…the Ashram was founded or rather founded itself in 1926.
The Ashram is the Mother’s creation and would not have existed but for her.
The Ashram was born a few years after my return from Japan, in 1926.
There was no Ashram at first, only a few people came to live near Sri Aurobindo and practice Yoga. It was only sometime after the Mother came from Japan that it took the form of the Ashram, more from the wish of the sadhaks who desired to entrust their whole inner and outer life to the Mother than from any intention or plan of hers or of Sri Aurobindo.
Sri Aurobindo
Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest: The Development of the Ashram
[In 1926] Sri Aurobindo had given me charge of the outer work because he wanted to withdraw into concentration in order to hasten the manifestation of the Supramental consciousness and he had announced to the few people who were there that he was entrusting to me the work of helping and guiding them, that I would remain in contact with him, naturally, and that through me he would do the work.
The Mother
Questions and Answers (1957-1958): 10 July 1957
The Ashram itself has been created with another object than that ordinarily common to such institutions, not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit.
Letters on Himself and the Ashram: The Purpose of the Ashram
All of you here, my children, live in exceptional freedom, the Mother would say to the youngest... No social constraints, no moral constraints, no intellectual constraints, no rules; nothing but a Light which is here. But it was a very demanding Light, and this was where the terrestrial work began. How can anything be "terrestrial" with 1,200 disciples, or even a hundred thousand? The Ashram was actually only a concentrated point for the work. The real Ashram is in fact everywhere in the world, wherever human beings yearn for a truer life, whether they know of Sri Aurobindo or not, because their inner orientation and their inner need automatically place them in the same evolutionary crucible. Transformation is not one individual's prerogative; on the contrary, it requires many individuals, as diverse as possible. The Ashram was only a symbolic point of the work, as a laboratory is the symbolic testing-ground for a vaccine that will benefit millions of people. Sri Aurobindo himself often called his Ashram the laboratory.
Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
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