Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 4
(Letter dictated to Nirodbaran.)
I don’t think I could approve of your departure to Brinda-van in this way – if you were going on a visit or temporary stay to see if you could get there some spiritual experience or for relief from pressure, it would be different; for however I would wish to have you here, your spiritual needs must take first place. The reasons you put forward in your letter seem to me very slight and outward: a dispute with Purani, the tragedy of the Professor’s handbag, certain difficulties about visitors’ cards and the Mother’s insistence on method and order in her work (what really good work is done without them?) are not sufficient reasons for abandoning the Ashram.
You can’t expect me to argue about my own spiritual greatness in comparison with Krishna. The question itself would be relevant only if there were two sectarian religions in opposition, Aurobindo-ism and Vaishnavism, each insisting on its own God’s greatness. That is not the case.
And then what Krishna must I challenge – the Krishna of the Gita who is the transcendent godhead, Paramatma, Para-brahma, Purushottama, the cosmic Deity, master of the universe, Vasudeva who is all, the immanent in the heart of all creatures, or the Godhead who was incarnate at Brindavan and Dwarka and Kurukshetra and who was the guide of my Yoga and with whom I realised identity? All that is not to me something philosophical or mental but a matter of daily and hourly realisation and intimate to the stuff of my consciousness. Then from what position can I adjudicate this dispute? Purani thinks I am superior in greatness, you think there can be nothing greater than Krishna: each is entitled to have his own view of feeling whether it is itself right or not. It can be left there; it can be no reason for your leaving the Ashram.
But the argument you put forward seems to me rather queer. By that logic one could deny greatness or divinity to Krishna because he was driven by superior armaments from Mathura to the farthest end of India or because he was wounded by an arrow in the heel and died of it, or to Ramakrishna because he suffered and died from cancer. You wrote the other day blaming somebody for losing faith in the Mother for exterior reasons such as her inability to save Tyagesan – even Krishna could not stave off fated death from the son of his beloved friend and beloved sister – but in this letter you seem to argue on that side.
I may say that I see no reason for alarm or apprehension about my eyesight; it has happened before and I was able to recover, even getting a better reading eyesight than before. These things are for me a question of the working of the Yogic force. Many customary illnesses have passed away from me permanently after an intimation that they would occur no more. In my last days in Calcutta that happened with regard to colds in the head, and when I was in the Rue des Missions Etrangeres with regard to fever. I had no cold or fever after that. So also with regard to things like the bad cough I had for many years: it was intimated some time ago that these things would fade out, and it has been so happening – only vestiges remain. So it will happen with what ailments remain, I expect.
The institution of visitors’ cards was not made for love of discipline or rule-making, but out of practical necessity. People from the town were coming in pretending to be visitors and taking their meals in the dining room and unpermitted visitors were passing themselves in for the Darshan; it was not possible for the dining room workers or the gate-keepers to know all the visitors of who were or were not genuine. I don’t see myself why anybody should object or resent this necessary precaution. The alternative would be to let everybody who wanted enter for the Darshan and to let anybody who wanted to take his meal in the dining room. That would soon make things impossible.
As for Doctor Syed’s handbag that is part of the special rules for Golconde. These rules, which do not obtain for the rest of the Ashram houses, are read out to everybody who is to stay in Golconde and if he does not want he can be given accommodation elsewhere. Doctor Syed seemed to be very happy about his stay here; if he was not really so and felt badly about these rules, why on earth did he refuse to stay in your place?
I may mention that he told Purani that there were two things he specially admired in the Ashram, first the fact that everybody here, rich or poor or of whatever caste were on the same level, and secondly the discipline of the Ashram. He said, according to Purani, that the absence of discipline was the great bane in India, neither individuals nor groups had any discipline. Then why did he weep merely because he was not allowed to put his handbag in a place not intended for it? I do not agree myself with him in the idea that there is perfect discipline in the Ashram. On the contrary, there is a great lack of it, much indiscipline, quarrelling and self assertion. What there is, is organisation and order which the Mother has been able to establish and maintain in spite of all that. That organisation and order is necessary for all collective work; it has been an object of admiration and surprise for all from outside who have observed the Ashram; it is the reason why the Ashram has been able to survive and outlive the malignant attacks [of the Catholic priests and]1 of many people in Pondicherry who would otherwise have got it dissolved long ago. The Mother knew very well what she was doing and what was necessary for the work she had to do.
