At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo

22 February 1933

MYSELF: Dear Mother, this desire of mine to remain all alone — has it arisen from a fixed mental idea? To keep quiet, to go within, cutting off social contacts — does this stress come from a pre-formed notion of the sadhana and does it want me to follow it? Or am I being pushed towards it as a genuine call coming from you? Is it all imagination? If it had been a wrong path I was choosing, surely you would have pointed out the mistake. Or perhaps you didn’t want to do so.

SRI AUROBINDO: It is not kalpana [imagination]. Mother herself stresses in these things wherever possible not from any mental preference but because it is seen that these habits keep the sadhaks here in a light externalised ordinary consciousness open to all kinds of doubts, self-indulgence, carelessness about the aim of yoga. If there is a stress in you it is her stress in you. Follow it quietly but keep it for yourself alone as each has to find it out for himself in his own time.

(22.2.33)