Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 3. 1936-37
1936-37
You wrote, “They [the sadhaks] go according to their own preference, Mother’s liking or not liking has nothing to do with it.” They say that they go for outings with Mother’s permission, not out of any desire but to see Nature and learn to appreciate it, and that she herself used to go and take some sadhaks with her.
That is all rubbish. They go for the vital fun of it and it would be better if they recognised it instead of talking high-sounding humbug. Mother went because her health needed fresh air and she could not be quiet anywhere else owing to her position and people crowding round her. But if she had never gone, they would still be taking their Nature trips to please themselves.
What is a “true necessity” – one can always say to oneself that one has a “true necessity” for the thing one desires. Moreover in approaching a thing needed one can do it with desire or without desire. The fact that a thing is “needed” does not prove that you have no desire for it.
Every sadhak has a good amount of defects and imperfections and the majority of them seem as unable to get rid of them as X.
In fact, if Z and a few others had not made themselves the instruments of the Mother and helped her to reorganise the whole material side of the Ashram, the Ashram would have collapsed long ago under the weight of a frightful mismanagement, waste, self-indulgence, disorder, chaotic self-will and disobedience. He and they faced unpopularity and hatred in order to help her to 
save it. It was the Mother who selected the heads for her purpose in order to organise the whole; all the lines of the work, all the details were arranged by her and the heads trained to observe her methods and it was only afterwards that she stepped back and let the whole thing go on on her lines but with a watchful eye always. The heads are carrying out her policy and instructions and report everything to her and she often modifies what they do when she thinks fit. Their action is not perfect, because they themselves are not yet perfect and they are also hampered by the ego of the workers and the sadhaks. But nothing can be perfect so long as the sadhaks and the workers do not come to the realisation that they are not here for their ego and self-indulgence of their vital and physical demands but for a high and exacting Yoga of which the first aim is the destruction of Desire and the substitution for it of the Divine Truth and the Divine Will.
If the Mother sanctions it means that it is her will that it should be so.