Chapter 1

The Character of the Ashram

THE FOUNDATION

Sri Aurobindo¹ lived at first in retirement at Pondicherry with four or five disciples. Afterwards more and yet more began to come to him to follow his spiritual path and the number became so large that a community of sadhaks had to be formed for the maintenance and collective guidance of those who had left everything behind for the sake of a higher life. This was the foundation of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram which has less been created than grown around him as its centre.

SRI AUROBINDO

*

There was no Ashram at first, only a few people came to live near and practise Yoga. It was only some time after the Meier came from Japan that it took the form of the Ashram, more from the wish of the Sadhaks who desired to entrust their whole inner and outer life to the Mother than from any intention or plan of hers or of Sri Aurobindo.

SRI AUROBINDO

¹ Sri Aurobindo refers to himself in the third person in several passages in this section.

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The facts are: In the meantime, the Mother, after a long stay in France and Japan, returned to Pondicherry on the 24th April, 1920. The number of disciples then showed a tendency to increase rather rapidly. When the Ashram began to develop, it fell to the Mother to organise it; Sri Aurobindo soon retired into seclusion and the whole material and spiritual charge of it devolved on her.

SRI AUROBINDO

*

Mother was doing Yoga before she knew or met Sri Aurobindo; but their lines of Sadhana independently followed the same course. When they met, they helped each other in perfecting the Sadhana. What is known as Sri Aurobindo's Yoga is the joint creation of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo they are now completely identified the Sadhana in the Ashram and all arrangement is done directly by the Mother, Sri Aurobindo supports her from behind. All who come here for practising Yoga have to surrender themselves to the Mother who helps them always and builds up their spiritual life.

SRI AUROBINDO

*

The Mother is not a disciple of Sri Aurobindo. She has had the same realisation and experience as myself.

    The Mother's Sadhana started when she was very young. When she was twelve or thirteen, every evening many teachers came to her and taught her various spiritual disciplines. Among them was a dark Asiatic figure. When we first met, she immediately recognized me as the dark Asiatic figure whom she used to see a long time ago. That she should

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come here and work with me for a common goal was, as it were, a divine dispensation.

The Mother was an adept in the Buddhist yoga and the yoga of the Gita even before she came to India. Her yoga was moving towards a grand synthesis. After this, it was natural that she should come here. She has helped and is helping to give a concrete form to my yoga. This would not have been possible without her co_operation.

One of the two great steps in this yoga is to take refuge in the Mother.²

SRI AUROBINDO

*

At the beginning of my present earthly existence I came into contact with many people who said that they had a great inner aspiration, an urge towards something deeper and truer, but that they were tied down, subjected, slaves to that brutal necessity of earning their living, and that this weighed them down so much, took up so much of their time and energy that they could not engage in any other activity, inner or outer. I heard this very often, I saw many poor people I don't mean poor from the monetary point of view, but poor because they felt imprisoned in a narrow and deadening material necessity.

    I was very young at that time, and I always used to tell myself that if ever I could do it, I would try to create a little world-oh! quite a small one, but still small world where people would be able to live without having to be preoccupied with food and lodging and clothing and

² When asked what the other great step is, Sri Aurobindo replied, "Aspiration of the sadhak for the divine life."

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the imperative necessities of life, to see whether all the energies freed by this certainty of a secure material living would turn spontaneously towards the divine life and the inner realisation.

    Well, towards the middle of my life-at least, what is , usually the middle of a human life-the means were given to me and . I could realise this, that is, I could create these  conditions of life.

THE MOTHER

THE AIM

My aim is to create a centre of spiritual life which shall serve as a means of bringing down the higher consciousness and making it a power not merely for 'salvation' but for a divine life upon earth. It is with this object that I have withdrawn from public life and founded this Ashram in Pondicherry (so called for want of a better word, for it is not an Ashram of Sannyasins, but of those who want to leave all else and prepare for this rule).

SRI AUROBlNDO

This is not an Ashram like others-the members are not Sannyasis; it is not moksa that is the sole aim of the yoga here. What is being done here is a preparation for a work-a work which will be founded on yogic consciousness and Yoga-Shakti, and can have no other foundation. Meanwhile, every member here is expected to do some work in the Ashram as part of this spiritual preparation.

SRI AUROBINDO

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This Ashram has been created with another object than that ordinarily common to such institutions, not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit. There is no general rule as to the stage at which one may leave the ordinary life and enter here; in each case it depends on the personal need and impulsion and the possibility or the advisability for one to take the step

  SRI AUROBINDO

*

The usual sadhanas have for aim the union with the Supreme Consciousness (Sat-chit-ananda). And those who reach there are satisfied with their own liberation and leave the world to its unhappy plight. On the contrary Sri Aurobindo's sadhana starts where the others end. Once the union with the Supreme is realised one must bring down that realisation to the exterior world and change the conditions of life upon the earth until a total transformation is accomplished. In accordance with this aim, the sadhaks of the integral yoga do not retire from the world to lead a life of contemplation and meditation. Each one must devote at least one-third of his time to a useful work. All activities are represented in the Ashram and each one chooses the work most congenial to his nature, but must do it in a spirit of service and unselfishness, keeping always in view the aim of integral transformation.

    To make this purpose possible the Ashram is organised so that all its inmates find their reasonable needs satisfied and have not to worry about their subsistence.

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The rules are very few so that each one can enjoy the freedom needed for his development but a few things are strictly forbidden: they are-(1) politics, (2) smoking, (3) alcoholic drink and (4) sex enjoyment.

