Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Letters
Fragment ID: 6449
(this fragment is largest or earliest found passage)
Sri Aurobindo — Ghose, Barindra Kumar
November 18, 1922
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To Barindra Kumar Ghose [1]1
Arya Office
Pondicherry
November 18. 1922.
Dear Barin,
I understand from your letter that you need a written authority from me for the work I have entrusted to you and a statement making your position clear to those whom you may have to approach in connection with it. You may show to anyone you wish this letter as your authority and I hope it will be sufficient to straighten things for you.
I have been till now and shall be for some time longer
withdrawn in the practice of a yoga
destined to be a basis not for withdrawal
from life, but for the transformation of human life. It is a yoga in which vast untried
tracts of inner experience and new paths of sadhana had to be opened up
and which therefore needed retirement and long time for its completion. But the
time is approaching, though it has not yet come, when I shall have to take up a
large external work proceeding from the spiritual basis of this yoga.
It is therefore necessary to establish a number of
centres, small and few at first but enlarging and increasing in number as I go
on, for training in this sadhana, one under my direct supervision, others in
immediate connection with me. Those trained there will be hereafter my
assistants in the work I shall 
have to do, but for the present these centres will be not for external work but
for spiritual training and tapasya.
The first, which will be transferred to British India
when I go there, already exists at Pondicherry, but I need funds
both to
maintain and to enlarge it. The second I am founding through you in Bengal. I
hope to establish another in
Guzerat during the ensuing year.
Many more desire and are fit to undertake this sadhana than I can at present admit and it is only by large means being placed at my disposal that I can carry on this work which is necessary as a preparation for my own return to action.
I have empowered you to act for me in the collection of funds and other collateral matters. I have an entire confidence in you and I would request all who wish me well to put in you the same confidence.
I may add that this work of which I have spoken is both personally and in a wider sense my own and it is not being done and cannot be done by any other for me. It is separate and different from any other work that has been or is being carried on by others under my name or with my approval. It can only be done by myself aided closely by those like you who are being or will in future be trained directly under me in my spiritual discipline.
Aurobindo Ghose.
1 This letter was written on the same day as the letter to Chittaranjan Das reproduced on pages 260–62. Both letters were concerned with fund-raising.
2 Champaklal’s Treasures, 2008 ed.: of Yoga
3 Champaklal’s Treasures, 2008 ed.: not withdrawal
4 Champaklal’s Treasures, 2008 ed.: large
5 Champaklal’s Treasures, 2008 ed.: friends
6 Champaklal’s Treasures, 2008 ed.: another one in