wrong, is their affair — and ours; we will deal with them according to what we see as necessary and possible for them at the moment and for that purpose we can not only deal quite differently with different people, allowing for one what we forbid for another, but we may deal differently with the same person at different times, allowing or even encouraging today what we shall forbid tomorrow.


Sri Aurobindo: ’s case is quite different from yours, for there is no resemblance in your natures. I told you that or something like it long ago and I emphasised in my letter to that what might be the rule for myself or was not to be applied or going to be applied to his case. To deal otherwise would be to create difﬁculties in his sadhana and not to make it easier for him or swifter. I have also told him quite clearly in my letter that the attempt at meeting and mixing with others — which in the ordinary human life is attempted by sociableness and other contacts — has to be realised in Yoga on another plane of consciousness and without the lower mixture — for a higher unity with all on a spiritual and psychic basis. But the way, the time, the order of movements by which this is done, need not be the same for everybody.


Sri Aurobindo: If he attempted to force himself it would lead to gloom, despondency and an artiﬁcial movement which would not be the true way to success. A human soul and nature cannot be dealt with by a set of mental rules applicable to everybody in the same way; if it were so, there would be no need of a Guru, each could set his chart of Yogic rules before him like the rules of Sandow’s exercise and follow them till he became the perfect siddha!  I have said so much in order to let you understand why we do not deal in the same way with as with you or another.  The tendency to take what I lay down for one and apply it without discrimination to another is responsible for much misunderstanding. A general statement too, true in itself, cannot be applied to everyone alike or applied now and immediately without consideration of condition or circumstance or person or time.


Sri Aurobindo: I may say generally that to bring down the supermind is my aim in the yoga or that to do that one has ﬁrst to rise out of mind into overmind, but if on the strength of that, anybody and everybody began trying to pull down the supermind or force his way immediately out of mind into overmind, the result would be disaster.  Therefore concern yourself with your own progress and follow there the lead the Mother gives you. Leave or others to do the same; the Mother is there to guide and help them according to their need and their nature. It does not in the least matter if the way she follows with him seems different or the opposite of that which she takes with you. That is the right one for him as this is the right one for you.


Sri Aurobindo: You have now begun to see the difﬁculties that are still there in your vital ; keep to that clear perception, let it grow clearer and more precise. Concentrate on what you have to do and do not let yourself be distracted this way and that by irrelevant preoccupations or any other inﬂuence.    You can tell him Mother does not discuss these mental problems even with the disciples.


Sri Aurobindo: It is quite useless trying to reconcile these things with the intellect. For there are two things, the Ignorance from which the struggle and discord come and the secret Light, Unity, Bliss and Harmony. The intellect belongs to the Ignorance.  It is only by getting into another consciousness that one can live in the Light and Bliss and Unity and not be touched by the outward discord and struggle. That change of consciousness therefore is the only thing that matters; to reconcile with the intellect would make no difference.


Sri Aurobindo: If he likes, you can lend him the — as he wants to converse with the Mother.     That is the Mother’s business. She alone can say what is the right way to deal with people.


Sri Aurobindo: If she were to deal with people only according to their defects, there would be hardly half a dozen people left in the Asram.    One way is to have entire faith in the Mother — the other is to believe that she is wiser than yourself and must have reasons for everything she does which are better than your mind’s judgments.  It should be established — that is all. So long as the vital or mental think themselves wiser than the Mother and able to judge her how do you expect these stupidities to disappear?


Sri Aurobindo:   The Mother’s injunction to work in peace and harmony with the others concerned those whom you meet for work, not a personal relation such as you had with.  The Mother is the sole judge of what is necessary for each  and she is not bound to apply the same rule to everybody. The Guru deals with each disciple in a different way and does not keep one law for all.


Sri Aurobindo: You were allowed to mix with for a long time like with and with — in all cases it has been bad for those who do not give up the special relation, preventing them from being successful in the Yoga for which they came.  The Mother does not interfere decisively for a time but only lets each know that it is better for them not to mix in a specially intimate way and she waits for them to realise it. When one or other of the two or both realises or begins to realise that it is better to break the special connection, then Mother intervenes. If you went back to, all possibility of Yoga for you would cease.  Even your going to the Dispensary has disturbed the progress you were making and brought back the old habits of thought and reactions.


