Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
Letter ID: 168
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
November 12, 1931
I think we will keep to the refrigerator. Your information about our food-measurements is inaccurate. I am taking the same quantity of food always. The Mother, of course, for some days took nothing and is still taking very little, but more and more rather than less every day; but the diminution was due to temporary incapacity and not to any set purpose. So there is no ground of that kind for changing what was settled. On the contrary the experience of these days shows that the refrigerator would have been of immense use and saved much time and trouble. The refrigerator is not going to be in the stores, except for a short time; it will be put on our floor as soon as the new rooms are ready; so there Shankar will have full satisfaction. All machines have to be carefully kept and handled if they are to remain in good 
order,– the motor cars are a proof of that,– but that is not a reason for machinelessness; the necessary care will have to be taken, that is all. And we have electricians and mechanics here, so it ought not to be impossible to repair any slight harm done.
As for Pratap, the Mother intends, if all goes well, to give a short meditation daily at Pranam time to the sadhaks for some days before the 24th, and if this can be done, he can come to the meditation. After the 24th she will see him privately; meanwhile he will have at least met her and received her touch: I hope that will satisfy him and keep him to his soul’s purpose in coming here. Please do not speak to others of this intention of the Mother’s, as that would raise a riot of comment, discussion, interpretation and gossip which would disturb the atmosphere altogether. It is better that it should not be known till the Mother is ready to make it public.
As for all the rest you write, you should realise that the Mother has had a very severe attack and that she must absolutely husband her forces in view of the strain the 24th November will mean for her. It is quite out of the question for her to begin seeing and receiving them meanwhile – a single morning of that kind of thing would exhaust her altogether. You must remember that for her a physical contact of this kind with others is not a mere social or domestic meeting with a few superficial movements which make no great difference one way or the other. It means for her an interchange, a pouring out of her forces and a receiving of things good, bad and mixed from them which often involves a great labour of adjustment and elimination and, in many cases though not in all, a severe strain on the body. If it had been only a question of two or three people, it would have been a different matter; but there is the whole Ashram here ready to enforce each his claim the moment she opens her doors. You surely do not want to put all that upon her before she has recovered her health and strength! In the interests of the work itself – the Mother has never cared in the least 
for her body or her health for its own sake and that indifference has been one reason, though only an outward one, for the damage done – I must insist on her going slowly in the resumption of the work and doing only so much at first as her health can bear. It seems to me that all who care for her ought to feel in the way I do.
The weakness in yourself of which you speak is there, as the persistency of these movements show but it is not in the heart – your heart is all right – but in the lower vital nature. All your weaknesses are there; the rest of your being is quite strong enough for the spiritual life. But this inadequacy of the lower vital is not peculiar to you, it is in almost every human being. This tendency to irrational sadness and despondency and these imaginations, fears and perverse reasonings – always repeating, if you will take careful notice, the same movements, ideas and feelings and even the same language and phrases like a machine – is a characteristic of the lower vital nature. The only way to get rid of it is to meet it with a fixed resolution of the higher vital and the mind and psychic being to combat, reject and master it. As you were determined to master the desire of the palate, so you must determine to master this “irrational knot” of despondency in the lower vital nature. If you indulge it and regard it as a natural part of yourself with good causes for existence or if you busy yourself finding this or that justification for it when it comes, there is no reason why it should let go its unpleasant grip upon you. Be firm and courageous here, as you have learnt to be with other movements of your lower vital; you will then, I think, find less difficulty in your meditation and your general sadhana.