Margaret Woodrow Wilson to Sri Aurobindo
Title
Margaret Woodrow Wilson to Sri Aurobindo
Creator
Wilson, Margaret Woodrow, 1886-1944
Identifier
WWP19649
Date
c. 1938
Description
Margaret A. Wilson writes to Sri Aurobindo to ask to become one of his disciples.
Source
Eleanor Wilson McAdoo Papers, University of California, Santa Barbara
Publisher
Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum
Subject
Religion and politics
Language
English
Text
Dear Sri Aurobindo,
Your Essays on the Gita have been a source of help and inspiration to me ever since the summer of I932, when I first discovered them. Now I am writing to you to ask you humbly for direct help and inspiration. I know no one here in this country to whom I can confidently turn, because I know of no one here who has had illumination. Whenever I am tempted to join this or that school or center I draw back in fear that their rules and disciplines will be binding and restricting without liberating to the self without conducing to its liberation. Now I have the little pamphlet about your sram in my possession, and I am daring to hope that you will suggest to me the disciplines that I can freely impose on myself in order to be liberated first into the Consciousness of the self in me and in all beings and finally and then when the Lord in my heart wills it experience that last final union with his the Prushuttama Consciousness the Purushattama. I know that before this will be possible the path will be long and hard but I want to enter it and go as straight and quickly as possible not stopping on the way for the enjoyment of any psychic riches or power. But I do want along the way to be an instrument of the spiritual Self for divine works. I am conscious now of a terrible emptiness, that every word and act of mine now is useless because not motivated from within by the Self, and I am convinced that I shall never again come under the illusion that the little self can be useful except it be guided and illuminated by the higher self. And so I am like a lost sailor who has left the a familiar shore but does not know the way to the shore he is seeking because he is without a compass. The desire of the union with the Highest is obscessing me but I know not how to attain it. The longing for liberation and union with the Highest is obsessing me and I want it to for I want it to deepen until there is no other desire left.
I have heard that when the pupil is ready the Master is there. I do not know whether or not I am ready or whether I am capable of following your directions but I implore you dear Master to show me the way, and I shall try to follow it witout fear because I know that you are only the representive of my own higher Consciousness of which I am now unaware. If my longing for liberation is not as deep and since as I think it is please make it deeper, dear Master for even though it tortures me at times I do not want to lose it until it. I am told that you have disciples who do not live in your sasram. Do you take disciples in America? If at any time you bid me to leave all and come to your sasram to live I shall do so God helping me.
and I hope with all my heart that I am telling you the truth when I say that it is the strongest desire of my heart and that I want it to swallow up every other desire.
Of one thing I am certain and of only one thing that that the consciousness of union with the Highest is the only goal worth striving for.
Your Essays on the Gita have been a source of help and inspiration to me ever since the summer of I932, when I first discovered them. Now I am writing to you to ask you humbly for direct help and inspiration. I know no one here in this country to whom I can confidently turn, because I know of no one here who has had illumination. Whenever I am tempted to join this or that school or center I draw back in fear that their rules and disciplines will be binding and restricting without liberating to the self without conducing to its liberation. Now I have the little pamphlet about your sram in my possession, and I am daring to hope that you will suggest to me the disciplines that I can freely impose on myself in order to be liberated first into the Consciousness of the self in me and in all beings and finally and then when the Lord in my heart wills it experience that last final union with his the Prushuttama Consciousness the Purushattama. I know that before this will be possible the path will be long and hard but I want to enter it and go as straight and quickly as possible not stopping on the way for the enjoyment of any psychic riches or power. But I do want along the way to be an instrument of the spiritual Self for divine works. I am conscious now of a terrible emptiness, that every word and act of mine now is useless because not motivated from within by the Self, and I am convinced that I shall never again come under the illusion that the little self can be useful except it be guided and illuminated by the higher self. And so I am like a lost sailor who has left the a familiar shore but does not know the way to the shore he is seeking because he is without a compass. The desire of the union with the Highest is obscessing me but I know not how to attain it. The longing for liberation and union with the Highest is obsessing me and I want it to for I want it to deepen until there is no other desire left.
I have heard that when the pupil is ready the Master is there. I do not know whether or not I am ready or whether I am capable of following your directions but I implore you dear Master to show me the way, and I shall try to follow it witout fear because I know that you are only the representive of my own higher Consciousness of which I am now unaware. If my longing for liberation is not as deep and since as I think it is please make it deeper, dear Master for even though it tortures me at times I do not want to lose it until it. I am told that you have disciples who do not live in your sasram. Do you take disciples in America? If at any time you bid me to leave all and come to your sasram to live I shall do so God helping me.
and I hope with all my heart that I am telling you the truth when I say that it is the strongest desire of my heart and that I want it to swallow up every other desire.
Of one thing I am certain and of only one thing that that the consciousness of union with the Highest is the only goal worth striving for.
Original Format
Letter
To
Ghose, Aurobindo, 1872-1950
Files
Citation
Wilson, Margaret Woodrow, 1886-1944, “Margaret Woodrow Wilson to Sri Aurobindo,” c. 1938, WWP19649, Eleanor Wilson McAdoo Collection at the University of California-Santa Barbara, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.