Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Discipline in the Ashram

Importance of Obedience [1]

In regard to obedience, X told Y, in a depreciatory way, that it was not that important, that asking for permission to do things was not necessarily surrender, but often was hypocritical.

It seems to me that one obeys rules because if one was to do the opposite, one would go out of your protection.

It is precisely that — one immediately goes out of the protection.

As far as I can see, right action and right movement (after asking you what is right) are rather the first bases of sadhana.

Yes, quite right.

Please cast some light on this, so that I can explain it to Y.

It is a deficiency of psychic perception and spiritual discrimination that makes people speak like that and ignore the importance of obedience. It is the mind wanting to follow its own way of thinking and the vital seeking freedom for its desires which argue in this manner. If you do not follow the rules laid down by the spiritual guide or obey one who is leading you to the Divine, then what or whom are you to follow? Only the ideas of the individual mind and the desires of the vital: but these things never lead to siddhi in Yoga. The rules are laid down in order to guard against certain influences and their dangers and to keep a right atmosphere in the Asram favourable to spiritual development; the obedience is necessary so as to get away from one’s own mind and vital and learn to follow the Truth.

8 June 1933