Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1934 — 1935

Letter ID: 547

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

January 12, 1935

A little more of “Riddance.” My reply to Girija has been published. Seen? Have you time? If so I’ll send. If not, I won’t.

No, I have not seen it. I should like to.

I am groaning under remorse for having given you no chance to be rid of Riddance. One word I could not read.

Yet a short question, que faire? [what to do?] I will put it as briefly as possible.

Is it true that the atmosphere of Nalina’s new rooms are far better than that of her old ones? I find it difficult to believe that Mother gives better-atmosphered rooms to some and less to others. Mother had said once that all the houses were sanctified by her presence and there were no houses more favoured than others. This appeals to me. For if it were otherwise I would like, of course, to try all the time to get into some room within the Ashram precincts as people say often that there the atmosphere is ever so much better. I can’t believe that Nalina’s old rooms were so poor in atmosphere since beside her Bula lived ever so happily and with remarkable cheerfulness without once complaining that the atmosphere there was not conducive to sadhana. I can quite believe that Nalina feels better in the new atmosphere of her new rooms. But that is because something inside her responds in the right attitude to her new rooms, for she never liked her old rooms as you know. My point in asking this question is that I have always believed, if I was not much mistaken, that you laid the chief stress on the inner attitude and were against laying too much stress on outer things – accidental things, inconveniences in the nature of things. It is those we have to master, not to yield to believing that such house is better the other inferior and things of that kind. I feel my attitude is here right. Am I mistaken? I ask you frankly and wanting to know, not to argue.

The atmosphere of the houses as houses is pretty much the same in all the Ashram. But people make their own atmosphere as well; a number of people living together may create one that is agreeable to this person and disagreeable to another. A single man also may leave a vital atmosphere in a house which is felt by others who follow him or, even if he does not feel it, be influenced by it for a time – that I have observed often enough. The surroundings also have sometimes an effect. But all that is very secondary – one ought to create one’s own atmosphere (of course of the right kind) and keep it, the other vibrations will fall away from it.

What are the Ashram precincts? Every house in which the sadhaks of the Ashram live is in the Ashram precincts. People have a queer way of talking of the houses in this compound as the Ashram – it has no meaning. Or do they think the Mother’s influence or mine is shut up in a compound?