Chapter 28Work for the Mother in the Ashram · All Ashram Work Is the Mother’s Work

Or again, if B or C prefer not to come to the Dining Room, why should others not follow their example? After all, the Gita’s line does apply: yad yad ¯acarati ´sres.t.has tad tad evetaro janah..1 If the well-known great sadhaks go about loosely, the ordinary sadhaks have few good examples to go by.

examples for others to follow — if people do it, it is their own error and their own responsibility. Even B cannot be imitated in everything though he is certainly a very good sadhak. But his not going outside the central compound has been sanctioned by X’s one merit as a sadhak is that he is entirely passive to the Mother and receives without question all she gives him. As for his separate kitchen that is Mother’s arrangement for him, not his own. The friends whom he receives there are people who have great devotion for the Mother or are seeking for light, the others do not come here though some still would. D always expresses adoration for the Mother and myself — she has always known us since the Mother first came to India. Even so this time also X refused to have her in his house, so she was put in E’s. It is not a bad progress for a man who has been here only a little over a year and had when he came a thousand ties with the world. It is also something that a man already marked out by some of the greatest English writers of the day as an equal of Keats and Shelley should renounce all publication and all fame and write only for myself and the Mother and the sadhaks. I know how impossible such a renunciation would be to most poets and writers and it seems to me it should be put to his credit as against any weaknesses he may still be unable to get over. For the matter of that who here has been able to become perfect in a year or two of sadhana? Not even the biggest saints or Yogis.

The whole idea of great sadhaks and imitation of them is in fact a mistake. Not to imitate others but to keep in mind the Mother’s will and try to follow it is what is asked from the 1 Whatsoever the Best doeth, that the lower kind of man puts into practice. Gita 3.21 sadhaks. Certainly if any sadhak had to be imitated in outward action, it would be Z and Y, not A or C!! But why do they want to imitate? Obedience to the Mother is the rule of the sadhana, not imitation of A or C. As for the line in the Gita, it is a statement of what happens in the world, not a rule for Yoga and the ´sres.t.ha here is not the Yogin, but those who are socially first, eminent and leaders.

17 August 1934 If anybody in the Asram tries to establish a supremacy or domi-nating influence over others, he is in the wrong. For it is bound to be a wrong vital influence and come in the way of the Mother’s work. If you feel anything of the kind in anybody, you are quite right to resist it and throw off the influence; to accept it would be bad both for him and you.

But there should be no quarrel or ill-feeling or keeping up of resentment or anger; for that too is not good for either. . . .

You must remember that just as the Mother uses your ca-pacities and gives them their field, she must be able to do the same with the capacities of others. If she gives charge of a department of work to one, that must not stand in the way of her consulting or using others. Thus X and Y are in charge of the building work, but the Mother consults Z too because of his scientific knowledge as an engineer and he has the right to make suggestions or criticisms or indicate any possible improvements, although he is not in charge. So too the Doctor is not in charge of the dispensary, but he is associated with the medical work and whenever necessary, or puts in his hands the treatment of a case of illness. It must be the same between you and Z.

It will be best if you fix in your mind and keep to the true rules of the work; then you will have no difficulty or trouble.

All the work should be done under the Mother’s sole authority. All must be arranged according to her free decision. She must be free to use the capacities of each separately or together according to what is best for the work and best for the worker.

None should regard or treat another member of the Asram as his subordinate. If he is in charge, he should regard the others as his associates and helpers in the work, and he should not try to dominate or impose on them his own ideas and personal fancies, but only see to the execution of the will of the Mother. None should regard himself as a subordinate, even if he has to carry out instructions given through another or to execute under supervision the work he has to do.

All should try to work in harmony, thinking only of how best to make the work a success; personal feelings should not be allowed to interfere, for this is a most frequent cause of disturbance in the work, failure or disorder.

If you keep this truth of the work in mind and always abide by it, difficulties are likely to disappear; for others will be influ-enced by the rightness of your attitude and work smoothly with you. Or, if through any weakness or perversity in them, they create difficulties, the effects will fall back on them and you will feel no disturbance or trouble.

12 October 1929

* Whose work is it if it is not the Mother’s work? All that you do, you have to do as the Mother’s work. All the work done in the Asram is the Mother’s.

All those works, meditation, reading Conversations, study-ing English etc. are good. You can do any of them dedicating them to the Mother.

Meditation means opening yourself to the Mother, con-centrating on aspiration and calling in her force to work and transform you.

18 September 1932

* All work in the Asram is the Mother’s.

12 February 1933

* You can take as much rest as you need from the work. The pains are evidently of the nervous system and are probably due to some resistance or obscurity there to the working of the Forces.

What you write in the beginning of your letter seems to indicate an excessive attachment to a particular work, that of the D. R. [Dining Room]. All work is the Mother’s and there should be no attachment to this or that to which you are accustomed or to the things or circumstances or people related to it; for that would indicate a sense of possession or clinging in the vital. The vital should be perfectly free and ready to work or not to work, to remain in one field or to go to another, to do in one way or to do in another according to the will of the Mother.

I trust that you will indeed take the opportunity of this rest to make a definite turn in your sadhana. A complete surrender of the mind and the vital both in work and in sadhana is the turn that is needed. Not to be attached to one’s ideas, feelings or formations, not to substitute them for those which the Divine Truth finds necessary for its workings, not to indulge one’s sen-timents, not to have personal preferences or, having them, to be ready to waive them at any moment and submit to the Mother’s Will which embodies the Divine Force, not to follow one’s own way but hers; this is the psychic submission that is most needed. So long as it is not there, a full opening of the sadhana on the vital and the physical plane is hardly possible. To carry on the sadhana in one’s way and according to the counsels of the individual mind and emotional being carries you only a little distance — it does not bring to the goal.

15 September 1933

* I must remind you that all the work in the Asram is the Mother’s work and no part of it is the personal property of any sadhak. easily forgotten by yourself and others.

7 March 1934

*

My mind says that the whole world belongs to the Mother; all works belong to her and whatever is done with her sanction is done directly for her. But in practice there seems to be a great difference between work we all do for her and work done for her personally. When I work directly for the Mother and she says, “Go and bring this for me”, my heart is filled with an immense joy. Yet I rarely find an opportunity to place myself at her direct service.