At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo

20 May 1933

Nothing had happened between yesterday and this morning, there was no new accusation against you, no fault that you had committed, no displeasure of the Mother against you. There was no bad look of the Mother on you, nor any refusal of her smile. On the contrary, as the Mother told me this morning before getting your letter, she saw that there was something wrong with you, a darkness and depression, and she did her best to remove it, but she could not get any smile from you in response. It is clear that once more you came with a preconceived idea or else an expectation in your subconscient, born of your sleepless night and self-tormenting thoughts and of X’s behaviour and saw and interpreted everything according to your expectation. All the surge of doubts and painful thoughts of which you speak have therefore no basis whatever in anything we have thought or done.

As to your going away for a time in order to get rid of your difficulty with X, a difficulty can never be overcome by your running away from it. And if you cannot overcome it with the direct and immediate help we can give you and have always been giving you and the support of our presence, I do not see how you are going to do it at a distance, and without our immediate help and presence.

It seems to me all this comes from your having taken a wrong way with yourself in meeting the consequences of your trouble. It is not by tormenting yourself with remorse and harassing thoughts and sleepless nights that you can overcome. It is by looking straight at yourself, very quietly with a quiet and firm resolution and then going on cheerfully and bravely in full confidence and reliance, trusting in the grace, serenely and vigilantly, anchoring yourself on your psychic being, calling down more and more of the love and Ananda, turning more and more exclusively to the Mother. That is the true way — and there is no other.

(20.5.33)