Discipline itself is not something especially Western; in Oriental countries like Japan, China and India, it was at one time all regulating and supported by severe sanctions in a way that Westerners would not tolerate. Socially whatever objections we may make to it, it is a fact that it preserved Hindu religion and Hindu society through the ages and through all vicissitudes.
In the political field there was on the contrary indiscipline, individualism and strife; that is one reason why India collapsed and entered into servitude. Organisation and order were attempted but failed to endure. Even in the spiritual life India has had not only the free wandering ascetic, a law to himself, but has felt impelled to create orders of Sannyasins with their rules and governing bodies and there have also been monastic institutions with a strict discipline. Since no work can be done successfully without these things – even the individual worker, the artist for instance has to go through a severe discipline in order to become efficient – why should the Mother be held to blame if she insists on discipline in the exceedingly difficult work she has had put in her charge.
I don’t see on what ground you expect order and organisation to be carried on without rules and without discipline. You seem to say that people should be allowed complete freedom with only such discipline as they choose to impose upon themselves; that might do if the only thing to be done were for each individual to get some inner realisation and life did not matter or if there were no collective life or work or none that had any importance. But this is not the case here: we have undertaken a work which includes life and action and the physical world. In what I am trying to do, the spiritual realisation is the first necessity but it cannot be complete without an outer realisation also in life, in man, in this world. Spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without. The Ashram as it is now is not that ideal, for that all its members would have to live in a spiritual consciousness and not in the ordinary egoistic mind and mainly rajasic vital nature. But all the same the Ashram is a first form which our effort has taken, a field in which the preparatory work has to be done. The Mother has to maintain it and for that all this order and organisation has to be there and it cannot be done without rules and discipline. Discipline is even necessary for the overcoming of the ego and the mental preferences and the rajasic vital nature, as a help to it at any rate. If these were overcome outward rules, etc. would be less necessary, spontaneous agreement, unity, harmony and spontaneous right action might take its place. But while the present state of things exists, the abandonment or leaving out of discipline except such as people might choose or not choose upon themselves the result would be failure and disaster. [One has only to think what would have been the result if there had been no rules and no disciplines prohibiting sex-indulgence; even with them things have not been so very good2!] On that principle the work also would have gone to pot, there would have been nothing but strife, assertion by each worker of his own idea and self-will and constant clashes; even as it is that has abounded and it is only the Mother’s authority, the frame of work she has given and her skill in getting incompatibles to act together that has kept things going.
I do not find that Mother is a rigid disciplinarian. On the contrary, I have seen with what a constant leniency, tolerant patience and kindness she has met the huge mass of indiscipline, disobedience, self-assertion, revolt that has surrounded her even to abuse to her very face and violent letters overwhelming her with the worst kind of vituperation. A rigid disciplinarian would not have treated these things like that.
I do not know what ill-treatment visitors have received apart from the insistence on rules of which you complain, but it cannot be a general complaint, otherwise the number of visitors would not be constantly increasing nor would so many people want to come back again or even come every time or so many want to stay on if the Mother allowed them. After all they do not come here on the basis of a social occasion but for Darshan of those whom they regard to be spiritually great or in the case of constant visitors for a share in the life of the Ashram and for spiritual advantage and for both of these motives one would expect them to submit willingly to the conditions imposed and not to mind a little inconvenience.
As regards Golconde and its rules – they are not imposed elsewhere – there is a reason for them and they are not imposed for nothing. In Golconde Mother has worked out her own idea through Raymond3, Sammer and others. First Mother believes in beauty as a part of spirituality and divine living; secondly she believes that physical things have the Divine Consciousness underlying them as much as living things, and thirdly, that they have an individuality of their own and ought to be properly treated, used in the right way, not misused or improperly handled or hurt or neglected so that they perish soon or lose their full beauty or value; she feels the consciousness in them and is so much in sympathy with them that what in other hands may be spoilt or wasted in a short time last with her for years or decades. It is on this basis that She planned the Golconde.
