The Mother
with Letters on the Mother

Note on the Texts

"THE MOTHER WITH LETTERS ON THE MOTHER" 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 Prayers and Meditations as well as his translation of "Radha's Prayer". The Mother, the Letters and the translations are published in three separate parts.

PART ONE: THE MOTHER

The Mother was first published as a booklet in 1928. It consists of six chapters, all of which were written in 1927. Each chapter has a separate history.

Chapter 1. Sri Aurobindo wrote this essay as a message for distribution on 21 February 1927, the birthday of the Mother. Three months earlier, after an important spiritual experience of 24 November 1926, Sri Aurobindo had withdrawn from outward contacts and placed the Mother in charge of the disciples who had gathered around him. He told them at that time to turn entirely to her for spiritual and practical guidance. This message therefore had a special significance in its immediate historical context. In 1928 it was published as the first chapter of The Mother .

Chapter 2. Sri Aurobindo wrote this piece after he had finished replying to a series of questions asked by Motilal Mehta, a disciple living in Gujarat, in a letter dated 30 May 1927. Motilal's questions and Sri Aurobindo's replies are published on page 107 of Letters on Himself and the Ashram, volume 35 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO. One of Motilal's questions referred to the message that is published as Chapter 1 of The Mother . Another question asked for "the

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signs of the coming of the Divine Grace". Sri Aurobindo concluded his reply to this question as follows: "Calling on God to do everything and save one all the trouble and struggle is a self-deception and does not lead to freedom and perfection." He then expanded on this theme in a continuation of the letter, which a year later was published as the second chapter of The Mother .

Chapter 3. Sri Aurobindo wrote this piece as a letter to Punamchand Shah, a disciple living in Gujarat, on 1 August 1927. In 1928 it was published as the third chapter of The Mother .

Chapter 4. Sri Aurobindo wrote this undated piece as a letter to Punamchand Shah. At the time Punamchand was involved in the collection of money for Sri Aurobindo's work. (See Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest, volume 36 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO, pp. 428–38.) In 1928 the letter was published as the fourth chapter of The Mother.

Chapter 5. Sri Aurobindo wrote this piece as a letter to Punamchand Shah on 19 August 1927. In 1928 it was published as the fifth chapter of The Mother .

Chapter 6. Sri Aurobindo wrote this essay dealing with the four aspects of the Mother and related topics in the autumn of 1927 with the idea of publishing it in the booklet that eventually became The Mother. Referring to the essay in a letter to Punamchand Shah dated 3 October 1927, he wrote: "The 'Four Aspects' is half written and will be finished in a few days. It has been decided to publish these four writings with the February message in Calcutta."¹ The essay was published as the sixth chapter of The Mother in 1928.

Once Sri Aurobindo had finished work on the "Four Aspects" essay, he gave his attention to the planned booklet. Work on the project was underway on 21 November, when he wrote in a letter that the publication of the booklet had been entrusted to Rameshwar De of the Arya Sahitya Bhawan, Calcutta. The publishers completed their work during the early part of 1928. Copies of the booklet reached the Ashram in Pondicherry in April of that year. The book has been reprinted many times since 1928. The text in the present volume has been checked against Sri Aurobindo's manuscripts and early editions.

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In the present text there are three verbal corrections which differ from previous editions; all three follow the manuscript readings. The corrections are: (1) page 11, line 30: money corrected to money—force; (2) page 13, line 28: breathing or corrected to breathing and; (3) page 25, line 17: alteration corrected to alternation.

Sri Aurobindo accorded The Mother a special place among his works. In 1937 he wrote to a disciple who had sent him the draft of a review of the book: "I think it [the review] will give the reader the impression that The Mother is a philosophical or practical exposition of Yoga — while its atmosphere is really not that at all." To a disciple who asked if he should continue the practice of reciting The Mother "silently with an aspiration to know what it contains", Sri Aurobindo replied, "Yes, if you find that it helps you."²

PART TWO: LETTERS ON THE MOTHER

Sri Aurobindo wrote the letters included in this part between 1927 and 1950. They have been selected by the editors from the much larger body of letters that Sri Aurobindo wrote to disciples during those years. Significant letters from this corpus appear in seven volumes of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO: Letters on Poetry and Art (volume 27), Letters on Yoga (volumes 28–31), Letters on Himself and the Ashram (volume 35), and the present volume. Letters of Sri Aurobindo written before 1927 to his family, friends, associates and early disciples are included in Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest (volume 36). The titles of these works specify the nature of the letters included in each, but there is some overlap. There are, for example, many letters mentioning the Mother in Letters on Yoga and Letters on Himself and the Ashram. Those selected for inclusion in the present volume have the Mother as their central focus. The questions and comments of the correspondent, which are printed along with many of the letters, bring out the historical circumstances in which they were written.

