Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Human Relations and the Ashram

Women in the Ashram [1]

I have heard from my mother that she is determined to go to you very soon without seeing to our many grievances. Now we are encumbered with many difficulties which we are unable to deal with without our mother. Please ask the Mother to tell her to return to us. We will let her go back to the Ashram within a year.

The Mother cannot give the advice you call on her to give to X. It is your mother’s free choice alone and sense of inner need that should guide her. No one has a right to interfere with her spiritual progress or pull her back in order to satisfy their own selfish demands. Her children are not infants needing the care of a mother and ought to be able to face by themselves the difficulties of life — it is rather now their duty to put her need first and not theirs; for at her age, it is she and not themselves who should be their first consideration in their dealings with her. She has need of rest to restore her broken health and an atmosphere of peace for her soul’s progress.