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 it was something very floating, without a

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collective reality." (Bulletin, April 1963, p. 23)

Then came the 'Siddhi Day' of 24 November 1926 and along with it the founding of what has come to be known as 'Sri Aurobindo Ashram'. Sri Aurobindo retired into seclusion for the realisation of the further stages of his Sadhana and the whole material and spiritual charge of the Ashram devolved on the Mother. Then she started working along two complementary lines with a dual purpose - individual and collective - in view. In order to understand what this dual purpose meant in actual practice, we have to remember that one of the cardinal points of Sri Aurobindo's teaching is that there are more than one overhead planes of spiritual consciousness above the ordinarily functioning mental, and it is possible through yogic sadhana to bring these superconscient planes down to illumine and heighten our everyday life; and that, in the depths of our being, there is a will much stronger and purer than our surface human will, and this deeper force of action can be brought to the forefront to direct our daily activities. It is in the light of these truths of occult psychology that the Mother sought to give a new orientation to the life and form of the fledgling Ashram. To quote her own words: "All our endeavour is to make this consciousness and this will govern our lives and action, and organise all our activities." (Bulletin, August 1964, p. 96)

This was the individual aspect of Sadhana, what every inmate of the Ashram was expected to put into progressive practice for his own march towards spiritual perfection. But there was at the same time a collective aspect to it. Thus the second line along which the Mother worked was to make the collectivity as real and living as the individual aspect and besides make this collective reality of the Ashram embrace even those sadhaks who for whatever reason could not permanently stay at Pondicherry. Prof. Srinivasa Iyengar has expressed well the significance of

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what was being done by the Mother immediately after the formal establishment of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Here are his words:

"What was done in those early years - the thirties especially - was to prepare the individual consciousness to admit and recognise the necessity for a collective individuality, to help the sadhaks to shed their superficial angularities and egoistic separativities, and to tune themselves to the music of interdependence governed by the śruti of the Divine Will." (Sri Aurobindo, 1972 edition, p. 562)

But the question may be asked: What was the necessity for the fostering of this sense of 'collective individuality' in the consciousness of the sadhaks of the Ashram? To answer it we have to refer, although in brief, to the basic elements of Sri Aurobindo's Vision of Integral Reality.