At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo

10 October 1933

MYSELF: Dear Mother, I find that many people are upset over X’s and Y’s departure. Why should one be upset when a person leaves? I feel neither sympathy nor pain in such cases. I rather feel for you, thinking that you have taken so much trouble, spent so much of your time for them. But why are people so frequently leaving the Ashram? Is there any undue pressure of sadhana? In this year, just see how many departures! We didn’t see so many going when we came. Is there any special reason or simply the action of the same hostile force? If so, why should that force succeed to such an extent now?

SRI AUROBINDO: I don’t know why. It is perfectly irrational. People have been going as well as coming since the Ashram began. Perhaps it arises from the ignorant idea that the people who go like X and Y are great bhaktas and sadhaks — while the fact is that X never made much progress even elementary and Y has been in a state of vital revolt sometimes against the Mother, sometimes against myself, latterly against both, for the last six or seven years. People go away because they are proud and arrogant to accept the control of the Guru or of the Truth or of the Divine. Y had decided that the Truth was in Him alone and there was no Truth in myself or in the Mother.

(10.10.33)