Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
CWSA 27
Music and Sadhana [1]
I quite understood your main point to which I shall answer, but there were many side-issues which obscure the main one in your letter and I took the occasion to try to get rid of one of them at once. For the moment I am answering only to your question about the music. Let me say at once that all of you seem to have too great an aptitude for making drastic conclusions on the 
strength of very minor facts. It is always perilous to take two or three small facts, put them together and build upon them a big inference. It becomes still more dangerous when you emphasise minor facts and set aside or belittle the meaning of the main ones. In this case the main facts are (1) that the Mother has loved music all her life and found it a key to spiritual experience, (2) that she has given all encouragement to your music in special and to the music of others also. She has also made clear the relation of Art and Beauty with Yoga. It is therefore rather extraordinary that anyone should think she only tolerates music here and considers it inconsistent with Yoga. It is perfectly true that Music or Art are not either the first or the only thing in life for her,– any more than Poetry or Literature are with me,– the Divine, the divine consciousness, the discovery of the conditions for a divine life are and must be our one concern, with Art, Poetry or Music as parts or means only of the divine life or expression of the Divine Truth and the Divine Beauty. That does not mean that they are only “tolerated”, but that they are put in their right place.
Then the minor facts and their significance. The Mother limited the concerts to one hour because that was the utmost she could give to them in the afternoons for which they are fixed and that meant checking a very natural tendency to spread over a greater length of time. On this occasion she first wanted it to be a half an hour affair because the more important occasion was to be reserved for November. But it was found that certain very undesirable psychological movements were tending to appear which would turn the occasion not into a part of the preparation for true expression or a part of the Yoga, but an occasion for the exhibition of a very mundane, almost professional egoism, vanity, rivalry, anger and spite at one’s talent being “neglected” etc. It was decided that this anti-Yogic stuff should not be allowed to mix with the atmosphere of the 24th November and therefore the Sunday concert could be lengthened out and the November one dropped – and this was what was written to Venkataraman. It is not an objection to music that the decision represented, but an objection to bringing into music here these very undivine and unyogic and, if human, yet not very reputable human elements 
and movements. The Mother said nothing to you about it because these things did not directly concern you and she did not besides care to make the causes of the change public.
Let us have music by all means; but also more rhythm and harmony in the atmosphere!
29 October 1932