Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

The Ashram and Its Atmosphere

The Atmosphere of the Ashram [4]

I have translated the first four pieces of Maurice Magre’s “L’Ashram de {{0}}Pondichéry”[[Maurice Magre, À la poursuite de la sagesse (Paris: Fasquelle, 1936), pp. 99 – 104.]] into Gujarati. There are some exaggerations in his perceptions: “les hommes les plus sages de la terre” and “Ce sont des Parfaits entre les hommes”. This is too much to say about us sadhaks. I find it almost impossible to put such sentiments in Gujarati, as people there would find them overblown.

Magre like many others got an immediate strong impression of the atmosphere of the Asram — most feel it as an atmosphere of calm and peace, something quite apart from that of the ordinary world. He thought it was the atmosphere of the people. Besides, of the few who saw him, he saw only the best. Also many here if not most have something in their appearance different from people outside, something a little luminous, which a man of sensitive perceptions like Magre could feel. The other side becomes apparent only if one stays long and mixes in the ordinary life of the Asram or hears the gossip of the Sadhaks. People from this country, Gujaratis or others, more easily see or feel this side and do not feel the rest because they enter at once into relation with the exterior life of the Asram.

4 February 1937