The Ashram Comes into Being In the earlier years of Sri Aurobindo's stay at Pondicherry, all those who dwelt with Sri Aurobindo formed a rather loosely bound informal grouping. It was only after the Mother finally settled in Pondicherry in 1920 that a serious attempt was made at some sort of a collective organisation. By January 1922, the Ashram - although not yet known as an 'Ashram' - was very much of a reality in its inner spiritual orientation. Yet, in this pre-1926 period, the community of sadhaks had been - in the words of the Mother - no more than "a collection of individuals ... without a collective organisation... One could say it had a general value but

(Jugal's book brings us an easy insight into the heart of Sri Aurobindo's "Integral Yoga" and into the manifold play of his creative vision. A fine piece of work!) xiii

The Sri Aurobindo Ashram Today Following the formal establishment of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1926, a steady stream of seekers heard the inner call and came to form an integral part of the organisation. From among those who joined the Ashram in the first twelve years after the year of founding, we mention here the names of some of the notables who became well-known in later years. The respective years of their joining the Ashram are indicated within brackets: 1. Chunibhai Patel alias Dyuman (1927); 2. K.D. Sethna alias Amal Kiran along with his wife Daulat alias Lalita (1927); 3. Dilip Kumar Roy (1928); 4. Sahana Devi (1928); 5. John Chadwick alias A

Freedom and Discipline in the Ashram The establishment of overall harmony and concord in our Ashram community and the building up of an ideal group life here is surely a realisation that would require sustained Page-60 effort of long duration. This cannot be expected in a few years' time or even in a few decades'. So let us not be overhasty in trying to "achieve" this concord by any means proper or improper, for that is bound to lead to failure and frustration. In our ignorant enthusiasm we may be tempted to adopt some mental and external measures to establish conformity in our Ashram life by unduly curtailing the freedom of the constituent ind

Nature of Human Relationships: Cherished Goal We should not forget that, being spurred by some misplaced zeal to establish a semblance of all-round 'harmony' in our Ashram collectivity, if we attempt to adopt some arbitrary short-cut measures and try to build our group-life on the insecure foundation of ego-prompted sympathy and solidarity, what we will at best achieve will be a deceptive and brittle 'constructed harmony', not the harmony the Mother and Sri Aurobindo would like us to cultivate. And these attempts are bound to fail in the end; for all that springs from ego has the roots of its ultimate decay and dissolution in-built into its soil

A Utopian Dream? We have put forward in the preceding Section the idea that in order to fulfil its destiny, the destiny of erecting an ideal collective life wherein will live perfect spiritual individuals, a significant number of Ashramites should seriously endeavour to grow within and live from within, know their real selves and build up their relationships with their comrades on the basis of the inner unity of consciousness. But this is a solution to which it may be objected that it puts off the consummation of an ideal human grouping to a remote future; for it presupposes that no machinery invented by man's reason can perfect either the individual or the collectiv

Basic Frailties of Any Group-life The Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry is, as is well known, an elaborate and complex structure of group-life sufficiently large in its dimension. But on what fundamental principle of solidarity has it been based or should it Page-21 be based? Before discussing this question let us first see how, in general, any group is formed. Man has in him two distinct master impulses, the individualistic and the communal, a personal life and a social life, a personal motive of conduct and a group motive of conduct. The possibility of their opposition and the attempt to find their equation lie at the very roots of huma

The Ashram Marches towards Its Glorious Destiny In spite of some temporary twists and turns visiting the history of its life, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram has been steadily marching towards its glorious destiny. There may be some Ashramites who hold the opinion that the Ashram is at present "passing through a very bad time" and the inmates "are passing through a great darkness." But we, on our part, do not subscribe to this alarmist view. This may possibly be the case with a few isolated individuals. But there are many more Ashramites who can easily testify on the basis of their daily personal experience that the Presence of the Mother and Sri Aur

The Deficiencies If we in the Ashram would like to fulfil the God-given task of building a collective life in which spiritually perfect individuals would dwell in a spiritually perfect community, many of the Ashramites, or even the majority of them, would have to sincerely try to grow into a more complete spiritual nature, live in the light of a higher and larger and more integral consciousness, and move and act under the guidance of a Truth which sees intuitively and spontaneously the thing to be done at any given moment and intuitively and spontaneously fulfil that in the act. The question is, Have we reached that happy position? The obvious answer is an emphatic NO.

BEHIND THE GENESIS OF THE BOOK A couple of months back, on July 17, 1995 to be precise, P-da of our Ashram Press wrote to me a two-page long letter in a most unexpected way. I say 'unexpected' because we have not met each other even for once during the last so many months if not years. In his letter, among other things, P-da has expressed his anguish over the supposed absence of harmony and brotherly feeling among many Ashramites. He somehow feels that our collective life here is not as he thinks it should be. He wanted to meet some senior member of the Ashram who could possibly clear his sense of uneasiness. I immediately took the letter to respected N