Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Human Relations and the Ashram

Relations between Men and Women in the Ashram [1]

How is it that when I am talking to a sadhika I don’t feel anything but afterwards the memory or image brings the sex-sense? Why should a sadhak not be able to speak to a sadhika as he would to anybody else?

In an Asram or other religious institution men and women are not usually allowed to live together. Where they do, as among the Vaishnavas, these difficulties invariably arise. The difficulty lies in the enormous place given to sex in the lower Nature. But there is no reason if one fixes oneself firmly in the spiritual consciousness why one should not speak and act between men and women without the least reference to sex.

2 December 1933