Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
4. The Mother in the Life of the Ashram
Fragment ID: 19779
Observing X ’s recent conduct, I have lost half my respect for him. And when I observe other things done by him, it is all the more so. People will not follow a hard-working sadhak like Y or Z; they see what the well-known great sadhaks do. When they see X speaking to the C.I.D. man as if he were his oldest friend or keeping his own kitchen where he invites his relatives and friends; when they see A freely reading newspapers, going to hotels and talking to anybody, they naturally feel justified in following their example. And when, in spite of their conduct, these men get inwardly and outwardly much more than others, I do not think people can be blamed for doing as they do.
Who gets? How does A get more than others inwardly? X does not get more, he receives more – if others had an equal receptivity, they would get as much as he, and some do get plentifully.
Or again, if B or C prefer not to come to the Dining Room, why should others not follow their example? After all, the Gita’s line does apply: yad yad ācarati śreṣṭhas tad tad evetaro janaḥ.1 If the well-known great sadhaks go about loosely, the ordinary sadhaks have few good examples to go by.
The Mother has never set up A, C or X as great sadhaks and examples for others to follow – if people do it, it is their own error and their own responsibility. Even B cannot be imitated in everything though he is certainly a very good sadhak. But his not going outside the central compound has been sanctioned by the Mother from early times because it was his spiritual need. X ’s one merit as a sadhak is that he is entirely passive to the Mother and receives without question all she gives him. As for his separate kitchen that is Mother’s arrangement for him, not his own. The friends whom he receives there are people who have great devotion for the Mother or are seeking for light, the others do not come here though some still would. D always expresses adoration for the Mother and myself – she has always known us since the Mother first came to India. Even so this time also X refused to have her in his house, so she was put in E’s. It is not a bad progress for a man who has been here only a little over a year and had when he came a thousand ties with the world. It is also something that a man already marked out by some of the greatest English writers of the day as an equal of Keats and Shelley should renounce all publication and all fame and write only for myself and the Mother and the sadhaks. I know how impossible such a renunciation would be to most poets and writers and it seems tome it should be put to his credit as against any weaknesses he may still be unable to get over. For the matter of that who here has been able to become perfect in a year or two of sadhana? Not even the biggest saints or Yogis.
The whole idea of great sadhaks and imitation of them is in fact a mistake. Not to imitate others but to keep in mind the Mother’s will and try to follow it is what is asked from the 
sadhaks. Certainly if any sadhak had to be imitated in outward action, it would be Z and Y, not A or C!! But why do they want to imitate? Obedience to the Mother is the rule of the sadhana, not imitation of A or C. As for the line in the Gita, it is a statement of what happens in the world, not a rule for Yoga and the śreṣṭha here is not the Yogin, but those who are socially first, eminent and leaders.
17 August 1934
1 Whatsoever the Best doeth, that the lower kind of man puts into practice. Gita 3.21