A collection of short prose pieces on the Mother and her four great Aspects - Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati, along with 'Letters on the Mother'.
Integral Yoga
This volume consists of two separate but related works: 'The Mother', a collection of short prose pieces on the Mother, and 'Letters on the Mother', a selection of letters by Sri Aurobindo in which he referred to the Mother in her transcendent, universal and individual aspects. In addition, the volume contains Sri Aurobindo's translations of selections from the Mother's 'Prières et Méditations' as well as his translation of 'Radha's Prayer'.
THEME/S
Q: How is it that some who come to the Mother with a clear aspiration and call go away from her after some time? What is it that takes them away?
A: Through the suggestions of the hostile forces, because of pride, egoism, ambition, sexual desire, vanity, greed or any other vital impulse urged by the hostile Powers.
Q: Are the vital forces so strong that in spite of a clear aspiration and Divine call in a person they can draw him away from the Mother?
A: Every man is free at every moment to consent to the Divine call or not to consent, to follow the lower nature or to follow his soul.
Q: Does their leaving the path not mean that they were unable to judge by their knowledge whether their call for the Divine was true or not?
A: All this about judging is nonsense. You feel the call or you do not and if you feel the call, you follow it without calculating or counting risks or asking whether you are fit or not.
Q: When people strongly feel the urge to leave the Sadhana and go away from the Mother, what is the best way for them to counteract this urge and stick on to the Mother?
A: By understanding that it is the Devil who tempts them and not listening to the Devil.
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Q: Can those Sadhaks, who have lived in the Ashram for many years, forget the Mother's Grace after leaving it?
A: Some of them seem to forget.
Q: Is there any possibility of their returning to do the Sadhana under the Mother?
A: It depends on the person.
6-9-1933
When the psychic being has been once fully awake, then it is not possible for the Sadhak to revolt and go away; for if he does, he leaves his soul behind with the Mother and it is only the outer being that lives for a while elsewhere. But that is too painful a condition; one has either to come back or life becomes hardly worth living.
20-11-1935
What you have written is quite correct. To say that the Divine is defeated when a Sadhak goes away is an absurdity. If the Sadhak allows his lower nature to get the better of him, it is his defeat, not the Divine's. The Sadhak comes here not because the Divine has need of him, but because he has need of the Divine. If he carries out the conditions of the spiritual life and gives himself to the Mother's leading, he will attain his goal, but if he wants to lay down his own conditions and impose his own ideas and his own desires on the Divine, then all the difficulty comes. That is what happened to X and Y and several others. Because the Divine does not yield to them they go away; but how is that a defeat for the Divine?
27-5-1937
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