Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
3. The Mother and the Practice of the Integral Yoga
You must not yield to impatience and let it bring thoughts of the old kind that cannot possibly help the working but must impede it. These thoughts that come are not true. Those who left, left because they mingled their own ego with the sadhana – ambition, vanity and other wrong movements – and wanted to use the force that sadhana gave them for these things,– or 
they had to go because the pull of the old life, family, home, action in the world outside was too strong for them. Also the idea that Mother is leading all others happily along and they are becoming perfect and only you are left out, is the usual delusion that comes when one allows despondency to rise. Almost all have these difficulties to overcome and these difficulties rise again and again till the inner being is sufficiently developed to make them impossible. There is therefore no reason to suppose that others will be able and you will not be able.
The change of the old habitual movements of the nature cannot be done in a single stroke; the inner consciousness has to grow in such a way that finally it occupies the outer being also and renders these things impossible. What I have written to you about these things and the attitude to be taken is the knowledge that we have and the truth of the human nature and of sadhana confirmed by our and by all spiritual experience. It is your outer being that has these reactions and not your inner nature. You have only to trust in the Mother and follow what I say and these difficulties will be worked out of the outer being and return no more; but patience is necessary because it takes time, not in you alone, but in all. Do not allow such thoughts as the idea “what is the use of spiritual experiences, since my nature is not changed” etc., for these are thoughts of the mind’s ignorance. Recover the attitude and the resolution that you had taken and were developing. Keep the will and the faith and in quietude and patience let the Mother work all out in you.
26 March 1936