Many of the letters in the present volume appeared earlier in Letters of Sri Aurobindo on the Mother (1951), Sri Aurobindo on

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Himself and on the Mother (1953), and The Mother with Letters on the Mother and Translations of Prayers and Méditations, volume 25 of the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (1972).

The Writing of the Letters

Sri Aurobindo wrote most of the letters included in this volume to members of his Ashram, the rest to correspondents living outside it. Ashram members wrote to him in notebooks or on loose sheets of paper that were sent to him in an internal "post" once or twice a day. Letters from outside that Sri Aurobindo's secretary thought he might like to see were sent at the same time. Correspondents wrote in English if they were able to. A good number, however, wrote in Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi or French, all of which Sri Aurobindo read fluently, or in other languages that were translated into English for him. Most letters were addressed to the Mother, even though most correspondents assumed that Sri Aurobindo would reply to them.

Sri Aurobindo generally replied on the sheets of paper (bound or loose) on which the correspondents wrote their comments and questions, writing below them or in the margin or between the lines. Sometimes, however, he wrote his answer on a separate, small sheet of paper from a "bloc-note" pad. In some cases he had his secretary prepare a typed copy of his letter, which he revised before it was sent. In other cases, particularly when the correspondent was living outside the Ashram, he addressed his reply not to the correspondent but to his secretary, who quoted, paraphrased or translated Sri Aurobindo's reply and signed the letter himself.

While going through Sri Aurobindo's replies, the reader should keep in mind that each one was written to a specific person at a specific time, in specific circumstances and for a specific purpose. Each subject taken up was one that arose in regard to the correspondent's inner or outer needs, or in answer to the correspondent's questions. Sri Aurobindo varied the style and tone of his replies in accordance with his relationship with the correspondent (or, in the case of people writing from outside, the lack of it).

Although the letters were written to specific recipients, they contain much of general interest. This justifies their inclusion in a volume

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destined for the general public. But it is important for the reader to bear in mind some remarks that Sri Aurobindo made during the 1930s about the proper use of his letters:

It is not a fact that all I write is meant equally for everybody. That assumes that everybody is alike and there is no difference between sadhak and sadhak. If it were so everybody would advance alike and have the same experiences and take the same time to progress by the same steps and stages. It is not so at all.³

I should like to say, in passing, that it is not always safe to apply practically to oneself what has been written for another. Each sadhak is a case by himself and one cannot always or often take a mental rule and apply it rigidly to all who are practising the Yoga.⁴

The tendency to take what I lay down for one and apply it without discrimination to another is responsible for much misunderstanding. A general statement too, true in itself, cannot be applied to everyone alike or applied now and immediately without consideration of condition or circumstance or person or time.⁵

Sri Aurobindo wrote the great majority of these letters between 1931 and 1937. He sometimes dated his answers, but most of the dates given at the end of the letters are those of the letters or notebook entries to which he was replying.

The Typing and Revision of the Letters

Most of the shorter letters in this volume, and many of the longer ones, were not typed or revised during Sri Aurobindo's lifetime and are reproduced here directly from his handwritten manuscripts. But a good number of the letters were, as mentioned above, typed for Sri Aurobindo and revised by him. Other letters were typed by the recipients for their

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own personal use or for circulation within the Ashram. Circulation was at first restricted to members of the Ashram and others whom Sri Aurobindo had accepted as disciples. When letters were circulated, personal references were removed. Persons mentioned by Sri Aurobindo were indicated by initials, or by the letters X, Y, etc. Copies of these typed letters were kept by Sri Aurobindo's secretary and sometimes presented to him for revision. Sometimes the typed copies contained typing errors or textual alterations. Recipients of letters, when they typed them up, sometimes omitted passages that seemed to them to be of no general interest. In a few cases, recipients added words or phrases that they believed made Sri Aurobindo's intentions clearer. Some of these alterations remained even after Sri Aurobindo revised the copies.

