Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Admission, Staying, Departure

Departure from the Ashram [27]

Last evening I saw X off at the station. He looked very black in the face and gloomy too. I felt for the poor fellow who has lost his all through his own waywardness. I felt a little sad as I came back. The question recurred to me again and again: did Sri Krishna truly mean it concretely or did he merely poeticise when he said na hi kalyāṇa-kṛt kaścid durgatiṃ tāta gacchati?

You have forgotten the context. Arjuna asks what of a Yogi who fails in this life because of his errors — does he fall from both the ordinary life and the spiritual and perish like a broken cloud? Krishna says no. All who follow the Good get the reward of their effort and do not perish — they get it first in the life beyond and afterwards in the next birth in which the Yogi who fails now may even resume his effort under the best conditions and arrive at Siddhi. Krishna never said that nobody ever in this life fails who attempts the Yoga.

20 September 1935