Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

4. The Mother in the Life of the Ashram

Fragment ID: 19749

I cannot keep quiet and clear due to the hurt feelings within me. I try to forget this thing by thinking of the Mother’s goodness, but these feelings still come.

It is the usual thing – you allowed a desire to get hold of you and because it was crossed by X ’s action and the Mother didn’t subscribe to it, you got upset first in the vital and then by reflex action in the body. All this questioning on the basis of an unsatisfied desire is out of place. You must get rid of this idea that you can turn a desire into a demand and then expect as a right its satisfaction and consider it a wrong done to you if it is not satisfied. That is precisely the kind of attitude of the vital which prevents the inner progress and drags back the consciousness from the psychic to the lower vital level. Full trust with humility and devotion, that is the psychic poise and for nothing should it be lost. No satisfaction of vital desire can replace it.

6 January 1937