Sri Aurobindo: Your one hope of doing anything in sadhana is really and truly and deﬁnitely to turn to the Mother alone and follow her will. There is no going back to the old things — the Mother will not sanction it. If you are sincere in what you have written (in English), then you must also forget the past and live for the Divine and the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: Whatever is done by the Mother is for the good of the sadhak and the sadhana.    Obviously. Neither Nature nor Destiny nor the Divine work in the mental way or by the law of the mind or according to its standards — that is why even to the scientist and the philosopher Nature, Destiny, the way of the Divine all seem a mystery.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother does not act by the mind, so to judge her action with the mind is futile. But why should or anyone assume that will have no proﬁt for her spiritual future from her stay here?    Not until it is enlightened by the true consciousness and knowledge from above.


Sri Aurobindo: Why should the Mother be obliged to treat everybody in the same way? It would be a most imbecile thing for her to do that.  All these things depend on the person, the condition, the circumstances. The Mother uses the method you speak of, the Mahakali method, (1) with those in whom there is a great eagerness to progress and a fundamental sincerity somewhere even in the vital, (2) with those whom she meets intimately and who, she knows, will not resent or misunderstand her severity or take it for a withdrawal of kindness or grace but will regard it as a true grace and a help to their sadhana. There are others who cannot bear this method — if it was continued they would run a thousand miles away in misunderstanding, revolt and despair.


Sri Aurobindo: What the Mother wants is for people to have their full chance for their souls, be the method short and swift or long and tortuous.  Each she must treat according to his nature.    If you are afraid of the Mother’s scoldings, how will you progress? Those who want to progress quickly, welcome even the blows of Mahakali because that pushes them more rapidly on the way.


Sri Aurobindo:   Certainly, when the Divine Consciousness is fully realised, there will be no difference between the Mother’s will and the sadhaka’s.  For a relation to exist in which Mother can do as you say, the sadhak must not be afraid of the Mahakali aspect and ask only for sweetness. He must be able to take the blows of Mahakali as a blessing.


Sri Aurobindo: He must also believe in her vision and judgment and word, otherwise when she says or does something unpleasant to his ego that ego will go sulking, justifying itself, calling her names etc. as is the habit with so many in the Asram when she does not do what they like. There are very few here who can take this attitude even imperfectly, but it is with them that the Mother has this relation. With others, who have a different nature, she cannot but behave differently — for she has to act with each according to his nature.  It is a favourite form of criticism and quite natural to the human mind which knows nothing about the play of forces through which the Divine Movement has to make its way under the conditions laid down by the play of the Ignorance.


Sri Aurobindo: But why indulge a feeling which has not truth or good sense or reason at its back? This accusation of partiality rests ﬁrst on feelings of egoistic vital demand, jealousy etc. which are no doubt fairly universal in human nature as it is, but not the more respectworthy for that. It supports itself on a crude idea of “equality” of treatment which in practice comes to this that everyone should be treated in just the same way, which is about as impossible a thing as could be demanded in this world and would make all action and all direction of either work or sadhana impossible. The Mother extends the divine love and protection to all, but the form she gives to her action must vary with the different nature and need of each, the demands of the work, the necessities of their sadhana. The idea about Europeans is quite wrong — since with the exception of and  all those who see most of the Mother or are given special positions of conﬁdence are Indians.


Sri Aurobindo: If one starts comparisons each has something which another has not. And to have that something does not prevent complaints of being worse treated than others. These feelings therefore are merely the product of the restless discontent of the vital and there is nothing to be done with them except to send them away whenever they come as useless disturbers of happiness and progress.    Yes, that is the mistake all the sadhaks make.


Sri Aurobindo: How can they understand the Mother’s actions unless they are united in consciousness with the Mother, have in fact the same consciousness as hers?    I do not know what right you have to invent false imputations against the Mother without even knowing all the facts out of your ignorant egoistic mind and insulting her with these falsehoods calling her a liar and a trickster. treated Bushy without asking the Mother; she was not even informed and she only knew of it when she heard the poor beast screaming and asked what was the matter. That is how the sadhaks treat the Mother and afterwards they insult and kick her.


Sri Aurobindo: As for, he had already asked and the Mother said no because he works in the night and she thought a class in addition would be too much strain for him. Afterwards when you wrote that he was enthusiastic about it she tried to ﬁnd someone who would relieve him but she has found no one. That is all. Even when she tries to meet your requests, you seize on it as an occasion for insulting her and putting the most base, vile and sinister motives on her simplest actions. There is no reason for throwing the blame for your condition off your own shoulders and attacking the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo: What the Mother said was perfectly just and reasonable. It is because your mind was confused and excited and hostile that it put its own imagined words and interpretations and tried to support and justify its hostility by its own inventions and inferences. This trick of putting into the Mother’s mouth words that she had not spoken — often the very reverse of what she had said, — or of twisting her words and acts to mean something that she had never intended, is a constant habit of the forces of falsehood when they want to turn the sadhaks from the right way or use them against the Truth and against the Mother. If you thus make yourself the instrument of a falsehood, how can you expect not to fall away from peace and light and the true psychic condition? You were constantly doing that before and it was the cause of all your troubles, putting yourself on the side of the obscure and false and hostile forces.


