Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Admission, Staying, Departure

Profiting from One’s Stay in the Ashram [2]

You can write to him that at present his coming here is hardly possible or advisable. There are now nearly 80 members in the Asram and all the accommodation available is taken up or else marked out already for others who are coming. Moreover if he has not been able to make the vital surrender, he would not be able to profit by coming here; for the conditions of the sadhana here are no longer what they were before and this vital surrender is precisely the first condition of any benefit from our help or any true farther progress.

As for his sadhana, if he can persist in the attitude he has taken and be entirely sincere in it, then the difficulty he is experiencing is bound to disappear. Necessarily, the resistance in the vital being and the body, based on all their past habits, cannot be overcome in a day. In his case, it is probable that the mental has reached the point where the surrender can be made, but the vital puruṣa still refuses. If he can become conscious in his sadhana not only of the resistance on the surface but of the vital being behind in its entirety, separately from the mind, and see all its deeper movements and offer them in the whole and detail to the Mother for transformation, then the work of transformation can be done. It is for more and more consciousness and more and more strength for consecration that he must ask.

1 December 1929