Maude Smith's Correspondence with The Mother

19 January 1957

Gracious Divine Mother,

I cannot believe that in the Integral Yoga the darkness and ugliness and suffering I have been immersed in for almost three years are necessary. Nor do I believe that it is beyond the power of the Divine to help. Only, something is dreadfully wrong somewhere.

In our last interview you said I should stop doing sadhana.²⁰ The partial stopping I have done since then seems to be ineffective, so now I shall stop completely everything that to me means sadhana (going to you at balcony, going to class and meditation, reading, marching, seeking guidance, trying to be quiet and relaxed). Little good seems to come from these things anyway.

I never told you to stop any of these things which are, on the contrary, the indispensable frame of the life here as they are the means through which I am working to help the inmates in their inner and outer life. There is surely some misunderstanding of what I can have said and on the contrary I wish that you should continue all that in spite of all the resistance you can feel in your lower nature, as it is the best way of conquering this resistance. For instance I expect that you will attend this evening meditation at the playground and I hope you will benefit by it.

If life is all a game of hide-and-seek instituted for the Divine's delight, naturally the more difficult it is and the longer it takes, the greater the delight. So why should I expect anything more than just enough help to keep me in the game?

This is only a way of saying and need not be taken too literally.

I did not come here with the idea that this way is so difficult that the goal can't possibly be achieved in a lifetime. But if things must be that way, I shall try to resign myself to it, I shall do the work given me to do and put far behind me as a foolish and mistaken ambition the dream of aspiration, childlike trust and joyous self-giving, of peace, light, oneness, and of the yoga as a means of becoming an instrument worthy of service to the Divine.

It is not an ambition and far from being foolish it is the right aspiration and the right attitude which must one day be fulfilled.

With my love and blessings

19 January 1957