Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Letters
To and about Anna Bogenholm Sloane [3]1
[August – September 1927]
I do not think it necessary to answer the personal
question you put me or announce who I am on the spiritual plane. If I am what
your question suggests, it is not for me to declare it but for others to
discover.
I prefer also to make no reply to the question about
the Mother, at least in the form in which you put it. All I care to say, and it
is all that is needed, is that she is doing the work for which she took birth
and has prepared herself uninterruptedly from her childhood. The Power is in her
that can bring down a true supramental creation, open the whole nature of the
disciple to the supramental Light and Force and guide its transformation into a
divine nature. It is because there is this Power in her that she has been
entrusted with the work.
But all are free in their inner being, free to accept
or refuse, free to receive or not to receive, to follow this way or another.
What the Mother can do for the disciple depends on his willingness or capacity
to open himself to her help and influence and on the completeness of his consent
and confidence. If they are complete, the work done will be perfect and true; if
they are imperfect, the work will be marred by the distortions brought in by his
mind and his vital failings, if they are denied, then nothing can be done. Or,
rather, nothing will be done; for the attempt in such circumstances might lead
to a breaking rather than a divine building of the nature, or even there might
be a reception of hostile forces instead of the true light and power. This is
the law of the relation on the spiritual plane: the consent of the disciple must
be at every moment free, but his confidence, if given, must be complete and the
submission to the guidance absolute.
This is the one real issue that your recent development
has raised between us. The rising of some doubts would in itself have been of
little importance; doubt is the very nature of the ignorant physical mind. But
yours have very evidently risen because you have taken a turn away from the path
to the 
supramental realisation along which the Mother was helping you and admitted
another occult influence. This is shown by the nature of your doubts where you
question her knowledge of certain common experiences of Yoga and by your
conclusion that she can no longer help you. I pass by your pretensions to gauge
her knowledge and experience; her dealings with you and others proceed from a
consciousness to which the mental understanding and judgment have not the key.
But when the doubt and questioning go so far, it is because something in the
vital nature begins to be unwilling to accept any longer the guidance; for the
guidance is likely to interfere with its going on its own way.
I could not accede under any circumstances to your
request to me to substitute my instruction and guidance for the Mother’s. If you
cannot receive help from her any longer, it is evident that you cannot receive
it either from me; for the same Power and the same Knowledge act through both of
us. I have no intention of taking a step which would bring down the work to the
personal human level and would be a direct contradiction of its divine origin
and nature.