Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

4. The Mother in the Life of the Ashram

Fragment ID: 19818

X has written a very fine letter – it shows that he is very open to the Mother for he proposes at all points what she herself suggested to me today.

The Mother accepts X ’s willingness to remove his shoes if he has to go to the Dispensary, but there is this to consider. It is not only a clash between two sadhaks, but Y has throughout been seized, as he himself admits, by a Power or Impulse that puts false ideas into his head and impelled him to offer an obstinate resistance to the Mother’s orders and to use every device – even the most childish and, to say the least, strange – to defeat her intentions. He does not reject or dismiss this action but justifies it and proposes to continue it unless the Mother yields to him altogether in this matter. The Power that got hold of him will consider itself as victorious and almost inevitably find other ideas or excuses to push him again to a similar action. Where that will lead, the example of the others has already shown any number of times. If that happens, then the Mother will have to come back again to the steps she had contemplated and commenced this time. It is quite impossible that an important department of the Asram should remain in the hands of one who goes on making it a sacred duty to disobey in favour of his own ideas the clear orders of the Mother.

28 December 1934