Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

4. The Mother in the Life of the Ashram

Fragment ID: 20182

There are people who tend to take away one’s vital strength. What should one do? Should one not talk to others or merely exchange smiles with them or walk gravely past them? Should one try to help others at all?

The danger of helping others is the danger of taking upon oneself their difficulties. If one can keep oneself separate and help, this does not occur. But the tendency in helping is to take the person partially or completely into one’s larger self. That is what the Mother has had to do with the sadhaks and the reason why she has sometimes to suffer – for one cannot always be on guard against any backwash when one is absorbed or in action. There is also the difficulty that the persons helped get the habit of drawing and pulling on your forces instead of leaving it to you to give just what you can and ought to give. And many other smaller possibilities one who helps others has to face.

29 January 1935