Letters On Yoga - Parts 2,3

Sadhana in the Ashram and Outside - I

This Ashram has been created with another object than that ordinarily common to such institutions, not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit. There is no general rule as to the stage at which one may leave the ordinary life and enter here; in each case it depends on the personal need and impulsion and the possibility or the advisability for one to take the step.

This is not an Ashram like others—the members are not Sannyasis; it is not mokṣa that is the sole aim of the yoga here. What is being done here is a preparation for a work—a work which will be founded on yogic consciousness and Yoga-Shakti, and can have no other foundation. Meanwhile, every member here is expected to do some work in the Ashram as part of this spiritual preparation.

The difficulty is that she seems to have only vairāgya for worldly life without any knowledge or special call for this yoga, and this yoga and the life here are quite different things from ordinary yoga and ordinary Ashrams. It is not a life of meditative retirement as elsewhere. Moreover, it would be impossible for us to demand anything without seeing her and knowing at close hand what she is like. We are not just now for taking more inmates into the Ashram except in a very few cases.

"Dedication of life" is quite possible for some without their staying

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here. It is a question of inward attitude and of the total consecration of the being to the Divine.

We do not think it would be advisable at this stage [for X to come to stay at the Ashram]. By coming to the Ashram difficulties do not cease—they have to be faced and overcome wherever you are. For certain natures residence in the Ashram from the beginning is helpful—others have to prepare themselves outside.

I have read and considered your letter and have decided to give you the opportunity you ask for—you can reside in the Ashram for two or three months to begin with and find out whether this is really the place and the path you were seeking and we also can by a closer observation of your spiritual possibilities discern how best we can help you and whether this yoga is the best for you.

This trial is necessary for many reasons, but especially because it is a difficult yoga to follow and not many can really meet the demands it makes on the nature. You have written that you saw in me one who achieved through the perfection of the intellect, its spiritualisation and divinisation; but in fact I arrived through the complete silence of the mind and whatever spiritualisation and divinisation it attained was through the descent of a higher supra-intellectual knowledge into that silence. The book, Essays on the Gita, itself was written in that silence of the mind, without intellectual effort and by a free activity of this knowledge from above. This is important because the principle of this yoga is not perfection of the human nature as it is but a psychic and spiritual transformation of all the parts of the being through the action of an inner consciousness and then of a higher consciousness which works on them, throws out their old movements or changes them into the image of its own and so transmutes lower into higher nature. It is not so much the perfection of the intellect as a transcendence of it, a transformation of the mind, the substitution of a larger greater principle of knowledge

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—and so with all the rest of the being.

This is a slow and difficult process; the road is long and it is hard to establish even the necessary basis. The old existing nature resists and obstructs and difficulties rise one after another and repeatedly till they are overcome. It is therefore necessary to be sure that this is the path to which one is called before one finally decides to tread it.

If you wish, we are ready to give you the trial you ask for. On receiving your answer the Mother will make the necessary arrangements for your residence in the Ashram.

It is not helpful to abandon the ordinary life before the being is ready for the full spiritual life. To do so means to precipitate a struggle between the different elements and exasperate it to a point of intensity which the nature is not ready to bear. The vital elements in you have partly to be met by the discipline and experience of life, while keeping the spiritual aim in view and trying to govern life by it progressively in the spirit of Karmayoga.

It is for this reason that we gave our approval to your marriage.

No, it is not enough to be in the Ashram; one has to open to the Mother and put away the mind which one was playing with in the world.

There is no formal initiation, acceptance is sufficient, but I do not usually accept unless I have seen, or the Mother has seen the person or unless there is a clear sign that he is meant for this yoga. Sometimes those who desire to be disciples have seen me in dream or vision before acceptance.

What you say is right. This attitude that the Divine has need of

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the sadhak and not the sadhak of the Divine, is utterly wrong and absurd. When people are accepted here, they are given a chance of a great Divine Grace, of being instruments of a great work. To suppose that the Divine cannot do his work without the help of this or that person is surely most arrogant and illogical. They ought to remember the Gita's ṛte'pi tvām "even without thee" the work can be done and its nimittamātram bhava.

I was thinking not of Pranam etc. which have a living value, but of old forms which persist although they have no longer any value—e.g. śrāddha for the dead. Also here forms which have no relation to this yoga—for instance Christians who cling to the Christian forms or Mahomedans to the Namaz or Hindus to the Sandhyavandana in the old way might soon find them either falling off or else an obstacle to the free development of their sadhana.