Champaklal's Treasures

General Instructions to Sadhaks

(From time to time, especially in the early years of the Ashram, Sri Aurobindo used to issue general instructions to the inmates. Here are a few of them)

It has been found necessary to change some of the forms and methods hitherto used to help by external means, the individual and collective sadhana. This has to be done especially in regard to the consecration of food, the collective meditation and the individual contact of the sadhak with the Mother. The existing forms were originally arranged in order to make possible a spiritual and psychic communion on the most physical and external planes, by which there would be an interchange of forces, a continuous increase of the higher consciousness on the physical plane, a more and more rapid change of the external nature of the sadhaks and afterwards an increasing descent of the supramental light and power into Matter.

Meditation at 7 a.m. on all days of the week except Wednesday and Friday.

Flower offering on Tuesday and Thursday, none on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

All fixed or daily times for sadhaks seeing the Mother are cancelled. Every day the Mother will call those whom she wants to see. Any others who need to see her, will inform Nolini early in the morning or the night before, and write the reason for their request which will be acceded to or otherwise dealt with, according to circumstances and possibilities.

The soup will be distributed in the evening in the downstairs verandah of Sri Aurobindo's house. All who taste it must be present at 8.30 and remain seated in silence till the Mother comes. Before the distribution there will be a few minutes concentration all together.

The night meditations are cancelled for a time.

On the first of each month, the distribution from the stores will be made in the store room, in the presence of the Mother, at 8 p.m.

The Ashram is meant for Yoga, not for musical entertainments, or other social activities.

Those that live in the Ashram are requested to live quietly and noiselessly, and if they are not capable themselves of meditation, they must at least leave the others to meditate.