Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Admission, Staying, Departure

Departure from the Ashram [47]

What you have written is quite correct. To say that the Divine is defeated when a sadhak goes away is an absurdity. If the sadhak allows his lower nature to get the better of him, it is his defeat, not the Divine’s. The sadhak comes here not because the Divine has need of him, but because he has need of the Divine. If he carries out the conditions of the spiritual life and gives himself to the Mother’s leading, he will attain his goal but if he wants to lay down his own conditions and impose his own ideas and his own desires on the Divine, then all the difficulty comes. This is what happened to X and Y and several others. Because the Divine does not yield to them they go away; but how is that a defeat for the Divine?

27 May 1937