Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

4. The Mother in the Life of the Ashram

Fragment ID: 19963

“Early” or “late” has nothing to do with what you call nearness. Some who were “early” – and also some who are “near” to her see the Mother only at “pranam” time – physically; some who are late, have the occasion to see her every day because their work compels it. But they see her because of the work; the work was not given to them in order that they might be near! You have taken the thing by the wrong end – not for the first time.

You are mistaken in thinking that you are the only one to ask with such persistence – there are others. Each one calls it a need, but when their “need” is freely given to them, they cease to value it – as happened with the soup and the pranam. And this shows that it is not a need, but a desire. The principle of all sadhana is to fix the will not on desires – even if presented to the mind as needs – but on the realisation only.

Our object is the supramental realisation and we have to do whatever is necessary for that or towards that under the conditions of each stage. At present the necessity is to prepare the physical consciousness; for that a complete equality and peace and a complete dedication free from personal demand or desire in the physical and the lower vital parts is the thing to be established. Other things can come in their proper time. What is the real need now is not insistence on physical nearness, which is one of those other things, but the psychic opening in the physical consciousness and the constant presence and guidance there.

I do not know what you mean by our wanting to use you for all practical purposes. We did not insist on your doing any work for us; it was you who asked for work, and we gave you what could be found for you. But we could not very well invent work with the express purpose of creating an occasion for physically meeting the Mother. That has not been done for anybody.

16 February 1932