Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Admission, Staying, Departure

Departure from the Ashram [42]

Neither the Mother nor I have asked you to go nor approved of your going. As I could not give any assent to it and the reasons put forward by you precluded my asking you to stay, I had to be silent. Mother could not withhold from you the money you asked for because you claimed it as your own and her withholding it would have looked like an undue interference with your personal liberty and your formed decision. I must now say however that if you go, it will be your own decision and not in any way ours. If you change your decision and resolve to face out your difficulty here until it is solved, we shall be very glad of it.

There is no such impossibility of your victory over the harder parts of your nature as you imagine. There is only needed the perseverance to go on till this resistance breaks down and the psychic which is not absent nor unmanifest is able to dominate the others. That has to be done whether you stay here or not and to go is likely only to increase the difficulty and imperil the final result — it cannot help you. It is here that the struggle however acute has, because of the immediate presence of the Mother, the best chance and certitude of a solution and successful ending.

5 March 1937