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 [6]

But what is the meaning of the dull life we lead here? No scope for any skills, no use for knowledge. My five years of medical study all lost. Some at least have the satisfaction of using their capacities — X his training as an engineer, Y his medical knowledge. But for most of us, it seems like you have put square pegs in round holes.

Obviously the life here is not that of a place where the mind and vital can hope to be satisfied and fulfilled or lead a lively life. It is only if one can live within that it becomes satisfactory. Y himself if he were outside, would be dealing not with two or three selected patients but with many — he speaks of hundreds in the past — and would be living a much fuller vital life. But for one who has the assured inner life, there is no dullness. Realisation within must be the first object; work for the Divine on the basis of the true inner self and a new consciousness, not on the basis of the old, is the result that can follow. Till then work and life can be only a means of sadhana, not a “self-fulfilment” or a brilliant and interesting vital life on the old basis.

15 April 1936