Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Rules in the Life of the Ashram

Guidelines for Writing about the Ashram [5]

Asked by the Indian Review, I sent them an article entitled “Socialism and the Indian Ideal”. They are asking for permission to print it in their review as well as in booklet form. Can the permission be given?

I think I had better make it clear once for all that I do not approve of the publication of articles on controversial political subjects by members of the Asram. It involves the Asram and can prejudice the work of the Mother by raising quite uselessly unnecessary opposition and prejudice of which there is already more than enough. From a deeper point of view it pulls down the work to a lower region of mental and vital forces and the methods current on that lower plane. The work we have to do does not belong to that plane and cannot be done by current methods. It can only be done by rising to a higher spiritual plane and working silently from there on the forces in action so as to prepare a favourable field for the growth of the true consciousness and the true life-action. So long as that is not done, to engage in any activity which means opposition and struggle on the lower plane or to resort to its methods can only put it at a disadvantage and imperil its future. It is from the higher levels that things have to be worked out before the lower can be ready.

Your article is not at all conclusive except to people who are already disposed to be of the same way of thinking. It has besides the appearance of preaching a sort of spiritualised individualism and capitalism, but that is no more the object of our work than the “spiritual communism” which Motilal put into it. To allow that to pass as the economic gospel of this Yoga would not do at all. In the Gita I only explain the spiritual sense of the cāturvarṇya; I do not put that forward as my own economic or social teaching. Our aim is to rise to a higher spiritual consciousness and to create from there — to drag in mental forms from the present or past society could only spoil or hamper the purity and freedom of the future spiritual working.

29 September 1938