Sri Aurobindo

Autobiographical Notes

and Other Writings of Historical Interest

Part Two. Letters of Historical Interest

2.Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life 1911–1928

Extracts from Letters to the Mother and Paul Richard, 1911 – c. 1922

To the Mother and Paul Richard [1]

All is always for [the] best, but it is sometimes from the external point of view an awkward best.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

I had one of my etheric writings, “Build desolated Europe into a city of God”. I give it [to] you for what it is worth. Perhaps it is only an aspiration of the powers that have brought about your recall. But is not the whole world and not Europe only in a state of decomposition? As for the idea of a quiet country somewhere in Asia, where does it exist? The whole earth is now under one law and answers to the same vibrations and I am sceptical of finding any place where the clash of the struggle will not pursue us. In any case, an effective retirement does not seem to be my destiny. I must remain in touch with the world until I have either mastered adverse circumstances or succumbed or carried on the struggle between the spiritual and physical so far as I am destined to carry it on. This is how I have always seen things and still see them. As for failure, difficulty and apparent impossibility I am too much habituated to them to be much impressed by their constant self-presentation except for passing moments.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

One needs to have a calm heart, a settled will, entire self-abnegation and the eyes constantly fixed on the beyond to live undiscouraged in times like these which are truly a period of universal decomposition. For myself, I follow the Voice and look neither to right nor to left of me. The result is not mine and hardly at all now even the labour.

6 May 1915