Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
4. The Mother in the Life of the Ashram
Fragment ID: 19992
You wrote once: “Those are the Mother’s children and closest to her who are open to her, close to her in their inner being, one with her will – not those who come bodily nearest to her.”1 I do not deny the truth of this. But why then has the Mother taken a body and why are we in Pondicherry? One can have an inner relation anywhere; there is no need of coming here.
Mother has taken the body because a work of a physical nature (i.e. including a change in the physical world) had to be done. She has not come to establish a “physical relation” with people. Some have come with her to share in the work, others she has called, others have come seeking for the light. With each she has a personal relation or the possibility of a personal relation; but each is of its own kind and none can say that she must do equally the same thing with each person. No one can claim as a right that she must be physically near to him because she is physically near to others. Some have a close personal relation with her, yet she sees little of them – some have a less close personal relation, yet for one reason or another may see her much oftener or longer. To apply the silly mathematical rules of the physical mind here is absurd – your physical mind cannot understand what the Mother does; its values and standards and ideas are not hers. It is still worse to make your personal vital demand or desire the measure of what she ought to do. That way spiritual ruin lies. She acts in each case for different reasons suitable to that case.
Undated
1 See letter of 25 December 1934 on page 496. – Ed.