Sri Aurobindo: If you want to get free, you must cease listening to them, justifying them, throwing them against the Mother.  We are perfectly ready to correct you and have no intention of leaving you to your ignorance, — that is another absurd imagination, — but you must also correct yourself as soon as your mind starts this kind of thing; for otherwise you will not be truly ready to receive the correction and will start again believing the Mother to be false and deceptive and the rest of it, as soon as the hostile forces can create or invent an excuse.     I ﬁnd it rather surprising that you should regard what the Mother said to you or what I wrote as a recommendation to relax aspiration or postpone the idea of any kind of siddhi till the Greek Kalends!


Sri Aurobindo: It was not so intended in the least — nor do I think either of us said or wrote anything which could justly bear such an interpretation. I said expressly that in the way of meditating of which we spoke, aspiration, prayer, concentration, intensity were a natural part of it; this way was put before you because our experience has been that those who take it go quicker and develop their sadhana, once they get ﬁxed in it, much more easily as well as smoothly than by a distressed, doubtful and anxious straining with revulsions of despondency and turning away from hope and endeavour. We spoke of a steady opening to the Divine with a ﬂow of the force doing its work in the adhar, a poised opening with a quiet mind and heart full of trust and the sunlight of conﬁdence; where do you ﬁnd that we said a helpless waiting must be your programme?   As for light-heartedness and insouciance, the Mother never spoke of insouciance — a light don’t-care attitude is the last thing she would recommend to anybody.


Sri Aurobindo: She spoke of cheerfulness, and if she used the word light-hearted it was not in the sense of anything lightly or frivolously gay and careless — although a deeper and ﬁner gaiety can have its place as one element of the Yogic character. What she meant was a glad equanimity even in the face of difﬁculties and there is nothing in that contrary to Yogic teaching or to her own practice. The vital nature on the surface (the depths of the true vital are different) is attached on the one side to a superﬁcial mirth and enjoyment, on the other to sorrow and despair and gloom and tragedy, — for these are for it the cherished lights and shades of life; but a bright or wide and free peace or an intensity or, best, a fusing of both in one is the true poise of both the soul and the mind — and of the true vital also — in Yoga. It is perfectly possible for a quite human sadhak to get to such a poise, it is not necessary to be divine before one can attain it.


Sri Aurobindo: It is rather surprising that the Asram does not break down altogether, if the Mother has no grasp of the physical world — those who are in that lamentable condition are not usually able to run anything on the physical plane; but perhaps it is the great grip of the thinking elements here on the physical world that keeps the Asram going in spite of the imbecility of myself and the Mother.  What I notice however is that when the Mother says something, the thinking elements very often understand the exact opposite.  It is not quite like that. Those who respond ﬁnd on the contrary that the Mother has a greater grasp of truth than they have and do not judge her by their fallible intellects but try to see that truth and follow it.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is not alone, but many or most who turn things [ ] in that way — the tendency is almost universal in human nature. It is not from dishonesty that he or others do it — it is because when they listen, their minds are not silent but active and the thought of their minds mixes with what they have heard and gives it another turn or shape or colour. Often also the vital interferes and exaggerates or reshapes according to the desire or the convenience. This is much more often unconsciously than consciously done.


Sri Aurobindo: In the present instance, the Mother spoke quite generally, not about or what had happened in’s case, and she meant that what ought to be remembered is not remembered because of some strong immediate desire which pushes the memory behind until the desire is fulﬁlled and then only, if at all, the recollection comes. evidently added his own ideas, applied it specially to ’s action and thought that the Mother had said it was consciously done — that remembered and yet went against her conscious sense of right in order to fulﬁl her desire. That was not what the Mother said or meant by her general statement.   It is only when the Mother speaks directly that you can say “The Mother has said”.   It is good if you have freed yourself from this bondage [ ].