First, she wanted a high architectural beauty, and in this she succeeded – architects and people with architectural knowledge have admired it with enthusiasm as a remarkable achievement; one spoke of it as the finest building of its kind he had seen with no egual in all Europe or America and a French architect, pupil of a great master said it executed superbly the idea which his master had been seeking for but failed to realise – but also she wanted all the objects in it, the rooms, the fittings, the furniture to be individually artistic and to form a harmonious whole. This too was done with great care. Moreover, each thing was arranged to have its own use, for each thing there was a place, and there should be no mixing up, or confused and wrong use. But all this had to be kept up and carried out in practice; for it was easy for people living there to create a complete confusion and misuse and to bring everything to disorder and ruination in a short time. That was why the rules were made and for no other purpose. The Mother hoped that if right people were accommodated there or others trained to a less rough and ready living than is common, her idea could be preserved and the wasting of all the labour and expenses avoided.
Unfortunately the crisis of accommodation came and we were forced to house people in Golconde who could not be accommodated elsewhere and a careful choice could not be made. So, often there was damage and misuse and the Mother had to spend some time two or three hundred rupees after darshan to repair things and restore what had been realised. Mona4 has taken the responsibility of the house and of keeping things right as much as possible. That was why she interfered in the handbag affair – it was as much a tragedy for the table as for the doctor, for it got scratched and spoiled by the handbag – and tried to keep both the bag and shaving utensils in the places that had been assigned for them. If I had been in the doctor’s place, I would have been grateful to her for her care and solicitude instead of being upset by what ought to have been for him trifles, although, because of her responsibility, they had for her their importance. Anyhow, this is the rationale for the rules and they do not seem to me to be meaningless regulation and discipline.
Finally, about financial arrangements. It has been an arduous and trying work for the Mother and myself to keep up this Ashram with its ever increasing numbers, to make both ends meet and at times to prevent deficit budgets, and their results, specially in this war time when the expenses have climbed to a dizzy and fantastic height. Only one accustomed to these things or who had similar responsibilities can understand what we have gone through. Carrying on anything of this magnitude without any settled income could not have been done if there had not been the working of a Divine Force. Works of charity are not part of our work, there are other people who can see to that. We have to spend all on the work we have taken in hand and what we get is nothing compared to what is needed. We cannot undertake things that would bring in money in the ordinary ways. We have to use whatever means are possible. There is no general rule that spiritual men must do works of charity or they should receive and care for whatever visitors come or house and feed them. If we do it, it is because it has become part of our work. The Mother charges visitors for accommodation and food because she has expenses to meet and cannot make money out of air; she charges in fact less than her expense. It is quite natural that she should not like people to take advantage of her and allow those who try to take meals in the dining room under false pretences; even if they are a few at first, yet if this were allowed a few would soon become a legion. As for people being allowed to come in freely for Darshan without permission, which would soon convert me into a thing for show and an object of curiosity, often critical or hostile curiosity, it is I who would be the first to cry “stop.”
I have tried to explain our standpoint and have gone to some length to do it. Whether it is agreed with or not, at any rate it is a standpoint and I think a rational one. I am writing only on the surface and I do not speak of what is behind or from the Yogic standpoint, the standpoint of the Yogic consciousness from which we act; that would be more difficult to express. This is merely for intellectual satisfaction, and there, there is always room for dispute.
I hope you will soon be able to shake off the dryness and depression and the upset that can always come in that state if one is not on guard. These attacks used always to come to you as to others at the time of the Darshan. Recently you had got into a state of consciousness in which they did not come or were merely thrown off, but this time you allowed something to pass through your defence, owing to the prolongation of the dull condition. There are still habits of the mind and vital which lay you open, but when you have recognised such things as things to be overcome you have shown in the recent past that you can overcome them even if after some time and struggle. Perhaps, after all, Krishna is only waiting for that to be complete to give you the state of psychic grace in which He allows people to get His direct touch.