Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Himself and the Ashram
The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35
Human Relations and the Ashram
Marriage, Service and Yoga
A letter from you dated July 25th of this year duly
reached Sri Aurobindo, but at the time he was not in a position to give any
definite answer. Latterly, he has read your letter again and instructs me to
write the following {{0}}reply.[[Sri Aurobindo wrote this letter by hand and
gave it to his secretary to be copied and sent to the correspondent. — Ed.]]
First, as regards your question about your married
life. The sound principle in these matters is that so long as you feel the sense
of duty, it is better to follow it out until you are liberated; you must not
carry a scruple or a remorse or any kind of backward pull or attraction into the
spiritual life. Equally, 
if you have any strong
attraction towards the usual human active life, towards earning, bright
prospects, the use of your capacities for the ordinary motives or on the
ordinary plane of human consciousness, you ought not to leave everything behind
you for what may after all be only a mental attraction towards spiritual ideals
and Yoga. The spiritual consciousness and spiritual life are exceedingly
difficult to attain; it needs a deep and strong call and the turning of all the
energies towards the one object to arrive at any kind of full success (siddhi).
Even those who have cut off all other ties, find it difficult not to live in a
double consciousness, one inward and turned towards the spiritual change and the
other which is still chained to the ordinary movements and pulls them down from
their spiritual experience into the persistent and unchanged course of the lower
nature. If you have not the entire and undivided call, it is better not to take
the plunge, unless you are prepared for very bitter inner struggles, great
difficulties and relapses and a hampered and doubtful progress. It is better in
that case to prepare yourself by meditation and concentration while still living
in the family and the usual human life, until the spiritual attraction is strong
enough to overshadow and destroy all others.
Next, you speak of leading a higher life in order to
fit yourself for service to others. But leading a higher life is a vague mental
phrase and the object of Yoga is not service to others. The object of Yoga is to
enter into an entirely new consciousness in which you live no longer in the mind
and the ego but in the divine consciousness and grow into the true inmost truth
of your being above mind and life and body. The aim in most ways of Yoga is to
draw back altogether from life into this greater existence. In Sri Aurobindo’s
Yoga, the aim is to transform mind, life and body into an expression of this
divine Truth and to make the outward as well as the inward life embody it — a
much more difficult endeavour. To act out of this greater consciousness becomes
the only rule of life, abandoning all other dharmas. Not to serve either one’s
own ego or others, but to serve the Divine Shakti and be the instrument of her
works is the law of this life.
Your other question,— about the Asrama, arises only
when 
you have found your call and your true
way,— if that leads you here. In all cases Sri Aurobindo prefers to be assured
of the call and the capacity before he admits anyone to his Asrama. The first of
these two questions however, you have to decide mostly for yourself; the second
can be settled only if, supposing you decide in this sense, you are called here
and personally tested with a view for the Yoga.
circa 1927