Sri Aurobindo: Love of Truth is divine, but this kind of truth is a very mixed product accompanied as it is by hardness or a ﬁerce anger. Truth does not insist on a blind adherence to the spoken word — as for instance, if a man says that he will kill another under the impression that that other has done him a grievous wrong and afterwards carries out his word even when he has found out that the other was innocent and no wrong done. That is what literal adhesion to the spoken word would come to, if scrupulously held as a principle. Truth on the contrary demands that a man shall cleave to the principle of Truth in things only, and in the case above the principle of Truth would demand that he should break his vow and not keep it. If a man pledges himself to something that is against the principle of Truth, e.g. against the principle of Love and Compassion or against that of obedience and surrender to the Divine, it is not Truth to keep that pledge — for it would be a pledge to follow falsehood and how can truth be rooted in allegiance to falsehood?


Sri Aurobindo: That would be an Asuric, not a divine Truthfulness.  As for the Mother, you will not ﬁnd in her this blind adherence to an arrangement once made. If, for instance, she told someone, next time you yield to sex-passion in any way, you will have to leave the Asram and if the man did it and repented, she too might relent and not insist in following out her menace. These matters of interviews are not promises, contracts or engagements, — they are arrangements only and can be altered.  If she has arranged for half an hour she can make it in fact  of an hour — or diminish it to twenty minutes.


Sri Aurobindo: There is a plasticity needed in the movement of time and the Shakti of life cannot afford to be rigid in its movements; otherwise Life would either be turned into a mere mechanism or break to pieces. But in this case there was no intention; it was a pure accident; by some oversight your name had not been written in the morning list and Mother came to the door when those on the list were ﬁnished. She could not go back because it was extremely late and it had been a long and exhausting morning spent in a continual struggle with adverse forces and she had to come in, do what still she had to do and come to me to report what had happened.  But even if she had intended it for some reason not known to you, your reaction was not the right one. For the basis you have taken for your Yoga is to obey the Will whatever it may be.


Sri Aurobindo: These things, seemingly accidental, happen when they are predestined and they come in as an ordeal for something in the vital which has by this painful process to accept change.    Mother told you about your psychic because she saw it — but she never told you that you were superior in that respect to and. It was not said to bring pride in you, but to encourage you to rely on your psychic and bring it out so that it might get full control on the vital. I may add that the psychic being strong does not necessarily mean that it is in full control of the vital or cannot be clouded over.


Sri Aurobindo: The condition some of those you mentioned have attained now is that the psychic is in control of the vital so that doubts and revolts are not possible or are rapidly rejected — and that was the condition to which you were coming before this (it seems to me quite causeless and accidental) lapse.  So I wrote that there was no reason why you should not speedily have the same psychic consciousness which would prevent all doubt or any radical disturbance.    People have put thousands of things in the Mother’s mouth that she never said. I have known them to say this and that to Mother and then go about putting it in Mother’s mouth, saying “Mother said to me.”


Sri Aurobindo: Also things that they have not said to her and she never said. You should put no reliance on these statements.    A lie is a lie whoever speaks it. If you give credit to what someone or another thinks or says as Mother’s motive in an action, take her statement of her motive as untrue and somebody else’s who cannot know as sound and true and on that challenge Mother for want of frankness, is the resulting upset our fault?


Sri Aurobindo: It is a question of greater conﬁdence in the Mother than in the statements or interpretations of sadhaks or the hasty assumptions or inferences of your mind or the feelings of your vital made without having the needed information. If you could get rid of that movement, things would be easier.    If the Mother did a thing for one reason and said that she did it for quite another she did not have, I fail to see how it can be anything but a falsehood. No superhuman motive can make a falsehood not a falsehood.


Sri Aurobindo: Moreover, if you really believe that the Divine can speak what is not true without being untrue and that that is a part of divinity, why do you resent it when you think the Mother has done it and grow sorrowful and indignant over her supposed unfair and uncandid treatment of you and say she ought to have been frank etc.? You ought rather to think she is acting from superhuman motives and accept gladly whatever she does. At least that seems to be the logic of such a position.   You base yourself evidently on the position that the Divine Consciousness is above good and evil.


Sri Aurobindo: But that does not mean that it does evil and good impartially. It can only mean that it acts from a light that is beyond that level of human consciousness which makes the human standard of these things. It acts for and from a greater good than the apparent good men follow after. It acts also according to a greater Truth than men conceive. It is for this reason that the human mind cannot understand the divine action and its motives — he must ﬁrst rise into a higher consciousness and be in spiritual contact or union with the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: But if anyone recognises that, he can no longer judge the divine action with his human mind and from a human point of view.  The two things would be quite incompatible.  But this does not fall under any such explanation. To allege a false motive cannot be a movement of a greater Truth and consciousness. To keep silence and not reveal one’s motives is one thing — to say I did not act from that motive when I actually did so, is not silence, it is falsehood.


