For years after his arrival in Pondicherry in 1910, Sri Aurobindo was unwilling to speak of his household as an Ashram. Not that the term would have been inappropriate, for an Ashram is simply "the house or houses of a Teacher or Master of spiritual philosophy in which he receives and lodges those who come to him for the teaching and practice."* It is true that in the early days Sri Aurobindo took
no disciples as such. He once wrote, "With the three or four young men who accompanied me or joined me in Pondicherry, I had at first the relation of friends and companions rather than of a Guru and disciples; it was on the ground of politics I had come to know them and not on the spiritual ground. Afterwards only there was a gradual development of spiritual relations." But even as more and more aspirants gathered around Sri Aurobindo specifically to practise yoga under his direction, the grouping remained informal, and was not referred to as an "ashram". It was only after the Mother finally settled in Pondicherry in 1920 that an attempt was made at collective organisation. "The number of disciples then showed a tendency to increase rather rapidly." And as thus "the Ashram began to develop, it fell to the Mother to organise it." She had to see to the outward lives of the disciples, whose "numbers began so much to increase that it was thought necessary to make an arrangement for lodging those who came, and houses were bought and rented according to need forthe purpose. Arrangements [also] had to be made for the maintenance, repair, rebuilding of houses, for the service of food and for decent living and hygiene" and so forth. At the same time the guidance of the disciples' inner lives began progressively to pass into the Mother's hands, so that, when Sri Aurobindo retired into seclusion on 24 November 1926, "the whole material and spiritual charge" of what had now come to be called Sri Aurobindo's ashram "devolved on her". It was in this way that "the Ashram was founded or rather founded itself in 1926", the informal grouping of seekers taking "the form of an ashram more from the wish of the sadhaks who desired to entrust their whole inner and outer life to the Mother than from any intention or plan of hers or of Sri Aurobindo's". The Sri Aurobindo Ashram is thus more a spontaneous growth than a deliberate creation.
