B. Urge to Procure Personal Money

Another timely reminder the Board of Trustees of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram has recently issued. It deals with some

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sadhaks' urge to procure money by various means. This is what the Trust Board has said:

"The inmates will employ all their time for Ashram Work. They will not take up any outside work or business.

"Ashramites should not involve themselves in private or personal business transactions or taking up part-time jobs outside the Ashram. How can this be reconciled if one is living totally, entirely for Mother's work here? Naturally, also, one cannot use the Ashram's name and address for any other work than the Ashram's, nor can one contact or write personally to Government offices. This has to stop."

(Brochure issued by the Trust Board)

The Sri Aurobindo Ashram provides the Ashramites with everything they need for a decent and healthy living. Even then, why is it that some Ashramites are in pursuit of personal money in abundant measure? The reason is not far to seek. It is because some of us have forgotten what an ideal spiritual seeker's life should be like. We have forgotten too that indulgence in ever-multiplying desires is totally inconsistent with leading the life of Sadhana. And as a result our vital is hungering for many a thing and to satisfy it adequately we need money as a purchasing commodity. But this course can only lead to our spiritual downfall. In order to bring us back to our senses let us listen to what Sri Aurobindo has to say to the sadhaks:

Sri Aurobindo on Desires and a Sadhak's Needs:

(1)"It is not yoga to give free play to the natural instincts and desires. Yoga demands mastery over the nature, not subjection to the nature." (Letters on Yoga, p. 1396)

(2)"Kāmanā bāsanā have no part in yoga, they cannot be

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its help, they can only be hindrances. So long as desire and ego remain, there can be no surrender to the Divine, no fulfilment in the Yoga. They are movements of the vital and cannot be anything else." (Ibid.)

(3)"It would certainly be very easy if all that one had to do were to follow one's desires; but to be governed by one's desires is not yoga." (Ibid., p. 1400)

(4)"The necessities of a sadhak should be as few as possible; for there are only a very few things that are real necessities in life. The rest are either utilities or things decorative to life or luxuries. These a yogin has a right to possess or enjoy only on one of two conditions -

(i)If he uses them during his sadhana solely to train himself in possessing things without attachment or desire and learn to use them rightly, in harmony with the Divine Will, with a proper handling, a just organisation, arrangement and measure - or,

(ii)if he has already attained a true freedom from desire and attachment and is not in the least moved or affected in any way by loss or withholding or deprival. If he has any greed, desire, demand, claim for possession and enjoyment, any anxiety, grief, anger or vexation when denied or deprived, he is not free in spirit and his use of the things he possesses is contrary to the spirit of sadhana." (Ibid., pp. 1399-1400)