Sri Aurobindo: It is a matter not of moral, but spiritual importance. The Mother cares for the Truth and she has always said that lying and falsehood create a serious obstacle to realisation. How then can she herself do that?  I do not remember any lies or half-lies told by Krishna, so I can say nothing on that point. But if he did according to the Mahabharat or the Bhagwat, we are not bound either by that record or by that example.


Sri Aurobindo: I think Rama and Buddha told none.  Quite so.  That is the right way. Union with the Mother’s consciousness is the true way for knowledge to come.  You should throw away this feeling.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not by asking questions to the Mother that you can get the knowledge, but by keeping your mind open to her.  Your writing these things does not give any displeasure to Mother. It is better to write if you have them, than to be silent about it.   If you want the Mother to work through you, you must lay before her your thoughts and desires and reject them.   When the sadhaks write to the Mother, it is not to get answers from her about the small things of daily life — sometimes they do it when necessary, and Mother sometimes answers, sometimes not.


Sri Aurobindo: The main object of writing is to put themselves before the Mother, their experiences, their progress, their lives, so as to create a constant connection and invite her presence, force, help, guidance in everything that calls for her intervention. But it is not necessary that the Mother’s response should take the form of a written answer. It would not even be physically possible in the course of 24 hours to answer all the correspondence that is addressed to us.    When the consciousness is open, to put things (difﬁculties, needs) before the Mother in a clear form written or otherwise (even if it is not submitted bodily to her), brings very often an immediate relief or response.


Sri Aurobindo:   The experience of being with the Mother and speaking to her is one that one can easily have when one is writing to her and is true because some part of the being does actually meet with her and open itself to her when one writes one’s experiences.


Sri Aurobindo: I suppose it is because in the act of writing or rather beginning to write you enter into contact with the Mother and the Force.    You did well to speak to and also to write to Mother. Of course Mother had observed’s difﬁculties, — it is correct that the difﬁculty is the lack of a certain free opening — otherwise all that could be removed quickly and the necessary change of nature (mind, ego etc.) carried on by smooth gradations. To write as you do is helpful for opening oneself and for receiving the precise touch.


Sri Aurobindo: ’s logic about the Mother knowing and therefore there being no need to write is applicable if there is a free or at least a sufﬁcient ﬂow of giving and reception between the Mother and the sadhak, but when a serious difﬁculty comes, this logic is not so applicable. Naturally, we shall do our best to help him in his struggle.  If you were seeking for a way of making it impossible for me to refuse you the money for going away, you have certainly found it this time. After the letter you have written and the accusations it contains, I am bound to give you the Rs. 50 you ask for.  As to your other reproaches and accusations, I do not think it is necessary for me to reply.


Sri Aurobindo: I send you the money you ask for and so fulﬁl the promise which you so imperatively demand that I should fulﬁl. I do not send you away or give my sanction for your going; it is for you to decide in all freedom whether you will go or stay. But if you stay, there must be no more reproaches of this kind, since you will be staying entirely by your own free will and under no pressure from us. Nor can I allow the claim you seem to have made that the Mother must do what you want and she must not say to you or do anything that does not please you.  That is a relation which is not allowed to others and it cannot be allowed to you either.


Sri Aurobindo: The Mother has shown you every possible favour and kindness; more she cannot do.    It is not possible for the Mother to tell you to remain, if you are yourself in your mind and vital eager to go. It is from within yourself that there must come the clear will on one side or the other.


Sri Aurobindo: But you have already had a personal interview with the Mother in which the question was spoken of for an hour or thereabouts and she told you very positively that she considered it would be harmful, dangerous to you for your sadhana. She cannot say more or otherwise than she did that time. As for these dull persistent desires, it is not by indulging them that they disappear — on the contrary: the only way is to grow out of them or let them die.


Sri Aurobindo: Some of them seem to forget.  It depends on the person.   Through the suggestions of the hostile forces, because of pride, egoism, ambition, sexual desire, vanity, greed or any other vital impulse used by the hostile Powers.


Sri Aurobindo: Every man is free at every moment to consent to the Divine call or not consent — to follow the lower nature or to follow his soul.   All this about judging is nonsense — you feel the call or you do not and, if you feel the call, you follow it without calculating or counting risks or asking whether you are ﬁt or not.   By understanding that it is the Devil who tempts them and not listening to the Devil.


Sri Aurobindo:  The Mother is not at all angry with him and has not been at any time — that is a sheer imagination. As for the pressure, the only pressure now is to bring down the supramental, but that is a pressure on Nature and not on the sadhaks. For the sadhaks, the only thing given is help, not a pressure.