Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Admission, Staying, Departure

Not a School or Teaching Institution [5]

The Asram here is not precisely a place for “spiritual training” but for growing into a divine consciousness and divine life. Those who come here must have grown already so far that they are ready to give up all past mental ideas, fixed life-habits or life-tendencies and even the very mould of their physical consciousness and open only to the light of a greater Truth which, by their complete surrender to it, will transform the whole nature. This is very difficult, and it has been found by experience that those who come here unprepared break down after a time and can go no farther, because they cannot consent to get free from their past selves. They find the atmosphere too hard for them to breathe and the pressure of the Truth too exacting. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are therefore unwilling to call anyone here, especially from so great a distance, transplanted from such different surroundings unless they have first assured themselves that the one concerned is ready for the change and truly called to this way of Sadhana.

26 February 1930