Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 3. 1936-37

Fragment ID: 18299

1936-37

When a doctor asks a patient to stop his work, what happens to the help and purification that the patient was receiving through his work?

The purification etc. does not depend on the quantity of work done, but on the attitude and sincerity. Work is entirely stopped only when the patient needs complete rest. In that case he can still remember the Mother and offer himself to her and pray and aspire.

Certainly if there is the right attitude, the work done with it will have its effect. Nobody is asked to take on too much work or to do it in the wrong attitude. On the other hand sitting idle with the wrong attitude will not help either. If he does a lot of meditation with the wrong attitude that will not help him either. If the attitude is wrong the first business of the sadhak is to put it right. It was not doing too much work that put X in the wrong attitude. It is the defects of his nature that put him into the wrong attitude and I don’t see how that is to be cured by his sitting idle.