Sri Aurobindo's revision amounted sometimes to a complete rewriting of the letter, sometimes to making minor changes here and there. He generally removed personal references if this had not already been done by the typist. When necessary, he also rewrote the openings or other parts of the answers in order to free them from dependence on the correspondent's question.

The Publication of the Letters

During the early 1950s, the principal editor of Sri Aurobindo's letters conceived and organised two volumes containing Sri Aurobindo's letters on the Mother and on himself. The first of these, Letters of Sri Aurobindo on the Mother, was published in 1951. The second, Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, was published two years later. The editor arranged the contents of the latter volume in three parts: (1) Sri Aurobindo on Himself: Notes and Letters on His Life; (2) Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother; and (3) Sri Aurobindo on the Mother. Part 3 was an expansion of the text of Letters of Sri Aurobindo on the Mother (1951).

In 1972, the material making up Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother was incorporated in two different volumes: On Himself: Compiled from Notes and Letters (volume 26 of the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library) and The Mother with Letters on the Mother and Translations of Prayers and Méditations  (volume 25 of the Centenary Library).

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In THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO, the material in Part One of On Himself is incorporated in two volumes: Letters on Himself and the Ashram (volume 35) and Autobiographical Notes (volume 36), and is discussed in the Note on the Texts in those volumes. The material in Part Two of On Himself, headed "Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother", is incorporated in Part Two of the present volume, primarily in Section Two, "The Mother, Sri Aurobindo and the Integral Yoga". The present volume contains many letters on the Mother that did not appear in the Centenary Library edition of The Mother with Letters on the Mother and On Himself.

The editor of Letters of Sri Aurobindo on the Mother (1951) and Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother (1953) included edited versions of the correspondents' questions if he thought they would help the reader to understand Sri Aurobindo's replies. He also placed headings before individual letters or groups of letters and supplied the dates if they were known. The editors of the present volume have continued these practices, adding many headings and edited questions, and supplying dates for all letters that were dated or for which there was reliable dating information.

The Selection, Arrangement and Editing
of the Letters in the Present Volume

The corpus of Sri Aurobindo's correspondence between 1927 and 1950 consists of tens of thousands of replies that he wrote to hundreds of correspondents. Most of the replies, however, were written to a few dozen disciples, almost all of them resident members of his Ashram. A smaller number of disciples, no more than a dozen, received more than half of the entire body of published letters. In compiling the volumes of Sri Aurobindo's correspondence published in THE COMPLETE WORKS, the editors have gone through all known manuscripts, typed copies or photographic copies of manuscripts, and printed texts. From these sources they have selected the letters that seemed suitable for publication. This selection includes most letters consisting of more than a few words that deal with topics of general interest. Electronic texts of the selected letters were then produced and checked against all handwritten, typed and printed versions.

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The selection and arrangement of the material in this volume is the work of the editors. The underlying structure of Part Two of The Mother with Letters on the Mother (1972) has been preserved, but the letters have been rearranged under new section and group headings. In a note of February 1936, Sri Aurobindo wrote that the placing of letters in group categories was possible in the case of "letters about sadhana", which could "very easily fall under different heads".

Part Two, "Letters on the Mother" consists of almost 1400 separate items, an "item" being defined as what is published between one heading or asterisk and another heading or asterisk. Many items correspond exactly to individual letters; other items, however, consist of portions of single letters, or two or more letters or portions of letters that were joined together by earlier editors or typists and revised in that form by Sri Aurobindo. In the present volume portions of letters that had been separated by previous editors have sometimes been reunited. In some cases, however, the separation has been considered justifiable and been retained.

In some cases the text of a given letter has been published in more than one volume of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO. Some of this doubling of letters occurs between Letters on Yoga and The Mother with Letters on the Mother. Sometimes Sri Aurobindo's revised version of a letter has been placed in Letters on Yoga, while the original handwritten version, along with the recipient's question, has been put in The Mother with Letters on the Mother.

