Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

4. The Mother in the Life of the Ashram

Fragment ID: 19738

Sometimes I throw away the vegetables or the milk because I don’t like to eat them. Why does Mother give us the same food every day in the dining room and not something new – some sweets?

That is the desire of the palate which the sadhak has to conquer.

Sometimes I want to wear nice clothes – my dissatisfaction persists unabated.

Another vital desire. These things are good for people in the ordinary life, but such desires must be overcome in Yoga.

There is a growing disgust with life and a preference for death. I pray to Yamaraja to take me quickly since I don’t think I can do anything for Mother in this body – why then live on?

This is the reaction of disappointed desire in the vital. It is a movement that should be rejected completely whenever it comes.

Why do these things arise?

They are brought by the ordinary human nature as obstacles to the sadhana.

Who has put them in me and why? How can I get rid of these disappointing things?

You must reject them when they come and try to replace them by a complete faith and surrender to the will of the Mother and a quiet and very patient aspiration for opening and inner union with her.

I still have a fear of the Mother. Why?

It is the same part of you, the vital, that is afraid of her.

It seems like someone has taken away my life-energy and I am without any strength.

It is the physical consciousness which has no longer the mind’s sanction to the old push of vital activity and vital desire and so feels the absence of the rajasic vital strength in which men live. In Yoga that strength must be replaced by the Divine Force that comes from the Mother.

15 May 1935