The Mother
with Letters on the Mother

Dealing with the Sadhaks

It is very silly and childish to have abhimāna; for it means that you expect everyone including the Mother and myself to act always according to your ideas and do what you want us to do and never do anything which will not please you! It is for the Mother to do whatever she finds to be right or necessary; you must understand that; otherwise you will always be making yourself miserable for nothing.

28 April 1932

It is no question of fault or punishment—if we have to condemn and punish people for their faults, and deal with the sadhaks like a tribunal of justice, no sadhana could be possible. I do not see how your reproach against us is justifiable. Our sole duty to the sadhaks is to take them towards their spiritual realisation—we cannot behave like the head of a family intervening in domestic quarrels, supporting one, putting our weight against the other! However often X may stumble we have to take him by the hand, lift him up again and get him to move once more towards the Divine. We have always done the same with you. But we could not support any demand of yours upon him. We have always treated it as something between him and the Divine. For you, the one thing we have insisted on and that with your full consent and with your prayers to us to be helped in doing it, is to cut the vital relation with him altogether and to base nothing upon it any more. Yet now you write to us that because we have not approved of your action of what you

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said to Y, no matter what that might be,—you renounce us forever.

I must ask you to return to your better self and your true consciousness and throw off these moods of vital passion which are unworthy of your soul. You have repeatedly written of your love for the Mother, the Ananda which you received from her and the number of spiritual experiences. Remember that and remember that that is your true way and your true being and nothing else matters. Get back your poise and throw off the lower nature and its darkness and ignorance.

29 March 1933

The Mother and myself deal with all according to the law of the Divine. We receive alike rich and poor, those who are high-born or low-born according to human standards, and extend to them an equal love and protection. Their progress in sadhana is our main concern—for they have come here for that, not to satisfy their palates or their bellies, not to make ordinary vital demands or to quarrel about position or place or comforts. That progress depends on how they answer to the Mother's love or protection—whether they receive the forces she pours on all alike, whether they use or misuse what she gives them. But the Mother has no intention or obligation to deal with all outwardly in the same way—the demand that she should do so is absurd and imbecile—and if she did it, she would prove false to the truth of things and the law of the Divine. Each sadhak has to be dealt with according to his nature, his capacities, his real needs (not his claims or desires) and according to what is best for his spiritual welfare. As to how it is to be done, we refuse to be dictated to by the ignorance of those of the sadhaks who consider that the Mother must act according to their standards or their ideas of equality or justice or the demands of their vital or the notions they have brought with them from the outside world. We act according to the Light within us and for the Truth that we are striving to establish in this earthly Nature.

11 December 1933

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The human consciousness is made of many materials and all cannot bear quickly a constant spiritual endeavour—they have to be trained, enlightened, changed in their habits. That is why the Mother and I always give time for the soul to grow upon the other parts and we do not mind if it takes time, provided there is a central sincerity and will—as certainly there is in you. Do not be impatient or easily discouraged because things do not go fast. Aspire, try to keep yourself in the sunshine of confidence and let the seed grow.

18 June 1934

X told me that Y has been insulting him often. But why does he allow himself to be insulted so badly that he has to go to his room and weep over it? Of course it is because he is afraid of bringing things down to the physical level and breaking them. But X also seems to have a good deal of hatred for Y and others too. How long can these hatreds be contained? What can be done for either of these men?

Each has to get rid of his wrong reactions—they are here for that. What other remedy is there? If they are not prepared to do that, then we remain on the ground of the ordinary life where one has to do as in a big family, intervening in quarrels, reconciling, soothing, rebuking, punishing, lecturing, somehow getting things going until the next clash. There is no end to that and we gave it up long ago. Each must mend himself—there is no other way out of it.

17 June 1935

From your answers to me it seems that the tamasic and rajasic elements of my nature have been at work for a long time and it will now take more time to get rid of them. But since you saw these wrong things entering me, would it not have been better to warn me of their intrusion so that I could keep a vigilant eye on them?

Here again is the rajasic ego in you dictating to us what we should have done and showing us our mistakes.

14 October 1935

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A suggestion sometimes comes to me: "As Mother has become stricter with you at pranam, so Sri Aurobindo is becoming stricter with you in his letters." Is what I have written all right?

You attributed too many motives—e.g. that the Mother tries to allure the vital by indulging it in the beginning. She has no such intention. She behaves naturally and simply with the being—whatever change there is is in the vital's impressions about her action rather than in the action itself—except in so far as there is a change necessitated by the change in the consciousness. Formerly you were writing from the higher mind mostly, but partly from the vital—the vital was often dissatisfied with my answers, so I ceased answering to it and wrote only what would help your higher mind and psychic. Now it is from the physical mind and vital that you often write and so my answers must be to them and they feel they are not given the answers they want or in the tone of indulgence they would like. But to satisfy and indulge them would not be helpful to your sadhana.

9 December 1935

It seemed to me that the Mother did not respond to my smile yesterday and that she put unnecessary pressure on me in regard to X's letter. And when you replied to my note in the evening with a simple "all right", I felt a terrible emptiness and a want of sympathy. It seemed as if your "all right" was also a sort of pressure in regard to X's letter.

The Mother put no pressure whatever about X's letter and there was no reason why she should do so. As for myself, I never even thought of it when I wrote the "all right". The word "pressure" besides is an entirely wrong one to use; the only thing we put is a supporting force to help you in your difficulties or else to bring down more peace and more of the higher consciousness. I do not see how that can be described as an unnecessary pressure or produce bad consequences. But the idea that we were displeased about X's letter or withdrew our support or were putting any kind of pressure about it is absolutely groundless. You ought not

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to make constructions of the mind like that or believe in them; for it is always these wrong constructions that upset you.

5 June 1936

Unfortunately X seems to think that the Mother is harder than you: she is grim and does not love etc.

That is because Mother's pressure for change is always strong—even when she does not put it as force it is there by the very nature of the Divine Energy in her.

11 March 1937