  
    Great care is taken for the maintenance of good health and the welfare and normal growth of the body of all, small and big, young and old.

24 September 1953

THE MOTHER

*

Here we do not have religion. We replace religion by the spiritual life, which is truer, deeper and higher at the same time, that is to say, closer to the Divine. For the Divine is in everything, but we are not conscious of it. This is the immense progress that man must make.

THE MOTHER

*

Ours is neither a political nor a social but a spiritual goal. What we want is a transformation of the individual consciousness, not a change of regime or government. For reaching that goal we put no confidence in any human means, however powerful; our trust is in the Divine Grace alone.

THE MOTHER

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A LABORATORY OF YOGA

It is necessary or rather inevitable that in an Ashram which is a "laboratory", as X puts it, for a spiritual and supra-  mental yoga, humanity should be variously represented. For the problem of transformation has to deal with all sorts of elements favourable and unfavourable. The same man indeed carries in him a mixture of these two things. If only sattwic and cultured men come for yoga, men without very much of the vital difficulty in them, then, because the difficulty of the vital element in terrestrial nature has not been faced and overcome, it might well be that the endeavour would fail. There might conceivably be under certain circumstances an overmental layer superimposed on the mental, vital and physical, and influencing them, but hardly anything supramental or a sovereign transmutation of the human being. Those in the Ashram come from all quarters and are of all kinds; it cannot be otherwise.

   In the course of the yoga, collectively-though not for each one necessarily-as each plane is dealt with, all its difficulties arise. That will explain much in the Ashram that people do not expect there. When the preliminary work is over in the "laboratory", things must change.

    Also, much stress has not been laid on human fellowship of the ordinary kind between the inmates (though good feeling, consideration and courtesy should always be there,) because that is not the aim; it is unity in a new consciousness that is the aim, and the first thing is for each to do his sadhana, to arrive at that new consciousness and realise oneness there.
  

    Whatever faults are there in the sadhaks must be removed by the Light from above-a sattwic rule can only change

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natures predisposed to a sattwic rule.

SRI AUROBINDO

GROWTH BY CONSCIOUSNESS

What seems to me of more importance is to try to explain how things are worked out here. Indeed very few are the people who understand it and still fewer those who realise it.

There has never been, at any time, a mental plan, a fixed programme or an organisation decided beforehand. The whole thing has taken birth, grown and developed as a living being by a movement of consciousness (Chit-Tapas) constantly maintained, increased and fortified. As the Conscious Force descends in matter and radiates, it seeks for fit instruments to express and manifest it. It goes without saying that the more the instrument is open, receptive and plastic, the better are the results. The two obstacles that stand in the way of a smooth and harmonious working in and through the Sadhaks are:

   
    (l) the preconceived ideas and mental constructions which block the way to the influence and the working of the Conscious Force.

    (2) the preferences and impulses of the vital which distort and falsify the expression.
   
    Both these things are the natural output of the ego. Without the interference of these two elements my physical intervention would not be necessary. . . .
   
    There is a clear precise perception of the Force and the Consciousness at work, and whenever this Force gets distorted or the Consciousness is obscured in their action,I

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have to interfere and rectify the movement. In most cases things are mixed up and there again I have to intervene to separate the distorted transcription from the pure one.

    Otherwise a great freedom of action is left to all, because the Conscious Force can express itself in innumerable ways and for the perfection and integrality of the manifestation no ways are to be a priori excluded, a trial is very often given before the selection is made.

SRI AUROBINDO

*

Sri Aurobindo has told us and we are convinced by experience that above the mind there is a consciousness much wiser than the mental wisdom, and in the depths of things there is a will much more powerful than. the human will.

All our endeavour is to make this consciousness and this will govern our lives and action and organise all our activities. It is the way in which the Ashram has been created. Since 1926 when Sri Aurobindo retired and gave me full charge of it (at that time there were only two rented houses and a handful of disciples) all has grown up and developed like the growth of a forest, and each service was created not by any artificial planning but by a living and dynamic need.This is the secret of constant growth and endless progress. The present difficulties come chiefly from psychological resistances in the disciples who have not been able to follow the rather rapid pace of the "sadhana" and the yielding to the intrusion of mental methods which have corrupted the initial working.

A growth and purification of the consciousness is the only remedy.

THE MOTHER

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None of the present achievements of humanity, however great they are, can be for us an ideal to follow. The wide world is there as a field of experiment for human ideals.

    Our purpose is quite different and if our chances of success are small just now, we are sure that we are working to prepare the future.

    I know that from the external point of view we are below many of the present achievements in this world, but our aim is not a perfection in accordance with the human standards. We are endeavouring for something else which belongs to the future.

    The Ashram has been founded and is meant to be the cradle of the new world.
   
    The inspiration is from above, the guiding force is from above, the creative power is from above, at work for the descent of the new realisation.

     It is only by its shortcomings, its deficiencies and its failures that the Ashram belongs to the present world.
  
     None of the present achievements of humanity have the power to pull the Ashram out of its difficulties.
   
     It is only a total conversion of all its members and an integral opening to the descending Light of Truth that can help it to realise itself.
  
     The task, no doubt, is a formidable one, but we received the command to accomplish it and we are upon earth for that purpose alone.
   
     We shall continue up to the end with an unfailing trust in the Will and the Help of the Supreme.
  
     The door is open and will always remain open to all those who decide to give their life for that purpose.  

THE MOTHER

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