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WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Sweet Mother,

Somebody asked me this question: "Is it not a great loss for human society if persons endowed with an exceptional capacity to serve mankind, such as a gifted doctor or barrister, come to stay here in the Ashram for their own salvation? They could perhaps serve the Divine better by serving men and the world!"

Nobody comes here for his own salvation because Sri Aurobindo does not believe in salvation; for us salvation is a meaningless word. We are here to prepare the transformation of the earth and men so that the new creation may take place, and if we [new p. 313]make individual efforts to progress, it is because this progress is indispensable for the accomplishment of the work.

I am surprised that after having lived in the Ashram for so long, you can still think in this way and be open to this Sunday-school drivel.

I am sending you a quotation from Sri Aurobindo which will perhaps help to enlighten your thought.

"It is equally ignorant and one thousand miles away from [old p. 315]my teaching to find it in your relations with human beings or in the nobility of the human character or an idea that we are here to establish mental and moral and social Truth and justice on human and egoistic lines. I have never promised to do anything of the kind. Human nature is made up of imperfections, even its righteousness and virtue are pretensions, imperfections and prancings of self-approbatory egoism.... What is aimed at by us is a spiritual truth as the basis of life, the first words of which are surrender and union with the Divine and the transcendence of ego. So long as that basis is not established, a sadhak is only an ignorant and imperfect human being struggling with the evils of the lower nature.... What is created by spiritual progress is an inner closeness and intimacy in the inner being, the sense of the Mother's love and presence etc."

24 February 1965

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 16, pp. 314-315