Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 3
The only thing to do with this impulse to go is to throw it away. It is nothing but a push from the forces which want you to fail and want the Yoga and the work to fail; whenever they see that some forward movement is going on, they get restless and push their way in through this old habit of sadness and despondency. As they could not use the old excuses for clouding the darshan time, they took this affair of the property as a basis. But if you clear your mind from their suggestions, you shall see that the whole thing is quite flimsy. That men are attached to money or possession is a thing known ever since humanity began its course. That when one gives up money or property, there will be plenty of “friendly” voices to say: “Don’t do it, don’t do it – too rash, too foolish.” – that too is an old experience and inevitable. What is there in all that to trouble you and make you want to renounce sadhana and the Godward will? The trouble of the property is going to be taken off your shoulders, so there is no cause for depression there. Again your giving of the houses and your going away are two opposite acts and cannot go together. One is an act of faith, love, confidence, self-giving – the other is just the opposite, a movement away from the Divine, away from the Mother. How can the two be compatible?
Until you allowed these suggestions to sadden you – and sadness always opens the way to the old trouble, if it is not rejected – you were going on very well; the psychic basis was growing and strengthening itself and that is the main thing to do now. The psychic basis once strong enough, all the old remnants of vital weakness or attachment would fall off of themselves without trouble. But what these despondencies do is to reawaken the painful struggle and tapasya – as evidenced by your letter of the morning about the dinner, etc. There is no use in reviving that – it is a painful method of struggling out of the vital evil and it is not quicker than the easier and less painful way.
You have to get back to the psychic feeling and attitude. That is the only thing to be done.
P.S. I do not see any harm in the social invitation in itself; if there is any vital froth, it will blow itself away in time. To pursue Yoga seriously is all right, of course.