Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

His Life and Attempts to Write about It
On His Published Prose Writings

Passages from The Mother [20]

This morning, when I said that I thought that the Mother was putting pressure on me, you wrote that the word “pressure” was “entirely wrong”. If that is so, what is the sense of the word “pressure” in this passage from The Mother: “[Maheshwari] puts on them the required pressure” [p. 41]? You wrote also, in regard to Mahakali, of “the vehemence of her pressure” [p. 44].

I was speaking of your case only — it was not my intention to say that the Mother never uses pressure. But pressure also can be of various kinds. There is the pressure of the Force when it is entering the mind or vital or body — a pressure to go faster, a pressure to build or form, a pressure to break and many more. In your case if there is any pressure it is that of help or support or removal of an attack, but it does not seem to me that that can properly be called pressure.

In the same book you say of Mahakali, “her hands are outstretched to strike and to succour” [p. 44]. What do you mean here by “strike”?

It expresses her general action in the world. She strikes at the Asuras, she strikes also at everything that has to be got rid of or destroyed, at the obstacles to the sadhana etc. I may say that the Mother never uses the Mahakali power in your case nor the Mahakali pressure.

5 June 1936