As in previous collections of Sri Aurobindo's letters, names of members of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and of disciples living outside the Ashram have been replaced by the letters X, Y, Z, etc. In any given letter, X stands for the first name replaced, Y for the second, Z for the third, A for the fourth, and so on. An X in a given letter has no necessary relation to an X in another letter.

Following a practice begun in Letters of Sri Aurobindo on the Mother (1951) and Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother (1953), the editors of the present volume have included the questions to which Sri Aurobindo replied, or the portions of the correspondents' letters on which he commented, whenever these are available and helpful for understanding his replies or comments. As a rule, only as much of a correspondent's letter has been given as is needed to understand

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the response. In some cases the questions have been lightly revised for the sake of clarity. Mistakes of grammar, spelling and punctuation due to the correspondent's imperfect grasp of English have been corrected. Questions written in languages other than English have been translated. When the question is not available, only Sri Aurobindo's reply is printed.

Readers should note that Sri Aurobindo almost always spelled the word "Asram" without an "h" though some of his correspondents occasionally wrote "Ashram". By the late 1940s, when "Ashram" had become the standard spelling in the Ashram's publications, Sri Aurobindo was no longer writing letters himself but dictated them to a disciple, who tended to write "Ashram". This spelling therefore occurs in letters of the final period, as well as in headings and other editorial matter throughout the book.

French Original of a Letter in Section Four

In the letter of 27 February 1933 on page 596, the question and the Mother's reply to it in the footnote were originally written in French:

Pourquoi la Mère s'habille-t-elle avec des vêtements riches et beaux?

The Mother: Avez-vous donc pour conception que le Divin doit être répresenté sur terre par la pauvreté et la laideur?

English Translations of French Words
in "On Prières et Méditations de la Mère" in Section Five

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Original English Texts of French Words
in "On Entretiens avec la Mère" in Section Five

PART THREE: TRANSLATIONS OF PRAYERS OF THE MOTHER

Prières et Méditations de la Mère

The Mother's Prières et Méditations de la Mère consists of extracts from her spiritual journal which she selected for publication. The first edition of the French original was printed for private circulation in 1932. An edition meant for the general public was released in 1944, and new editions followed in 1952, 1973, 1980 and 1990. In 1952 the title was shortened to Prières et Méditations.

An English translation of the entire text of Prières et Méditations de la Mère was published in 1948. A second, newly translated edition

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came out in 1979; the text of this edition was reproduced in 2003.

Of the 313 prayers in the original French edition of Prières et Méditations de la Mère, only 24 were translated fully or in part by Sri Aurobindo. His own handwritten manuscripts of these prayers or parts of prayers still exist. Twenty-two of the 24 translations were first published in 1941 in Prayers and Méditations of the Mother, which contained 61 prayers; the remaining two translations were published subsequently: the prayer of 28 November 1913 was brought out in 1962 in a slightly enlarged edition of the book above; the prayer of 28 December 1928 came out in 1979 in a complete translation of all the prayers, entitled Prayers and Méditations, which is volume 1 of the "Collected Works of the Mother". These 24 translations, along with "Radha's Prayer", make up the contents of Part Three of the present volume. Sri Aurobindo also revised in his own hand translations of around one hundred prayers done by others. These revised translations have not been included in the present volume; more than half were first published in the 1941 edition mentioned above.

Radha's Prayer. The Mother originally wrote "Radha's Prayer" in English on 12 January 1932 and rendered it into French the following day. Sri Aurobindo then translated the French version into English.

The Mother wrote this prayer for a disciple who was preparing to perform a dance about Radha. In a letter to the disciple the Mother wrote:

To complete what I told you yesterday about Radha's dance I have noted this down as an indication of the thought and feeling Radha must have within her when she stands at the end in front of Krishna:

  "Every thought of my mind, every emotion of my heart, every movement of my being, every feeling and every sensation, each cell of my body, each drop of my blood, all, all is yours, yours absolutely, yours without reserve. You can decide my life or my death, my happiness or my sorrow, my pleasure or my pain; whatever you do with me, whatever comes to me from you will lead me to the Divine Rapture."⁶

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